Nigerians Charged To Resist Plans Towards One-Party State

Patriotic Nigerians should resist efforts by the ruling All Progressives Congress to stifle oppositions and turn the country into a one-party state. Resource persons that spoke on the subject in Enugu, weekend, said no democracy thrives in absence of viable oppositions.

A former Labour Party stalwart in Enugu State and commentator on national issues, Barr Nnadume Offorkansi, aired his opinion while reacting to the skirmishes rocking the African Democratic Congress, ADC. He said it was only ADC that is providing Nigerians with a glimpse of having an opposition ahead of the 2027 general elections.

He alleged that, “The crises in major political parties in Nigeria are being orchestrated by the ruling party. It is not a hidden agenda. This ruling party wants to destroy all the oppositions. That is how they coaxed virtually all the state governors; the party also has more than 70 percent of the National Assembly members. A party that has such population should go home and sleep because the election is as good as completed. But yet, they keep getting frightened about the opposition. They know that they are not with the people.”

He said Nigerians should see the battle to have a viable opposition as a collective necessity. “If we wait for INEC and the court, the desired result will not be achieved. Already people are moving to occupy INEC headquarters. Maybe after Easter, the next place might be INEC offices at the states. After occupying INEC offices, maybe the next destination will be the courts. Most of the problems bedevilling the country today are from judicial pronouncements. Some judges are becoming reckless.”

He said it was the courts that enable the excesses of INEC. In his words, “INEC will always say they are obeying court orders. Nigerians should take their destinies into their hands. The president, during his campaign, promised to give the citizenry steady electricity. The same president went out of the national grid and installed solar at the Presidential Villa, Abuja. Nigerians should not wait for the opposition parties to do it alone. We should also wake up. We are the people suffering the brunt. If they succeed in muscling ADC, which is the only opposition party we have, the nation is gone.”

A former information commissioner in Enugu State, Barr Igbonekwu Ogazimora, advised Nigerians to defend the nation’s democracy before it gets too late.
He said, “The ADC problems have nothing to do with legal or the court. It is a political manipulation from the highest level. What must happen now is for Nigerians to refuse to see the travails of ADC as localised to ADC. It is a move to force Nigerians to have one-party system where they have no choice but to accept the continuity of what we have at the moment. What we have at the moment may be beautiful to some people, but not the majority of Nigerians. A litre of fuel now is about N1,400. Look at our electricity!”

He said those in power had succeeded in using poverty as the tool to conquer the psyche of Nigerians. “Poverty forces people into political docility,” says Barr Ogazimora. “They are robbed of the confidence and humanity they deserve. When people are not sure of paying their children’s school fees, settling their medical bills, and so on, they are bound to be politically docile. Researchers have said that Nigeria’s poverty is not natural. It is deliberately designed to control the population. We have a country that has the potential of becoming whatever a country can be in the world, but somebody somewhere is ensuring that Nigerians are forced to be docile. They have no voice because they are too poor. The little that it takes to participate in politics is absent in them.”

He said Nigerian citizens should “better wake up; shelve that hunger and get politically active”, adding that, “It is not only ADC that is targeted. I am not saying ADC will win the election; what we are saying is that we need another alternative. We are unfortunate to have a population that is docile, but we have an opportunity to cause our people to wake up. It is left for people who are not comfortable to stand up for correction. If they do not, and continue to hope on comfort, they will continue to live on hope.”

He said the political greed of most Nigerian leaders had come down to every level of governance, including governors, local government chairmen, lawmakers and even presidents general of communities. He therefore rallied Nigerians to follow standards devoid of violence. According to him, “Violence will compound the problems. Most people in government don’t seek consultations; they are all-knowing. That is why we have a lot of white elephants, and unfortunately we have a sycophantic population. We need to institutionalise standards so that our children and children’s children will have a better tomorrow”