AAC and the 2027 Elections

The 2027 general elections are around the corner. The elections will take place amidst the worst economic distress for working people in recent history. This is compounded by mounting insecurity and social crisis. Nonetheless, politicians have started warming up for campaign.

Different sections of the ruling class are coming up as usual with empty promises. But now more than ever, the working masses, the marginalised youth, and oppressed people across the country need an alternative that challenges the systematic rottenness of social, economic, and political life.

Issues shaping 2027

A recent poll by Business Day confirmed that, towards the 2027 elections, the topmost concerns of Nigerians are the economy and security. This is not at all surprising. While there has been economic growth since the Bola Tinubu administration of the APC regime came into power in 2023, the lives of poor working-class people have got worse. It is now more difficult for the vast majority of the population to survive economically. And the state of physical insecurity is also worsening. Kidnapping and killings have become commonplace.

The United Nations estimates that 35 million Nigerians go to bed hungry every day. This does not include the tens of millions of working people who just “manage” with whatever they can find. According to both the World Bank and the National Bureau of Statistics, the poverty rate has increased. At the beginning of May 2023, the poverty rate was 49.8%. Today it stands at 63%. The cost of living has become unbearable for poor working people. The neoliberal capitalist policies that the regime has implemented, such as the removal of fuel subsidies and the devaluation of the naira, have enriched a handful of super-rich Nigerians while the masses wallow in extreme poverty.

Insecurity has also gone from very bad to exceedingly terrible. In his inauguration speech on 29 May 2023, Tinubu said that “security shall be the top priority of our administration because neither prosperity nor justice can prevail amidst insecurity and violence”. But credible data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED) show that he has failed in this crucial regard. The Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED) recorded 4,500 deaths and 7,000 incidents of kidnapping during his first year in office alone. By the second year, these had increased to 7,472 and 12,584.

Alongside the two key issues of mass pauperisation and increasing insecurity, a major issue that will shape the forthcoming elections is the quest for a genuine alternative. There is great distrust in the ruling class on the one hand. On the other hand, there is as yet inadequate confidence in the possibility of a qualitative alternative supplanting the parties of this class of rogues.

The bosses’ parties and the revolutionary alternative

The ruling APC party is throwing everything it can into ensuring it wins at the polls next year; by hook or by crook. The People’s Democratic Party, which ruled the country from 1999 to 2015 and could have been considered the main capitalist opposition party until 2023, is imploding. 

Different sections of the oppositionist capitalists rallied into a coalition. This took the form of their takeover of the African Democratic Congress (ADC). But some old members of the party have taken them to court, insisting that they (the old ADC hands) are the legitimate leaders of the party, throwing up a stalemate that could stop the party from being able to present candidates. 

It is also common knowledge that, despite campaigns not having commenced and the capitalist opposition parties being in disarray, APC has already begun deploying “logistics.” These include the distribution of thousands of branded vehicles and the circulation of materials such as billboards and clothing. There are also videos online which show branded foodstuffs like bags of rice being distributed to people who first have to show their voter’s card, by party stalwarts at the grassroots level, wearing APC insignia.

The politics of the ruling party

APC has been consolidating its incumbent power aggressively. The presidency of Bola Tinubu is not ready to leave anything to chance in the forthcoming elections. One of the major steps in this direction is the wave of defection of governors to the ruling party. When Bola Tinubu took over the reins of power in 2023, APC had 20 governors out of the across the 36 governors in the country. Today, the number has risen to 31 out of 36.

Most of these crossed over from the capitalist opposition parties, especially PDP which had 14 governors at the beginning of May 2023 but which now has just two (Accord, APGA and LP have one each). Bribery and threats of probe, as well as calculations of how to remain relevant informed the decisions of these governors defections, though they always couch their taking this step as being for the benefit of the citizens they are supposed to represent.

With the Nigerian flavour of capitalist politics “structures”  better enabled by the actors in the government houses of the states. These include both mass mobilisation mechanisms for bringing out the vote, and money enabled rigging machinery. Thus, this overwhelming control of states is very significant and has resulted in widespread outcry that APC is working towards establishing a de facto one-party state.

The ruling party is also using its massive takeover of the two chambers of the National Assembly to shape the legal framework for the forthcoming elections. When the 10th National Assembly was convened in 2023, APC had 59 of the 109 seats in the Senate and 176 of the 360 seats in the House of Representatives. Currently, after “cross carpeting” from capitalist opposition parties similar to the drama of the absurd with the governors, it has 75 and 280 seats in the Senate and House of Representatives respectively.

There is also a pattern of court judgments that have led many Nigerians to believe that the APC has the judiciary in its pocket too. Thus, the broad spectrum of the administrative and repressive apparatuses of the state are being wielded by APC with the aim of securing a landslide victory at the polls next year.

A capitalist opposition in disarray

APC has been fingered as the brain behind the crisis of both legs of what aspires to be the capitalist alternative at the polls, even if this would be nothing more than the alternative between six and half-a-dozen. Its strategy of destabilising and eroding whatever traction the capitalist oppositionists could have has included using fifth columnists in both PDP and ADC.

The abundance of court judgments that have contributed to this destabilisation of the two parties and the, at times, questionable stance of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on party or party leadership recognition also provide ample basis to suspect that APC is using both the judiciary and what is supposed to be an impartial umpire of the electoral process to foster its self-perpetuating aim.  

The voice of APC can be seen in the implosion of the PDP through the hand of Mr Nyesom Wike, minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) and a staunch supporter of Tinubu, whose intentional antics have split the party into at least two factions.

Different sections of the oppositionist capitalists rallied into a coalition that took the form of their going into the African Democratic Congress (ADC), an hitherto existing party that they believed they had taken over as a special purpose vehicle.

These included Atiku Abubakar, Peter Obi and Rabiu Kwankwanso, the presidential candidates of the PDP, LP and NNPP which came second, third and fourth in the 2023 presidential election, respectively.

Quite a number of former APC leaders that fell out of favour with Tinubu are also part of the “coalition” crowd of the (new) ADC. These include Rauf Aregbesola, a former leftist who was the closest lieutenant of Tinubu during the latter’s eight-year period as governor of Lagos state and for many years after that.

At the time of going to press with this edition of the Socialist Worker, the ADC coalitionists’ future with the use of that special purpose vehicle (SPV) of a party, appears uncertain. Some of the ADC originalists are in court challenging the validity of the coalition-as-party under the leadership of David Mark, a former military-era governor and minister, who is also the longest-serving President of the Senate, during the reign of the PDP.

In light of the contrived crisis which this court case represents, INEC has withdrawn its recognition of either faction of the party. That will effectively shut out the coalitionists from being able to use the ADC as their SPV in 2027 except things change. As is the case with the PDP, this unfolding drama appears to be yet another tactic within the strategy of the APC’s “crush the opposition” playbook. 

Why AAC cannot collaborate with any section of the capitalist “opposition”

There were calls to Omoyele Sowore and the African Action Congress to join the ADC towards building a grand coalition that can take on the APC. Probably the loudest of these was by Deji Adeyanju, a former Director of New Media for the PDP during President Goodluck Jonathan’s presidency, who has in recent times become a human rights lawyer and activist that has joined the Take It Back global movement and AAC at the barricades.

While these calls have been muted in light of the new development, it is not the first time that such calls would be made. There were similar unsolicited advice in 2023 and its immediate aftermath for Sowore to align with Peter Obi. And it is likely that such calls will continue to be made in the future.

It is thus important to highlight why AAC would not be joining the ADC, LP/Obidients or any party/movement based on the agenda of any section of the exploiter classes.  

As I noted in a recent Sunday Independent interview, ADC, PDP, and LP, as well as the other capitalist opposition parties such as SDP and APGA are not different from the APC. “They all represent the same class of exploiters and oppressors of the people who have made life hell on earth for the poor working people in Nigeria.”

That is why they all have the same ideologies, programmes and perspectives. Some people would say that political parties in Nigeria do not have any ideology. Nothing could be further from the truth. There is no political party without an ideology.

The ideology of a party can be deciphered from its manifesto and its praxis. A close look at the manifestos of each of these parties and the policies that they have implemented when in power shows that any commitment they have to serving the masses is merely lip service meant to woo working-class people’s votes.

In practice, just like APC, they have all pursued programmes and projects that have made the rich richer and the poor poorer, in all the states they have ruled and nationally in the case of PDP when it was in power at the centre. 

Conclusion

Working-class and youth activists need to turn the table around against the capitalist class of exploiters and its different parties. We cannot continue like this. Our situation will only get worse, if we do not seize power from them, with a revolutionary alternative programme.

The programme of the African Action Congress is the only one on the ballot that will ensure that no Nigerian goes to bed hungry, no poor person dies from preventable causes because they cannot afford healthcare, no child is denied the opportunity to access quality education because their parents are not wealthy.

The AAC is the party that has stood by and will continue to stand by working-class people on the picket line, in resisting demolition of our communities, in fighting against police brutality, and in the emancipatory struggle onto victory, for our building a better society.