The director of Abuja School of Social and Political Thought, Dr. Sam Amadi, yesterday said political parties in Nigeria have no coherent ideological vision of the country’s developmental future.
He also warned that Nigeria could collapse if maladministration and mismanagement of the nation’s resources continues in the next three years.
Amadi, in a keynote address at a capacity building workshop organised by Political Commission of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) for leaders of political thought, said, “We don’t have the luxury of well-managed parties anymore.”
He described parties as Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) only used for getting to political offices, adding “Politicians proudly talk about parties as mere SPVs, vehicles to get to power and either discard or mismanage,” he said.
Noting that political parties are meant for the advancement of public interest, he warned that politics will soon become an unconcealed and unmediated fight for private interests should political parties fail to act as arbiters and moderators of incommensurability and incompatibility of plural societies.
Stressing the absence of opinions and ideology in parties, he stated that Nigeria’s First Republic ended in a civil war and the Second Republic ended with military coups, even though the quality of democracy in those periods were far better than today’s.
He said parties of the two republics tried to aggregate “opinions and perspectives about the natural question and tried to mobilise intellectual and human resources to present a vision of national development.”
He however accused President Bola Tinubu of playing ruling with the tiniest minority of any president.
“There is an extreme urgency to get Nigeria out of intensive care unit and into a general hospital ward where recovery, revival and regeneration can commence.
“The country is terminally sick. The only difference between Nigeria and a person in intensive care is that Nigeria is presently not receiving any care.”
He stated that the threat to destroy the country was evident during the last national protest, where northern youths marched in Kano, Kaduna and other states without fear of their lives.
“It tells us the recklessness that could become Nigeria’s revolution if the current hunger and hopelessness continue,” he said.
He called for electoral reform and “real and radical party restructuring.”
He however said, the Labour Party has the chance to reform itself and rescue Nigeria from her present problems.
He said the Labour Party is important to sustainable economic and social development of the country because “it is difficult to conceive of a working democracy without a working political party system.”
On his part, acting chairman of the NLC Political Commission, Prof. Theo Ndubuaku, said Nigeria’s developmental challenges are caused by its broken politics.
Ndubuaku called for political reconstruction and committed political leadership hoisted on ideological and pragmatic persuasions to remedy the ill of the successive years of bad governance.
“As a Political Commission, we are committed to changing the narrative not by mere polemics or sloganeering but by active engagement with the political process.
“In this regard, we are conscious of the paramount role of knowledge as an enabler of effective political thought and action.
“This is the reason the NLC Political Commission developed and disseminated a Workers’ Charter of Demands in the run up to the 2023 general election,” he explained.
The Charter of Demands, according to him, covers the gamut of social, economic and broader political concerns in the polity.
He disclosed that they were used to engage candidates who contested the 2023 general elections from different political platforms including those who contested under the Labour Party.
“The NLC Charter of Demands became a rallying pillar for the advancement of issue-based politics and popular participation in the 2023 general election.
“The impact of our engagement with the political class delivered some measurable markers with which Nigerians are using today to assess the performance of public elected officers especially on the issue of the petrol subsidy and the payment of decent wages to workers,” he added.