THE TALKING COALITION AND THE APC

ADC is doing the talking while APC is building a coalition, reckons JOSHUA J. OMOJUWA

The political firmament is getting clearer by the day. Whilst some insist on not seeing this despite being apparent enough, even to the visually impaired, the rest of us can see the times for what they are; President Bola Tinubu has been building a coalition all along, while the ADC talked endlessly about building one. To readers of this page, this cannot be a surprise. Everything I believed the ADC’s pretend coalition was, it has been and a little worse. We now know that the ADC is just a caricature of what would have been a coalition and as the days go by, the wise and ambitious will start to play for 2031. Those wiser than those were playing for that, long before these skies got clearer.

Soon, it’d be easier to count who has not defected to the APC, to account for those who have. Because then, it’d take too long to run the count for the latter. The APC is building a coalition. That they weren’t the ones talking one up does not change that fact. ADC talked it, APC simply focused on doing it. Now, with barely a year to the election, everyone who isn’t pretending to be asleep, knows which of the parties has expanded more than the other this year.

In August I wrote about politicians who are both in and not in, figures who join a party and simultaneously do not. “There are ADC bigwigs today that their followers can’t really say whether they are ADC members or members of another party. I call them Schrödinger members. They are ADC but they are also not ADC. Some of their members want you to believe that it’s some strategy but even they can’t be that bereft of common sense to believe that themselves. No politician craves uncertainty for themselves”. This continues to apply. They joined the ADC, but never joined the party. There was talk of some being permitted to take part in the by-elections under their previous party, who would then switch to the ADC fully after those elections. The elections came and went, nothing changed except APC adding new members who burnt their previous boats.

Then there are the Sam Amadis of this world who hear one thing but refuse to accept reality for what it is. Governor Peter Mbah said he fell in love with President Tinubu because of his bold decision on fuel subsidy. Sam Amadi posted to social media, “I do not blame Peter Mba for dumping @OfficialPDPng for the @OfficialAPCNg. The PDP destroyed itself by love of Wike’s money. APC is d best organized & sensible party. But it has bad presidential candidate. @PeterObi is the best guy to save Nigeria now But which party now”. These are the people advising one of the major coalition presidential prospects. If you are in denial of a disease, how can you cure it?

Governor Peter Mbah was clear about why he joined APC. But Sam Amadi, who needs to be in Peter Mbah’s good books and the good side of a mob that knows when not to be irascible, decided to not dare criticise Peter Mbah for his defection. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t dare. Instead, he plays divide-and-conquer, by pretending that Peter Mbah’s movement was despite Bola Tinubu. When the man himself said it was because of same. That’s what they call divide-and-conquer in Problem Solving. Isolate the same kind as though they were of different kinds, then treat them separately.

This is the politics of immorality some play whilst pretending to be the doyens of morality. How can you isolate Mbah’s defection from Bola Tinubu when the man himself couldn’t have been clearer? Here, Mbah and Tinubu are one, to pretend to like one whilst hating the other is to be fast asleep with your eyes wide open. What politics is more desperate than this politics of double-speak and pretend blindness? And these are the ones that want Nigerians to believe they offer a different kind of politics. The jokes scribble more jokes.

The talking coalition prefers symbolism. It announces committees that never meet and principles that never bind. It calls press conferences to condemn defections, then courts the same defectors. It packages indecision as flexibility, while members fight for precedence on posters. The strategy is attention, not adhesion. Yet politics punishes that model in the end, because voters feel the difference between a parade and a procession. A parade amuses. A procession moves people from one place to another with agreement about direction, distance, and timing. The former flatters the eye, the latter builds power. Power likes working plans, always. They say, “this country is in trouble” in reaction to the same outcomes they desired but never really worked for.

Media critics sometimes argue that defections are theatrical, not substantive. They are correct that a decamped figure does not guarantee a durable base. What matters is whether the APC integrates the newcomers into real work, or merely aesthetics. To the extent that the APC keeps absorbing leaders and assigning them concrete roles, the story writes itself. To the extent that the ADC keeps narrating strategy without field execution, the story also writes itself. Voters may disagree on ideology, yet they rarely miss the scent of an organisation that truly functions. Function beats performance in hard seasons.

As we step into the election season proper and the economy continues to tend in the direction of stability and growth, some outcomes become inevitable. We shall see. One of the opposition figures said President Bola Tinubu would finish 3rd when the elections come around. It came across as a joke but if they truly believe that, then President Tinubu’s work is much easier than one expected. Because from the look of things, he is treating the game for all the seriousness it requires whilst his antagonists are depending on result from elsewhere. Even those hoping that results from elsewhere favour them know they must play their own part. But not these ones.

 Omojuwa is chief strategist, Alpha Reach/BGX Publishing