A Misrepresentation of Tony Anenih

Dialogue With Nigeria By AKIN OSUNTOKUN

“With the migration, last week alone, of two more state governors from the opposition Peoples Democratic Party [PDP] to the ruling All Progressives Congress [APC], the latter has already recorded a landslide victory more than a year before the 2027 general elections and is on course to record a political earthquake in the upcoming elections. Whether that is historically safe, is another matter. In summary, PDP that emerged from the 2023 elections with twelve state governors, is now down to three”-Mahmud Jega

The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP is in crisis today not because, as my friend and colleague, Okey Ikechukwu, proposes, it lacks the presence of a man like Anenih. This is a total misreading of the evolution of the Nigerian political party system and its culmination into the repetitive trend towards one party dictatorship.

Anenih, a politically astute former police officer, leveraged his career to forge a national network of connections, effectively using the police force as a means to navigate the political sphere. His approach has often been characterized by a style reminiscent of political maneuvering seen in organized crime, fostering relationships that served his interests . His pedigree in the police institution provided a fertile ground for keeping tabs on influential or potentially influential individuals and the cultivation of a secondary career in mafia-style political racketeering.

It is a misunderstanding and exaggeration to imply that Anenih would have made a difference to the crisis that has typically buffeted the PDP. Ever the keen and disciplined political opportunist, his political acumen was always coupled with opportunism; he would likely have shifted allegiance to the APC in 2015 had he remained politically active. Ask Shehu Yaradua, Ibrahim Babangida, Olusegun Obasanjo, Umaru Yaradua and Goodluck Jonathan. Without the shield and protective custody of incumbent power, he certainly would not have gone far in national political reckoning.

The observation that “his life-long exposure to human affairs and deep knowledge of the country, with relationships that spanned geographical, religious and other boundaries, gave him great advantages when and where it mattered. His capacity for strategic engagement, especially from the angle of power politics, as distinct from being in political office, gave him an aura that was peculiarly his own” is correct.

Of doubtful validity are such fanciful declarations that “Under him, the PDP was both an election-winning machine and a widely dominant political party”. “Would the PDP be where it is today if it still had men like Anenih, or individuals who can play the various roles he played for the party when it really mattered? Just look at the PDP today”. I think it is quite a stretch to attribute the success of the pdp at the 1999, 2003, 2007 and 2011 presidential elections or any of them in particular, to his leadership.

What is not an exaggeration was that he was an effective enforcer of whatever decisions were taken by his principals, hence the befitting sobriquet of Mr Fix it.

He was exercising the delegated powers and authority of superiors who were nearly all conveniently incumbent presidents. All through his career, from the National Party of Nigeria, NPN days, there was not one single instance where he was a member of any political party other than the ruling party.

In his depiction of Anenih as larger than life, Okey wrote “It was Anenih who, during the Second Republic, chaired the initially questionable and relatively unpopular National Party of Nigeria (NPN) in the old Bendel State and transformed it into the incredibly popular party with which he defeated the no less popular Governor Professor Ambrose Alli at the time”. Yet we all know that the said ‘victory of NPN in the governorship election in the then Bendel state was no more than a local instance of a generalised deployment of the “landslide and bandwagon” ideology of the party in the 1983 general elections to which Anenih acted as local enforcer. In 2007, when he was much more powerful, his attempt to pull the same trick in Edo state, ultimately ended in failure, when the courts abbreviated the short lived governorship career of his protege, Monday Osunbor.

Okey asserted “His role and impact were obvious in the building of what turned out at the time to be Nigeria’s first people-owned and real national party, the Social Democratic Party (SDP). Consider how he deftly facilitated the political fortunes of his friend, whom he literally took by the hand and sold him across the nation as the SDP presidential flag bearer”. There was no doubt he played a significant role in the consolidation of SDP but he did so as an agent of his godfather at the time namely Shehu Yaradua. And only Okey would know how “he literally took Moshood Abiola by the hand and sold him across the nation…”. To the contrary, what was public knowledge about the role of Anenih as SDP national chairman in 2003, was his intrumentality to the internal subversion of Abiola’s June 12 1993 presidential victory.

Okey spoke of how “Anenih helped to quell the somewhat over-ambitious aspirations of former Vice President Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, who wanted to unseat his principal, Olusegun Obasanjo”. The truth of that unfortunate chapter is certainly more complicated. Regardless, with or without Anenih, there was no chance Atiku would have unseated Obasanjo in 2003. If we are looking for those that were consequential in ensuring that Obasanjo prevailed, maybe we should be looking in the direction of hard ball players like General Theophilus Danjuma who read the riot act to the conspiring governors.

The truth about Anenih is that he was a connoisseur of power who knew how to position himself as indispensable to the quests of his sponsors to capture and retain political power, mostly incumbent rulers. Rather than attribute to him an autonomy of influence he did not possess, he was as strong as his superiors wanted him to be. His political career reflects a dependency on the existing power structures, akin to the role of a consigliere in organized crime—strategically positioned but ultimately subordinate to those in command .

Several attempts at understanding the contemporary status and situation of the Nigerian political party system have been ruling the waves. I should now make a contribution. I begin with the inference from the last presidential election that: were the Labour party and the Peoples Democratic Party, (as represented by Peter Obi and Atiku Abubakar), to team together in a unified presidential ticket, they would have carried the day and defeated the presidential candidate (now incumbent President Bola Ahmed Tinubu) of the All Progressives Congress, APC, and vice versa.

The logic is quite persuasive albeit mostly pushed by those eager to rationalise and legitimise the outcome of the 2023 presidential election as inevitable, with or without rigging. They argue that it is a matter of simple arithmetic and self-evident in the fact that the declared winner only won with 37% of the total votes cast, while the balance of 63% was shared between Obi and Atiku who individually posted a lower margin to Tinubu’s figures.

As a ringside player with a vested interest in the election, I have more than a passing interest in this summation. The argument is predicated on an assumption that is not valid. Obi’s appeal and recognition stemmed from his individual candidacy, which would likely diminish if he were to run as a vice-presidential candidate. His unique connection with voters would not translate effectively in a coalition context, especially considering regional and religious sentiments. He would have lost his appeal to the crucial younger generation bloc of voters styled the ‘Obidients.’

I boast better access and insight into what truly transpired at the 2023 elections but I have no interest in (re)litigating the fraudulent result declared and certified by the so-called Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC. Moreover, the notion that Nigerian political parties function like conventional political entities is misleading. Nigerian political parties evolved as vehicles for ethnic mobilization and rough and ready SPVs for contesting elections rather than genuine platforms for democratic engagement. This reality traces back to the colonial history of Nigeria, where political parties emerged as extensions of ethnic and cultural unions .

The pace for this identity and role was set by the British decolonisation formula of divide and rule and the contending large scale pluralities of the constituent regions. The Nigerian political elite responded to this stimulus with the formation of political parties that were essentially the alter ego of ethno cultural unions. ‘On March 21, 1951, for instance, the Egbé Omo Odùduwà set up a political party called the Action Group. The party was to serve as the vehicle for realizing its primary objective of mobilizing the Yoruba under one political umbrella. The Action Group was therefore formed to implement the ideals and objectives of the Egbé Omo Odùduwà; and was led by Chief Obafemi Awolowo’.

Within the context of seeking political power in an ethno regional predicated Nigerian politics, it would have been unrealistic of the Egbe omo Oduduwa as an emergent political party not to rouse and magnify the urgency of the ethnic mobilization of the Yoruba.

Formed in June 1943, the Northern Peoples Congress, NPC (which made no effort to disguise its interchangeability with Jamiyaar Mutanen Arewa, went straight for a nomenclature that marked out its geopolitical identity) was the dominant political party in the Northern region from the 1950s until the military coup of 1966. It similarly metamorphosed from the cultural organisation earlier identified as Jamiyaar Mutanen Arewa,

‘The National Council of Nigerian Citizens, NCNC, had its core and organic support in the Ibo State Union (later Igbo State Union) a powerful pan-Igbo organization (1948-1966) whose focus was Igbo unity, cultural preservation, socio-economic development, and played a key role in Nigerian nationalism’.

The dysfunction of overcentralisation of power, a unique and debilitating feature of Nigerian federalism, has repeatedly resulted in the syndrome of the trend towards one party dictatorship and the attendant crisis. The phenomenon was at play in the first republic with the formation of the grand Nigerian National Alliance, NNA, by Ahmadu Bello and the NPC. The history repeated itself in the second republic with the overreach of the National Party of Nigeria, NPN. The PDP was similarly trending in the same direction (as encapsulated in the boast that they would rule Nigeria for sixty years). Tinubu and the APC are now in the thick of enacting the same scenario.

The ongoing political dynamics suggest that without significant constitutional reforms, the trend towards one-party dominance will persist, echoing the patterns of past political eras .