‘Ellu P’ Power

Editor’s note: This essay is available in our print issue, A Nation Divided. Buy the issue here.

These concerns cast a long shadow over the election and its outcomes, particularly for the fact that its victor, President-Elect Bola Ahmed Tinubu, has been accused of criminal activity in Nigerian and in foreign courts, and may be a key figure in the godfather politics of Nigeria’s Fourth Republic (1999-present). That Tinubu and Nigeria’s current president, Muhammadu Buhari, are both members of the All Progressives Congress (APC) also means that his victory has been seen as vindication of Buhari’s administration, and of governance under APC, despite their deep unpopularity.

Nowhere has these grievances be more deeply felt than among supporters of the Labor Party (LP). LP’s presidential candidate, Mr. Peter Obi, entered the race a well-known figure, though running on a party with ‘no structure’––one seen to lack the strategic depth and breadth to compete against Nigeria’s two largest parties, APC and People’s Democratic Party (PDP), in national elections. Obi quickly gained popularity online and in nationwide media for his image of frugality, relative youth, and appearance of disconnection from the corruption and power politics that have shaped the Fourth Republic. Obi’s now famous humility, resistance to corruption, and no-frills, issues-based approach to politics, added to this appeal. The excitement around his candidacy crystalized into solid political potential when a bevy of pollsters, including Stears, SBM Intelligence and Bloomberg, published results suggesting Obi, until then the dark horse candidate, might win the election. Some foreign news media followed, with such publications as The Economist endorsing Obi as ‘the only candidate to offer Nigerians much hope of change’.

In the 2023 elections, Obi performed more successfully than any other third-party presidential candidate in Nigerian electoral history, receiving over a fourth of all votes cast. In a rebuff to concerns about the party’s structure, LP evenly split the country’s states with the two major parties, winning landslide victories throughout the South East, three states in the South South, two in the Middle Belt, and surprise wins in Lagos and Abuja. Down-ballot LP candidates also benefited from enthusiasm around the party, winning 43 seats in the national legislature, and the governorship of Abia state.

All of this stands in stark contrast to LP’s previous electoral performance. The 2023 elections were just the second in Fourth Republic history to have LP win more than one seat in the House of Representatives, and any seats at all in the Senate. Alex Otti, the incoming LP governor of Abia State, is just the second to win an election on an LP ticket, and Obi is far and away the most successful presidential candidate in the party’s history. While the party has sometimes been home to influential political figures, such as Adams Oshiomole, an early LP leader, and Olusegun Mimiko, the two-term LP governor of Ondo State, much of their influence failed to accrue to the party itself. Oshiomole, for example, still an LP member, ran for and won two-term governorship of Edo state on an Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) ticket instead, and would later become an APC member, even serving a turbulent two-year term as that party’s national chairman. In the 2023 elections, Oshiomole was recorded goading supporters of his new party into intimidating potential LP voters, an ironic display of estrangement from his previous political home, and of perceptions of LP’s political limits.

LP and its supporters now contend that their party’s official performance in 2023’s elections, improved as it was, still does not reflect the full measure of its support, and have taken legal action to challenge results where they feel they were short changed. These challenges have cited inconsistencies in INEC’s vote counts, disruptions to normal voting procedure, and cases of violent voter disenfranchisement, each of which, the party has argued, disproportionately affected potential LP voters. Controversy around Lagos State’s gubernatorial election, which featured alarming displays of state-sanctioned ethnic bigotry and voter suppression seen to have targeted LP supporters, puts some of the context that informs these challenges on grim display.

While these efforts may take months and even years to find resolution, the fervour around them and their potential consequences speaks to the remarkable energy of LP’s coalition, now a force with veritable political power. These factors may now present LP with a unique opportunity to capitalize on its recent gains through, effective, people-centric and value-driven opposition party politics, and hold promise for substantial change in Fourth Republic politics.

It may not be correct to say Nigerian parties have always lacked ideology. It may be more so to note that they have found it difficult to develop ideology not rooted in religion and ethnicity. The parties of the First Republic (1963-66) may be seen to have been profoundly ideological, though with ideological leanings often strongly influenced by sectarian interests, such as in the Northern People’s Congress’ recruitment of expatriates over Nigerians from the Eastern and Western regions for government roles. This type of sectarian-ideological alignment was made considerably more difficult by the constitution of the Second Republic (1979-83), which mandated that political parties maintain ‘federal character’ in their leadership, and register in at least two-thirds of the country’s states. These mandates were passed onto the abortive Third Republic (1992-93), and to the modern Nigerian Fourth Republic.

This requirement has often meant that modern Nigerian political parties emerge from coalitions of disparate and sometimes even conflicting interests, united in the pursuit of limited political goals. The diversity of perspectives that parties may accommodate is reflected in the geographic breadth of the support that major parties find during national elections, and the tumult that parties have sometimes experienced after they realize the goals for which they were created. This may be seen in the internal divisions APC suffered soon after its electoral victories in 2015, or PDP’s 2007 crisis over former president, Olusegun Obasanjo’s bid for a third term in office, which featured such political theatre as the party’s expulsion of Obasanjo’s vice president, Atiku Abubakar.

Perhaps too broadly-based to pursue other objectives, Fourth Republic parties have often been organized around the sole pursuit of power. This pursuit motivated the merger of military and business interests that would become the PDP in 1999. Sixteen years later, concerns that their presidential candidate might cost them power motivated some PDP members to join ACN, Congress for Progressive Change and All Nigeria People’s Party (ANPP), among others, in Muhammadu Buhari’s APC. In 2023, after eight years under President Buhari, cross-carpeting and political defection have become commonplace in Nigerian politics, with politicians regularly aligning and realigning with political parties in pursuit of fleeting strategic advantage. Three of the four front-runners in 2023’s presidential elections were, in 2015, members of APC, and, just four years before he was LP’s presidential candidate, Obi was (as he’s commonly known) Atiku’s Vice Presidential candidate on a PDP ticket. The tremendous influence of godfatherism and patronage politics at all levels of governance has often meant, then, that the party that enjoys power very often tends not to be the party with the most appealing political platform. Instead it is often the party that is most able to secure and maintain the support of godfathers and other individuals with political influence and unite their interests in pursuit of power. In 2023, PDP’s failure to maintain support from Nyesom Wike, the influential PDP governor of Rivers State, for example, may have cost the party a win in that state.

Here, we find another remarkable aspect of LP’s 2023 performance. The party went into the election with considerably less godfather support than either of the two major parties. While a number of well-recognized figures, including former President Obasanjo, came out in Obi’s support in the months leading up to the election, it is not clear what these endorsements might have meant against those enjoyed by PDP and APC, whose membership allows both parties access to state coffers, substantial elite support, and ready recourse to the means of violence. That LP was able to compete against these parties, despite this relative disadvantage, speaks to the strength and promise of its coalition and political approach.