Recently I watched an interview that former President Olusegun Obasanjo granted on the floodgate of defections of governors and other top politicians from across the country’s political spectrum into the then ruling party, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) when OBJ was in power. PDP was the party that took over power from the retreating military dictators headed by gemial Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar, and which ruled from 1999 until it was booted out of office in 2015 by the first successful alliance/coalition of Nigerian politicians to contest and win elections.

Remember, the PDP was so firmly rooted in power that it prided itself as the biggest political party in Africa; it also boasted that it would rule for an uninterrupted 60 years! But it ended up ruling for only 16 years! Someone said the oracle that the PDP bigwigs consulted actually predicted correctly, but it was the politicians that were hard of hearing, mistaking 16 years for 60 years, either because they both sound alike or because 60 years was sweeter to their hearing than 16!

President Obasanjo was asked whether the gale of defections into PDP, the then ruling party, was not a sign that Nigeria was turning into a one-party state and that he, as the sitting president, was complicit in it. As is characteristic of him, OBJ was bombastic in his response. Did he write a letter to invite anyone to defect into his party? Did he compel anyone to do so? What is wrong if his party was doing well and others appreciated that and wanted to team up with it to further move the country forward? Should he wield a whip and drive away people wanting to join his party? Was the interviewer not aware that the Nigerian constitution guarantees to every Nigerian freedom of association and freedom of movement?

At that time, there were complaints that OBJ was not moving the country in the right direction and that people were suffering needlessly. Remember, in the election of 1999, Obasanjo lost in his home region of the South-west, whose preferred candidate was Chief Olu Falae. That election was believed to have been compromised by the so-called “owners of Nigeria”, the military cabals, retired and serving, and their civilian collaborators whose preferred candidate was Obasanjo.

If that election was tainted, the one that followed in 2003 when Obasanjo himself was the sitting president was no-less a daylight robbery. Obasanjo deployed the ubiquitous “federal might” to make that election a walk-over for him. By guile, subtlety and naked arm-twisting tactics, he ensured he erased the “shame” of 1999 in his home base of the South-west, sweeping away the Alliance for Democracy governors that had held sway in the region, save only for Asiwaju Bola Ahmend Tinubu, the then governor of Lagos state.  

Against the groundswell of opposition to his personality and government, Obasanjo was asked if he thought he could win his re-election in 2003. To him, the question was out-of-place. How on earth could you expect a party that controlled 31 state governors and an overwhelming majority in the National Assembly to lose an election to a motley crowd of opposition parties controlling, among themselves only five (5) states? It should be clear to everyone that the results of that election - though yet to be held - were a foregone conclusion.

And, truly, they were! But the interesting thing to me is that the same person - and people - who relished their party’s control of 31 over 36 states are the same that are shouting from the rooftop today that the All Progressives Congress (APC) that is yet to attain that threshold has already turned the country into a one-party state!

Is the threat of a one-party state more latent today than it was under PDP in the OBJ era? If there was nothing wrong with the PDP controlling 31 out of 36 states; if that control did not translate into the country becoming a one-party state; if the same PDP went ahead to lose the 2015 presidential election to the opposition, why the cry - and from the same people who perpetrated the PDP blitzkrieg - that APC with just about 23 state governors has turned or is turning Nigeria into a one-party state?

 Is this, then, the proverbial case of someone who kills with the sword, who will never allow anyone with a sword to come near him! I said “just about” because the tornado of defections is yet to cease but is gathering momentum in many other states of the federation as we speak; which could be why the opposition is jittery. Judging by Obasanjo’s logic, how can a vastly diminished opposition withstand and overcome APC and Tinubu in 2027 if the ruling party and sitting president control an overwhelming number of state governors and National Assembly members all over the country?

Another angle that must frighten the opposition is the way Nigeria’s business moguls are lining up behind Tinubu, saluting his economic reforms. If anything, the example of the United States teaches that money plays a big role in election matters. The financial support of Elon Musk was pivotal in Donald Trump winning the last US presidential election. Both men have publicly admitted to that.

With the country’s billionaires filing behind Tinubu and the opposition being depleted of cash-cow states where resources to finance its election could come from, what are the chances of the opposition in 2027? Where will the funds come from? How will they cope with the deep pockets of Tinubu who, as a private citizen, reportedly single-handedly financed his own election, not to talk of now that he has limitless financial resources at his beck-and-call? If, despite all the obstacles strewn his path as an aspirant and the “Federal might” deployed against him, Tinubu still scaled through in 2023, what do we make of now that he himself wields the “federal might”, which he can deploy against anyone as he deems fit?

As far as human eyes can see and political permutations are concerned, the prognosis for the opposition as we move towards 2027 does not look good at all. But with God all things are possible! In soccer, there is also something that is described as “against the run of play” where a team that has its back to the wall becomes the one that manages to score first and goes on to win the game. At a point like we are in today, PDP looked impregnable, but see what has become of it!

APC is just 10 years in power - six more years before it, too, reaches the “magical” year where PDP unravelled. Anything is possible. Even if Tinubu gets a second term, after him, what next? What do we think can happen to the presidential election of 2031? Politics is not static; it evolves. And when you think everyone sleeps with all heads pointing in the same direction is when you find dissenters. May their tribe grow!

Which brings me to Ini Ememobong, the young, amiable, and, above all, politically-conscious Akwa Ibom state politician, Ini Ememobong. Ini recently resigned his appointment as a commissioner in the cabinet of the governor of the state, Pastor Umo Eno, rather than follow the governor to defect from PDP to APC. Umo, the latest defector into the ruling party, had asked everyone he appointed to either follow him into his new party or resign.

Comrade Ini, as he is fondly called, declined to do “follow-follow”, like Fela crooned in Mr. Follow Follow! “Some dey follow-follow dem close them eye/Close dem pin-pin-pin/Some they follow-follow dem close them mouth/Close them pam-pam-pam…” According to Fela, they close their ears and senses as well, to do follow-follow! That was what Ini refused to do last week when his boss the governor, after speaking in parables and in tongues for a while, eventually came into the open to dump PDP for APC. We have said a lot about why politicians defect and that need not detain us here again save, to say, that it is usually for their own selfish interests.

Ini did the honourable thing; he resigned his appointment. Not everyone can be bought! Not everyone has a price! Not everyone has their eye fixed on the pie! In Nigeria’s aridity of conscience-less politicians, there still can be found an oasis of principle and honour. When the Delta State governor defected some weeks back from PDP into APC, all his appointees and the entire PDP political structure in the state - past and present - went with him. Not a single Ini Ememobong was found in their midst.

Ini was a fire-brand and principled student union leader in his days. That activism, radicalism, and commitment to principles, the readiness to make sacrifices, must still be burning fiercely in him. I worked closely with Ini during the short-lived campaign of the immediate past governor of Akwa Ibom state, Udom Gabriel Emmanuel, for the PDP presidential flag (2022/2023). Ini was Udom’s Commissioner for Information while I was the National Director, Media and Publicity for the campaign. At home in Uyo and at work, Ini was a delight to work and associate with.

My prayers: Ini's departure from Gov. Umo Eno’s government shall be unto sunshine and not unto twilight! Seven “Gboosas” for Comrade Ini Ememobong!   

 Former editor of PUNCH newspapers, Chairman of its Editorial Board and Deputy Editor-in-chief, BOLAWOLE was also the Managing Director/Editor-in-chief of The Westerner news magazine. He