Thread by @DavidHundeyin

In an Uber with a few minutes to kill, so I'll do a thread about Nigerian politics and why "3rd Force" is a chimera.

The APC is 7 years old (formed in 2014) and PDP is 23 years old (formed in 1998), right?

WRONG. They are both approaching 60 years old. Here's how.

The first generation of electoral politics in post-colonial Nigeria was dominated by Tafawa Balewa's Northern People's Congress (NPC), Awolowo's Action Group (AG), M.I. Okpara's United Progressive Grand Alliance (UPGA) and the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC).

These were all regional parties whose open and stated mission was to protect the interests of the 3 major ethnotribal political groups in Nigeria - Northern, Southwestern and Southeastern.

As a result, these parties had very strong regional structures and support bases.

It is important to understand that if you do not recognise Nigeria's politics as first and foremost ethnic/regional, and then religious before ANYTHING else, then you know absolutely nothing about Nigerian politics.

The local/regional structure is the lifeblood of politics here.

Keep that in mind.

In 1998 following General Abacha's death, Nigeria's military and political elite agreed to transition into electoral democracy
They decided to merge these 3 regional interests into one political entity to prevent another Abacha and guarantee some stability.

That entity was called the People's Democratic Party (PDP), and it was supposed to address the problem of ethnotribal political interests pulling in different directions by using agreements like zoning to pacify everyone.

Of course in practise, that didn't work out so well.

President Obasanjo himself created the new party's biggest crisis of credibility when he publicly flirted with ending the constitutional 2-term limit.

Instead of ending region-focused politics, PDP's emergence actually amplified it, albeit unwittingly.

The successor party of Awolowo's Action Group (AD/AC/ACN) inherited the AG's structure in the southwest. Ditto the ANPP/CPC, which succeeded Tafawa Balewa's NPC in the north.

APGA in the southeast emerged as essentially a facsimile of M.I. Okpara's UPGA.

In 2013 when yhe northern and Southwestern political interest groups decided to stage what can be described as a democratic coup, the new party (APC) emerged as essentially a crude approximation of the same thing that was done in 1998, but without one of the tripartite partners.

This is why to date, capturing the southeast and Niger Delta by fair means or foul remains an undying obsession of the Buhari regime. If they do that, they will be politically untouchable and free to turn the APC into the eternal dynasty that PDP was intended to be.

The point of this thread in case you have not figured it out, is that the idea of a "3rd Force" political party emerging now, 17 months to an election, with expectations of actually achieving anything, are ludicrous and nonsensical.

That is not how Nigerian politics works.

The parties that we recognise today as the "Big 2" are not flimsy items of convenience thrown together at a moment's notice.

They are a result of 60+ years of political engagement and building. You are not going to unseat APC or PDP anytime soon.

You need to deal with that.

So when people with historical links to the incumbents start flying kites like "PDP and APC are the same," the correct response is not "Yea" or "No". The response should in fact be "And so what?"

Whose interest is served by building voter apathy 17 months to an election?

Whose interest is served by misdirecting the political energies of young people into a series of never ending "3rd force" chimeras built on beach sand?

Who benefits by deceiving voters into thinking that change is won by quick bursts of emotional energy as against years of work?

I won't answer the question because that it's a bit too on-the-nose.

Let's just say that in the end, everybody will be fine.