MUHAMMED BUHARI AND THE MANAGEMENT OF INTERNAL CONFLICTS IN THE ALL PROGRESSIVE CONGRESS (APC)
ABSTRACT
Intra-party clashes of all kinds and sizes have been a feature of Nigeria’s democratic experience. However, they have recently grown much more ubiquitous and even crisis-like, with grave implications for democratic stability and consolidation.
This essay analyses the geography, implications, and causes of intra-party conflicts in a democratizing Nigeria, drawing on the literature and interpreting the facts to offer settlement solutions. It is based on the concept that pervasive intra-party tensions, which have now reached crisis proportions, are not inherent, but have been fostered by structural causes that have formed the contours of Nigerian politics.
It argues that the crises are inextricably linked to the Nigerian petrostate’s neo-patrimonial character, the nature of politics being played by political actors, praetorian hangover, and a scarcity of democrats who genuinely have democratic temperaments to play the game of democratic politics according to established rules.
It advocates for, among other things, the reform and improvement of Nigerian political parties’ internal conflict management capacities.
Introduction
Political parties, as political organizations made up of individuals with various perspectives, values, and interests, as well as platforms for recruiting personnel to fill public office, cannot help but be a source of conflict stemming from mutually contradictory views, thoughts, and interests.
Indeed, political parties’ personalities in liberal democracy are constantly shaped and reshaped by ever-recurring conflicts among the various actors within their folds, despite being conveniently tagged, albeit theoretically, as the media for aggregating interests and opinions within a polity (Omotola 2010:125).
To put it another way, conflict, in all forms and dimensions, is an integral component of the operational structures of political parties in a modern democracy.
While intra-party conflict can take many shapes and sizes around the world, those occurring over the selection of party leadership and candidates are the most destructive, not only to democracy but to society as a whole. Political parties are supposed to put in place suitable institutional frameworks for settling disagreements that may emerge among their members on occasion (see Scarrow 2005).
By institutionalizing such frameworks, they not only foster unanimity within their folds, but also contribute overtly to the overall system’s stability (Simbine 2015:5). According to Omotola (2010:12), “political parties, if well-institutionalized, can function as a set of mediating organizations through which differences in ideas, interests, and perceptions of political problems at a given period can be controlled.”
The preceding ideal appears to have been internalized and institutionalized in mature liberal democracies with well-established structures for managing power struggles inside political parties. However, in a democratizing Nigeria, as in other illiberal democracies, the opposite appears to be true (Basiru 2015:83).
It may not be out of place to assert that political parties’ records in the area of internal conflict management have not been disappointing since the country re-democratized itself in 1999 (see Olaniyan 2009; Ojukwu and Olaifa 2011), but in recent years, the lack of conflict management has resulted in unending intra-party wrangling, ceaseless litigations, wanton party defections, and other antimonies that are uncommon in liberal climes (see Omilusi 2013; Nwanegbo et al. 2014).
Although the problem is not new and has revealed itself in previous Republics of the country, the magnitude of the problem in the Fourth Republic is definitely worrying. This is clear from the squabbles and crises that followed the recently ended primaries of the country’s major political parties (Daka and Abuh 2018:1).
In light of the aforementioned, and given the crisis scale that intra-party conflicts have taken in recent years, it is necessary to investigate the prevalence of intra-party conflicts in a democratizing Nigeria. Although there have been numerous publications on internal democracy within political parties in a democratizing Nigeria, the area of intra-party conflicts and management appears to have received little attention.
As a result, the significance of this paper is reliant on deepening the dialogue in this area. This study investigates the geography of intra-party disputes in a democratizing Nigeria and the consequences of its pervasiveness for democratic peace and stability.
It also identifies and explores the drivers and elements responsible for intra-party conflict’s pervasiveness in a democratizing Nigeria. It then concludes by suggesting resolution possibilities.
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MUHAMMED BUHARI AND THE MANAGEMENT OF INTERNAL CONFLICTS IN THE ALL PROGRESSIVE CONGRESS (APC)
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