Ribadu and Pragmatic Politics,By Dan Agbese

The surprise is not that Nuhu Ribadu dumped APC for PDP. The surprise is that anyone is surprised by his action. Critics are straining themselves, criticizing and condemning him. It will change nothing. I ask them to hasten slowly. If it is any consolation, he is walking along the well-beaten track. Many went down that road before him and many more would go down the same road after him.
I can understand the feeling of those who think Ribadu is too decent and too principled to allow himself the venal luxury of swaying so easily in the political wind. I can understand their disappointment because Ribadu’s fall depletes the small rank of arguably young and promising politicians on whom some of us seem to be building the forlorn and unrealistic hope for the emergence of new breed politicians unsoiled by greed and motivated by public rather than self service.
We miss the point. I know. Ours is bread and butter politics. It trumps an airy nothing called politics of principles any day. Stomach infrastructure, a new phrase that defines corrupt and crooked politics in the land, qualifies as pragmatic politics. Our politicians are in the business of shopping for opportunities. If they cannot find them in their parties because the opportunities are limited or if the grass on their side of the political divide is turning increasingly brown, they are pragmatic enough to know when to jump ship.
We have witnessed the inflow and the outflow of politicians from one party to another and back again since 1999 when the generals allowed the bloody civilians back on the political stage. Each instance of inflow or outflow was motivated entirely by the endless search for greener pastures, rosy cheeks, instant wealth and the right to live above the law. The carrot is always pretty inviting.
And this I believe. Our politicians who know where to butter their bread are not foolish men. A cursory glance at the changing political and economic fortunes of those who not long ago put self before others shows that they are truly wise and pragmatic men. Unlike the rest of us, they are realistic enough to appreciate that it is purely utopian to elevate our bread and butter politics to the lofty heights of politics of principles at this point in our national political history.
Ribadu has promptly entered the ring for the governorship race in his state, Adamawa. It does not matter that the former presidential candidate of APC never had kind words for the PDP and its robber barons. That is in the immediate past now. I am sure his sins, if that, are forgiven. Ribadu has seen the light and he now knows that whatever he might have thought and felt about the largest party in Africa and its leadership, it is still the distributor-in-chief of the national cake and the only party that can change a man’s fortune in the time it takes to say PDP. Well, at least Ribadu has not tried to insult our intelligence by claiming, as Modu Sheriff did, that he dumped his party in the national interest.
When I think of the fluidity of the principles of party politics in our country, I am moved to pity politicians in other countries who stick to one political party all their lives. They become fossilized men and women, endlessly waiting for change in the direction of the political wind. If their party loses an election, there is no outflow to the winning party because their belief in the ideology of their party is a matter of deep-seated principles, never to be shaken by the temporary loss of political power or fortune. Generations stick to one party out of this same principle. People remain true and faithful to their party and nurse the hope that someday it will make it to the top of the totem pole. I am still a sucker for their well-heeled politics of principles.
The constant toeing and froing of our politicians from one party to another points to one inescapable fact: a true multiparty democracy is still a mirage in our dear, dear country. Multiparty democracy is built on ideological principles. It is unrealistic, foolish even, to equate the mere registration of more than one political party in the land with multiparty democracy.
There is a dire consequence for this – and it is this: the roots of our democracy will continue to spread on the surface of the scorched political earth. You cannot deepen democracy without taproots. And so this country, this great country of 170 or so million souls, this rich country with the largest economy in Africa and the largest political party on the continent, will continue to grope in search of its soul in the murky waters of a system of government that is neither fully dictatorial nor fully democratic. And, mark this, it will continue to hold the candle to smaller and poorer African countries with settled and respected ideological party principles on which the tenets of their multiparty democracy are flourishing.
Oh, Nigeria.