NO VIABLE OPPOSITION TO TINUBU, FAROUNBI

Dr. Yemi Farounbi, a former Nigerian Ambassador to the Philippines and veteran broadcaster, has said that there is no viable opposition in Nigeria  yet, stating that Abubakar  Atiku of the Peoples’ Democratic Party and Peter Obi of the Labour Party  have not articulated policies  different from those  of President Bola  Tinubu.

Speaking in a recent interview, Dr. Farounbi said that the government has been able to get away with some of the things it has done because there is no viable opposition at the moment.                                           

In his words, he said: “For me, there is no viable opposition now. That is why the government has been able to get away with some of the things it has done . They [APC, Labour Party, Peoples’ Democratic Party or the Social Democratic Party members]   all collectively passed the new National Anthem, and the bill for the commission that would be conducting local government elections. They all agreed they would withdraw the subsidy on fuel.”

“So, I don’t see Obi going anywhere. I can’t find any alliances he is building. He hasn’t imprinted in the minds  of the people what I will call Alternative Policies the way Awolowo did it 1982 against the Sharagi government. You can recall that Awolowo said the economy of this country would soon collapse unless Shagari did ten things. Shagari said there was nothing wrong with the economy.”

“He even sent an economics professor to go round  in the world capitals to say that the Nigerian economy was solid. Six months later, he had to go to the parliament to have what they called the Emergency Economic Law, admitting that the economy had collapsed. That is the beauty of an opposition party. An opposition party ought to have told all Nigerians that Tinubu is not doing well in food production, tax system and other areas; and provide better steps and alternatives to the government.”

“There is no articulated policy alternative platform that I have seen that takes  the policies of Tinubu to the cleaner. In December 1983, Awolowo, in his last speech as the president of the Unity Party of Nigeria [UPN],  said when you had a thesis which is the government, there must be an anti-thesis which is the opposition party. We don’t have that now. We only have people calling themselves PDP, SDP, LP or whatever.”

“They are at one party in the morning but another one in the afternoon. None of them has clearly articulated the platform that would make the common man happy and ask Tinubu to borrow a leaf from Obi or Atiku’s policy propositions in certain areas.”