by Mohammed Bello Doka
There comes a point in a nation’s political life when patterns stop being academic curiosities and become warnings written in capital letters. Nigeria is at that point. What has followed Bola Ahmed Tinubu through three decades of power politics is no longer deniable: parties rise, serve his ambition, and then wither, dissolve, or are deliberately sacrificed. What survives is never the party. What survives is the structure.
This is not an insult. It is an autopsy.
From the SDP of the Third Republic to AD, AC, ACN, and now the APC, the constant has not been ideology, internal democracy, or institution-building. The constant has been ambition—relentless, strategic, and unforgiving to any platform that dares to constrain it.
Let us be clear about the historical record.
The SDP collapsed with the Third Republic. Its afterlife today is a ghost—same name, no soul, no continuity, no national relevance. The Alliance for Democracy (AD), once the ideological home of South-West progressivism, lost its grip, fractured, and became electorally irrelevant once Tinubu’s structure moved on. The Action Congress (AC) barely lived long enough to pretend it was a party; it was a transitional shell, quickly discarded. The Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) did not even pretend to survive—it was deliberately dissolved, sacrificed at the altar of a larger ambition, to birth the APC.
This is not party evolution. This is party consumption.
Every time the party’s constitution became inconvenient, it was bypassed. Every time internal democracy threatened control, it was negotiated away. Every time the platform itself became smaller than the ambition riding it, the platform was abandoned, rebranded, or buried. The message has been consistent: the party is a vehicle, not a destination.
Political theory warned us about this long ago. The logic of the minimum winning coalition is simple: build only what you need to win, because excess power creates excess conflict. Tinubu has repeatedly violated this logic—not by accident, but by design. His coalitions do not stop at victory; they expand until they swallow everything in sight. Opponents are not merely defeated; they are absorbed. Boundaries are not respected; they are erased.
Today, the All Progressives Congress is no longer a coalition; it is a container. Governors defect without ideology. Rivals are welcomed without conditions. Contradictions coexist without resolution. The APC is bloated, incoherent, and overfed on power. It looks strong. It is not healthy.
History is merciless to such formations.
Weimar Germany showed what happens when elites expand coalitions to “contain” ambition—democracy legally commits suicide. Italy under Berlusconi showed how personalisation hollows out institutions and condemns citizens to stagnation. Hungary under Orbán illustrated how electoral dominance beyond necessity suffocates accountability. Zimbabwe under Mugabe proved that when ambition becomes permanent, the state becomes disposable. Japan’s long-ruling LDP demonstrated that even without tyranny, over-consolidation can paralyse a nation for decades.
The lesson is universal: oversized coalitions do not collapse from opposition pressure; they rot from within.
This is why the real danger to APC is not 2027’s opposition—it is 2027’s internal implosion.
Tinubu’s ambition is now stretching APC past its elastic limit. Imposition is replacing competition. Loyalty is being enforced rather than earned. State power is being weaponised for short-term control, breeding long-term resentment. Party members are being told to clap, not to choose. Aspirants are being instructed to wait their turn in a line that never moves.
This is how parties die.
Not with a bang, but with sabotage. Not with rebellion, but with silence. Disgruntled factions do not always defect; sometimes they simply stay and work against you. Voters do not always protest; sometimes they stay home. Elections are not always lost loudly; sometimes they are quietly surrendered.
APC is beginning to show all the symptoms: ambition overload, elite congestion, base demoralisation, and the fatal illusion that power today guarantees power tomorrow.
It does not.
The irony is brutal. The very ambition that built APC—the genius of coalition-making, the ruthlessness of power aggregation—now threatens to undo it. A party created to rescue Nigeria from one-party dominance is fast becoming a monument to overreach. A coalition born in resistance is mutating into a machine allergic to dissent.
So the prayer in the title is not sarcasm. It is a warning.
SDP died. AD faded. AC vanished. ACN was sacrificed. APC stands at the edge of the same historical cliff.
May APC not suffer the same fate—but history does not respond to prayers. It responds to restraint, rules, and institutions.
If APC refuses to learn that lesson, then Tinubu will not merely have happened to another party. He will have completed the pattern.
Mohammed Bello Doka can be reached via [email protected]
Abuja Network News
Tags
Opinion