By Ochereome Nnanna

THE  term, Government of National Unity, GNU, will take a prominent space when the political dictionary of Nigeria is compiled. The sooner this compilation is done the better, because Nigerians need to know what it truly means.

It is a term that gains quick popularity at the onset of every new administration, especially after elections have been won and lost. Therefore, it is (erroneously) seen as the act of including winning and losing political parties in the cabinet of the new (or re-elected) president in order to “give them a sense of belonging”.

This idea of the GNU has never yielded any positive result. After the recent presidential election, there is nothing that necessitates it. The GNU we have been practising since 1999 is an opportunistic corruption of the “accord” arrangements of the 1960s and 1970s, which helped some political parties form governments at the Federal level.

In 1959 under the parliamentary system, the winning Northern Peoples Congress, NPC, did not produce a clear constitutionally-sanctioned majority to enable it form government during the federal elections. It had to reach out to the party with the next largest number of seats, the National Council for Nigerian and the Cameroons, NCNC, for an alliance.

In getting the partnership into effect, both parties agreed to share power almost equally, with the NPC producing the Prime Minister while the NCNC produced the ceremonial President. All cabinet positions were equally shared down the line. The third highest scoring party, the Action Group, settled to lead the Opposition.

That arrangement enabled our political founding fathers to successfully take over power from the colonial masters. Again in 1979 under the newly launched presidential system, the winning National Party of Nigeria, NPN, could not muster the two-thirds majority of members in the National Assembly and the required number of states to produce the president as required by the constitution.

The party, whose leaders were offshoots of the defunct NPC, reached out to their old allies in the Nigerian Peoples Party, NPP, which was also an offshoot of the defunct NCNC. An “accord” was struck and both parties went into government together.

This allowed the NPN’s winning presidential candidate, Alhaji Shehu Shagari, to assume power, while the NPP produced the Speaker of the House of Representatives in the person of Chief Edwin Ume-Ezeoke. The two parties also shared cabinet positions, even though not as equitably as in 1959.

However, by 1999, when the military was vacating the political stage for the second time in our history, the newly formed Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, won by a landslide and satisfied all the requirements of the 1999 Constitution. Thus, it did not require going into any “accord” with any political party to function effectively. However, either out of ignorance or mischief, it threw its doors open for what it called “the Government of National Unity”.

In all three previous occasions that the party won the presidential elections, it offered the GNU to losing major parties, particularly the All Peoples Party, APP, later the All Nigerian Peoples Party and the Alliance for Democracy, AD. The GNU thus became the strategy through which the ruling PDP was able to absorb and destroy the opposition.

The reason was that most of the officers appointed from the opposition parties eventually decamped to the ruling party. The opposition parties also became open houses for PDP to go in, weaken their ability to contend in the next elections, and come out at will.

It is with this historic lesson that the Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN, is now fighting shy of taking up President Goodluck Jonathan’s offer of a GNU partnership. The GNU only serves the gluttonous interests of opposition party chiefs, while strengthening the hold of the ruling party on the polity. It has promoted the dominant one-party system and placed the multi-party system of our democracy at risk.

Clearly, a GNU is necessitated by the need to make up the required constitutional numbers and form a government. Since those numbers were convincingly obtained by the ruling PDP at the polls, it must proceed to form its government without inviting losing parties to the banquet table. The losing parties need the next four years to re-arm and launch another challenge for power.

The electorate that voted for the Congress for Progressive Change, CPC and the ACN voted to opt out of the PDP. They did not vote for the leaders of either of these parties to share political offices with the PDP and therefore trade in their mandates. Having thrown their lot with the ACN in the South West for instance, the electorate there cannot expect to share power with a PDP they rejected at the polls.

The only “government of national unity” Nigerians expect from President Jonathan is the sharing of political offices among the six geopolitical zones of the country in such a way as not to relegate any section based on negative considerations, such as the way they voted, or their role in the civil war that ended 41 years ago. Power sharing, if equitably done, will give the Jonathan administration the required national goodwill to function effectively. If President Jonathan regards all sections of Nigeria as his constituency (not just those who voted for him) and ensures that the benefits of his regime are distributed evenly and justly, he would be running the Government of National Unity that Nigerians truly need.

While he campaigned in all parts of the country he made tons of promises. All these promises were carefully tailored to meet peculiar needs of the various localities. He will be running a government of national unity if he gives the implementation of these promises his best shot. For then, Nigerians will truly be united behind a government that, for once, responds to their needs.