Former Senator Shehu Sani argued with striking directness that Nigeria’s leading opposition figures, including former Vice President Atiku Abubakar and former Anambra Governor Peter Obi, would govern in essentially the same manner as President Tinubu if they were to come to power, because all Nigerian political parties and their leading presidential aspirants share the same fundamental economic ideology regardless of the different names and acronyms behind which they operate.
He pointed out that unlike political systems in more developed democracies where parties are clearly differentiated as left, right, centre-left, conservative, or liberal, Nigerian political parties are distinguished only by their alphabetical names and have no meaningful ideological distance from one another. All of them, he argued, subscribe to the Washington Consensus, the IMF, the World Bank, subsidy removal, and currency devaluation.
According to Shehu Sani, the evidence for this claim is readily available in the public record of these politicians’ own time in government. He argued that none of them has previously used positions of power as governor, minister, or speaker to demonstrate any policy approach that would indicate a fundamentally different or more humane economic philosophy, and that any difference between their potential governance and Tinubu’s would be purely cosmetic rather than structural.
Shehu Sani said: “When you are talking of opposition in Nigeria, you are not talking about these ones are Marxist, these ones are socialist, and the other ones are neoliberals. There is nothing like that. If you give Obi or Atiku power, it will still be the same thing that they will do. The difference that you may have been able to have is cosmetic. But ideologically, none of them is opposed to IMF and World Bank policies. There is nothing they will do and I believe that. What ideas do they have? All of them have been in government. If there is any miracle or magic they would have performed, it could have been visible.”
... “If You Give Obi Or Atiku Power It Will Be Same Thing, The Difference Is Only Cosmetic” – Shehu Sani ... Sportify Post.