By Rasheed Ojikutu

Anytime a member of the Nigerian opposition appears in the media to talk about the predicament of the politicians outside the government, there is clear manifestation of the “ Blame Shifter and “Scapegoaters” syndrome in the public presentation. The unfortunate part of the circus show is that some members of the Civil Liberty and Human Right Organizations catch the flu by queueing behind the complainant.

This may because of their unwillingness to deeply review the enormity of the situation. This may be because these set of supporters don’t want to give the government the room to fester unchecked into autocracy and authoritarianism. More disgusting is the fact that the supporters of the opposition, including the media,fail, on each occasion, to do an in-depth review of the situation before offering a helping hand to theirtendency to cry “wolf” where none exists. The danger in all these is that we are all inadvertently making the opposition ineffective, lazy, docile, less innovative and unworthy of its role as the watchdog of the government in power.

A student of elementary Games Theory can decipher clearly that the Nigerian opposition parties have failed to optimise collective outcomes due to fragmentation, leadership rivalry, and weak institutional coordination,

Games Theory provides a powerful analytical framework for understanding political competition. Elections in Nigeria represent strategic interactions among political actors competing for scarce political power. Despite favorable conditions in some electoral cycles, opposition parties have failed to dislodge the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC), raising critical questions about their strategic behavior.

A simple conceptual clarification of games and political competition shows that a game consists of players, strategies, payoffs, and rules. Here, the players are the political parties and the candidates (Ruling party and other parties in opposition), whereas, the strategies are the campaigns, alliances and messaging while the Electoral laws and institutional frameworks constitutes the rules of the game. The payoff is Electoral victory and political control which translates to control of state power, particularly the presidency. Secondary incentives include patronage networks, policy control, and elite influence. These high stakes create incentives for both cooperation and defection among opposition actors.

The objective of each participant is to minimize the gains of the opposition while maximising his own. This is a zero sum game in which the gain of a party is the loss to the rival (or opposition).

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu aptly captured it with his word on the marbles when he said“ Don’t blame me for your poor organization, indiscipline and gross incompetence…” This, in simple language means that the President is correctly explaining to all and sundry that it is not his duty or responsibility to strengthen the gloves of the opposition in the political boxing ring.

The Nigerian opposition is consistently known to misread the political barometer, misjudge the national political structure and treat elections as isolated contests rather than interconnected strategic games. Hence, the failure of the opposition is a result of internal coordination failure, a lack of strategic planning, and non-cooperation rather than external suppression.

Optimization successes of the opposition require better internal and external cohesion than it is at themoment. At a glance, an observer can see that the principal actors outside the ruling party have pursued individual rationality at the expense of collective rationality. This creates a classic Prisoner’s Dilemma scenario-and elite fragmentation where defection (running independently) yields worse outcomes for all members opposed to the ruling party.

The Prisoner’s Dilemma is a canonical model within Game Theory. The dilemma arises when individually rational actors choose strategies that lead to collectively sub-optimal outcomes due to the absence of trust and enforceable cooperation.

Let us take a close look at the features of the political parties and their front-running candidates. The APC has historically demonstrated coalition-building and elite bargaining with minimal intra-party dissents. This may be because they are in government but one cannot also rule out the possibility that the noted cohesion is the outcome of leadership dexterity and sustainable intra-party governance with membership discipline adjacent. This asymmetry in coordination gives APC a strategic advantage.Their leading candidate, Bola Ahmed Tinubu,even before becoming the President of Nigeria has shown that he is conversant with the rules of the game. His strategies and successes in the 2023 primaries of his party despite solid opposition within the APC has accorded him enough respect to the extent that in-house challengers to his second term bid are counting the cost of moving against him.

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on the other hand,is suffering from governance disharmony ,irreconcilable internal factionalism and general indiscipline that seems to be the offshoot of administrative inadequacies and absence of good coordinating leadership. A political party that once had the opportunity to govern over two hundred million Nigerian for sixteen years could hardly put its house in order. From a leader and one of the founders of the party who in the full glare of the public tore his membership card to those who openly canvass votes for parties that are in opposition to their own, one can see a party that is in obvious disarray. Barely eight months to the 2027 general election, the party itself is pleading with the court to determine which of its factions is legitimate.

The Labour Party lacks institutional depth. Like the other opposition parties, the Labour Party has gone rudderless and directionless to the point that its Presidential Candidates in the last election has cross carpeted to another party taking along with him the colour and glamour that made it the third most favoured party in Nigeria in 2023.

The ADC was until few months ago, a party that Nigerians did not recognize beyond its registration with INEC. Unfortunately it became a safe haven for disgruntled and over ambitious politicians who seem to be more interested in occupying offices and positions rather than serve the people of our land. As at the last count, media reports show that there are over thirteen court litigation pending in court. All these emanating from within its rank and file. The truth is that any follower of the party’s working process will know that unless individual ambition are suppressed for collective national interest, the battle within the party is yet to begin. This is because, written all over the face of ADC are obvious strategic incoherence while ambition among leading figures in the party illustrates non-cooperative equilibrium.

Former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar is insisting on his candidacy without coalition consolidation. This is understandable because he led the pack to the “new” party and feels therefore that he should legitimately represent it in the 2027 election . Although, Peter Obi is able to mobilized new voters but his mistake is that he joined a fragmented opposition. Pundits may find it a bit hectic to assess the strength of Rotimi Amaechi with his elite competition dynamics and Rabiu Kwankwaso and his regional strategic move over national coalition. Although, it is clear that this duo do not possess the political acceptance of Atiku and Obi.

In brevity, these opposition parties are bedeviled by a lot of internal contradictions such as leadership struggles, self, rather than party interest, ideological inconsistency, weak party discipline and personalization of politics with each actor maximizing personal payoff, to the detriment of collective success. Heaping the blame of failure on the ruling party, the judiciary and the electoral umpire may achieve temporal success that will resonate only with those who are equally naive but the truth is that if the opposition continues with its planlessness, the ruling party would have a walk over in 2027.

The Nigerian opposition’s repeated failure reflects a breakdown in strategic reasoning. Game theory highlights the necessity of coalition-building, credible commitment, and coordinated action. Without these, opposition parties will continue to lose not because the game is rigged, but because they are playing it poorly.

•Rasheed Ojikutu is Professor of Statistics (rtd), University of Lagos.