An Evolutionary Take on Peter Obi and ADC Coalition Party

I want to approach the bombshell news of Peter Obi teaming up with his former boss, Atiku Abubakar and some disaffected former APC bigwigs to join the ADC coalition, through evolutionary lens. As a pseudo-intellectual, I enjoy the insights I glean from evolutionary psychology and evolutionary biology. I’ve learned so much about human behaviour from evolutionary theory. But before I get into my analysis, I can’t help but notice that this news has put OBIdients in a difficult situation, though, as expected, they are pretending otherwise. The problem, critics have pointed out, is why should Obi, who has been advertised by his supporters as a saint, be hobnobbing with the likes of Nasir el-Rufai and Rauf Aregbesola, who until five minutes ago were in APC, the very party Obi wants to unseat from power? Good question. While the move might be politically savvy, the optics do not look good for him and his supporters.

Certainly, coalitions and defections are not a new thing in Nigerian politics. However, the political theatre in the country reminds me of the jungle. Our closest cousins in the evolutionary family tree are chimpanzees. In many ways, we can learn a lot about human nature from them. As primitive as chimps are, they organise themselves in social hierarchies with the alpha male being at the top of the food chain. Of course, by being the alpha, he is entitled to unfettered mating opportunities. When he and his associates hunt down prey (chimps are omnivores), he gets the fattest hunk of meat. He decides who he shares the prey with while the rest of the clan salivates watching from the sidelines. Chimps are naturally violent. To become alpha, you have to defeat the current alpha. To remain alpha, you have to occasionally defend your title by fighting a testosterone-filled lad who is hungry for power. And you do this as many times as you are challenged. The alpha cannot afford to show weakness as that would signal an opportunity to his enemies to attack. Toxic masculinity, if you will.

Of course, Nigerian politics isn’t structured the way chimpanzees organise. But metaphorically, Tinubu is the current alpha. In two years, he will defend that title. Without formidable opposition, he remains the alpha for the next six years. It is worth noting that Tinubu’s emergence as president did not happen by some stroke of luck. I’m no fan of the man but I cannot deny the fact that he has spent years building friendships and relationships with the who’s who across the length and breadth of the country. He has also sired many children in politics. Hence, the one time he contested, he won, not because he staged an impressive campaign, but because he played the game well.

How do you defeat the alpha if you are not strong enough? Coalition building. There is a concept called reverse dominance hierarchy. It is when there are egalitarian norms established to prevent the emergence of a tyrant or to eliminate a tyrant if one emerges. Hunter-gatherers are famously egalitarian in their norms. Anyone hubristic enough to crave power and dominance will earn the wrath of the group. Richard Wrangham talks about the Execution Hypothesis in his book Goodness Paradox. He argues that one of the reasons humans are orders of magnitude more peaceful and altruistic than chimpanzees is because individuals who showed tyrannical tendencies were executed by our hunter-gatherer ancestors. This led to what has been theorised as self-domestication. By executing these tyrants, egalitarianism was maintained and we reduced the probability of the tyrant trait in the gene pool.

To extrapolate from the reverse dominance hierarchy theory, one can see through evolutionary logic why underdogs like Peter Obi, Atiku, Aregbesola, and El-Rufai have formed a coalition to end the dominance of Tinubu, the alpha. Of course, they are not doing it through execution, like our hunter-gatherer ancestors or Chimpanzees in the wild. They are doing it by ensuring they build a formidable structure to win millions of votes in 2027. In his last outing, Obi came third. It was an impressive feat. He contested against towering figures like Tinubu and Atiku, a former vice president. He left the PDP for the Labour Party and had less than a year to build his campaign from scratch. No doubt, he was (and still is) the darling of the youth. But it takes more than public goodwill to win elections, especially in a complex society like ours that is heavily fractured along ethnic and religious lines. Winning in a country like this requires you to parley with different interest groups. That means you may have to promise them juicy appointments or contracts if you become president. Yes, it’s a sad commentary on the state of the country.

There was a time when PDP was the larger-than-life alpha in this country. Nyesom Wike hubristically once said PDP would rule for 50 years. But he did not foresee the emergence of APC, a party birthed through coalition. Since 2015, APC has grown in monstrosity and has consolidated itself as the almighty alpha. Tinubu, who masterminded APC, ironically is about to be served a dose of his medicine by the ADC coalition. But whether ADC would have been strong enough to defeat him in 2027 is up for speculation.

One of the criticisms against Sowore, Oby Ezekwesili, Fela Durotoye, and Tope Fasua in 2019 was their refusal to form a coalition. Sowore especially was too cocky believing he could win alone. Sowore is an idealist and I actually appreciate that he stands on principles, even if I don’t agree with them at times. Unfortunately, there are no deontological ethics that govern politics in Nigeria. Principles can earn you admiration online, but they don’t win elections. The system forces you to make a Faustian bargain with people you disagree with because you need them.

Coalitions are not without their problems. If a group of individuals with selfish interests coalesce with the singular aim of winning an election, it’s just a matter of time before the union begins to fall apart. This problem is compounded in a political culture like ours, where parties are not formed along ideological lines. Once these individuals see that the union fails to satisfy their selfish interests, they exit. Even in a more ideologically sophisticated polity like America, this problem exists. For instance, Donald Trump’s MAGA movement became very pluralistic last year. Some disaffected Democrats like Tulsi Gabbard, RFK Jr and Elon Musk joined the movement for various reasons. For Tulsi Gabbard, her former party had ostracised and launched a smear campaign against her. For RFK, his controversial views on vaccines made him a pariah within the party. The Democrats refused to conduct a primary but if they had, RFK stood a good chance of winning the ticket. And so, he left. He initially ran as an independent but eventually joined the MAGA train. For Elon Musk he was tired of the woke ideology within the Democratic party, and he was passionate about reducing America’s unsustainable debt. Today, Elon has fallen out with Trump over the so-called Big Beautiful Bill. Libertarians like Dave Smith, who supported Trump mainly because of his anti-war stance, recently regretted his decision to back him because of the recent 12-day war with Iran.

ADC has a long way to go. Their immediate goal is to decide who their standard-bearer will be through election or consensus. There are many would-be alphas among them, and that makes the coalition extremely prone to implosion; if not now, then later.