The first few years after independence in Nigeria showed clearly that the nation’s political class had very little interest in democracy. The leaders of nationalist movements who formed government after the colonial masters left the country were not democrats; they only wanted power to attain influence and wealth. Once in power, they embraced authoritarianism and criminalised political dissent. Contestations were thus violent, leading expectedly to a state of war. The military, with its huge structure of discipline, thought it could intervene and stop the nation’s drift to anarchy, but it could not, as many of the soldiers in government turned out to be more corrupt than the civilians they had kicked out of office.
In retrospect, it was not only the incursion of the military into the politics of Nigeria that was a mistake, it was also an error for the soldiers to have sought to bequeath ideal democracy to the political class.
Political events from 1987 till today easily confirm the viewpoint that has been made. The transition to civil rule political programmes of the military, especially that of President Ibrahim Babangida (IBB), had well-arranged processes and procedures. The scheme to establish viable political parties looked quite noble but the reactions to the idea were essentially negative. All the 13 political associations that sought to be recognised as political parties were insincere; they had fake party membership lists, just as some of them created placeholders in more than one prospective party. The idea of two administrative secretaries to help the parties to stabilise was thwarted with the argument that a political party cannot be run like a government agency. The Open Ballot System which brought credible election results had to be amended in view of the criticism that it compromised the sanctity of the ballot.
The military itself fell into the trap of cynicism when it annulled the June 12, 1993 presidential election which was internationally hailed as Nigeria’s best. The annulment showed that the military, not being a democratic institution, could not have provided what it did not have. Unfortunately, those who succeeded the military did nothing to remove from our democracy many regimented rules and guidelines which they inherited. They accepted, for example, that our nascent democracy required to be guided without asking certain pertinent questions. First, how long should the guidance last? If it would be ad infinitum, what would be the difference between such stunted political entities and the so-called government by a national electoral commissioner who happens to be a Senior Advocate? What value in law does the strong monitoring team add to the event to be monitored? In other words, would it have mattered if the numerical strength of the agencies earlier rejected during military rule? The question aptly interrogates the emergence of regimented political parties which has brought Nigeria to its present state in which her political parties are under a regime of unending guidance.
In Nigeria, there are too many rules, with some of them cancelling themselves while others are contradicting one another. Put differently, our rules and guidelines for politics and elections have become indeterminable. Our best example is the real relationship between the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and the nation’s political parties. The Electoral Act says every political party shall give to INEC a 21-day notice of its intention to undertake a function such as congress or convention. What seems to be the purpose of the notice is for INEC to monitor the activity. Then, we hear that INEC may or may not monitor the same event, adding that the failure of INEC to monitor the event cannot invalidate the same event. If so, why is it necessary to burden INEC with such a mandate of no consequence?
Indeed, what concerns INEC with a political party activity which is essentially the internal affair of the party concerned? Is INEC a member of any political party? The standard practice is that INEC is the referee of the game between competing political parties; our laws have not clearly stated why the same INEC is also to be the referee between a party and its members. During a recent convention of one of the factions of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the INEC monitoring team was gleefully announced. It was said to be a large contingent that was led by a non-lawyer. What value does the strong monitoring team add to the event to be monitored? In other words, would it have mattered if the numerical strength of the team was less or that it was led by a non-lawyer?
When the huge and delicate assignment of INEC is properly considered, there is no need to add assignments that are capable of distracting the commission. The role of a referee in any game is easy to appreciate; asking a referee to visit any of the teams in any pending contest to find out how it is getting ready to pick its players for the coming game is superfluous. As stated earlier, the monitoring of parties was introduced in the past to guide our nascent democracy into stability and maturity. Therefore, Nigeria’s democracy cannot continue to be regarded as a premature baby several years after the restoration of democracy to the country. If indeed it was necessary during the military era, the same cannot be said in respect of today when the youngest child of our democracy is above 25 years. One of the implications of our unending guided democracy is our failure to produce a group of technocrats whose area of strength is party management and administration.
Each time a political party in Nigeria says it is registering new members, it includes old members in the exercise because there are no relevant records in the party offices concerning the subject—no institutional memory. What is more, the exercise ends with members who claim to have voters’ cards in excess of the figure in the INEC register; yet many voters’ cards have remained reportedly uncollected. Our parties cannot grow if they are continuously run by task forces, notwithstanding that there are elected party executives. The major reason for this, as revealed many years ago, is that our politicians are not interested in running political parties; they want to run government offices that have annual budgets, they want to award contracts and be wealthy overnight. Except the situation is reversed, Nigeria cannot have viable political parties that can justify principles such as party supremacy.
Accordingly, party members elected to public offices under the platform of a political party will have higher stake in party matters. The system of guided democracy will therefore remain popular not for better party management, but because it gives those in the legislature the room to alter our electoral law at will. A federal legislator once told this writer that federal high courts were created because state governors had become unbearable. He added that his colleagues were ready to increase the powers of the federal high courts to render state high courts irrelevant in political matters. The goal is to ensure that governors are not legally empowered to overwhelm federal legislators. Luckily for the political class, the judiciary has been constructively divided. Where one court declines jurisdiction on a matter, another claims it even though in the hierarchy of courts, both are equal.
If anything else, it is the stance of the judiciary that has made it exceedingly clear that we may make no progress with the growth of political parties if other societal institutions such as INEC and even the judiciary itself will not allow the parties to breathe.
There were cases in the past where INEC accepted the result of a party primary it did not monitor only because the judiciary so directed. If there is no difference between monitored and unmonitored primaries, monitoring is not only unnecessary, but it is also weird to make rules for it. A political party ought to be responsible enough to give effect to the correct result of a party primary it conducted, which suggests that there is no need for a third party to get involved. Where third-party involvement is expedient, it should not be just to record a 21-day notice.
We cannot end this piece without referring to the case of Senator Ahmed Lawan, immediate past Senate President who had wanted to become Nigeria’s president. Having lost the presidential primaries, it meant he also lost the opportunity to return to the Senate because he could not have participated in the senatorial primaries. Along the line, his party abandoned the winner of the primaries and relisted Lawan as its flag bearer for the election to the Senate. The court ruled that Lawan was the rightful candidate because his party declared him to be her choice. Lawan has since returned to the Senate. Why then is INEC still running around political parties at the expense of better handling of the logistics of elections?
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