One would have thought, ordinarily, that after 21 years of experimenting uninterruptedly with democratic governance that "circumstances" would have forced political parties to drop their undemocratic practices for principled democratic ones. But that has not happened as the just concluded 2019 general elections revealed.
Based on the Reports of Non-state Actors and International Observers that monitored the 2019 elections, all the political parties that participated in the elections violated all the democratic principles that make democracy the most celebrated form of governance globally, one way or the other. This ugly trend seems to have continued and blossomed as the build up to the 2020 Edo and Ondo States gubernatorial elections clearly demonstrates.
It would seem like political parties in Nigeria through their operations are just vehicles for conveying politicians into elective positions. This would suggest that instead of being building blocks for a virile democratic government, they pose a major threat to the survival of sustainable democracy in the country.
In western democratic tradition, from where we copied our brand of democracy, there is a symbiotic mutually reinforcing relationship between political parties, political culture and democracy. Obviously, we do not need a prophet to tell us that such relationship does not exist in our democratization process and practice . It would seem like that in Nigeria the activities of political parties are not congruent with democratic norms and values, which undoubtedly lead to electoral malpractices and violence, and ultimately to bad governance.
From my study, our votes may never count if we don't fix and invigorate our internal party system. No party should be allowed to alter the rules guiding the conduct of their activities at will in order to provide advantage to a preferred candidate like APC and PDP did in respect of Governor Godwin Obaseki and Pastor Iye Iyamu respectively. The party structures at all levels should be allowed to function and participate in the running of the party in areas such as daily administration, nominations, primaries and other activities. That is what is popularly referred to as internal democracy.
As a rule, you cannot have party supremacy without internal democracy. It is a misconception, a mortal error, to construe that party supremacy means being loyal to the party executive at all levels and power brokers within the party like Adams Oshiomhole, his followers and sympathizers would want us to believe. That's not it, not at all! Rather, allowing all party structures at all levels to function seamlessly according to the roles assigned to them by the party's constitution, is party supremacy. That way both the party executives and those elected on the party's platform could be held accountable when they go out of line.
In fact, in a reality, all the party executive members at all levels, members of the NWC and their elected representatives on the party's platform like the president, governors, national assembly members, house of assembly members, local government chairmen and councillors ought to attend their respective ward meetings presided by their ward chairmen.
The suspension of the former National Chairman of APC, Adams Oshiomhole, by his ward executives that finally culminated in the dissolution of the party's NWC should be the rebirth of party supremacy in the country. The almighty Adams Oshiomhole who once boasted that no one could remove him as the National Chairman of APC, was brought down by a ward chairman. That is party supremacy in action. That ward chairman deserves much more credit than what analysts and commentators on both mainstream and social media have accorded him so far.
In my opinion, the fall of Adams Oshiomhole illuminates and evinces what is wrong with our democracy and how to fix. For me, that means in the proposed electoral reform we should focus more on our political parties and possibly less on electronic voting for now. Perhaps, we do not seem to have the infrastructure and the will to drive that process.
Before 2023, the proposed electoral law should make it mandatory for all political parties to have a verifiable membership list based on online registration, prescribe membership dues, fix a ceiling for the cost of party nomination and declaration of interest forms, ban deflection from one party to the another, ban indirect primaries and prescribe sanction for the non submission of audited report of the party's account to INEC.
In my estimation, if we could create a level playing field within the party system, that would significantly reduce the undemocratic practices and shenanigans that have bedevilled our democracy in the last 20 years. Anything short of that in the name of electoral reform would mean doing the same thing every electoral year, but expecting a different outcome.
Felix Akpan PhD
lixzito@yahoo.co.uk
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