INEC, with the assistance and encouragement of APC – and I will also not spare the ‘body language’ of the sitting president – bullied young political parties and summarily deregistered them ultra vires the Nigerian Constitution as amended on the same issue, in February 2020.
INEC could have followed the rules strictly and allowed these parties to contest all elections as stipulated by the Constitution, but in the normal way of doing things that has dragged us to the level of a failed country, INEC went ahead to damn the young parties because they know that the judiciary is a joke (unfortunately, some people in INEC even say this) and they know that the small parties have no resources. Some of us are at the Appeal Court presently. Is this the way that President Buhari, APC and INEC should maltreat and oppress young people who gather themselves, look for money where there is none, in order to be part of Nigeria’s political progress? Oh, now the president is complaining. INEC offices are being burnt (42 so far). Did these powerful people prefer youth violence to youth political engagement? How many of the thousands – perhaps millions – that were engaged by the deregistered parties are now followers of Sunday Igboho and Nnamdi Kanu and other charlatans seeking to dismember the country? Will INEC ever learn? Will Buhari ever be magnanimous in spirit? Each party had at least 30 national executives, and at state level, an average of 20. Multiply 30 by 74. That is over 2,000. Multiply 20 executives by 37 states by 74 parties. That gives us about 55,000 youths. Then think about the number of people who contested on those parties’ platform for everything contestable in Nigeria – from councilor to president. Then think about their supporters. You are looking at almost four million youths. Many of them were confused by APC and PDP money during the elections and did not vote for those young parties. What will it cost INEC and Buhari to just leave these parties so that the young turks who formed them can continue to feel like they are part of Nigeria’s progress? Can we see what impunity and an oppressive nature can cause?
I recall in the build-up to the last elections the frenzy was palpable among the youths. Many who had never joined political parties before, many who had been excluded because they had no godfathers and no money, were glad to identify with some of the younger parties.
At ANRP (Abundant Nigeria Renewal Party), we commenced the journey as early as 2016, but INEC made sure they strung us along, for a whole year until our licence was granted in December 2017. We started working towards the coming elections by organising state, local government and ward chapters with the little money that we could raise from hard-earned salaries and whatever we could lay our hands on. We kept our noses clean. We did not entertain any illegal money or hijack from moneybags. We did not have any scandals and we ensured total transparency by publishing party accounts every two weeks. Before the major elections in February 2019, we also organised a number of party primaries to which we invited INEC, while we also put in contestants for some state elections – notably Osun and Ekiti. We maintained a database of members using ICT and used to call members out of the blues, to the delight of many. Even INEC was impressed with our database and organisation when the party EXCOs once visited their headquarters.
I recall a lot of starry-eyed young men and women who contested on our platform, excited to see their faces on posters in their localities. Some were security men. Some were hairdressers. Some were bin men in the market. A number of them were lawyers, accountants and white-collar workers. Many were businessmen. For many of them, it was a life-changing experience. Many came to their own and achieved self-actualisation, believing that they were also adding their efforts to the advancement of Nigeria. Others held party positions at federal, state, local and ward levels. Yes, wards were a tad difficult for us to organise because at that level, it was all about money. We were selling ideology, youth, innocence, passion, but at the ward level, there was much hunger and we didn’t have the billions to shell out at the almost 10,000 wards in Nigeria. Still, we tried. We did not allow this deterrent hold us back from doing what we had to do for the fatherland. We were tired of complaining and ranting. We promoted the idea that young Nigerians should be able to hold down a job or have a business and still participate in their country’s governance. We felt disappointed by the two big parties which had been financed over time, with billions of naira from taxpayers’ money. Of course, we registered our parties at a time when INEC collected money from parties rather than give. We were well aware but felt the risk was worth the while. Impact was our focus. We fielded contestants for elections at every level; ward, local governments, state assemblies, senate and House of Representatives, state governor and president – as many as we could find who were serious. The idea was to try as much as we can, because we may get lucky where we least expected. Every contestant was to ensure they financed themselves. The party had no money to dole around.
It was a game of luck, but we had no choice because it was our only reliance given the little funds we had. It was out of question for us to join the big parties… at least we had to show what we could do on our own. Of course, Nigerians are Nigerians. Many of those who joined us came from the big parties. Some of those could not cope with this new culture where we had no money and preached passion. We also suspected that some were sent to us to deliberately create confusion. Many young parties experienced serious upheavals, breakups, factionalisation and betrayals. Only those with strong characters in leadership could hold their own till the elections.
Elections came and went. The results were dismal and painful. The impact we thought we could have was not there. We saw that coming but probably not on the dismal scale. It will be naïve for most first-time contestants to expect to win elections anyway. But we hoped to at least make a dent (collectively). The strategy broke down because most young parties could not afford N5,000 for at least one party agent at each polling booth. There were over 100,000 of them, so that is a clear N500million at least. Even where we tried to pay the polling agent, the bigger party showed up with bigger money and some of the agents called us to say ‘sorry o, I have to switch, party XYZ just gave me double what you gave”. It didn’t matter if it was a ward election, state governorship or presidency. In fact, the bigger parties have a culture where they allocate between N250,000 and N500,000 per polling booth, through their party chieftains. All those who voted for them received either N3,000 or N5,000. The youths in those parties coordinated this business. At a mere N250,000 per polling booth, a party needed at least N25 billion! Where will we find that kind of money? And those who paid such promptly collected back with huge premium because they had their fingers in the till at the federal or state level anyway. Nigerians made their choices. And the electoral commission did a good job for their masters, most unfortunately. They added to their mandate, that smaller parties, coming with better ideas, must never be allowed to survive, much less draw the attention of Nigerians. Some so-called civil society organisations joined the electoral umpire to ensure life was snuffed out of these budding parties. Nobody should blame us for trying. We needed to see these things firsthand to learn about the problems of our country. It is not enough to hide behind keyboards and assume or act of hearsay.
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