Nigeria’s democracy seems to be fast evolving together with its laws. Most recent have been the inclusion of new provisions in our political and electoral laws to strengthen internal party democracy, thus refining the competitiveness of individuals and groups within political parties. Party internal democracy has been a thorny issue bedeviling the smooth refinement of the democratic structure of elections in Nigeria.
A principal structure of party internal democracy is the ability of party members to elect both their party leaders and their candidates for inter-party elections as enshrined in our constitution. In the case of electing candidates for inter-party elections, party members go through a nomination process commonly referred to as primary elections. This internal party process is fully catered for by our relevant electoral laws, and the process is hinged on the democratic norms of choice and competition. Party members wishing to occupy local government, state and national elective offices go through this process in order to emerge for inter-party contests.
In this democratic journey of ours, there have been instances of candidates and political parties challenging the emergence of rival candidates from rival political parties after inter-party contests. For instance, in the just concluded proceedings of the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal (PEPT), President Bola Tinubu and his APC, as respondents, challenged the legitimacy of the party membership of a petitioner, Peter Obi, to his party, the Labour Party (LP).
President Tinubu and APC contended that Obi was not a member of LP when the party submitted its membership register to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for the purpose of the 2023 presidential election.
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Currently, our laws provide that candidates and their political parties cannot question the emergence of their rivals from rival political parties. On this ground, PEPT rejected this contention of President Tinubu and APC. Many instances of this scenario have been recorded in our courts.
It reaches the realm of fairness and justice to disagree with this very provision of our electoral law asserting that candidates are “interlopers” on issues of emergence of their rival candidates from rival political parties. This very provision of the law is ill-framed and badly placed against the spirit and practice of fair play in a competitive democracy. From two perspectives, the illogical foundation and frailty of this position of the law can clearly be seen: from the field of contest and then from the umpire of the contest.
Looking at the issue from the perspective of the field of contest, it is clear that there are multiple political parties, in the first instance, each operating within its own field of play – its own party activities. Currently, rival political parties have no say about what is happening in the houses of the others – party ABC has nothing to do with what party XYZ does about the choice of its party officers, and vice versa. On the same node, party ABC has nothing to do with candidates nominated by party XYZ to contest, say, a senate seat.
Now, note that each political party has its own house and plays its internal democracy within its own house. By this, each political party submits to INEC its own rules and guidelines for the conduct of its internal affairs. Further than this, there is a common field of play, outside the control of each participating political party, for all the participating political parties to use in common for a particular election. For this common field of play, INEC provides the rules and guidelines for all participating candidates and their parties.
It is then fair and logical to state that all candidates on this common field of general contest should assume same and uniform qualifications, including the process of qualifying. The problem with the current provision of the law is, it assumes that the process of qualifying is not an item of qualification, whereas it is! Then, since no item defining the qualification of both party and candidates should be infringed upon, the process of qualification must also be clean, in as much as the common contest has to take place at a common place. Hence, party ABC, for instance, should be able to ask questions about why it duly followed its own provided rules and regulations in order to reach up to this common contest, whereas party XYZ did not follow its own rules and guidelines, reaching up to the common contest.
The second perspective is that all contesting parties submit their internal nomination rules and guidelines to INEC for the purpose of their internal nomination processes. The same INEC is also mandated to monitor the conduct of the nomination processes of all the parties, and then it reports as to whether the parties complied with their own rules and guidelines in the nomination processes. Why is INEC common to all parties and their respective candidates, but qualification from roots is not common? This is highly illogical considering the fact that a common playing ground has already been established.
As long as INEC’s common umpire status remains sacrosanct, then participating parties and candidates should be able to ask questions about the qualifications of rival candidates and their parties. It is like one being trained by their party in the art of using leather gloves in the field of contest, but only to come to a common contest and then find the rival candidate equipped with metal gloves. Unfair – very unfair!
From a moral point of view, it is wrong to allow a rogue candidate, who deliberately broke the procedural laws of their party, to emerge as a candidate to contest with someone who went through a clean process. Likewise for the political parties, it is wrong to allow a fraudulent political party which twists and breaks its internal rules of contest to compete with a clean and innocent political party fond of applying rules and laws to the latter. Why should it be accepted that corruption is rooted in the seeds of the system? Rival candidates and rival parties should be given the nod to provide check and balance in the conduct of internal nominations of parties.
Let democracy question its correct application, from seed to fruition. The Electoral Act 2022 needs to be amended to reflect this, immediately. We cannot continue threading on wrong grounds as long as we have found out that the grounds are wrong. Let there be more sanity as we continue to march to a much cleaner democracy.
Dahiru sent this piece from Abuja – [email protected]
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