Judging by the experience of the advanced Western democracies and even some evolving ones, political parties, without a doubt, play a critical role in the survival and growth of democracy in any country where it is practised.
Besides recruiting and training aspirants for public office and seeking to get their candidates elected to public offices, they perform other tasks in a democratic society, such as socialisation and education of citizens on the functioning of the electoral and political systems, and general political values.
They equally seek and articulate key public policy and civil necessities and challenges identified by their members and followers. Additionally, they channel public opinion from the citizens to the government, and arouse and mobilise the public to participate in political decisions, including the suggestion of viable options to contentious or ineffective government policies.
In Nigeria, Section 106 (d) of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) makes membership of a political party a mandatory qualification for a person contesting election in Nigeria. Sections 221 to 225 cover prohibition of certain associations from political activities meant for political parties, restriction on formation of political parties, constitution and rules of political parties, aims and objectives, finances, among others.
Section 226 (1) compels the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, to report to the National Assembly an annual report on the accounts and balance sheet of every political party. The Commission itself is an establishment of the same Constitution and its functions are spelt out in Section 15, Part 1 of the Third Schedule and the Electoral Act.
In spite of all the legal backing, the output of political parties in Nigeria leaves much to be desired. While political parties are strong institutions in other climes, in Nigeria, they are practically very weak. This weakness makes them unable to perform effectively their roles in the political system, thereby stunting the growth of democracy in the country.
I will support the assertion made in the preceding paragraph with evidence from very recent elections in the country, starting with the local government elections in South-East Nigeria where I am based. I chose to start with local government elections because if "the government of the people by the people and for the people" must thrive in any country, it must be entrenched at the grassroots where the people are found. Even in the United States, which is seen as the bastion of democracy in the world, the phrase "all politics is local" is very common.
Local government epitomises the grassroots. There is nobody in Nigeria who does not live in a local government. The President of Nigeria, the members of the National Assembly, Secretary to Government of the Federation, SGF, Ministers and other top Federal Government functionaries live in the Federal Capital Territory, FCT, Abuja Municipal Area Council, AMAC.
Unfortunately, political parties exist at the local government level in Nigeria only for the sake of it. They are neither strong nor active. Not many at the grassroots belong to political parties. The parties are very poor financially. The paucity of funds render them unable to participate effectively in elections at the local level.
In some cases, the parties bank on the government controlling power at the state and the national level to survive. For instance, in the build-up to the forthcoming November 2, 2024 local government elections in Abia State, the political parties are demanding for funds from the Abia State Government led by the Labour Party, LP, to enable them participate in the council elections, considering the short notice, which may not allow them to mobilise enough funds to prosecute the election.
Ironically, Abia State is a multi-party state. Although Governor Alex Otti was elected in 2023 on LP platform, the House of Assembly at inception comprised members from the LP, the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, and Young Progressive Party, YPP. The APC later got one State Assembly seat through the election tribunal.
Four political parties produced members of the National Assembly from Abia. They are LP, PDP, APC and the All Progressive Grand Alliance, APGA. Notable among them are the Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Benjamin Kalu and former Senate Chief Whip, Senator Orji Uzor Kalu, both of APC; Enyinnaya Abaribe of APGA and Colonel Austin Akobundu of the PDP. Prior to his election to the Senate, Akobundu at different times served as the PDP National Vice Chairman, South-East and the National Organising Secretary. How these big names impact on the strength of the political parties in Abia State remains to be seen.
Another evidence of the weakness of political parties in Nigeria is the low turnout of voters during the just concluded September 28 local government elections in Anambra State. Not minding that the ruling party, the All Progressive Grand Alliance, APGA, has controlled power in the state for about 18 years, it could not mobilise the electorate to come out en masse and participate in the council polls.
Regardless of the fact that it was the first local government election in Anambra State in 10 years, voter apathy was reported across the 21 local government areas and 326 wards in the state. Yet, APGA recorded 21 over 21 in the election. The poor turnout of voters in the council polls replicated the poor turnout of voters witnessed in the last November 2021 governorship election in the state, in which only 10 percent of the registered 2.4 million voters voted. Professor Charles Soludo won the election with 112,229 votes, representing four per cent of the registered voters in Anambra State and about 40 per cent of the 253,000 votes that participated in the election.
However, the poor voter turnout in the just concluded Anambra local government elections was a child's play, compared to Imo State, where polling units were literally empty on the day of the September 21 local government election in the state. In spite of the very low turnout, the Imo State Independent Electoral Commission, ISIEC, declared the ruling APC in Imo State the winner of the entire seats available for contest. In a video obtained by a popular online media, the ISIEC Chairman, Charles Ejiogu announced the names of the winners without announcing the figures polled by the candidates and parties that participated in the election.
The local government elections in Enugu State on the same September 21, was not different from the ones mentioned earlier. Although the ruling PDP and LP are the two dominant parties in the state, the PDP cleared all the 17 local government chairmanship seats and the 261 councillorship seats available in the state.
Often, you see the political parties at the state level boycotting the council polls because of the lack of transparency on the side of the State Independent Electoral Commissions, SIECs.
The irony is that the same political parties participate in the general elections conducted by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), which has not proved to be more transparent than the SIECs, judging by its performance in recent elections, the latest being the Edo Governorship Elections, where the national electoral body flagrantly abandoned its rules to the bewilderment of both local and international observers.
For instance, the results of Oredo, Akoko Edo and Egor local government areas where collated at the INEC Headquarters instead of the local government secretariat, where they were supposed to be collated, according to the rules of INEC. What about the last presidential elections won by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu? Although the Judiciary ruled that Tinubu won the election, Nigerians remain puzzled till date that INEC abandoned its more transparent digital processes, particularly the IREV portal during the collation of the presidential results after hundreds of billions of Naira of public funds were spent on the digitisation of the electoral system. This is to mention but a few.
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Therefore, I think that our democracy is stumbling in Nigeria because we have weak political parties. We copied our multiparty democracy from the United States of America. Although no electoral system is perfect, the system in the US is much more advanced than ours because they have very strong political parties that are capable of demanding transparency from the electoral system.
If we want democracy to survive and grow in Nigeria, we should work towards strengthening our political parties. A party should not exist only on INEC recognition. The parties must design unique manifestoes appealing to the people. They should drive for membership. A party that has 5000 strong financial membership in each of the 774 local government areas (LGAs) can muster enough funds to participate in elections at all levels. A party that has strong 5000 members in each of the 774 LGAs automatically has almost four million votes in the presidential election. If each member woos five voters, the party automatically has 20 million votes, which is 12 million votes more than the eight million votes, which Tinubu used to become President of Nigeria.
Similarly, a party that has 5000 strong members in each of the 21 local government areas in Anambra State automatically has 105,000 votes. If each member woos five voters, the party automatically has 525,000 votes, which quadruples the 112, 000 votes that Soludo used to win the last governorship election
*Dr. Nzomiwu, Director of Media and Publicity, Development Communication Research Association of Nigeria, DECRAN, wrote via: [email protected]
