As APC primaries start tomorrow
Primary elections of the ruling All Progressives Congress [APC] are to start throughout the country tomorrow ahead of the 2019 general elections. Presidential primaries, which will be by direct method, will hold all over the country tomorrow, Friday while governorship primaries will hold in 29 states on Saturday, September 29. Primaries for elections to the […]
Primary elections of the ruling All Progressives Congress [APC] are to start throughout the country tomorrow ahead of the 2019 general elections. Presidential primaries, which will be by direct method, will hold all over the country tomorrow, Friday while governorship primaries will hold in 29 states on Saturday, September 29. Primaries for elections to the Senate will hold on October 2; those for the House of Representatives will hold on October 3 while those for state assemblies will hold the following day, October 4.
These primaries are very important because they are the first real test of internal democracy within political parties, in this case the party that rules at the centre and presently in 24 states as well. Many observers have long said that lack of internal democracy within political parties, and repeated failure to adhere to their own rules and constitutions, spill over into the general elections and are a major weakness of Nigeria’s democratic experiment.
Ahead of these primaries, there has been much tumult in APC as to whether the primaries should be direct, i.e. involving all party members, or indirect, i.e. through delegate congresses, or even by consensus. The party’s constitution provides for all three methods provided they are agreed to by stakeholders. Even though the APC leadership and President Muhammadu Buhari showed preference for direct primaries, its powerful governors, backed by state party chairmen, mostly preferred the indirect method. Although supporters of indirect primaries proffered good reasons such as the logistics, cost and security implications of direct primaries, others said governors and other powerful elements prefer it because they control most of the delegates that attend the congresses.
In the end, APC’s national executive committee [NEC] adopted direct presidential primaries but allowed the states to adopt which method they prefer for the other elections. Two days ago, the party’s National Working Committee [NWC] announced the approved method to be used in each state. Eighteen states are to hold direct primaries. They are Abia, Akwa Ibom, Anambra, Bauchi, Bayelsa, Cross River, Edo, Ekiti, Imo, Kano, Lagos, Niger, Ogun, Ondo, Osun, Taraba and Zamfara. States that are to hold indirect primaries are Adamawa, Benue, Borno, Delta, Ebonyi, Enugu, Gombe, Jigawa, Kaduna, Katsina, Kebbi, Kogi, Kwara, Nasarawa, Oyo, Plateau, Rivers, Sokoto and Yobe.
Even though APC’s NWC mostly approved the methods chosen by the state chapters themselves, in some cases it altered them due to petitions from other aspirants. It made the important point that some party members went to court to contest the legality of ward, local government and state congresses held earlier this year, so if the delegates chosen at those congresses are to be the delegates in an indirect primary, the courts might later quash some of the primaries.
APC’s presidential primary is not expected to be contentious because President Muhammadu Buhari is the only one standing in them. Still, the party should brace up and make the process to be credible because the Independent National Electoral Commission [INEC], local election observers as well as reporters will monitor them closely. Much more tricky are the subsequent primary elections which are going to be keenly contested. There are as many as 20 aspirants contesting in the APC primaries in Borno State, ten in Nasarawa, ten in Taraba and nine in Ebonyi states. While this makes for a good democratic choice, it also affords a lot of opportunity for crises and conflicts, including resort to violence by some desperate aspirants.
Governorship aspirants in APC have paid N22million each to contest in these primaries, an excessive figure by most standards even though it still did not succeed in pruning down the number of aspirants in some states. Nigerians will therefore be watching the APC primaries with keen interest to see if the touted party of change will prove itself by conducting violence-free, fair, transparent and democratic party primaries.