The case for democratising Nigerian democracy

Nigeria’s First Republic existed for only six years and the Second Republic

On Tuesday, the Savannah Centre for Diplomacy, Democracy and Development invited me to make a presentation on the best strategies for democratising Nigerian democracy. Their concept paper was clear –  Nigerians are getting extremely frustrated that the democracy they fought for and won has very little dividends for them as citizens. The future pathway is one of rising apathy as the people see the political class as perpetually serving their own interests rather than that of the people. Significant improvements in the quality of our democracy are therefore necessary to make people regain confidence that even at its worst, democratic systems offer more value than authoritarian ones.

Nigeria’s First Republic existed for only six years and the Second Republic had an even shorter life span of just over four years. The Third Republic was aborted but the Fourth Republic has had a relatively long-life span of 22 years and still counting. Historically, the explanation often offered for the underdevelopment of democracy in Nigeria is that the military never allowed democracy to mature by repeatedly disrupting democratic regimes and not allowing the political class to learn from their errors by interrupting the process and returning the counter to zero. This time, the expectation is that the quality of democracy should have improved but the reality is that it has not. Citizens have still not seen the dividends of democracy; the political class remains crass and self-serving and money plays a larger role in politics than the voice of the voter. In seeking explanations for the challenges facing democracy under the Fourth Republic, we need to focus on the fetters to democratic development energised essentially by Nigerian political parties.

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Nigeria operates a two-party dominant political system in which the ruling and main “opposition” party, currently, the former ruling party, controls enormous resources compared to the others. There are three categories of political parties – the two dominant parties, parties with parliamentary representation and the other small parties most of which were established as possible platforms for important politicians that lose out in the bigger parties and need another platform to access nomination for elective posts. The president and state governors tightly control political parties and party leadership is at the beck and call of these executives who can change them at will. The president is the leader of the dominant party, (forget the party leader formally given to a certain Lagos politician), although a party chairman exists and state governors are the leaders of their party at that level. This system is replicated in other parties that have state governors. The general situation is that Nigerian parties are not fit for purpose, they do not stand for anything in terms of the ideological spectrum and their activities are not driven by a membership that has agency.

The transmission of power from the ruling PDP to the opposition APC in 2015 has not led to a significant change in the country’s party dynamics. The greatest challenge facing Nigerian democracy is the absence of a real and functional party system. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has complained repeatedly that many parties have been operating with invalid national executive committees whose tenures had expired or were not reflective of the federal character as required by the Constitution. The Attahiru Jega INEC had de-registered a number of parties for not adhering to these constitutional requirements and for not winning seats in any elections but the courts have always been lenient and permitted parties to continue to have legal existence even when they do not meet the constitutional requirements. The current Mahmoud Yakubu-led INEC has pursued the same actions.

Virtually all parties have very little respect for internal party democracy. That is to say that they do not conduct their internal affairs based on the principles enunciated in their constitutions and rules. Party officials and candidates for elections are not elected in accordance with the rules of the game. Party conventions become occasions in which governors and godfathers simply impose candidates of their choice rather than people voted for by members and delegates. The lack of internal party democracy weakens the internal coherence of most political parties and creates a situation where the judiciary, often at a price, becomes the arbiter of who the candidates are rather than delegates.

In February 2020, INEC used its power to prune the number of political parties from 92 to 18. The decision to axe 74 political parties was justified on the basis of their poor performance in the 2019 election. The increase in the number of our political parties to 92 had created a lot of confusion in the minds of the electorate. For voters, it was often difficult to distinguish between similar symbols or emblems of the parties. The Electoral Commission faced a huge challenge printing very long ballot papers that could contain the list of all the contests. In addition, the huge bulk of the voting materials created a transportation crisis as many of the materials were too wide to enter the hold of small aircraft. The reduction of numbers is considered as a first step towards creating the conditions for the development of capable political parties that could grow in popularity based on growing membership and a good programme. The problem however is that the de-registered parties could always re-constitute themselves and apply and obtain a new registration. Indeed, in May 2021, INEC announced that about 40 new parties had applied for registration.

The core problem of Nigerian parties is that virtually all of them are not real membership parties. This means they do not really seek to recruit members and those presented as so-called party members have virtually no say in party affairs. Parties, small and big, have godfathers who control their affairs.

Nigerian parties are not about democracy and elections. The report of experts prepared by the National Institute of Policy and Strategic Studies just before the 1983 elections, correctly predicted that the elections could not be conducted without massive electoral fraud because the parties in power were not ready to allow others to come to power. The report also showed that only the 1959 and 1979 elections were held without systematic rigging and that those two elections had one point in common: they were held in the presence of strong arbiters, the colonial State and the military, who were not themselves participants in the elections and were not ready to engage in blatant rigging.

The Babalakin Commission of Inquiry into the 1983 elections correctly argued that:

‘The nature of politics and political parties in the country is such that many men and women of ability and character simply keep out of national politics. For the most part, political parties are dominated by men of influence who see funding of political parties as an investment that must yield rich dividends.”

We must change the political culture in which competition internal to the parties is not about who has the votes of members. It is about those who can use anti-democratic tactics – violence, bribes, illegal use of security agencies and so on to obtain leadership or nomination by force. As Nigeria moves towards the 2023 elections, it is imperative that political parties imbibe the culture of internal democracy as a means of creating harmonious conditions that would not only enhance their performance but also be of help when they eventually win elections.

There would be a future for Nigerian democracy under two conditions. First, Nigerians must stop voting for candidates based on sentiments. If we all decide to vote on CAPACITY TO PERFORM, we will begin to have elected officials that have come to serve the people rather than the normal self-serving scenario. Secondly, Nigerians must massively register as members of political parties and insist on choosing candidates themselves in the primaries. Citizens must OVERTHROW the godfathers and takeover the parties. On Monday, INEC will resume continuous voter registration. Dear Nigerians, if you are not registered; go out, register and use your power in the party you choose.