The wisdom of consensus in party primaries
The raging controversy over the Electoral Act Amendment Bill 2021 appears to have subsided with a re-worked version of the bill passed by both chambers of the National Assembly and sent back to the president for his assent. The general expectation is that this new piece of legislation which captures all the three modes of […]
The raging controversy over the Electoral Act Amendment Bill 2021 appears to have subsided with a re-worked version of the bill passed by both chambers of the National Assembly and sent back to the president for his assent. The general expectation is that this new piece of legislation which captures all the three modes of party primaries: direct, indirect and consensus, will finally receive presidential assent to become part of our electoral jurisprudence that will govern the upcoming primaries and the general elections in 2023.
The major bone of contention has been the consensus option that allows the parties to reach unanimity on any aspirant and nominate the person as the party’s candidate for an election. It came under a barrage of criticism for being a tool in the hands of many a party chieftain, cabals and governors to impose their preferences on the rest of the party members. That the system is subject to abuse is certainly not in doubt, but so also is both the much hailed direct primaries, as well as the less maligned indirect primaries. The direct primaries are usually manipulated through the party membership list, which explains why the integrity of party register is often a subject of major disputes and controversies ahead of any primary. The indirect primary with a delegate system is notorious for abuse as well. The process is usually hijacked by money bags in a mercantile transaction where delegates are bought and sold like commodities and the candidate with the deepest pocket buys the highest number of delegates to emerge the winner. No system is free of abuse as long as it is operated by humans.
That the consensus option was perceived wrongly and negatively to be demonised as the bane of our electoral politics is unfortunate and shows the amount of mischief, misinformation, misconceptions and propaganda that can affect the quality of public discourse at national level. Politics is all about consensus building. To build consensus, a politician must have the capacity to engage across any political divide through negotiation, consultation and dialogue in order to come to a common agreement to unite the people under one purpose. Political parties are formed by consensuses reached by a group of people, and here we are condemning a legal provision that makes consensus one of the options for parties to choose their candidates for elections. What a contradiction! The consensus mode of selecting candidates is to promote inclusion by encouraging our politicians to practice consensual politics which involves reaching out to others to find a common ground as against the increasingly adversarial approach that is making our electoral politics more acrimonious,rancorous and litigious that tends to undermine our fragile polity.
The time has come for our politicians to invest their time and energy in building consensus on issues that affect our life and not just in the selection of candidates for elections, but in their duty to deliver the dividends of democracy to the people.
Ejimofor Boni Agbachi wrote from Abuja.