Uche Secondus. Photo: Twitter/UcheSecondus
When at the beginning of this year former President Olusegun Obasanjo wrote a public statement dismissing the two major political parties, All Progressives Congress (APC) and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as lacking in credibility, most Nigerians saw his assertions against the backcloth of his beef with the two parties.But, recent happenings with APC and PDP regarding the place of internal democracy in the running of the platforms, give some modicum of relevance to Obasanjo’s position, despite the inability of the former leader to recommend a better alternative.
The recriminations over direct primary in APC and consensus/automatic tickets in PDP, have thrown up some pertinent questions: Is impunity in the DNA of the two political parties? Are they afraid of the tenets of democracy? Experts insist that the methodologies for the selection of candidates by political parties determine the level of inclusion extended to members. Consequently, whether by direct or indirect primary, transparency and acceptability of the chosen method become crucial.
For APC, its trouble arose from the attempt by the leadership to enforce double standards in the attempt to uphold direct primary for some executive incumbents in the name of espousing internal democracy as contained in its constitution. On the other hand, the move by PDP to adopt consensus and automatic ticket put the party at the line of fire of its members, particularly in Cross River State, where the state chapter protested publicly against such.
Across both parties, their former members have given poor testimonial about the state of democracy within the platforms. While Senator Rabiu Kwankwaso said he left APC because the change promised was not sincere, former governor of Cross River State, Mr. Donald Duke, explained that he left PDP because it (PDP) has lost what its symbol stands for. Kwankwaso declared that the change envisaged in 2015 was the greatest mistake he had made, stressing that the “much-talked about change has only brought hunger, killings and unemployment to Nigerians.”Speaking while commissioning the state secretariat of the SDP, Duke bemoaned the indiscipline and impunity rocking the PDP, saying: “The problem with the PDP was that it does automatic things automatically.”
APC’s false step towards a new beginning
There are indications that the knee-jerk adoption of direct primary for the selection of APC’s candidates for the 2019 election was an attempt by those who refused tenure elongation to the party’s national working committee led by Chief John Odigie-Oyegun to carry through its triumphalism. Governors elected on the party’s platform demanded that the same gesture extended to President Muhammadu Buhari as the leader of the party should be extended to them as leaders of the party in their respective states.
In the same vein, members of the federal legislature from the party, while challenging the autocratic tactics adopted by the governors, voted for the direct system approach to assess the acceptability of each aspirant, including the governors. It could therefore be seen that APC glided into the present vortex by the lack of consensus on the issue of method of choosing candidates. Beginning from Osun, where the direct primary option was experimented upon, opponents of the system advanced cogent reasons against it, including lack of credible membership database and absence of impartial electoral body.
But, instead of sitting down to iron out these crucial bottlenecks, the party went to town heralding direct primary as the holy grail of internal democracy and laurel for Adams Oshiomhole-led NWC. At the end of the day, direct primary and simulated automatic ticket for President Buhari, plunged APC into a morass likely to culminate in anti-party activities during next year’s poll.
Yet, by not canvassing direct primary before the national executive committee, state governors took battle positions, just as the party headquarters and the Presidency saw it as the weapon of attack against recalcitrant legislators. How the party grapples with growing public perception that it is afraid of democracy and preparing to muscle its way back to power would be seen as it enters the primary season.
The Director General of Voice of Nigeria (VON), Mr. Osita Okechukwu, told The Guardian that APC is not afraid of democracy or next year’s election. Dismissing instances of the party’s double standards, Okechukwu described them as “the propaganda of our sister political parties.”
“On the whole our great party is not divided, but differ especially on the issue of mode of primary. That we are divided is far from the truth, because what we have is a normal contestation for advantage, over mode of primary, which is clearly spelt out in APC’s Constitution. Again, all the factions are all behind our presumptive consensus presidential candidate, President Muhammadu Buhari,” he contended.
On the constraints to direct primary, the DG said: “There are two or three major dangerous constraints in adopting direct primary mode of electing our candidates. One is the truism that we have no valid database for credible party primary. And there is no time to package one now. “It is pertinent that we cast our mind back to 2013 through 2014, when our national leader, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, initiated the biometric data register for APC. This project was aborted by the former President Goodluck Jonathan’s regime that used the Department of State Services (DSS) to raid the Data Centre in Lagos.
“They raised dust and accused Asiwaju of all manner of criminality short of treason and shut down the facility. If not for that misadventure, one could have supported direct primary, as we the founders of the party could have been ranked.”Regardless of what APC leaders say, it is only the fact that the party has a core in the person of President Buhari that is holding the party together. By the time the primary elections have been won and lost, the party would get into a new round of real troubles, such that it may join the call for slight adjustment in the poll timeline.
PDP’s reward contrivance without retribution
IF the main opposition PDP has not learnt any lesson from its loss of 2015, then the current attempt to gift some members with automatic tickets would spell doom for it. Had PDP allowed former President Jonathan to test his popularity among party members alongside some presidential aspirants in a presidential primary in 2014, chances are that most of those that defected might not have left the party.
Contemporaneously, it would be foolhardy for PDP leaders to endorse automatic tickets or consensus for any aspirant, especially against the background of returnee former playmakers aspiring for various positions. PDP national chairman, Prince Uche Secondus has continued to assure party faithful of a level playing field, but matched against the schemes in some state chapters, his words evaporate in the wind.
For the PDP, the emphasis should not be just on selecting candidates for the next election, there should be a process of assessing the performances of incumbents, particularly governors and federal legislators. The sin of imposition and pandering to money as the major criteria of selecting its standard-bearers contributed in a large measure to the label of impunity on PDP. If therefore the party is prepared to turn a new leaf, 2019 offers it a golden opportunity to reclaim its position as Nigerian’s truly national party.
It must be in the light of that challenge that its Board of Trustees (BoT) chairman, Senator Walid Jibrin, came out to warn BoT against showing preference for any of the presidential aspirants. Incidentally the fact that PDP has no department of research and documentation deprives the party the necessary machinery to produce relevant data to guide it in decision-making as well as reflect the preferences of its members.
Five months away from the general election, it is obvious that party politics in the country is not yet where or what it ought to be. The disputations over method of selecting representatives of the parties in an election point to that poor state of affairs in them, especially as it relates to public enlightenment and membership inclusion.
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