Nduka Uzuakpundu
One interesting development, twenty years into Nigeria’s Fourth Republic, is the deep factionalization of some of the leading political parties: the All Progressives Congress (APC) and People’s Democratic Party (PDP) are two good cases. It’s a development – however nasty some think it is – that is in keeping with democracy. When a party is split, for whatever reasons – including inordinate scheming and strategizing by some of its top-ranking, policy-makers, to register their authority and hijack, as it were, the party’s structures, to press their ambition to, say, become national law-makers or state governors – new alliances are formed. The party morphs, in most instances, to a weak one.
Amidst discontent, unrepentantly high decibel of cacophonous noise within the party’s milieu, it lends itself to poaching by others in the political system that are endlessly in indeed of highly impressive number of followers and individuals who could help theirs financially, especially during municipal elections.
The picture that should developments – some political analysts have righty said that the internal morphology of the affected political parties that they breed; sometimes to their disadvantage – it’s been rightly argued is democratic! Democratic because disagreement, choice and the right to voluntarily associate with or belong to any political group are constitutionally guaranteed. But, in two decades of Nigeria’s Fourth Republic, it’s becoming indeed imperative that there be an across- the-board culture of loyal opposition within the political parties; a culture of loyal opposition that would steel or augment internals democracy to the discouragement of factionalization of the political parties.
Factionalization may rear its ugly skull as an inevitability in a democratic locale, but for any party, to compete well, in an election, against nearly eight others – if not more – its skippers should think “party first”, not the recent situation in Nigeria where, on the eve of a crucial election, splinter groups of supposedly vibrant political parties – again the APC and PDP deserve a generous mention – surface with each block, especially at the state level, struggling via the media, to sell itself as the ‘sole, legitimate representative’ of the crisis-ridden, parties.
Take two recent instances: in the run-up to the 2019 general elections, there was the internal crisis in the Social Democratic Party (SDP), in which beautiful-looking Donald Duke snatched the presidential ticket from Professor Jerry Gana – an old political horse, since the gap-tooth days, and the PDP, which was split into the Buruji Kashamu’s camp and Oladipupo Adebutu’s. If it was not all that, it was the misplaced political high-handedness of Governnor Rochas Okorocha to impose a candidate of his choice – his in-law, who goes by name Uche Nwosu as the APC’s governorship candidate, in a conscious bid to build a political dynasty for himself in Imo State. But the people there said, ‘you can’t do that there’. And so it is. It was the same ill-advised arrogance and anti-APC activity that played out in Ogun State: Governor Ibikunle Amosun was resisted. He had to smuggle his candidate – Seyi Makinde – into one of the mushroom political parties, but Dapo Abiodun – a long-standing APC juggernaut emerged victorious at the gubernatorial election.
And recently, a Federal High Court, in Asaba, Delta State, declared as illegal and unconstitutional, a decision by the APC which made senator and representatives of Ovie Omo-Agige and others belonging to the James Erue’s faction. Justice Adegoke ruled that Professor Pat Utomi, who teaches at the Lagos Business School, OlorOgun O’tega Emerhor and Olorogun Ima Niboro were the legitimate, elected deputies of the APC
It’s an unhealthy development in which the independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had, in some instances – and much to its embarrassment – been caught. Following court verdicts, to the ‘annulment’ of earlier elections that it had conducted and ruled as free, fair and credible, it has had to ‘recall’ certain candidates, withdraw their certificates of return at the state and national assemblies, and crown the court-anointed candidates as the legitimate winners of the elections.
Perhaps, as INEC, since the Jega days, has often stated, its duty is that of an unbiased, independent umpire – one that is charged with the duty of conducting, free and fair, credible and non-violent, peaceful and transparent election. And that, in consonance with democratic, separation of powers, it does not meddle with or dictate to parties what manner of candidates they should present for elections.
That it matters less whether such characters are potential looters of the national treasury. Makes a lot of political services, does it not! And yet, it’s a sensible political argument that does not seat comfortably with INEC’s implacably vociferous critics: INEC, by its imperfect, court-over-ruled judgement at the polls they, too, say is also worsening – even if inadvertently – the unhealthy culture of factionalization of political parties. In effect, the practice of politics with bitterness smiles!
The PDP has suffered most, in recent years, from factionalization. Recall that there, once upon a time, was an Ali Modu Sheriff-led faction of the party. Up to this day, none is sure that, given the pressure of wanting to be politically relevant, the staunch members of that faction are still rooted in the camp of the former governor of Borno State. Sheriff lost the captaincy of the party at its Port Harcourt caucus meeting because some of the PDP members felt – and rightly, too – that post of its chairmanship should be zoned to the South. And so, Uche Secundus, an Igbo, is the party’s current chairman.
As one writes, there are very clear, persuasive indications that Secundus carries a gargantuan proportion of the blame for the party’s loss of the presidential election, which won by the APC by a margin – more than four million votes – never recorded in the history of the democratic election in Nigeria. That’s the ugly and agonizingly cruel effect of factionalization. It means just one thing: the uncomfortable truth that the PDP has to wait for yet another four years to contest the presidential race; that is if it’s not cripplingly factionalized, within the distance, as to render it in need of a London-trained political tailor to seam its rag-tag tugging groups under its weak umbrella. That would surely happen. And some have suggested that Secundus should vacate the seat of the party’s chairman and that the PDP needs an Adams Oshiomhole, who can, as a first-timer on the chair, lead the party to victory – come 2023.
Still, it’s instructive that the Supreme Court of Nigeria has ruled – with an avuncular streak – that political parties should, in the interest of the country’s hard-won Fourth Republic and democracy, cultivate and nurture internal democracy; be accommodating of dissert or constructive – even if against a popular tide – ideas, and be good managers domestic crisis. It’s not necessarily a function of enlightened self-interest, such a ruling, but the obvious truth is that it underscores some element of impatience on the part of the Justices of the Supreme Court with the plethora of cases of party factionalization brought before it. Add party aspirants’ suits, at both states and national levels, filed at Federal High Courts either in Lagos and Abuja. Today, too many, to put it charitably, are such cases filed by some genuinely aggrieved political aspirants against their parties for, among others, unfair primaries in which they felt they were maliciously robbed of victory.
It’s interesting, no less, that the Federal High Courts or Supreme Court of Nigeria has decided in favour of some of the plaintiffs. And so were they made party standard-bearers or law-makers at the state or national levels. While the decisions of the courts in such cases have tended to point out some of the imperfections or infirmities of the Fourth Republic, it’s one sad commentary that most political skippers – in their Bourbon bent – have refused, with an unrepentant feel, to embrace internal democracy that helps the unity of their party and the pressing need for internal morphology – so inspired by the court verdicts – in terms of effecting amendments to their parties constitutions and sell them to leading opponents as brides or partners with which they could form an alliance for state or national administration.
These are some of the implied verdict of the Supreme Court of Nigeria. This country needs vibrant and progressive political parties with realistic manifestoes that could be lifted off the page and transmitted to the realities of concrete developments – like constant electricity supply, good, all-season reads to, naturally, aid the movement of goods and commuters from one part of the country to the other – as one of the many indexes of transparent utilization of the voter’s tax-money – accessible primary healthcare centers, water supply, security, transparency and effective representation on the part of the elected deputies.
Put differently, the verdict of the Supreme Court of Nigeria presupposes that given an enforced culture of internal democracy – and an abiding stability, there from – it’s a healthy development that will shoo away factionalism, litigations that are distractions from which brilliant lawyers smile to the banks and the ripple effect of good leadership and governance at all three tiers of government.
In all these instances, some facts stand out: with internal democracy, parties will make desired progress; the parties need internal democracy to build strong institutions and structures that emphasize, in spirit, letter and practice, the supremacy of the party – one that has no quarters for money-bags who think, somewhat arrogantly, that with their fifty lucre, they can hijack any party and run it as their private business.
It’s perhaps, no too late for INEC – aided by the Presidency, Judiciary and National Assembly – to go about organizing, for the top leaders of the political parties seasonal workshops on the need for internal democracy in the administration of their parties. The aim should be to sow the seed of orderliness peace, security and stability on the Nigerians political terrain; in place of unnecessary rancour.
