From Romanus Ugwu, Abuja
The spate of crises ravaging major political parties in the country, is a testament that Nigeria’s democracy may, after all, be in danger.
•Umar Damagun
From the recent ultimatum by the leadership of the All Progressives Congress (APC) to its members, the unending crossfire in the Labour Party (LP) to the simmering cold war in both the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP), the tensed situation in the political parties portends grave danger to Nigerian democracy.
Virtually all the parties are battling one form of skirmish or the other. In APC, PDP, LP, and NNPP among others, it has been a clear case of things crumbling and falling apart while the centre can no longer hold.
One after the other, the party leaders are all prosecuting myriads of court cases, while others are struggling to manage further escalation of the crises progressively assuming disturbing dimensions to checkmate them from conflagrating into dangerous proportions.
In almost all the major political parties, there are festering perennial conflicts and internal wrangling really affecting the actualisation of the anticipated harvest of democratic dividends for people in the country.
Of course, crises engulfing political parties are not a novel development in Nigeria, especially in an institution composed of human element, but the dimensions they are gradually assuming in the current republic is turning the democratic landscape into a vast theatre of war that has become a source of serious concerns to many political watchers.
Only last week, while the ruling party was busy handing in stern seven-day ultimatum to its members across the country to urgently withdraw and discontinue all instituted litigations, the leadership of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) staged a grounding combative battle at the LP national headquarters and some state offices to demand the sack of the party’s National Chairman, Julius Abure.
Surprisingly, the atmosphere in the other political parties like the PDP and NNPP, was not different even though it looked calm and quiet outwardly.
The party leaders seem to have simply adopted an ostrich approach, perhaps to avoid ruffling further feathers in the public. What is visibly transpiring in both the PDP and NNPP could better be described as peace of the graveyard.
In the history of political party crises in Nigeria, certain recurring factors like financial recklessness, display of draconian tendencies and fragrant abuse of powers by the headship, prebendalism and application of biased formula in the allocation of resources and positions, winner-takes-all mentality, conduct of manipulative, acrimonious party primary elections and by extension, lack of internal democracy, among many other factors, have continued to fuel misunderstandings among party members.
Whether the crises were man-made or deliberately orchestrated by unforeseen circumstances, or treacherous forces, what is playing out today in almost all the parties is a lack of unity and peace, which has stalled and affected the traditional practice of opposition politics in the current dispensation.
After all, did the Bible not say that one has to remove the log in one’s eyes before seeing the speck in another? The implication of the crises ravaging the parties is that some leaders and chieftains of the opposition parties are blackmailed with allegations of lacking moral rectitude to critically assess and tackle the government in power since they can’t put their houses in order.
For example, in what looked frustrating and putting the presidential candidate of LP, Peter Obi, on the edge after losing both the election and litigations, his party has not known peace as it continued to fight one form of leadership rift or the other in addition to the latest allegations of financial recklessness against the National Chairman, Abure.
From the widening crack in its national leadership following the declaration of total war against the party’s chairman by a member of the National Working Committee (NWC), Oluchi Opara, over allegations of lack of accountability to the recent full-blown war from the leadership of NLC which picketed the national and some state offices of the opposition party, LP is gradually losing grip of the sympathy of the large followership which made it the rave of the moment during the 2023 general elections.
Curiously, LP seems to be gradually leaving behind Obi, the man who propelled the transformational success story of the party during last year’s general elections, perhaps in such doldrums over the right magic wand to apply to redirect the sinking ship of the party.
Regrettably, the crisis in LP has climaxed with a recent weighty allegation from the party’s embattled suspended national treasurer, Oluchi Opara that the party’s chairman, Abure, is planning to suspend its presidential candidate in the 2023 election, Obi.
She specifically told a national newspaper that; “again, Mr Peter Obi has also come out to say that the account will be thoroughly investigated, hence the reason Abure has been trying to suspend him from the party. That is the news out there because nothing is hidden.
“We all heard that he had been trying to do that. He has been trying to use the members of state executives. I mean the state chairmen. They are trying to tell them that their jobs will be taken, hence the reason they all needed to come up together, stand, and fight.
“Again, fighting for what? The allegations are clear. The allegations were too weighty to face, but he is going by the cunning way and trying to cut corners by trying to cover them. Those tracks will not be covered”, she warned.
While the crisis in LP is simmering at boiling point, the main opposition party, the PDP, is still fighting the intensely ragging war of attrition over who controls the structure of the party among the gladiators, and sharply divided camps between the 2023 presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar and the current Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Nyesom Wike.
The unending crisis in the PDP has rendered the party ineffective at efficiently playing the role of opposition just as it has apparently grounded activities to the point of leaving the members and some chieftains so confused about the direction the party is headed.
In the NNPP, the status of its 2023 presidential candidate, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, who was suspended over allegations of anti-party activities among some members, chieftains, and leaders of the party loyal to him, is still contentiously unresolved and still shrouded in uncertainty.
Surprisingly, the ruling party, the APC, is not immune to the bug feasting deeply on the peaceful coexistence of members of the party. And perhaps, left with no other option on the best way to restore sanity in the troubled party, the national leadership had to issue a seven-day ultimatum to members to discontinue all litigations currently pending in the law courts as the feeble panacea to restoring peace.
However, the threat of sanctions from the party’s NWC to erring members may after all be an empty one, considering the ineffectiveness of such action previously. Retrospectively, in 2018, the Comrade Adams Oshiomhole-led APC NWC leadership directed all aggrieved and disgruntled members to withdraw all court cases against the party, advising them to take the warning seriously as failure to comply would be met with stipulated disciplinary actions.
“The NWC has frowned at the actions of some party members who have resorted to litigation as a way of addressing their perceived grievances and disputation without exhausting the party’s dispute resolution mechanism,” the statement from the NWC issued by the National Publicity Secretary, Lanre Onilu, read.
“This growing trend is viewed by the party as a manifest indiscipline. The action, it should be noted, is considered as anti-party as it goes against our party’s constitution. The party intends to activate constitutional provisions to penalise such members as their action is capable of undermining the party and hurting its interest.
“We hereby strongly advise such members to withdraw all court cases, while approaching the appropriate party organs to resolve any outstanding disputes. In addition to this, aggrieved members are urged to take full advantage of the reconciliation committees the party has just put in place,” the statement from Onilu noted.
And even as ineffective as the initial directive was, the Governor Mai Mala-Buni-led Caretaker Committee also issued a similar threat in 2021, ordering all its members with pending court cases to urgently withdraw them and explore the option of the party’s internal resolution mechanism.
“Finally, in the light of these clarifications, we call on all APC members who have sued the party to withdraw their cases and use the mechanism of reconciliation to address their grievances,” a member of the CECPC, Prof Tahir Mamman, warned, threatening fire and brimstone.
However, despite the threats by the party’s leadership, and to prove that it has never been a productive antidote and solution to handle party crisis, an APC chieftain and founding member, Chief George Moghalu successfully prosecuted a court case against the party after the shoddy conduct of its primary election for the Anambra State governorship poll, winning not only up to the Apex Court, Supreme Court, but also getting handsome financial compensation.
Apart from the recalcitrant attitude of those bent on continuing the prosecution of their court cases despite the threat of sanction from the party, APC is also struggling to paper the cracks of certain recent allegations and the ignoble roles some persons played in the controversial conduct of party primary for the September Edo State governorship election.
Instead of the members and leaders fanning the embers of crisis, they ought to know that political parties, as the engine and machinery of the vehicle of democracy thrives, require a clear ideology for national development on the assumption of power through a transparent election.
However, the nature and patterns of party politics in the successive republics have caused lots of crises and conflicts that have gone beyond the confines of the political party and escalated into Nigeria elections.
Interrogated against the backdrop of corruption, lack of internal democracy, and ideology, festering crises, and overwhelming nuances have detracted political parties from fulfilling their sublime function of deepening good governance.
And displeased by the intractable discouraging effects of the crises in the conduct of peaceful transparent elections in the country, the chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof Mahmood Yakubu, last week, read the riot act to the leaders of the political parties.
In his comment at the quarterly consultative meeting with the leadership of political parties in Abuja, Yakubu warned the party leaders against conducting acrimonious primaries, arbitrary granting of waivers to fresh joiners, and frequent changing of the dates and modes of primary elections, describing the changes as disruptive and costly.
Suggesting solutions to curtail the crisis ravaging the parties, the electoral umpire boss said: “I urge political parties to adhere strictly to your proposed dates and modes of primaries. Frequent changes, as we witnessed recently during the Edo primaries, are not only disruptive but costly.
“The commission cannot mobilise, demobilise and remobilise our officials for the monitoring of party primaries at the convenience of political parties. Parties should stick to their proposed dates and modes of primaries for certainty and optimal deployment of resources,” he lamented.
Handing down further warning, Yakubu cautioned: “Similarly, political parties should avoid acrimonious primaries. Increasingly, the conduct of parallel primaries and the emergence of multiple candidates is a frequent occurrence.
“So too is the tendency to grant waivers to candidates who were, a few days earlier, card-carrying members of other political parties and nominating such persons to the commission as their candidates for election.
“Some of these infractions lead to unnecessary litigation among party members in which the commission is always joined as a party. The legal fees and cost of producing Certified True Copies (CTCs) of documents can be used more productively in other electoral activities by both the political parties and the commission. We must find a solution to this situation,” he advised.
Commenting on the crises ravaging the political parties in the country, a foundation member of the APC, Mr. Osita Okechukwu, in a chat with Daily Sun, described it as customary
He said: “What you call a spate of crisis, one calls intra-party contestations which is a prelude to major elections where candidates are nominated among members of political parties throughout the history of liberal democracy.
“It is customary, though the better organised or the more internal democracy is adhered to the less public contestation by the political party. The leaders of political parties are entrusted by law to elect or at times select candidates for the next election, hence struggle for power.
“This is why those who decry the absence of internal democracy in our clime are right. Most of our political parties unfortunately adhere to dictatorship more than democratic principles engraved in their constitutions. This is why critical analysis gazetted more intra-party electoral court cases than ones between political parties every election.
“Methinks INEC is correct to a large extent that political parties beating the drum of warfare accounted for the challenges of conducting peaceful and transparent elections. It is so to a large extent because our political culture is embedded in stomach infrastructure which fuels do-or-die optics; since political power unfortunately has become the fastest route to wealth.
“We will, one day, come out of this stomach infrastructure political culture, and that will be only when we adopt the Uwais Electoral Reform Report, especially the item which recommended the election of INEC Commissioners.”
From all indications, since crises have become an indispensable integral part of party politics in Nigeria, whether during election season or not, political actors should make deliberate conscientious efforts to evolve pragmatic measures to tackle avarice, greed, dictatorial tendencies, desperation for power, financial recklessness, manipulative penchant during the conduct of primaries and strong observance to party’s ideology to combat the menace.