Beyond APC, PDP and Jega’s Political Sermon

Iyobosa Uwugiaren writes that while the former Chairman of the Independent Electoral Commission, Professor Attahiru Jega, has rightly accused the Peoples Democratic Party and the All Progressives Congress of failing to address the leadership question in the country, the former INEC boss supervised the discredited process of recruitment of the present discredited political leadership.

Given the disruptive political culture of Nigeria, especially with huge lack of internal democracy that has been widely, but audaciously exhibited by the dominant political parties: the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the All Progressives Congress (APC), the recent call by former Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Attahiru Jega, on Nigerians not to vote for the two parties in 2023 general election, is well-timed and politically precise.

But his fair comment has swiftly attracted impulsive and hash criticisms from some political commentators, who have advised him to “simply shut up’’ and stop any attempt to “impress anybody,’’ since it was the northern political agenda he implemented in 2015 that brought Nigeria to the present political catastrophe, as represented by the six years of President Muhammadu Buhari-led government.

Nonetheless, a thorough examination of Jega’s message will point to the fact that he was correct. To be sure, the two dominant parties have steadily but suspiciously stimulated grave incidences of electoral rigging, and violence.

While accusations and counter-accusations of fraud and malpractice have been extensive, countless lives have been lost and property destroyed.

For APC and PDP, political analysts said winning elections in Nigeria has been a serious business, having become a sure way of gaining access to state resources. The “real owners’’ of the two parties have never been concerned by the fact that as an ambitious democratic state, periodic free, fair and credible elections in Nigeria should be one of the pillars for nourishing democracy.

The political actors in the PDP and APC have never acted in a principled manner or played by the rules.

Perhaps, that may explain why many political monitors are not shocked about the current crises enveloping the two parties. Indeed, unfolding events within the parties in the past few days have suggested that this is not the best of times for the ruling APC, and the main opposition PDP. Both parties are presently manacled by election-threatening interminable squabbles ahead of the general election, which is about 20 months away.

For the APC, the crises arising from the ward congresses are fast tearing the party apart across many states. While fresh trouble has hit the PDP with six national officers resigning on Tuesday. Even though the aggrieved party men cited “bad treatment” allegedly exhibited by the PDP National Chairman, Prince Uche Secondus, as reasons for their action, insiders said the real reason could be located within the many political hawks struggling for the soul of the party, ahead of the 2023 general election. There have been calculated plans and counter-plan to kick Secondus out of his plum position, with many insiders linking it to his political disagreement with his governor, Mr. Nyesom Wike of Rivers State. The six PDP’s national officers, who resigned their positions include, Deputy National Publicity Secretary, Diran Odeyemi; Deputy National Legal Adviser, Ahmed Bello; Deputy National Women Leader, Umoru Hadizat; Deputy National Auditor, Divine Amina; Deputy National Organizing Secretary, Hassan Yakubu; and Deputy National Financial Secretary, Irona Alphonsus.

However, the crises generated by the ward congresses of the APC in many states have continued to aggravate, with several court injunctions being instituted to nullify the outcome of the congresses of the party.

Within this context, Jega may be right to say that the two major parties are like a Siamese twins of corruption and crisis, and that it was high time Nigerians looked for a trustworthy substitute.

This was the professor of Political Science’s message, when he recently spoke on a British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Hausa programme, advising Nigerians to dump the two parties because of their bad antecedents.

But he also quickly gave himself out as an aspiring-selfish politician when he said, ‘’That is why I have since registered with the Peoples Redemption Party (PRP). I am now a PRP member looking for ways to help Nigeria.’’

The political scholar believes now is the time to construct a platform, which every good Nigerian should join and contribute towards building the nation on the right path.

He postulated that it was the lack of good leadership in the country that threw the nation into its current problems, which had led to the series of agitations for the country to be balkanised.

Jega’s comment may sound fair. However, many political commentators are aware that the former INEC chairman was influential in enthroning the current discredited political order.

‘’Someone needs to tell Attahiru Jega to simply shut up. Who is he trying to impress? He should first admit that the northern agenda he worked for led to this calamity’’, a political commentator/journalist, Mr. Sunny Igboanugo, recently argued.

Before the 2015 general election, the then INEC chairman said what the electoral commission aimed to achieve was a general election, in which Nigeria would take its rightful place in the global order of nations – where electoral democracy had come of age.

For some fair-minded political observers, Jega and his team were able to conduct a credible general election in 2015.

The argument was that going by the country’s previous experience, the Jega-led team displayed a high level of ground-breaking spirit in the organisation and management of the 2015 general election.

However, other right-thinking Nigerians also argued that the card reader machines ‘’deliberately configured to fail in several places’’, especially in the Southern part of the country, created room for Jega-led INEC to skew the 2015 election in favour of his ‘’tribesman,’’ Buhari.

In the controversial 2015 election, there was the upsetting issue of under-aged voters issued with PVCs in the northern part of the country, during the March 28 polls. Some of the states identified in this alleged malpractice were Kano, Kaduna, Jigawa, Katsina, Gombe, Bauchi, Katsina, Borno and Kogi states. To be sure, a team of European observers led by Dirk Verheyen and Joelle Meganck had decried the spate of underage voting that characterised the election in the north in their reports. They reported that minors presented valid PVCs.

Jega-led INEC was also accused of voter suppression in the south through the instrumentality of the PVCs. For example, while there were about five million voters from the South-east in the 2011 elections, only 2.6 million votes were recorded in 2015. In contrast, the total votes from Jigawa and Kano states (Jigawa used to be a part of Kano State), was 3.1 million, even double that of Lagos State, which had only 1.4 million. In fact, over 1.8 million scandalous votes were recorded in Kano without any invalid vote – in spite of what many observers described as high level of illiteracy in the state.

Several months before the election the issue of underage voting was brought to the knowledge of INEC, and Jega’s response was not really convincing as he only stated that any under-aged voter who presents himself or herself to vote on election day would be arrested. However, in spite of Jega’s assurances, thousands of under-aged voters were alleged to have been allowed to vote on March 28.

While Jega appeared to have made sense through his recent comment, the argument is that the source of the message is discredited and polluted.

The former INEC boss is accused of creating the prevailing political mess, because of his alleged questionable role in the 2015 general election.

The election, some observers argued, did not meet the minimum standards of free and fair polls.

As Prof. Osita Agbu has argued, ‘’a free and fair election is a desideratum for the existence of democracy. A democratic government ideally denotes government composed through the freely given consent of the people as expressed in an election. Once the element of free consent is absent in an electoral process, then the outcome is no a longer democracy, but dictatorship.’’

Apart from those who accused Jega of foisting a government that lacks strong legitimacy on Nigerians, the National Secretary Caretaker/Extraordinary Convention Planning Committee (CECPC) of the crisis-ridden APC, Senator John James Akpanudoedehe, in a statement, said the judgment of Jega lacked scholarly research and was not evidence-based.

The APC said Jega got it wrong to have said the ruling party had failed to meet expectations of Nigerians just like its predecessor in office, the PDP.

“While Professor Jega is right about the PDP, a party under which he served as the Chairman of the nation’s election management body, we reject his comparison of the APC with the PDP. Professor Jega got his facts wrong and mixed up in his baseless comparison of the PDP with the APC’’, the running party explained.

“It is, however, instructive to note that having recently abandoned his academic pursuit and blindly plunged into the arena of PDP’s brand of politics, the erstwhile electoral umpire as a politician can make such political statements occasionally while trying to launch his political career in a mushroom political party’’, APC further slammed Jega.

On its part, the PDP cautioned Jega not to further infuriate Nigerians by trying to dry-clean “the rudderless, inept and debauched APC, despite the unbearable devastation the APC has brought to the nation in a space of six years.’’

Reacting to Jega’s comment, the National Publicity Secretary of PDP, Kola Ologbondiyan, had emphasised that “it is worrisome that Jega, who only recently and rightly so, described the APC and the Buhari administration as a failure, “is now attempting an image laundering with such a warped comparison, just a few weeks after he was offered a juicy appointment as Chairman of Governing Council of University of Jos by President Buhari.”

In all, what is evident is that PDP and APC may have failed to respond to leadership question in the country and by extension, the socio-political and economic challenges.

However, many people believe that Jega supervised the discredited process of recruitment of the present political leadership in the country.

This is the task Nigerians must be ready to confront, ahead of 2023 general election.