Senate’s Misplacement of Priority on Primaries for Political Parties

GAVEL

With the absence of an unbiased umpire to conduct and supervise the direct and indirect methods of selecting candidates by political parties, the selection process has always been an internal affair of the parties that often ends in litigation. Udora Orizu wonders why the Senate should waste scarce legislative time and resources on the adoption of direct primary when Nigerians are choked by more important issues of insecurity, and violent agitations

The Senate’s order a fortnight ago that the nomination of candidates for elective positions by political parties should be through direct primary was an attempt by the legislature to chase shadows when Nigeria is overwhelmed by other serious challenges.

Nigerians are bogged down today by insecurity, disunity, weak democracy, poverty and the collapse of infrastructure, particularly power supply and roads.

With separatist agitations in the South-east and South-west fuelled by the elevation of injustice and nepotism as state art, national cohesion has taken flight.

Among all these challenges, insecurity has remained the greatest single threat to the nation’s sovereignty.

Virtually the entire Northern Nigerian has been taken over by heavily armed terrorists and bandits while the South is increasingly having its own share of insecurity.

Unknown gunmen have occupied the public space in the South-east, threatening all the state actors, while bandits and kidnappers are on the prowl in the South-west, abducting residents, travellers and freeing prisoners.

As the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB) continues to threaten public peace, imposing sit-at-home order on the people of the South-east, a video of another heavily armed separatist group, which identified itself as Biafran National Guard (BNG), dressed in military fatigue in a convoy of SUVs went viral on Thursday.

Armed with AK-47 rifles and pump action rifles, the group drove into a filling station in an unknown location in the South-east to fuel their vehicles in the broad daylight unchallenged.

One of their commanders was seen threatening that the “war has started” and that they were going to Anambra State to free their members who had been detention in Awka and Onitsha prisons for 15 years.

In another video, the fighters were seen firing at the direction of a white SUV parked along the expressway, with one of them shouting that they were fighting soldiers at a military checkpoint.

As a confirmation of the authenticity of the videos, the Director of Army Public Relations, Brig. Onyema Nwachukwu had issued a statement on Friday that troops conducting Exercise Golden Dawn in the South-east killed one of the Biafran National Guard gunmen who attacked troops’ location at Amaekpu, Ohafia Local Government Area of Abia State.

Nwachukwu said the assailants, “who were heavily armed and conveyed in several vehicles opened fire on the troops’ location, but were met with stiff resistance by the troops”.

He said the troops “neutralised one gunman, while others abandoned their vehicles and retreated in disarray with gunshot wounds.”

According to him, the troops also recovered a pump action gun, among others.

“While the criminals withdrew, having been overwhelmed, they were promptly intercepted at Eda by troops of Forward Operating Base Ohaozara in Ebonyi State.

“The troops recovered additional three vehicles and apprehended one of the gunmen,” he said.

Before the Abia incident, heavily armed bandits had invaded the Nigerian Correctional Centre in Oyo, Oyo State and freed over 800 inmates awaiting trial after overpowering soldiers and destroying the prison walls with dynamites and other heavy weapons.

Gunmen had also abducted two girls in their mother’s car when their mother was opening the gate of their residents in Akure, Ondo State, last week

Also barely a week after four persons were seized and taken away from Ayebode-Ekiti in Ikole Local Council of Ekiti State, gunmen had on Tuesday last week invaded a funeral event in Itapaji-Ekiti in the same Ikole council and abducted eight guests.

Before the Akure and Itapaji-Ekiti incidents, abduction of people from their houses was restricted to the northern parts of the country.

Instead of the National Assembly to be disturbed that the public space in Nigeria is gradually being taken over by armed non-state actors, the lawmakers were busy committing scarce legislative time and resources to direct political parties on how to elect their candidates.

It is a misplaced priority on the part of the federal lawmakers.

Political parties have the prerogative to conduction the elections for the selection of their candidates that will stand for elections and not any unbiased umpire.

So, whether they are forced to adopt direct or indirect primary, the processes are subject to manipulations by the party leadership, who regards the election as their internal affair.

Though INEC officials are mandated by law to witness such elections, it is not their role to conduct the elections.

Under the direct primary proposed by the Senate, INEC will monitor the election but monitoring election is not the same as conducting an election.

Many observers argue that direct primary could strengthen political parties’ internal democracy and end god-fatherism, but it is the same party leadership backed by a godfather that conducts and supervises the direct primary.

The party leadership won’t have challenges in getting INEC officials sent to monitor the elections to endorse any fraud they commit in the name of direct primary.

The Red Chamber’s decision was arrived at by its harmonisation committee during amendments to some clauses of the Electoral Act (Repeal and Re-enactment) Bill 2021, passed on July 15, 2021.

The upper chamber also mandated the INEC to monitor every primary election conducted by political parties in the country.

Direct primaries involves the participation of all party members in the selection of their elective representatives as against the use of delegates, who are usually leaders and members of the executives at the ward, local government and state levels.

The use of indirect primary has been widely condemned in the past due to the overbearing power it provides to state governors who have made themselves godfathers and most often decide which aspirant wins a primary election in their state. But other observers have contended that the process of direct primary is not only cumbersome but also expensive.

During the Electoral Act Amendment in July, the Senate had adopted the use of both direct and indirect primaries in the nomination of candidates, while the lower chamber had recommended the use of only direct primaries.

The lower chamber’s recommendation for the direct primary was proposed by the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila. The Speaker had while contributing to the debate during the consideration of the Electoral Bill proposed the eternal removal of “or indirect primaries”.

The committee’s recommendation in Clause (section) 87 titled “Nomination of Candidates by Parties”, read thus: A political party seeking to nominate candidates for elections under this Bill shall hold direct or indirect primaries for aspirants to all elective positions, which may be monitored by the commission. The procedure for the nomination of candidates by political parties for the various elective positions shall be by direct or indirect primaries.”

In the new amendment, Senate Leader, Senator Yahaya Abdullahi in a lead debate said that the amendment to Clause 87(1) nomination of candidates by parties reads: “A political party seeking to nominate candidates for elections under this Bill shall hold direct primaries for aspirants to all elective positions, which shall be monitored by the Commission (INEC).”

As verbal attacks by some stakeholders, such as the leading opposition party, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), trailed the decision of the Senate, the House expressed its contentment with the decision, saying that it will help check god-fatherism, enhance intra-party democracy and reduce the commercialisation of elections in Nigeria.

Though a majority of the lawmakers have given nod to the direct primaries clause adopted by the Senate, some minority lawmakers are in support of the governors who are insisting on indirect primaries.

Speaking when he appeared on a live TV programme last week, the Chairman of the Senate Committee on INEC, Kabir Gaya (APC, Kano) said the amendment is not a revolt against state governors but an opportunity to protect legislators from the governors.

Gaya appeared alongside the member of the House of Representatives representing Ikorodu Federal Constituency, Hon. Babajimi Benson (APC, Lagos).

Gaya, a former governor of Kano State in the Second Republic, reacting to concerns about the cost of running direct primaries by political parties, said it is the only means to get credible candidates into elective positions.

On his part, Babajimi Benson, who is the Chairman of the House Committee on Defence, said the indirect primaries will end money bags in political parties.

Speaking against it, Hon. Ben Rollands Igbakpa (PDP, Delta) said: “Indirect primary is better, less expensive, easy to organize in terms of logistics, security and other necessary aspects. Direct primary is going to be rancorous, will have security challenges. It is akin to telling the entire people of the constituencies to come to Abuja. I don’t know what the proponents want to achieve. What is INEC coming to do in the internal affairs of political parties? Maybe, very soon, INEC will start telling political parties how much they will sell their nomination forms and all that. These are the internal affairs of political parties.”

Similarly, former Senate President, Bukola Saraki, who few days before the Senate’s move, had perhaps gotten wind of it, made an appeal to the legislators to save the country the crisis and trouble that would result from the proposal because many of the political parties lacked the necessary infrastructure to successfully conduct direct primaries at all levels. Saraki further added that the attempt would lead to hundreds of litigations that might jeopardise the general election.

The former Senate President, who made this known in a statement by the Head of his Media Office, Yusuph Olaniyonu, said he felt compelled to once again appeal to both chambers of the National Assembly to reconsider their position.

As the National Assembly abandons the country’s more pressing challenges and dissipate energy on the internal affairs of the parties, the governors were allegedly mounting pressure on them to reconsider their position.