As the Electoral Act prescribes, all Parties have just submitted the list of their Candidates for all elective offices for the April elections. The only notable exception is the absence of the Borno State ANPP Candidate, who was murdered in cold blood in broad daylight last week. INEC has granted the Borno State ANPP an additional 11days to produce another gubernatorial candidate. The submission of the Party Candidates’ list will both mark the conclusion of an important stage in the electoral process, as well as the beginning of major quarrels and intense campaigns for the votes of the electorate. Without any doubt, the processes that produced the final list of candidates for the major Parties reflect the lowest standards of intra-Party democracy, and the decreasing quality of our democratic system. In the run-up to the Primaries, and during the Primaries and Congresses, the nation saw the most flagrant abuses of the rules governing intra-party contests. Selection of delegates was monopolized substantially by Governors and Party executives, which virtually guaranteed the victory of favored candidates. Delegates were heavily compromised in many instances with money in full view and knowledge of all; and candidates that paid the most won the elections. In fact, many Partymen and women merely sought to be selected or elected as delegates because they knew they would make a lot of money from one or two candidates. Even where delegates and party officials were induced to vote for a particular candidate, there was no guarantee he or she will eventually emerge victorious, because at any stage in the many layers of decision-making in the Party, party officials could substitute him or her at will. But by far the most damaging assault on intra-party democracy was embedded in the amended Electoral Act, which gave parties unquestionable powers to submit any candidate to INEC, and precludes INEC from rejecting any candidate forwarded by any Party under any circumstances. This provision has left many Nigerians bewildered, in view of the elaborate provisions in the Electoral Act giving INEC powers to supervise and ensure that Primaries, Congresses and Conventions are conducted in accordance with the rules of the Party; yet the same Act virtually destroys all these provisions by giving Parties the power to decide who is their candidate, irrespective of what transpires at the Primaries. The provision is what has been responsible for the long drawn-out disputes over Gubernatorial and Senatorial candidates in many States and Parties, such as Katsina, Kano, Bauchi, Oyo, Ogun and Kogi, as well as many other parts of the country. Aspirants fought desperately to emerge as Candidates, sometimes by forcing many re-run elections, or preventing re-runs. Party officials assumed huge powers to decide on who is the winner, knowing that neither INEC nor the Courts will challenge anyone whose name they forward. Between the 15th of January when going by the law, Party Primaries came to an end, and the 31st of January when the list of candidates had to be submitted, Parties had a free hand to decide who to forward as their candidates. The bitter contests, and the quarrels over their legality or otherwise moved to State and National Party headquarters, and the role of ordinary party men and women who exercised their choices were forgotten, as powerful aspirants battled each other among party officials. Nigerians will be very surprised at what the final list of the PDP and the CPC in particular will look like. Many will be angry, and many party loyalists will turn their backs against their Parties as a result of the decisions of the Parties. Party leaders will defend their decisions in the interest of the Party, and electoral fortunes, and in some instances, they will insist that candidates whose names have been forwarded to INEC actually won at the Primaries. INEC will have to accept the decision of the Parties, and even those who emerged after primaries held after January 15th are likely to squeeze through, because INEC is not likely to have the will or the time and resources to take up the might of the PDP in potentially complicated legal battles over candidates, with literally a few weeks to elections. Among the lists forwarded by Parties, there will be many who have won their Primaries in a free and fair contest. To these, we wish the best of luck. There will also be many whose emergence as Candidates is the product of the subversion of party rules, the violation of the will of party members, and a veritable source of division and conflict within the parties. Many powerful party aspirants will now campaign against their Parties, since they cannot change ship at this stage. For those who are now candidates, the second stage of the contest will now begin. They will have to fly their party’s flags while fighting opponents from within and outside their parties. Many parties will lose elections because of the choices they made in their Candidates. Many Nigerians who participated eagerly in the Primaries will be disillusioned once again because what they thought are popular and election-winning candidates have lost out. Indeed, many Nigerians are curiously waiting to see how many members of our State and National Assemblies who lost at the Primaries will be returned by their Parties, since they have been boasting that they will be back. If the standards of our intra-party democratic practices have not developed sufficiently to form the bedrock of free and fair elections, there is very little hope that the quality of our elections will improve. A major yardstick for assessing the impact of the absence of intra-party democracy on the overall quality of our democracy will be how the Parties, or the PDP in particular, handles the fate of the large numbers of their legislators who lost at the Primaries. Every Nigerian will hope that the Party that prides itself as the pacesetter in Africa will respect the will of its members, and forward the names of those members who defeated their sitting legislators as candidates. If the Party fails to do this, it may pay a huge electoral price, which is its business. But it is the business of the nation when large numbers of people who will make laws for Nigerians are given undeserved advantages against the rules of their own party, and in violation of the rights of other party members. If citizens cannot nominate and vote for people of their own choices, democracy will mean very little to them. Those who doubt this should note what is happening in Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, Yemen and Sudan. The citizens of those countries are just like Nigerians. We all want to live under the authority of people we elected freely and openly.
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