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| Senator David Mark |
Mark, at a
conference on “Party Politics in Nigeria and Lobbying, the Lobbyist and the
Legislature”, in Abuja Monday, decried the proliferation of parties in the
country, which he said was driven by the quest of their promoters to benefit
from the grants to political parties enshrined in the 1999 Constitution.
Deputy
Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Emeka Ihedioha; former President
Olusegun Obasanjo; Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Chairman,
Prof. Attahiru Jega; and former Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) National
Chairman, Dr. Okwesilieze Nwodo, who also spoke at the occasion, condemned the
way the parties were being run and proffered suggestions on how to make them
more efficient.
The
conference, organised by the National Institute of Legislative Studies, was
convened to address the problem of internal party discipline and cohesion and
how to resolve the issue of intra and inter-party squabbles, among others.
In his
comments, the senate president said many of the parties were not viable and
predicted their demise soon rather than later, because so many of them were
floated simply to attract the financial subventions which the 1999
Constitution, before its amendment, guaranteed them.
“We know
that in reality, most of our political parties are fledgling and hardly able to
stand on their feet. Many exist mainly on paper, and were floated to attract
the financial subventions which the 1999 Constitution hitherto guaranteed them,
before it was amended,” he added.
Mark
identified funding as one of the biggest problems facing political parties in
the country, stressing that this has paved the way for the rich to hijack the
parties and party administration.
He said: “A
situation where a handful of individuals tend to fund the party is not good for
democracy. Like the saying goes, he who pays the piper dictates the tune.
“I believe
that all Nigerians, no matter how small, should contribute to the running of
political parties. There are political parties in this country where people are
called national leader; I don’t know where that fits in the constitution of the
party.
“He is not
the chairman of the party, not the chairman, Board of Trustees (BoT). He is
simply a national leader and takes precedence over every other person in the
party.
“He is
simply a national leader; he owns the political party. Such a situation cannot
augur well for our democratic parties.”
According
to him, even the big ones, which control various executive and legislative arms
of government, are often threatened by internal convulsions, lack of cohesion,
indiscipline and a glaring absence of internal democracy.
Earlier in
his remark, Deputy Senate President, Senator Ike Ekweremadu, said political
parties were key players and critical institutions of democracy and their
philosophies and manifestoes should be the fulcrum on which politicking and
governance should revolve.
“Unfortunately,
the management of the nation’s political parties gives us a cause for
concern. As it is put in Latin, Nemo dat
quod non habet: no one can give what he does not have,” he said.
In his
contribution, Ihedioha tasked politicians to run the parties efficiently and
ensure that patriotism and merit played a vital role in the emergence of
candidates for political offices.
Ihedioha
said it had become imperative for political parties to rise to the occasion, to
run their parties efficiently, as democracy cannot be firmly entrenched in
Nigeria without political parties playing their role well.
He argued
that the problem of indiscipline, lack of cohesion, intra-party squabbles and
inefficient organisation of political parties was dependent more on the
maturity of politicians than on laws.
In his
contribution, Jega accused ruling parties in some states of using the
incumbency factor to deny opposition political parties access to basic
electioneering materials such as radio and television as well as denying them
freedom to campaign and canvass for votes.
According
to Jega, “Some political parties even go ahead to budget funds to bribe members
of the Election Management Board during elections. This is one of the
challenges of deepening democracy in Nigeria.”
He
described some election petitions as frivolous, stating that they were a mere
waste of funds, as some politicians who even knew that they had no case
insisted on challenging the results of elections.
The INEC
chairman, who called for the abrogation of Section 31 of the 2011 Electoral Act
because of abuse by political parties, said: “Let the names of candidates
sponsored by political parties remain final and not use the names of candidates
as a temporary measure to seek for the ‘good candidate’ to be replaced at a
later stage during the elections.”
This, he
said, breached the procedure of the emergence of candidates for elections as
stated in Section 87 of the Electoral Act.
He also
expressed regrets that political parties had not been allowed to function
effectively because the rich have hijacked them.
In his
comments as the chairman of the occasion, Obasanjo blamed the political parties
for operating outside their manifestos and wondered how the people could hold
them responsible, if they did not comply with their manifestos.
He also
accused the political parties of lack of discipline, stating that “discipline
remains one of the greatest assets of moving political party democracy forward.
Discipline must be taken seriously, because no human institution can move
forward without discipline.”
Nwodo, who
spoke on strengthening party structures and internal democracy in political
parties, said that the PDP had been hijacked by a clique and moneybags.
He also
advocated a ban on carpet crossing, which he blamed on indiscipline within the
parties.
Nwodo said
the PDP had derailed from its people mass movement, adding: “In the PDP, when
you say, PDP, we are supposed to say power to the people; but now, PDP has now
been hijacked by a clique, hijacked by the anointed, so PDP has become ‘power
to the godfathers!’”
He called
for e-registration of party members, which will prevent moneybags from stopping
other Nigerians from becoming members of the political parties of their choice.
In his
comment, a former Governor of Kano State, Mallam Ibrahim Shekarau, accused the
PDP of lack of ideas, explaining that that was why former President Umaru Musa
Yar’Adua came with his seven-point agenda and President Goodluck Jonathan has
his transformation agenda.
He noted
that the programmes of the duo were never part of the PDP manifesto.
“When the
late President Yar’Adua came into office, he came with his seven-point agenda
and President Jonathan has now come with his transformation agenda; yet they
are from the same party and nowhere in the manifesto of the party will you find
these agendas.
“All these
get the electorate confused. There is the need to respect the manifestos and
ideology of the parties,” he said.
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