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What manner of democracy can
this be, when every opportunity Nigerians have to select leaders they want is
scuttled by so much intrigue, complicated by processes contrived to ensure that
only certain people emerge as party candidates?
One can’t readily recall in
what order the famous ‘of/for/by-the-people’ definition of democracy went; but
one knows that it was always/has always been/will always be about the right of
the people to FREELY choose their leaders. This
means REAL CHOICE, from political party level.
Can this be how democracy ought to be
practised? Can true democrats be so averse or allergic to the simple democratic
process of putting themselves up for the race, canvassing for votes and hoping
to win on the strength of their conviction, not because the party has in a
cult-like manner ‘decreed’ that everyone must vote one way, irrespective? Is
that democracy, truly?
Why can’t people be allowed
to slug it out the old-fashioned way, through superior argument? Suddenly, we
want to tinker with the Electoral Act beyond what INEC brought us back there
for? One thought we were repairing time-lines, but No! Trust us; it’s time to
exploit loopholes to make sure answers match questions.
What, pray tell, is our
business with ‘party-caucus-to-choose-candidates’ and
‘right-of-first-refusal-clause’? Are these democratic tenets? We complicate
simple matters because we need/have to confuse the people to get specific
results, since the people ‘don’t know’ what’s good for them. What is wrong with
a more simple process, unless they suspect they are not worthy of our votes?

This is a sad interpretation of democratic practice indeed!
People hope candidates who emerge from the
primaries would have fought for the right to represent the party based on known
standard democratic principles: robust debate, sound logic, superior reasoning,
respect for all opinion, allowing unfettered choice without express or implied
intimidation and most importantly, accepting that one’s choice may not be
popular. This, I’m afraid, isn’t what they’re going to get!

REAL CHOICE means not restricting us to candidates the political party
leadership [in all their wisdom?] deem fit to have supposedly short-listed for
us! That’s the problem with the proposed amendments. We wanted a process that
would allow us to select whom we wanted.
What we will be getting instead, is a process so contrived, wherein
every current political office holder shall definitely come back, if the
Constitution allows it.
We have lost the right to
boot out politicians who do not perform well.
How can someone who was redundant in his political office have the right
to ‘first-refuse’ to come back before we can field someone against him? Who
should be refusing whom here? So performance becomes immaterial because once
the Electoral Act is tinkered with, that simple age-long process of letting
candidates vie for and get your vote after convincing you, dies? If party
primaries don’t throw up the right people, will we get vibrant leadership or
will we be stuck with this current cult-like system?

At the end of the day, we
are going back to the Electoral Act because amendments were not primarily done
for our benefit. We were not given those reforms we demanded through the UWAIS
panel, were we?
Months ago, everyone thought
that finally, amended laws would supposedly give us the FFC [free, fair,
credible] elections we badly needed. Are we now changing our minds about the
quality and capacity of those amendments, after slapping ourselves gleefully on
the back about a job-well-done? Were we pretending in the spirit of patriotism?
Am I the only one who remembers some poignant reforms demanded and denied?
Take the clause about
leaving at least six months between the date of election and the date
governance commences, for example; did we ask for governorship election
disputes to go to the Supreme Court? Blame it on all the politicians who, in
defiance of specific laws, insist on going to the Supreme Court to seek one
clarification and/or interpretation on matters, which a court with competent
jurisdiction will have ruled on. Is this ego? Where will it end, the feeling
that only the Supreme Court is big enough to pronounce on one’s matter?
Is this desire to have the
highest court in the land adjudicate on one’s matter, evidence that one is indeed
important? Will the Supreme Court satisfy them? Did a politician not approach
the ECOWAS Court, knowing that it was a fruitless venture but ‘deepening our
democracy’ nevertheless?

Are you surprised that
things are now unravelling because our political office holders only want to
further their own cause with amendments that would be of benefit to their
personal ambitions alone?