What next for smaller parties?

Following the dismal performance of the mushroom political parties in the last general elections, there are calls for their deregistration by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). The consensus of experts is that the electoral umpire must find a way of regulating the activities of small parties, without necessarily wielding the big stick. This, they say, could be by restricting their participation to the local level, until they are able to garner support beyond state and regional levels. RAYMOND MORDI, LEKE SALAUDEEN and MUSA ODOSHIMOKHE report.

SENATOR Ifeanyi Ubah, who represents Anambra South in the upper chamber of the National Assembly, was elected on the platform of the Young Progressive Party (YPP) in the last general elections.  The chairman of Capital Oil and Gas garnered 87,081 votes to defeat the Peoples Democratic Party’s (PDP) candidate, Chris Uba, and the All Progressive Grand Alliance’s (APGA) Nicholas Ukachukwu, who polled 62,462 and 51,269 votes respectively. Andy Uba of the All Progressives Congress (APC) got 13,245 votes.

But, Ubah promptly defected from the YPP to the APC immediately after the general elections, to have a say in the Red Chamber. The APC National Chairman, Adams Oshiomhole, announced Ubah’s defection at a meeting President Muhammadu Buhari held with APC senators-elect at the presidential villa on March 25.

A winner-takes-it-all mentality governs the political scene and small parties have little or no chance of survival. Over the years, they have been used as pawns by the big parties in the political chess game. Apart from Anambra State that is controlled by APGA, the other 35 states are controlled by either the APC or the PDP. The two parties also hold all but a few seats in the National Assembly and Houses of Assembly across the nation. For instance, Danjuma Shiddi who emerged winner of the Wukari/Ibi Federal Constituency seat in Taraba State during the last general elections is one of such exceptions.

In spite of the above scenario, the political landscape is saturated with many parties; this made the list of parties on the ballot paper unnecessarily long and unwieldy. A total of 91 parties participated in the 2019 general elections; the highest number ever. There were 71 presidential candidates. The ballot paper was quite long. The Independent National Electoral Commissioner (INEC) in charge of Information and Voter Education, Mr. Festus Okoye, said this created a logistics nightmare and confused many voters, particularly the less-educated during the election.

Indeed, many Nigerians have expressed concern about the length of the ballot paper used for the February 23 and March 9 general elections and have called for a deregistration of the parties that failed to win any seat during the election. But INEC is helpless. Unless the constitution is amended, such fringe parties will continue to provide platforms for political jobbers. Since the 1999 Constitution guarantees freedom of association, lots of those parading themselves as political actors without any reasonable means of livelihood could just wake up to form a party for elections, obviously hoping that something beneficial will come out of it.

This is not the first time that the issue of de-registering parties would be the subject of public discourse. It has been a recurring decimal in every post-election season since the number of parties reached 50.  In 2008, the late President Umaru Musa Yar’ Adua had toyed with the idea of pruning down the number of political parties, but nothing came out of that exercise.

In December 2012 INEC de-registered 28 political parties, including the Peoples Redemption Party (PRP), the Nigeria Advance Party (NAP) and the Fresh Democratic Party, but the move was subsequently overturned in July of 2013, when a Federal High Court in Abuja held that INEC has no power to de-register any political party, going by the dictates of the 1999 constitution as amended. It even went further to declare section 78(7)11) of the Electoral Act as unconstitutional, invalid, null and void, adding that it was offensive to the provisions of Section 40 and Section 222-229 of the constitution.

Similarly, in July 2015, an appeal court sitting in Lagos ruled against INEC’s de-registration of political parties on the basis of not winning elections. In the appeal brought by the National Conscience Party (NCP), the court held that it is not part of Nigeria’s constitution that every political party must win election in order for it to operate as one.

The overriding constitutional provision against de-registration of political parties is Section 40, which provides that among other things that every person shall be entitled to assemble freely and associate with other persons , and in particular he may form or belong to any political party , trade union or any other association for the protection of his interests.

But, the 2017 amendment was supposed to circumvent this barrier, such that by amending Section 225, INEC is expressly empowered to de-register political parties for non- fulfillment of certain conditions which include failure to secure/win elections for either presidential, governorship, local government chairmanship, the National Assembly, any state House of Assembly or a councillorship.

For many Nigerians, there is no much difference between the APC and the PDP. With the possible exception of President Muhammadu Buhari and the APC National Leader, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu and their close associates, the bulk of those who make up the APC today were members of the PDP during the heydays of the party. In fact, Dr. Obiageli (Oby) Ezekwesili, who attempted to contest the presidency in 2019 on the platform of the Allied Congress Party of Nigeria (ACPN) but pulled out in the eleventh hour, described the two parties as Siamese twins.

Given this widespread perception, some Nigerians had dreamt of the emergence of a “third force”, to upstage the two dominant parties in 2019. But, eventually, that did not materialize, partly because the young and better educated candidates who were expected to come together to provide a better alternative for Nigerians failed to do so. Such younger candidates include: motivational speaker, Fela Durotoye, who was the candidate of the Alliance for New Nigeria (ANN); Gbenga Olawepo-Hashim, the presidential candidate of People’s Trust (PT); political economist and former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Kingsley Moghalu, who contested on the ticket of the YPP; activist and owner of a popular online media, Omoyele Sowore, who contested on the platform of the African Action Congress (AAC); businessman, Tope Fasua who contested on the ticket of the Abundant Nigeria Renewal Party (ANRP); and former Governor Donald Duke, who was the candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP).

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Experts and stakeholders expressed divergent views on the deregisteration of fringe parties. Former Vice President of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Monday Ubani called for de-registration of parties that did not win a seat in the last general elections. Ubani said INEC is empowered by the electoral law to remove the names of parties that failed to win seats and urged the electoral umpire to invoke the provision of the Act on the fringe parties.

He said they are a clog in the wheel of electoral process. He added: “Can imagine having the logo of 75 political parties on a ballot paper? As a result, the sorting out becomes complex, the announcement of the results is delayed, because the score of each political party must be recorded and announced by the electoral officers. The annoying thing is that most of them score zero or less than 20 votes. All this makes the electoral process cumbersome.

“Another thing is that most of these mushroom parties were sponsored by the two dominant parties. An indication to this played out in the build up to the presidential election, when some of the presidential candidates stepped down for the flag bearers of the APC and that of the PDP.”

Ubani said we don’t need 93 political parties. He said a maximum of five political parties is okay. He added that the leaders of the mushroom parties know quite well that they would not win elections, but come out only during election time to negotiate for political offices with the ruling party.

But Professor Sylvester Odion-Akhaine of the Department of Political Science, the Lagos State University (LASU), disagreed with Ubani on deregistration of lukewarm parties. He said the call for the proscription of the mushroom parties is anti-democracy and counter revolutionary.

Odion-Akhaine recalled that at independence, before the first coup in 1966, there were about 81 political associations. He said: “The colonial authority did not have problems managing the electoral process. The element of multi-party is part of liberal democracy we are mimicking. Liberal democracy should not be caricatured here. There is a notable trend in trying to constrict the political space, so that the incumbent rascals will continue to dominate the scene. What we have now is a product of struggles waged by the likes of the late Gani Fawehinmi up to Supreme Court.”

He argued that some smaller countries have more political parties than Nigeria. He said: “Take for example, South Africa, Britain etc. They have more political parties and have never had problems putting them on roll.”

To Dr Tunji Ogunyemi of the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife, Osun State, the number of seats won by a political party do not determine its existence. His words: “Democratic practices do not require that parties win seats for them to exist; the more the merrier. The existence of many parties suggests prima facie that there is a significant level of political participation and inclusion and these are some of the most critical requirements of democratic practices.”

Ogunyemi said INEC cannot de-register political parties, unless they are involved in treasonable offences that can imperil Nigerian security. He said even if they did the electoral body should follow the due process of law before de-registration. He said: “Political parties once registered become a constitutional matter which borders on the fundamental rights of the Nigerians to associate with anyone they may wish to associate with. This is guaranteed under Section 40 of the Nigerian constitution.”

On whether there should be a law limiting the number of parties, Ogunyemi said there should be no such law. He added: “If such a law exists it will be derogation from the tenets of democracy, which requires that the people participate to the fullest in the of governance by belonging to any political party of their choice or even to contest as independent candidates. The solution to having an unwieldy number of parties should not be in delimiting their existence. Rather, it should be in setting criteria for their categorisation. That is, parties should not be registered straight away as national parties, but should begin from local and state levels. Hence, there should be local parties, state parties, regional parties and national parties.

“The existence of such a category of parties will simultaneously, save the cost of conducting elections, broaden the field of political participation, while ensuring that unnecessary overcrowding at the state or national level is curtailed.”

Afenifere Publicity Secretary, Yinka Odumakin, said INEC should continue to regulate the conduct of parties, instead of deregistering them. He said the constitution gives room for multi-party democracy and that INEC will run foul of the law, if it goes ahead with its plan to deregister parties.

He said: “The constitution provides for multi-party democracy, but we have lot of mushroom parties in the country. Well, in terms of regulation, I think what needs to be done is to curtail the springing up of weak parties. While we respect the rights of each party, there must be guidelines to regulate their activities.

“This will ensure that ballot papers are not unnecessarily long when they are not really doing something useful as parties. But, again, INEC must ensure free and fair elections to determine the strength and capacity of each party. Without free and fair elections, we cannot not actually determine the strength of the parties. But, as it is now, INEC says it can de-register parties that fail to perform. If fail to meet conditions stipulated by INEC, they can also not be registered. Under a free and fair election, if a party failed to win any position during election, they can be prevented from moving into another election.

“On the allegation that some of the bigger parties make use of the smaller parties, we could see what happened in Rivers State. The APC used one fringe party to cause crisis in the state during the election. So, you cannot rule out the fact that the big parties make use of the smaller ones to cause confusion and instability. What INEC wants to do is work-in-progress and if we begin to practice the real democracy, things will continue to correct itself.”

Lagos APC chieftain, Lanre Razak, said if the parties registered by INEC could not justify the reason they were registered, it is immoral to exist as parties at the expense of tax-payers money.

He said: “Political parties are platforms to contest and win elections. So, how many of them were able to win elections? Since they have failed to serve the purpose for which they were put there in the first place, I don’t think they should continue to exist on the INEC platform.

“A situation where you see a ballot paper as long as one meter, just to accommodate non-performing parties, I don’t think that one is healthy. I don’t think it is reasonable enough.

“The clamour for multi-party system is okay, but of how many number of parties?  Now how many parties do we have in Britain and America? Yet, they profess multi-party system. The number of political parties that Nigeria has is too much; INEC should deregister some of them.”

Lagos APC chieftain, Moshood Salvador, said small parties will continue to fleece on the commonwealth and that INEC should not tolerate them longer than necessary.  He said INEC’s plan to let go many of the smaller parties is the right thing to do.

He added: “I have to support the position of INEC on the de-registration of political parties 100 per cent. The power given to INEC to cut to size all these mushroom parties, their continued existence only entrenched some as political jobbers. They are not serious about it. In the past, we used to have a standard. If a political party could not win a seat in a state House of Assembly out of the total number in the country, it could not be called a political party. If a political party could not win one council chairman in the whole country, then why should it be called a political party?

“Look at Lagos State for instance. In 2015, the total number of votes scored indicated that the APC had 45. 6 per cent, while PDP scored 43.2 per cent. This means that all the other parties put together had the remaining scores. If this is the situation, why are we allowing this to continue? The mushroom parties are supposed to be farmers associations.”

Lagos State PDP Publicity Secretary, Taofiq Gani, said INEC could not remove weaker parties, because there had not been free and fair elections.

“It will be delicate to support the position that INEC should deregister political parties. INEC should not do that in the light of the type of party primaries we have seen in the country, especially by the major parties. People should have the right of choice.

“The perspective from which INEC is trying to look at it may not suffice, because if INEC is saying that the list is long, the question is whether INEC is sponsoring the parties? Is INEC in charge of their campaigns? What INEC should do is to provide the necessary disciplinary measure for parties to conduct its affairs. It should provide a framework for anybody to vote free and fair without facing victimisation.

“I can tell you that majority of the mushroom parties will ordinarily win anywhere if they had contested under a free and fair atmosphere. These parties were mal-handled, frustrated and pushed to the brink by the bigger parties, who are set out to run them aground.”

The Chairman of the Coalition Against Corrupt Leaders (CACOL), Debo Adeniran, the idea deregistering weaker parties will be an exercise in futility. He said the court have halted similar moves in the past and that it is likely face the same situation again.

He said: “Nobody can take away the rights of the people to associate, because that is entrenched in the constitution. That is the reason why INEC has not been able to get away with the plans to deregister parties in the past.

“INEC had been told by the court on several occasions that it cannot do that. At our own level, we are not saying that they should de-register parties, but I believe that INEC should have the power to check their activities. They should be given instructions on how to conduct their affairs.

“The parties should have the minimum numbers of members, they should show capacity to mobilise, they should have offices in different states with minimum number. It they don’t have these criteria, they could be advised to liaise with other parties that have similar ideologies.

“All parties with similar ideologies can fuse together. Again, INEC may not succeed in axing the weak parties, because it is the inalienable right of the people to freely associate and the people will go to court on that basis, if you try to deny them such rights.”