The All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) like to tell us, the electorate, that the internal dynamics of their parties is a ‘family affair, implying that we who are at the receiving end of the governance and policies of members of these parties are outsiders who have no say.
They have been able to get away with this argument because many of us are ‘too busy surviving Nigeria to care’ or have given up hope.
However, as the collective noose of poverty, insecurity, poor public services, state capture and abuse of power tightens, instead of turning against ourselves, more of us, particularly those who may or may not be part of the shrinking middle class, should turn our attention to the ruling parties. The argument is simple: the clue to how we will be governed is in the way the parties are managed.
Let’s start with APC.
The recent attempt to dislodge Governor Buni as the interim chairman of APC ahead of APC’s national convention on March 26 was about only one thing: taking control of the party and determining the outcome of primaries. Three things about the power tussle expose the ethos of members of APC as undemocratic, disorganised and suffering from a lack of imagination.
Undemocratic
All APC factions want to ensure ‘their people’ are in key positions for the primaries and it is not simply about deciding who the delegates will be and how they will vote. In 2011, the Supreme Court ruled that power to grant candidacy resides solely with a party’s national working or executive committee (NEC).
In other words, an aspirant can win APC’s primaries but the NEC, which Buni chairs until March 26 and maybe even after, can decide, at its discretion, to submit a different person’s name to INEC.
When this happens, as it often does, the courts have no jurisdiction over what is regarded as a party matter and the person whose mandate was stolen has no legal recourse. It is the power to execute this type of chicanery that the gladiators of APC want.
The horse trading that allows this to happen is what results in the quality of presidents, governors and legislators we get, where it is not character or quality that stands out but the ability to wield violence and public funds and for an ideal candidate being controllable.
The inability of a party and its members to be democratic about their processes indicates that they cannot be democratic when in office. They know too well the benefits of subversion and will always revert to the ‘easy’ model of winning.
This is why even the so-called sophisticated technocrats in government house end up behaving like those we consider thuggish, ineffective or entitled, especially when it comes to eroding the independence of local governments and state assemblies.
When what it takes to be in power is a perversion of processes and ethics, we should not be surprised when those who win through that process refuse to be accountable.
Read also: Nigeria Decides 2023: How elections are stolen (2)
Disorganised
The transition process for APC national chairmen has always been disorganised, same with the states. After the 2021 state congresses, almost all states had two lists of party officials and multiple lawsuits running into the hundreds.
Every transition in the leadership of APC’s NEC has been messy, and this is in part due to President Muhammadu Buhari having no real interest in leaving a political legacy, not even in the form of a more cohesive and democratic party.
In the Buni fiasco, Buhari did give his nod of approval to Governor Bello’s camp to kick out Buni, as confirmed by the governor of Kaduna. As is the norm when a person is not leading with any conviction, the President’s mind was soon changed for him.
To give proof of the latest deal, social media was flooded with pictures of Buni and Buhari, in London no less, as Nigerians battled another collapse of the national grid, prolonged and crippling fuel scarcity and over 100 percent increase in the cost of diesel.
We can expect more conflict around the convention and primaries, all designed to ensure that within the disorder, the path to maintaining the status quo is clear.
This, in Nigeria-speak, ‘any-how-ness’ in the way APC is managed internally is carried into the conduct of government as evidenced by conflicting pronouncements and infighting symptomatic of an administration without a shared vision.
Lack of imagination
It is an existential crisis for Nigeria that members of the ruling parties cannot imagine any way of being other than what they are now.
APC, after seven years in power, cannot conceive of managing its processes and members any different from the way parties have been run for decades – opaque, unverifiable memberships and decisions made by caucuses of interest marshalled towards recycling themselves and gorging on a pie that is almost all gone.
How does this affect us?
Our stake in APC is two-fold. Instead of tending to Nigeria’s challenges, APC is distracted with keeping power. The second is that what APC is and does is a reflection of what their candidates are and will do when they are elected.
The reality of our everyday lives is that APC and PDP cannot give us what they do not have: democracy, organised processes and/or systems and a vision for a better Nigeria.
In 2019, there were 84 million registered voters, less than 35 percent of them voted and while only three percent (869,758) did not vote for APC or PDP, there were 54 million who did not vote.
How do we get a third of this 54 million voting for one candidate outside APC and PDP in 2023? This is three million more votes than the 15 million votes that won APC the presidency in 2019.
It is not impossible to mobilise towards this goal – and there is no better time than now to show both parties that we can do better than two dysfunctional platforms who consider the electorate as outsiders.
Next week – on PDP’s dysfunction and why they too do not deserve our vote.
Ayisha Osori is the author of ‘Love Does Not Win Elections’
