Remi Sonaiya, a former presidential candidate of the KOWA party in the 2015 presidential election, has kicked against calls for the country to adopt a two-party system practised during the Third Republic as one of the ways out of the nation’s electoral logjam.
Nigeria currently has more than 90 registered political parties; however, in recent times political stakeholders and leaders have said that part of the proposed electoral reforms before the 2023 general election should be a return back to the two-party system practised in the Third Republic.
They, said that deregistration of smaller and non-performing parties was needed as part of the initiatives to solve the logjam bedevilling the nation’s electoral system.
In an exclusive interview with BusinessDay, Wednesday, however, Sonaiya said though the current number of political parties in the country may be too many, the government cannot impose two-party system on Nigerians.
Sonaiya said the current democratic arrangement in the country does not favour smaller parties except the two major parties of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) that had tasted power and had the resources to manipulate elections results.
Speaking further, the scholar accused the two major parties of using state funds to manipulate elections in their favour to the detriment of the smaller parties.
According to her, “I agree; there is no doubt that having like seventy or more parties on the ballot is wasteful; is expensive, it is confusing for a lot of people.
“But I don’t think they can impose PDP or APC on us because many of us believe that they are the same party. They are just a group of people who are just mismanaging the country and taking advantage of the resources of the country to win elections.
“They take money from the government and they are using that money to win elections.
“So they keep saying that the smaller parties are not making impact but you are using the money of the country to buy votes; you give people N5, 000, N10, 000 or more to buy their votes. Because they know that Nigerians are poor they deliberately keep the people poor so that they can buy their votes”.
When asked her view on the recent judgment by the Supreme Court on the Imo gubernatorial election, the former lecturer expressed surprise by the ruling, stressing that the Supreme Court had questions to answer.
“I don’t understand it. I reacted like many Nigerians did because I don’t understand how somebody got all the votes that was not counted and they were now added and it happened that all the people in the constituency voted only for this man.
“It is surprising; is it not? And this is a party that no one voted for the state House Assembly elections but they voted for him in the governorship election are they making fool of us or what?
“Now, somebody who was third in the primaries was now given the governorship election, we have to query the Supreme Court on that judgment,” she added.
Iniobong Iwok
