A CASE FOR RESTORATIVE JUSTICE FOR UNSUCCSESSFUL ASPIRANTS!
Politics is a roguish business although it should be for service delivery. Politicians are inherently selfish and self-centred when in search of or in possession of power. Power politics is a brutal business- no paddy for jungle! Forget sugar coating, there is deficit of morality in power politics in Naija. No politician who is favoured by power play matrix or calculus cares about the next person or feeling of others. In that euphoria, the popular sayings you will hear are that “power is taken, power is not given”; “you use power to be powerful, you do not use power to be powerless”. Power politics is an oppressive business and oppressors are obsessed or fanatical about power. The only consolation is the eternal truth that “if you rejoice over injustice because it favours you; one day you shall cry for justice and it shall elude you”. Truly, power is ephemeral or evanescent as nothing lasts forever. Not even bad times, but Naija politicians no send!
Given the chance, many Naija politicians will not like to belong to any political party especially when they are not in charge or calling the shots. They will prefer to go solo. Only those who have held the wrong end of the stick in party politics can come to this grim reality. It can be frustrating belonging to a political party and being sidelined or reduced to a complete outsider to the levers of power and decision making process- sort of internally displaced politician. There is no joy hearing the sound of music without being able to dance, gyrate or boogie to it because of arthritic pains. An internally displaced politician is a bag of regrets because of his or her irrelevance in the scheme of things. To mitigate this anguish, his or her next and best option is to take flight and seek refuge in another political party. That is why migratory politics (political jumpology or defections) can never end in Naija. That is also why the prospect of having politics of ideology take root in Naija is dead on arrival. This nonsensical behaviour is justified by the saying that interest is the only thing that is permanent in politics.
In Nigeria, the constitution and electoral laws do not allow for independent candidacy or independent candidature. Any person desiring to participate in any election organised by either the Independent National Electoral Commission or State Independent Electoral Commission must be a candidate sponsored by a political party. Literally speaking, it costs an arm and a leg to emerge the candidate of a major or leading political party in Naija. Political parties in Nigeria, without exception, are more like cult groups. Their credentials are anything but democratic. Impunity is their first, middle and last name. The big political parties are not any worse than the smaller political parties. The difference is that the smaller political parties are not privileged to have mega platforms, membership and opportunities like the big political parties to unleash mayhem on their members. For example, APGA, although not in the category of a big political party (as it is in control of only Anambra State and has never formed Government at the center like PDP or APC), has been so enmeshed or embroiled in leadership tussles that it can be unarguably described as a ghost of its former self. Furthermore, to think that a little known Labour Party before the 2023 general election will throw up hustlers, usurpers and sit tight power mongers like Apapa and Abure and the rest of them is one of the many things that can predictably happen in Naija party politics. A butterfly thinks itself a bird because it can fly is an African proverb. Today, Labour Party is indubitably squandering the little goodwill and followership it garnered in between the last general election because of the same virus that afflicts Naija political parties and their officials- tyrannical and irresponsible political behaviours.
This intervention is not about political parties and their undemocratic practices. The backdrop was painted to show that no Nigerian political party is populated by angels. It is nothing to be proud of either. It is a sardonic repertoire. Even, the ancestor political party, the PDP, is disappointingly “an old man behaving badly”. PDP proudly reputes itself as the only party that has not changed its name, logo or manifesto since 1998. This is true although PDP has not also changed its bad political behaviour as the ancestral home of impunity. Most major actors and players in all the current, nascent or embryonic registered parties in Nigeria were once PDP members and have the deadly PDP DNA. Again, this intervention is not about PDP although it is a wake-up call that an old man or woman dancing naked in the public is nothing to be proud of. An unexamined life is not worth living but Naija politicians don’t give a hoot.
This intervention is intentionally captioned “IMO APC LOCAL GOVERNMENT PRIMARY ELECTIONS, CONSENSUS CANDIDACY AND MANAGING POST-PRIMARY FISSURES!” With the slated 21 September 2024 Local Government election in Imo State by the Imo State Independent Electoral Commission (abbreviated as “ISIEC”) by the corner, political parties desiring to sponsor candidates in that election should have sent in the names of their candidates. In Imo State, the party to beat in that Local Government election is the APC. The reasons are obvious or self-evident. APC is the party in power in Imo State. It has the Governor, Deputy Governor and more than comfortable majority seats in the State House of Assembly. At a time, APC had 27/27 House of Assembly members.
Besides, the regular pattern or common practice across the country is that the party in power in any State of the federation sweeps the Local Government election in that State. Few recent examples will suffice, The PDP won all 25 Local Government chairmanship seats and 499 out of the 500 councillorship seats in the Delta Local Government election which held sometime in July 2024. The election was conducted by the Delta State Independent Electoral Commission. In the same July 2024, APC won all the 13 chairmanship seats and 171 Ward councilors in the Local Government election conducted by the Ebonyi State Independent Electoral Commission. These extrapolations are not justificatory of how independent these State election management bodies are or how free, fair and credible the elections they conducted were. These examples were cited to explicate that it is a predictable pattern that the results the so called independent electoral bodies return in their respective States is dependent on the political party in power in that State and no more.
Naturally, the Imo State APC primary election for the Local Government election into the 27 Local Government Executive Chairmanship positions and 305 Councillorship seats was oversubscribed. This is putting it mildly. Power seeking politicians are desperate gamblers. Politicians are incurable optimists too. Many aspirants who know or should know that they were either not qualified or will not scale the party primary election obtained the nomination form at the cost or value set by the party. It is the tradition that monies paid to obtain expression of interest and nomination forms are NON-REFUNDABLE. The party in its infinite wisdom settled for consensus primary procedure. This was the “Catch 22” situation.
Consensus primary is not new in Nigeria’s electoral lexicon. Under the Electoral Act, 2022, other than direct and indirect primary procedures, a party can select its candidate via consensus. Section 84(9) of the Electoral Act, 2022 provides that a party that adopts a consensus candidate shall secure the written consent of all cleared aspirants for the position, indicating their voluntary withdrawal from the race and their endorsement of the consensus candidate. However, in section 84(10) of selfsame Electoral Act, it is provided that “Where a political party is unable to secure the written consent of all cleared aspirants for the purpose of a consensus candidate, it shall revert to the choice of direct or indirect primaries for the nomination of candidates for the aforesaid elective positions while under subsection (11) thereof “A special convention or nomination congress shall be held to ratify the choice of consensus candidates at designated centres at the National, State, Senatorial, Federal and State Constituencies, as the case may be”.
The provisions of the Electoral Act are applicable only to INEC organised elections into the Presidential, Governorship, Senatorial, House of Representative and State Assembly seats. The provisions of the Electoral Act, 2022 do not apply or fit snugly in a Local Government election organised by a State Independent Electoral Commission. Local Government elections are organised by SIEC under laws made by the House of Assembly of the State. It is apparent that many aspirants to the recently held Local Government primary election in Imo State did not know this much. Ignorance of the law is not an excuse. Indeed, ignorance of the law excuses no one. This is expressed in the Latin maxims “ignorantia juris non excusat or ignorantia legis neminem excusat. In the end, APC has submitted its list of candidates for the Imo Local Government election. Querying how APC arrived at its consensus candidates in the said election in Imo State does not help matters at this stage although it would have been more than desirable that the procedure was transparent and manifestly defensible.
Now that APC has adopted consensus procedure to select her candidates- Chairman, Deputy Chairman, Councilors what next? What is the restorative justice for unsuccessful aspirants? It is unthinkable that wholesale and wholesome political fairness was served in the process of selecting consensus candidates for the offices. Loud cries of shortchanged aspirants and open lamentations of marginalised political blocks, wards and communities within the Local Governments across the State do not validate that although political decisions are not usually without casualties. Local Government and Councillorship elections are the most difficult elections to contest. They are grassroots based and are strictly competitions between people who know themselves up to their families. More often than not, they are elections between villages inter se, or communities and wards that share common ancestry, history customs and culture. Hence, “political wounds” sustained or injustices occasioned in councillorship or Local Government Chairmanship elections do not heal fast. But political problems are best resolved politically. It only remains to propose how to ameliorate the wrongs.
This is a direct appeal to the Governor of the State as the Leader of the APC in Imo State to intervene and use his good offices to cause the nomination fees of the unsuccessful aspirants to be refunded to them. Much as the nomination fees are non-refundable, but political decisions are not cast in steel. The big party leaders who are not from Imo State may not be interested in this proposal about refunding money already paid into the coffers of the party, but he who is wearing the shoes should know where it is pinching. Injured feelings, dashed hopes and aspirations of party members can be assuaged by making reasonable amends. One sure way is through refund of fees paid by unsuccessful aspirants. It could have been a different scenario if the aspirants lost their election bids through direct or indirect primary election(s). That consensus arrangement aborted the dreams of many to test their popularity or electability at the polls.
Managing post-primary fissures is the hallmark of good party leadership and key to party cohesion, unity and success in present and future inter party or general elections. It can be very painful to have an aspiration shot down in terms not seen to be fair to all concerned. It is more aggravating where the party pretends that nothing happened. In 2014, those who had control of the PDP machinery at the federal level at the time switched the Imo PDP delegates list and conducted sham primaries. No one refunded the cheated and angry aspirants a dime. No party official looked the way of the aggrieved. The party and or blinkered party officials all pretended that nothing happened. The party paid dearly for it in the 2015 governorship election. More recent examples can be cited but they are not necessary. Pointedly, an aggrieved party member is dangerous. Sabotage can only come from within. A word is enough for the wise.
Evil should not become the norm and tradition in politics. May GOD ALMIGHTY give Governor Hope Uzodinma the wisdom and courage to give hope to the hopeless unsuccessful aspirants in the 2024 Imo Local Government primary elections. They deserve restorative justice. I so beseech and submit!
A new normal is possible!
Prof Obiaraeri, N. O.
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