This week, a crucial decision made by President Muhammadu Buhari to refuse to give his assent to the 2021 Electoral Act Amendment Bill may have surprised some people but, in reality, his refusal to assent to the bill only strengthens the country’s democracy.
The contentious provision in the rejected bill is the issue of political parties holding direct primary elections to select candidates to fly their flags during elections.
The President announced his decision via a letter he sent to the National Assembly where he cited several reasons for his action. His letter was read during Tuesday’s plenary session at the Senate and the House of Representatives.
Specifically, the President is of view that the mandatory use of direct primaries for all political parties in the country will put a financial burden on the country’s meagre resources.
He said that conducting direct primary elections will be tasking, especially for security agencies since such a method of election requires a large turnout of voters and, invariably, the use of security agents whose agencies would be stretched.
The President also expressed fears that the proposed mandatory use of direct primaries will amount to the violation of parties’ and citizens’ rights to choose and marginalise smaller political parties who are likely to find it hard to organise direct primary election because of its cost.
He also said that the proposed use of mandatory direct primary elections is likely to lead to more litigations among and within parties and their members.
These reasons adduced by the President for his rejection of the Electoral Act Amendment Bill are, however, termed as misleading by some people who are in support of the direct primaries. But, as it is said, the divergence of views is the sine qua non of democracy.
It should be noted that Section 87 of the current Electoral Act provides for either direct or indirect primaries. The All Progressives Congress (APC) used the direct system to select its presidential candidate in 2019. In other words, yes, the President is a beneficiary of the direct primary system.
This fact, therefore, led those opposed to the president’s rejection of the bill to claim that he threw away the baby and the bathwater. They also pointed out that by his action, the President has also rejected the electronic voting system provision contained in the bill which he had endorsed when he admitted that he is a beneficiary of the electronic accreditation of voters by the use of card readers.
Of course, they say that the direct primary elections system aligns with section 223 of the Constitution, which has imposed a duty on political parties to elect their officers through democratic elections, pointing out that the indirect method, which the President appears to them to favour, encourages imposition of candidates by money bags.
Therefore, how do the President’s reasons for refusing to give his assent to the bill stand next against the arguments of the proponents and supporters of the bill? Well, for a start, it should be noted that the Senators, many of who appear to be in support of President Buhari signing the Electoral Act Amendment Bill into law are themselves not believers of the so-called direct means of choosing leaders – at least, not their leaders.
The Senators, this week, amended the Senate Standing Rules 2015 and approved a closed ballot system of voting for the election of the President of the Senate and the Deputy. The upper chamber also retained a simple majority rule for the election of presiding officers.
The amendment of the rules followed the consideration of a motion under Order 111 of the Senate Standing Rule, 2015.The motion was sponsored by the Chairman of the Committee on Rules and Business, Senator Suleiman Sadiq Umar (Kwara North), and the Vice-Chairman who is the Senate Leader, Yahaya Abdullahi (Kebbi North).The Rules and Business Committee had proposed a two-thirds majority in its report. Senator James Manager (PDP, Delta South), threw his weight in support of a two-thirds majority for the election of officers.Senator Ibikunle Amosun (APC, Ogun Central), on his part, kicked against the adoption of a two-thirds majority.Senator Rochas Okorocha (APC, Imo West), proposed an amendment for a two-thirds majority spread across all geo-political zones of the country but his proposed amendment failed to owe to the refusal of Senators to second same.So, if in a group of about a hundred people a decision could be rightly made to avert chaos in the process of selecting leaders, why won’t cautionary measures be put in place when it comes to the selection of representatives of behemoth political parties like the APC or PDP, especially in this period of insecurity?There is no doubt that all security agencies and their personnel have been overstretched owing to the presence of armed conflicts in many parts of the country. Of course, it is not a thing of pride to see the military personnel engaged in the nation’s electoral policing. But, engaged they must be because of the inadequacy in the number of police and degree of violence associated with elections in the country.This issue of overstretching of the security agencies also applies to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) if the direct primaries are to be applied.
Had the President accepted the proposed direct system, one would have wondered where the INEC would have mobilised its personnel to cope with the situation.Nigeria, a country with about 9,000 wards would certainly make it very difficult, if not impossible, for the INEC to monitor especially the presidential and gubernatorial primary elections of political parties.Does the country have, or could Nigeria afford to spend, money that would be needed by the INEC to supervise direct parties’ primary elections? The INEC has said that N305 billion is required to conduct the 2023 elections.
The money, it said, would be used majorly to meet the commission’s technological needs to better serve the country.Other than that, would some political parties, especially smaller ones, be able to mobilise resources, in terms of cash and personnel, to conduct such a gigantic exercise even if the INEC could dig deep to deploy its men for supervision of the direct primary election?It is doubtful if the bill had anticipated such situations and provided remedies and or solutions in situations where the security agencies could not cope, the INEC fails to have the money and personnel it needs and small parties fail to muster resources for the conduct of the proposed direct primary elections.Of course, if one or several of the above-mentioned scenarios occur, it, then, will be safe to argue that democracy would be threatened. However, deliberately threatening democracy or making things difficult or impossible for institutions in Nigeria are not why we have a government in place.
In fact, despite the numerous arguments made in favour of the adoption of the direct primary elections, there is certainly no visible, clear-cut evidence to show its advantage or advantages over the indirect primaries or even the consensus arrangements.Recently, the APC used the direct primary option in Anambra State to elect its gubernatorial candidate, who, in the secondary election unsurprisingly lost to the APGA candidate. It was unsurprising because Andy Uba, the APC candidate, who, during the primary election was accused by other APC contestants of rigging the electoral process to get more than 200,000 votes, was only able to get about 40,000 votes during the secondary gubernatorial election. And where did the remaining over 150,000 APC voters that supported Andy Uba during the primary elections go to?The former Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and candidate of APGA, Charles Chukwuma Soludo, won the Anambra governorship election, polling a total of 112,229 votes, leaving people to conclude that, indeed, the so-called APC gubernatorial direct primary was rigged to throw up Andy Uba as the winner.Taking all into considerations, therefore, Nigerians are left with the sole conclusion that in as much as the other methods of conducting primary election have their demerits, it is clear that the direct method if adopted as the only method, will threaten and stifle the nation’s democratic system, undermine security agencies and place huge, but an avoidable financial burden on the country.
Thus, to make the conduct of primary elections in Nigeria credible and erase some fear of partiality nursed by some politicians, the Independent National Electoral Commission, political parties and the electoral actors, security agencies, media and civil society organisations must effectively play their roles of sensitising people against issues such as rigging, violence and other forms of manipulations of the electoral process that are considered detrimental to democracy.In the end, everyone has a role to play, including religious, traditional and community leaders who should openly and sincerely speak out against violence and unhealthy electoral system manipulations, irrespective of the partisan leaning of the community.
