God Almighty created the earth and gave it to the children of men. He planted a beautiful garden and installed man to be fruitful, multiply, replenish, subdue and dominate the earth. He simply required obedience and character from man to live in prosperity and pleasure all the days of his life. Man failed Him from beginning and chose the track of sinful life, rebellion and disobedience against the very Being who created Him. If man can rebel against God himself, much more can he rebel against one another in the spirit of greed and selfishness. Initially, God in His wrath, destroyed man because of sin. On sober reflection, God decided that the best approach to bring men to order on earth was to establish a human government and delineate the attributes of the people who will be set as rulers over them. According to Romans 13:1-2, “Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation”.
It was not surprising that obedience to laws and strict punishment as deterrent for disobedience is God’s primary concern in His relationship with man. He knew that anything short of this results in anarchy which will lead to the eventual destruction of man by man. To pilot the affairs of men on earth, God decreed the attributes of the leaders that should be set over the government on earth which He has established. Exodus 18:19-21 put it succinctly, “Hearken now unto my voice, I will give thee counsel, and God shall be with thee: Be thou for the people to God-ward, that thou mayest bring the causes unto God: And thou shalt teach them ordinances and laws, and shalt shew them the way wherein they must walk, and the work that they must do. Moreover thou shalt provide out of all the people able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness; and place such over them, to be rulers of thousands, and rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens”. This is the technical definition of character, which means the ability to do the right thing when nobody is watching you. To be covetous means to be corrupt, greedy and be inordinately or wrongly desirous of wealth or possessions or for another’s possessions. The Common English Bible version summarised those attributes thus: “you should also look among all the people for capable persons who respect God. They should be trustworthy and not corrupt. Set these persons over the people as officers of groups of thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens”. Even God is desirous that capable, competent men of character should govern Nigeria for us to have peace and prosperity in our land. He warned that when men who possess these qualities govern the people, they will rejoice, but when men who are bereft of these lofty qualities are in power, the people mourn.
Nigeria is a beautiful blessed country of God whose only problem is having men who are bereft of character that are piloting its affairs. We have crude oil in abundance, but we cannot even meet up with our export quota given to us by OPEC to boost our revenues. We cannot even refine enough oil for domestic consumption, 64 years after we first discovered oil in our land but has continually exploited the people through high oil prices. We have abundant iron ore deposit but cannot tap them to manufacture iron we need for our industrial revolution since about 42 years after we built Ajeokuta steel factory in Kogi. The list is endless, but there’s no area where this perfidy is more pronounced like in the area of the manipulation of the internal democracy of the primaries of political parties. Primary elections of political parties are so important in Nigeria because of the absence of the independent candidacy in our electoral process. The arena where the fortunes and prospects of good men of character are destroyed and denied from giving Nigeria their best is in the primary elections. The people of Nigeria are denied the opportunity of voting for these men because if one can stop them in the primary election, they will not even be on the ballot to compete in the general election. This is why Nigerians should become interested in what happens in the internal process of parties choosing their leaders. They should start resisting attempts by parties to rig the general elections by rigging their own primary elections and foist on the people a fait accompli.
Let us congratulate the 9th Session of the National Assembly for their patriotic efforts in harkening to the voice of Nigerians and the President in allowing the choices of Direct, Indirect or Consensus method of primary elections in parties choosing candidates for their elections. The National Assembly has saved itself from the blame by the political class that the misfortune and crises in their parties originate from their being compelled to adopt a particular mode of primary election, in this instant case, the Direct Primary method of election. The option of the consensus method in the amended Act is also commendable. Consensus simply means unopposed. The Lawmakers displayed ingenuity in the amended Electoral Act by qualifying or clarifying the meaning of consensus in the Act to mean unopposed. If an aspirant is unopposed, it signifies that no other aspirant is willing or desiring to contest the election with him. If some aspirants had signified interest in contesting and have been cleared to run, it accords to common sense that the party which claims that they stepped down for any aspirant should prove that their decision is voluntary. The insertion in Section 84 of the Act 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” is commendable. This is intended to guide against bullying of aspirants to step down involuntarily for any preferred candidate of a godfather.
Let us also state our belief that the President will or should sign the amended Electoral Act to purify and promote best practices in our elections because he said he will sign and because we trust that he is a man of his words who will keep to his words. Whatever imperfections remaining in the Act can be perfected through amendments. However, our problem in this country is not our laws, it is ourselves. The Ekiti gubernatorial primary elections of both parties has exposed the problem of leadership in Nigeria. The APC adopted the Direct primary, while the PDP adopted the Indirect Primary, yet both ended in avoidable controversies.
The National Assembly gave as one of their reasons for adopting the Direct mode of primary election the overbearing influence of the Governors in manipulating the Indirect delegate election. But a closer look at the Ekiti gubernatorial primary elections of both parties showed that all aspirants were accusing the Governors, both current and former, of manipulating both the Direct and Indirect modes of primary election. The problem is no longer with the method of primary election but with the character of the practitioners. The truth is that the Governors hold sway in both the Direct and Indirect modes of primary election. They resisted the imposition of the Direct primary mode because they know that non-current Governors or other powerful forces can use the instrumentality of Direct Primary to outwit them in the contest of the position of the President. The truth is that there’s nothing like genuine Direct Primary election today in Nigeria. Whoever is the National or State Chairman of any political party can write or endorse any result of his preferred candidate and foist the candidate on the party. But this will be more difficult to do with Indirect Primary. There’s no doubt that Indirect Primary can be manipulated with a lot of inducement but the process can be managed to produce acceptable result because it is done in a centralised arena in the public glare of everybody. The process of Direct Primary as of today is simply unmanageable because of absence of acceptable universal membership register of members of the political parties, cost of recruiting and maintaining polling agents in all the wards of the State by all the aspirants in the primary election and the cost of securing the arenas of voting because of our precarious security situation.
In Ekiti, seven out of eight governorship aspirants, withdrew from the gubernatorial primary election conducted in Ado Ekiti alleging that those the electoral committee appointed as presiding and returning officers were loyalists of Governor Fayemi and one of the governorship aspirants and Secretary to Government, Biodun Oyebanji. Summarily, they accused the Governor of rigging the Direct Primary election in favour of his preferred candidate even before the primary election was conducted. Ironically, majority of the accusers, like Senator Opeyemi Bamidele and Hon Femi Bamisile, are current members of the National Assembly who hitherto thought that Direct Primary will insulate fhem from the manipulation of the process by incumbent Governors. In PDP, the immediate past Chairman of the Party in Ekiti, Olabisi Kolawale, was declared winner of the Indirect Primary election held in Ado-Ekiti. Reports had it that he won because he enjoyed the support and backing of former Governor Ayo Fayose. Senator Olujimi pulled out of the gubernatorial Indirect Primary contest alleging gender bias and the manipulation of the list of voters for the primary to her electoral detriment. She pointed out that the National Leadership of the Party refused to conduct the Congress of her Local Government thereby statutorily leaving her with fewer delegates for the primary election. This also meant that the primary election was rigged against her even before it was conducted. The more intriguing aspect of the PDP Primary election was the case of a former Governor of Ekiti, Segun Oni, who conceded defeat to the winner immediately the result was announced only to recant on sober reflection to declare the election as flawed and shameful. He pushed it further by dumping PDP altogether.
There’s one thing that is lacking in this process and certainly it is not the lack of laws, it is the lack of character. Whenever nobody is watching the politicians in Nigeria, they do the wrong thing. The people have to increase their vigilance both during the primary and general elections to safeguard our nascent democracy. Eternal vigilance is the price to pay for the sustenance of democracy.