Democracy abhors dictatorship. This is why it creates an inherent system of checks and balance. It gave independent powers to the different arms of government: the Legislature, the Executive and the Judiciary, but forbids them to operate such powers tyrannically. This is why the powers of each arm is made subject to the checks of another arm. The Legislature has the power to make laws for the peace, order and good government of the country and the power of the Legislature to make laws for the Federation is exercised by bills passed by both the Senate and the House of Representatives and assented to by the President. Where a bill is presented to the President for assent, he shall within thirty days signify that he assents or that he withholds assent and where the President withholds his assent and the bill is again passed by each House, by two-thirds majority, the bill shall become law and the assent of the President shall not be required. It’s obvious that the assent of the President within thirty days is simply an initiative by the drafters of the Constitution to check and balance any excess of the Legislature in its task of making laws.
Whichever arm of government is exercising its powers, the Constitution envisages that the participation by the people in their government shall be ensured. There’s no matter in which the participation of the people is more important than in the matter of the Electoral Bill which is intended to usher in the conduct of free, fair and credible elections. Nigeria may survive its present numerous challenges but may not survive another military incursion into our political lives. The only assurance that the military will stay out of politics is free, fair and credible elections. The past democratic experiments were overthrown because of election rigging and violence which abrogated the right of the people to choose their preferred candidates. It’s understandable why the current Electoral Bill and the withholding of the President’s accent is generating such tension and emotions, majority of them, arising from the age long distrust between the governed and their leaders in Nigeria, not based on the facts of the case at hand.
The National Assembly passed the Electoral Bill recently with numerous positive innovations, the most prominent being the recognition and granting of the power of independence to INEC in determining the best way to electronically transmit and collate the election results of candidates to ensure that it reflects the will of the people. This decision was arrived at after a painstaking public participation in the process. However, after the conclusion of the different sections of the Electoral Bill, and out of the blues, without the input of the public whatsoever, there came a smuggling in of one section into the Electoral Bill. The imposition on all the political parties the direct primary method of nominating candidates of political parties, effectively eliminating the concensus and indirect modes of nominating candidates for political parties, in open affront to the extant provisions of the Constitutions of political parties, without consulting them or the people.
As expected, the opposition parties, led by the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) kicked against this provision, with the assertion that the ruling party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), wants to impose its preferred option of Direct primary on other parties which might not be much endowed with resources and manpower to carry out this method effectively throughout the country, especially in this era of security challenges. The Bill was passed by both Houses and sent to the President for accent.
The President consulted with all the stakeholders in the electoral process within the time alloted him by the Constitution and eventually came out with a verdict. He said “Further to the letter dated 18th November, 2021, forwarded for Presidential assent, the Electoral Act (Amendment) Bill 2021 as passed by the National Assembly, I have received “informed advice” from relevant Ministries, Departments and Agencies of the Government, and have also carefully reviewed the Bill in light of the current realities prevalent in the Federal Republic of Nigeria in the circumstances”. This reflects the point that the President did not reach this decision on his own opinions and caprices. One of the greatest critics of President Buhari, the Governor of Benue State, Samuel Ortom, of the opposition People’s Democratic Party, described the decision of the President as emanating from “deeper consultation” which led to an informed decision by the President. For the first time in a long time, Ortom thanked the President for the decision.
The informed advice by the President can be summarised in his own words, “It is my considered position that the political parties should be allowed to freely exercise right of choice in deciding which of direct or indirect primaries to adopt in the conduct of their primary elections as their respective realities may permit. In the premise of the above, I hereby signify to the National Assembly that I am constrained to withhold assent to the Electoral Act (Amendment) Bill 2021 in line with the provisions of Section 58(1) & (4) of the 1999 Constitution (as amended).” This is completely in line with our submission in our article on this column dated the 24th of October, 2021 and titled “Electronic transmission of results and direct primaries” where we submitted that “political parties should be allowed to determine whether they prefer the direct or indirect modes of primary election for now. Whichever political party that fails to organise itself should be allowed to perish like some of them have done. Imposition is symptomatic of dictatorship which is undemocratic.” It’s obvious that the President is not against the Direct mode of nominating candidates as adopted by the National Assembly, he was simply against the undemocratic imposition of the Direct primary mode on all political parties, irrespective of their strength and capacity to handle such a mode for now. He opted for a more liberal, democratic approach of allowing the political parties to decide.
The President’s objections to the imposition of Direct mode of primaries also stemmed from some of his observed disadvantages of the Direct primary which can be summarised as high cost, security challenge of monitoring election, violation of citizens’ right, marginalization of small parties, likely litigations and possible manipulation. Most of these excuses have already taken place. Nobody is better placed than the President to understand what he is saying because he was nominated to run for the President in 2015 by Indirect primary and was nominated to run for the President in 2019 by Direct primary. In the last Anambra gubernatorial primary election, APC adopted the direct primary mode to conduct the election which produced Andy Ubah as its candidate. The whole aspirants rejected the result and insisted that there was no primary election. They headed to court where the court agreed with them that there was no primary election at all and declared that APC did not participate in the gubernatorial election in Anambra State. The Court went ahead to direct APC to refund the sum of about N22.5m to the aspirants who were duped by the party through a phantom direct primary that was never conducted. Meanwhile, this was an election in which the winner purportedly scored about 230,201 votes in the direct primary election to win but couldn’t score more than 43,285 votes in the general election. This justifies the President’s rejection of the imposition of Direct primaries based on likely litigations, possible manipulation and violation of citizens’ right to vote. This manipulation in Direct primaries stems from obvious absence of a properly compiled and electronically secured membership register of party members which enables the godfathers and the contestants to simply sit and write the results they like and deploy resources to influence the Ogas at the top to accept their results, thereby disenfranchising the members completely.
However, the most elaborate reason for rejecting the imposition of Direct primary is the high cost of organising it on INEC and the political parties. We have about 8,809 wards in Nigeria. The INEC must have enough resources to monitor the direct primary elections of about 18 political parties, plus the more that will be registered, on different days, in about 8,809 wards in Nigeria about 5 times before the general election. They have to monitor the primaries of the House of Assembly of the State, House of Representatives, Senate, Governorship and the President. Simple arithmetic shows that each party will organise the direct primary elections in 8,809 x 5 which equals to 44,045 places before the general election, while the 18 parties will hold primaries in about 792,810 places, to be monitored by INEC before the general election. This will be very costly in our present Nigeria. A nation that is riddled with debts should be considering options that should be more cost effective not options that will inevitably blossom the cost of elections and end up spiralling our debts. Each party must also have enough resources to procure the logistics necessary to conduct and monitor direct primary election in all parts of Nigeria because in the election of the President, the country is by law one constituency. In any case, they can’t even conduct the primaries in all parts of Nigeria because of security concerns which is prevalent in almost all parts of the country today. This also justifies the President’s rejection of the imposition of Direct primaries based on high cost, security challenge of monitoring election and marginalization of small parties.
All in all, the President acted as a statesman in advising the National Assembly to reconsider its position on the imposition of Direct primary on all the political parties and become more liberal in accommodating other options and allowing the political parties the option to decide. This looks more democratic because democracy is a system of government that thrives on choices. As for those that are sceptical that the President may be hiding under this pretext to frustrate the amendments of the Electoral Bill, I can tell you outrightly that they should bury the thought. The President is an honest man who says what he means. He will sign this Electoral Bill immediately the amendments are effected. As we enter into a New Year, may we all learn to love one another and work together peacefully and productively for our country. Congratulations for seeing a new year, especially you that is reading this column, and may God prosper and bless you in whatever you lay your hands to do in this New Year.