Ayodele Okunfolami
A Federal High Court has stopped the Independent National Electoral Commission from deregistering 31 political parties. The suit which was filed by 33 political parties followed the deregistration of 74 political parties by the electoral body earlier in February. INEC had claimed it was exercising its constitutional rights to strip parties that didn’t meet the requirements to remain on the ballot when it announced the deregistration of the political parties. INEC was quite empirical in its approach. It just didn’t go about disrobing the political parties randomly, it used their electoral performances in the last general elections in which these political parties didn’t win any seat. Must a political party win to affirm its continued existence? The answer is yes.
Unlike pressure groups, civil society organizations, nongovernmental organizations or any other political concerns, political parties are set up primarily to win elections for the sake of being in government. And according to INEC’s incontrovertible evidence, these parties were found wanting. After all, if INEC has the right to register, it is just commonsensical that it should have the right to withdraw such registration if and when necessary. Another way to look at it is that election is a competition. And like many professional sports, there are seasonal promotions to the main league and relegations to the minor league following certain performance benchmarks. What INEC simply did, as it has done in the past, is to “relegate” these 74 parties for not fulfilling their terms for remaining in the premier division. Besides these parties’ polls performance, many Nigerians see them as a nuisance on the ballotflummoxing the voter all the more. Accommodating them makes the ballot paper unnecessarily bulkier and more expensive to produce.
So, one wonders why these political parties are contesting a decision that was well celebratedby majority of Nigerians if the vox pop in the electronic and wireless is anything to go by. If these deregistered political parties are dogged in moving against a seemingly popular decision, it presents them as political parties that could shun the voice of the electorate or that of established institutions for their own parochial interests.
These parties have also not helped their cause in their wintry custom of hibernating from the political scene only to show up once in four years. They preach the “third force” or “third alternative” message only as it pertains presidency. Elections or politics is not only about the who presides from Aso Rock. Where was the third force in Bayelsa and Kogi? Is the voter going to have any for Edo and Ondo or other legislative off season byelection besides the usual PDP-APC? In the last general elections, over 70 candidates vied for the presidency and an average of 40 per gubernatorial seats and 20 per legislative unlike the big PDP and APC that fielded candidates for every elective post. This is where they keep missing it by keeping their eye only on executive seats. INEC’s requirements is simply to win a state legislative seat which in some constituencies is as small as a handful of political wards. Any serious party should be able to achieve that even if it is for the sake of retaining their registration and capitalizing for future elections.
Unfortunately, because these parties are not pan-Nigerian in physiognomy, they are only seen as platforms for politicians who present themselves as puritans who are not only discontent with the PDP-APC duopoly but also can’t align with any other already existing parties. They are bereft of any inclusive ideology outside the identity of their presidential candidates that is enough to capture any particular demography. At the end of the elections, their results appear only in hundreds, tens and units. Even the APCs and PDPs that have history, spread and cash, still bank on the sentimental votes of certain geopolitical regions or the endorsements of professional bodies, socio-cultural groups. But these small parties with serial failures keep wishing the electorate would uncharacteristically change their age long voting patterns away from the dominant binary options.
Another argument INEC’s action generated was the number of political parties that should be ideal for a polarized nation like Nigeria with her multiple complexities at the same time not disenfranchising certain ideologies or demographics. Like other established democracies,“market forces” of the political space havealso forged Nigeria into a dominant two-party system wheredozens of other “small” parties flex their muscles. It is the number of these other alternatives that is usually debated. One thing is clear, two parties have never been forced down the throats of Nigerians, aside the fiat of the hoodwinked third republic. Nigerian democracy has always beenmultipartied, what irritates the Nigerian voter is pretenders on the ballot paper and not the number of options.
One can understand the nagging insistence of these parties wanting to participate in the general elections. First, they have the right to float a political party and in turn field candidates as long as they fulfil the constitutional requirements. Secondly, with the dividends of democracy still a mirage, they will want to continue to raise the hopes of the electorate as the alternatives to the status quo. However, they should be more tactical.
I previously mentioned the oligopolistic nature of democracies that thins options into indifferentiable choices, so that the dissimilarities of the leading political parties are blurred. It is this pretense of choices this wonky electoral democracy presents that is making the European and American elector throw the dice on far-right populism. This is what is making the Republicans and Democrats in America, Conservatives and Labour in the United Kingdom, and other binaries of developed democracies to be less moderate and centristto more distinguishable campaigns and ideologies. These smaller parties can cash in on this. They should work on themselves and build workable programmes that is indigenous to them and sell it to Nigerians. They should also be transparent and democratic in their internal affairs because PDP and APC may have their share of woes, both have sustained organizational structure with membership that cuts across ethnic lines, open conventions and primaries etc. The culture of just picking anybody as flagbearers only because the fellows possess a degree of hutzpah have not done these small parties any good. There should be a democratic way where interested party members can vie and canvass for support amongst themselves before they are presented to the larger electorate.
Finally, they should unhesitatingly wake up before the alarm clock of the next elections because INEC will again open the windows for party registration.
okunfolami writes from Lagos via@ayookunfolami