In a democratic setting, a primary election is a process where members of a political party indicate their choice of candidate in an upcoming election. It is designed to take the power of the candidate’s nomination from party leaders to the people and it has its origin in the United States of America. It can be an open or closed election. In an open primary election, all registered voters can take part while only party members can take part in in the closed primary election. In our system in Nigeria, the closed system is usually the norm. The recently concluded primary elections by all the political particles vying for elective offices in the upcoming 2019 elections have shown the fragile underbelly of our political structures and the unpleasant political temperament of our politicians. The conduct and the controversies on the results show that our politicians want to win at all cost and if they cannot have their ways, they have no qualm to jump ship to join other parties. They also want to cling to power so as to represent the people whether the people want them or not.
The first primary election that caught my attention was the one conducted in 1959 by the then NCNC party to choose the party’s candidate for the safe Ilesa Urban seat at the then Federal House of Representatives in Lagos. Three top leaders of the party in the town wanted to be the NCNC candidate to contest this safe seat for the party. They were Mr. Tunji Olowofoyeku, the party’s national legal Adviser, Mr. Tunji Ogunbiyi, a lawyer and the chairman of Ijesa Southern District Council and Mr. Yinka Siyanbola, the secretary of the party at Ilesa. None of these three was prepared to step down and this situation was causing a very serious division within the party. It took the political ingenuity of the leader of the party then, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe to settle the nomination problem. He did this by constituting all the NCNC councillors in the four district councils in Ijesa division into an electoral college and asked them to vote in a fashion similar to the present indirect primary system. In the end, Tunji Ogunbiyi came on top through this process and went to win the seat convincingly for the party at the federal election in December 1959.
The episode narrated above took place when the country was running a parliamentary system of government, and since the advent of presidential system of government in 1979, the use of primary elections had been more entrenched. Each party by law is obliged to carry out primary elections to choose people for all the elective posts in all elections. Such primaries are by law observed by the electoral umpire which now goes by the name Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). Such primaries could also be observed by local and international observers.
A cursory look into the past since we started the use of primary election in our presidential system would show that the conduct of primary elections had always been a sort of Achilles heels of our political parties. In the past, some political parties especially those holding the reins of power usually suffered serious turbulence after the conduct of primary elections. In the democratic dispensation between 1979 and 1983, the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) led by Chief Obafemi Awolowo was almost torn asunder as a result of the primary elections to elect the party’s gubernatorial candidates in the South Western states of the country, where the party was the ruling party. In Lagos State, the primary election that endorsed Alhaji Lateef Jakande to contest the 1983 gubernatorial election did no go well with Senator Sikiru Shitta-bey who left the party to join the rival National Party of Nigeria (NPN). In Oyo State, there was a fierce battles between the incumbent Governor, Chief Bola Ige and his deputy Chief Sunday Afolabi and Chief Adelakun, a commissioner in Bola Ige’s government. The two did not support Chief Bola Ige’s second term, and when they could not prevent this, dumped the UPN for NPN. The same scenario played out in Ondo State where Chief Akin Omoboriowo after failing to prevent the incumbent governor, Chief Adekunle Ajasin from having a second term crossed over to NPN with his supporters. During this period, the other major parties, the NPN, NPP and PRP did not have much problem after the conduct of their primary elections.
In the present democratic dispensation that started in 1997, the conducts of primary elections have also had far reaching repercussions on the cohesion and unity of political parties. In the run up to the presidential election conducted in 1997, one of the leading parties, the Alliance for Democracy (AD), had its unity and cohesion fractured after conducting an indirect primary election to choose the party’s flag-bearer for the election. The indirect primary conducted by the leaders of the party at D’Rovan Hotel brought out Chief Olu Falae as the party’s flag-bearer for the election and this did not go down with the second contestant, Chief Bola Ige and his supporters. The party did not recover from the schism arising from the primary election and its aftermath is still very much evident in the politics of the Yoruba people of Southwest till today. Progress in our democratic dispensation was mangled in the PDP during this period when President Obasanjo held sway. After winning the primary election that made him the presidential candidate of PDP in 1997, he muzzled subsequent primaries in the party by imposing candidates for presidential, gubernatorial and other elective offices on the party. However, the attempt in 2015 by President Goodluck Jonathan to be the presidential candidate of the party without facing other candidates in any primary election led to the defections of some governors and lawmakers to form nPDP which subsequently joined other parties to form the APC. The APC subsequently won the presidential election of that year because of its spread and became the dominant party in the country since then.
The destabilizing virus inherent in the conduct of primary elections in Nigeria is now afflicting APC, the ruling party in Nigeria with many notable members of the party which include governors and lawmakers voicing openly their disapproval of the way the primary elections were held. Those in this group are Governor Yari of Zamfara, Governor Amosun of Ogun State, Arakunrin Akeredolu of Ondo State and Governor Rochas Okorocha of Imo State who is bent on making his son-in-law succeed him. Also in this group are party leaders like Osita Okechukwu, the Director- General of Voice of Nigeria and unrelenting supporter of the president from the Southeast and Shehu Sani who has since resigned from the party. At present, the party has issues with the conduct of its primaries in Ogun, Kaduna, Zamfara, Rivers, Imo and Ondo states. Some governors are currently on a war path with the chairman of the party, the feisty Comrade Adam Oshiomhole. It is being alleged that that some governors are planning his removal as chairman and in order to frustrate this move, the Comrade has got the chairmen of the party in the South-south geo – political zone to pass a vote of confidence in him. From the look of things in the party, Comrade Oshiomhole would need the patience of Job with Solomonic wisdom to get his party in good shape for the 2019 elections, as a result of the fallout from the primaries conducted by the party under his watch. In this primary election saga afflicting APC, it is interesting to note that the umpire, INEC is trying to assert its independence by saying that since APC as a party did not conduct any primary election in Zamfara State, then the party is ineligible to present candidates for governorship, National Assembly and state assembly positions. The APC will need a court judgement to upturn this INEC decision.
As written earlier, primary elections to choose people for elective offices are an acceptable norm in a democracy. It ensures that elected officers are truly the people’s choices. It is part of the beauty of democracy. In Lagos, a sitting governor and a sitting senator were rejected by their party through very transparent indirect primary elections, presumably because they have lost the confidence of their party members. Despite its importance, primary elections can be manipulated by the people who oil the political machinery even in advanced democracy as it used to happen in Chicago in the sixties under the legendary Mayor Daley. At present in the United States of America, Senator Jeff Blake of Arizona would not be going back to the senate because he felt that he could not win his party primary election due to the fact that most of the members of his party in Arizona are fervent supporters of President Trump who he had opposed openly on principles. Also, many Republican congressmen opposed to President Trump had been denied another term in the congress by their party. There is also a report coming out of Britain, that Labour Party officers loyal to the Labour Leader, Jeremy Corbyn are alleged to be going round the constituencies to campaign against the return to parliament of MPs who are not loyal to Corbyn. It is my hope that future primary elections conducted by the political parties in Nigeria will be more transparent and less rancorous as primary elections have come to stay as part and parcel of our democratic dispensations.
- Professor Lucas writes from Old Bodija, Ibadan.
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