Political parties sabotage electoral process through their activities, Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) chair Prof. Attahiru Jega alleged yesterday.
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo said some political parties operate without manifestos.
The duo spoke at the workshop organised by the National Institute for Legislative Studies in Abuja.
Senate President David Mark and Deputy Senate President Ike Ekweremadu underscored the need for discipline in political parties.
The former President noted that without discipline, no political party can endure.
He stressed the need for the electorate to hold political office holders accountable to their party manifestos.
Obasanjo regretted that political parties have reduced party manifestos to “mere instruments for political campaign”.
He added that most political parties throw away their manifestos shortly after being voted into office.
He said: “I want to say that there are some areas where political parties need improvement. One of them is on the issue of manifestoes. What I have come to see and understand in Nigeria is that manifestoes are prepared for campaigns and afterwards, they are thrown away.
“How then can we hold parties and their elected leaders to their promises and manifestoes? Or if they have no manifestoes, what do we hold them to?”
Jega, in a paper on “Party Politics and elections in Nigeria”, said: “There is exhibition of corruption and corrupt tendencies deliberately exhibited by the political parties. Electoral officials are usually blamed for declaring false electoral results but, in most cases this happen, it is because of tremendous inducement and pressure from political parties and from candidates. It’s incredible the amount of money that is budgeted. Political parties budget fund in terms of the amount to be given to security agencies, INEC or electoral officials, litigations and so on. Really, this is a very serious challenge in terms of the future deepening of democracy in our country. Of course, people can resist it and when people resist it, some other tendencies come on. We have to curb this exhibition of corrupt practices in our electoral process”.
He added that political parties exhibit poor organisation and mobilisation very clearly and it is no longer important to go out and sweat in terms of mobilising people for party programmes and certainly little action goes into what is prepared in the manifestoes.
According to him, intolerance and insensitivity generally characterised not only inter party relations but also intra party relations.
“By the time we moved into the new dispensation from 1999 onward, virtually every party, no matter big or small, had a youth wing, an armed wing and many people specialised in terms of the role that they play in providing arms or whatever for aggressive engagement and competition in politics. Virtually every party wants one way or the other to cut corners when it comes to party nominations. When it comes to party nomination, for example, we have seen how parties will put aside the provisions of their own constitutions, will actually substitute names without reference to democratic procedures. Section 31 of the electoral laws has a clause which says that the names of candidates submitted for any election cannot be changed, for whatever reason. The same section also defines the procedure by which candidates can also emerge from the party.”
Mark urged the panelists to direct their ingenuity on how to solve indiscipline, lack of cohesion, ideology drought and absence of internal democracy and transparency in political parties.
He added that a deep reflection should as well be given to the malady of intra and inter-party squabbles.
According to him, to effectively address the issues is to establish a definitive roadmap on how to consolidate and sustain the gains of democracy.
The Senate President noted that intra party squabbles arise mainly because political party affiliation is rarely anchored on ideology or any uniting and defined philosophy, but rather largely on crass opportunism.
This, he said, undermines the capacity of the political party to govern effectively, even after gaining political power.
He said: “The internal contradictions sired by the coming together of strange bedfellows breed convulsions, strife and upheavals which hamper the machinery of governance.
“In the most extreme of cases, as we had in the First and Second Republics , intra party squabbles combined with inter-party conflicts to scuttle the democratic experiment.
“Two vivid examples are the events leading to both the January 15, 1966 coup, and that of December, 1983.”
Mark insisted that modern representative democracy requires viable, ideology based political parties capable of providing clear policy options as evidence of a demonstrable capacity to govern.
He said: “Political parties ought not to be corrupt self-centered organisations dominated by power hungry elite who serve only their own interests, and those of their cronies. Political parties must serve the interest of the ordinary citizen.
“A political party must clearly stand for something.
“In our fragile democracy in which destabilising demons have suddenly found their voices and have been let loose in the new air of freedom, each political party has a duty to preach restraint, caution and political moderation.”
The political class, as a whole, he said, has the solemn duty of ensuring that Nigerians develop sustainable confidence in the country’s electoral and justice systems.
Mark noted that lobbying targeted at legislators is the act of attempting to influence legislation and resolutions made by the parliament.
To him, it is unfortunate that the term, “lobbying”, has come to acquire a pejorative connotation, despite its many inherent and positive benefits.
