Politicians suffering from military era hangover —Nwagwu

Comrade Ezenwa Nwagwu, the chairman, Partners for Electoral Reforms, in this interview by OSARETIN OSADEBAMWEN, says political actors in the country still approach democracy with the hangover of the military era.

Besides the many shortcomings that have been obvious in governance in the country since 1999, what will you regard as the positives so far in our democracy?

I think that in looking at democracy in the last 20 years, we will have to look at the process of transition. We may have to interrogate different stages of the transition from military to civil rule; it will help us to appreciate our development so far. We are in the whole business of subjecting our armed forces and other institutions of government to civil rule in almost every facet of our engagement. The process has its burden on us and our public service in all of our engagement. That process has its own brush. We are not very patient, as a people this is something we inherited, we inherited an immediate effect mentality. For us, everything has to happen immediately; democracy is not like that. It is a process requiring a great deal of patience. We have to go through lawmaking process. We have to go through bargains, push, shoves from both the executive, judiciary and the legislature. All of these processes take time. Many times the people whom have been entrusted with public trust and political power do have that mentality, so they will want to ride a rough shod over the people.

That is one way we are dealing with it, as we try to become more civil, a critical element in a democracy.

Secondly, our leadership recruitment process is bedevilled by influence of moneybags. The deep pockets have hijacked the process. It did not start now. From 1999, it was the people who had money that registered political party. When they registered the political party, they took over the rein, they started giving people tickets. They did not like contest. Anything about contest annoyed them. You hear statements like ‘we will give you the ticket’. Even within the political parties, they did not like people to contest for position. Politics is a competitive enterprise; the people who registered the party and give tickets, do not want competition. Competition annoyed them. In many instances, those with political power ambushed the party and processes and turned them into parastatals. You saw political party events being held in government houses, in the Villa as against the party secretariat or some other neutral ground.

As we progressed to 2003, 2007, 2011, the whole arrangement of political organisation and administration were ambushed by the executive. We have instances where you could not become the local government chairman without being anointed by the governor, indeed, governors and the president became leaders of the party. Self-respected people were pushed out of the political party and if you are not anointed you can’t become anything. That is where the dysfunctionality that we have in our democracy started manifesting.

Then, do you subscribe to the call for fewer partyies, strong and vibrant enough to resist impunity and grow into institutions?

Educated people should not talk about regulation of political parties. This is because political parties evolve. You cannot decree on political party. It is about participation, it is about opening up the space; it is about increasing the number of members of a society to have a say in how they are governed. What you can do is to create conditions for them to conduct elections. If they need to meet certain conditions before they can contest for an election. You cannot open the space of contest to a selected few. It has to be that if you win certain number of position over a period of time, you may not be allowed to contest future elections because the right to exist is a fundamental human right; the right to assembly, the right to form and belong to a political party cannot be decree by legislation. In Britain, it is not just about the liberal and conservative or any other party. The number of seats you win determines your relevance in the political process.

It does not necessarily have to be a national party, in the United States of America, we have up to 400 political parties just about 14 or there about come on the ballot in every elections cycle.

In Nigeria, we registered 93 political parties all of them pretend to be national party. All of them pretend to want to contest in a national election in a country of 170million people. That is a deception.

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) or election management body or any other institution that might be created as a result of the push and the lessons we have learnt. We have to come to terms with the fact that every of those political parties cannot be on the ballot.

However, while they cannot all be in the ballot, they have right to exist and  their right to exist should not be denied.

Are you suggesting that parties should focus in their areas of strength and gradually work to the centre?

Absolutely! That is what it should be. The pretence that you are big when in actual fact, you are small is very bad especially for the party itself before we talk of the entire process. You see political party that say they are national parties and the party cannot muster 3000 votes and in the next election cycle, you still put them on the ballot! For what?