Proliferation of parties, a serious problem —Aiyede

Associate Professor Remi Aiyede of the department of Political Science, University of Ibadan, speaks on the registration of more political parties by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and what it portends for the country’s polity. KUNLE ODEREMI presents the excerpts:

YOU at some point talked about the formation of party as being proliferated. Why is it so at a time like this?

I think it is a trend because of the type  of ideology and the fall in the existence of man status and mostly party that do not exist within the context of traditional sub-spectrum . Rather what we have now are parties that are set up to deal with certificate issues, such as global warming, climate change and feminism and so on and so forth. So the traditional mass parties that are usually driven by ideology do no longer exist.

Do you think we are moving in the right direction?

Yes, we are moving in that direction, and we are likely to have a situation where we have over a hundred parties. This is also because apart from the ideological closure that we don’t have ideological parties, we also have situation where people form parties to form their political ambition. In Nigeria the rule is that if you are politician you decide the position you want to vie for and once you have that you look around to shop for party that will help you fulfill that ambition. If you are unable to get into the last party what you do is to see if you can set up a new party or adopt a weak party that you can popup to build support for yourself. He will use that platform as a basis to launch into the larger party to demonstrate your clout. And so largely because of the ambition of politicians and the individual selfish interest, that is why we are experiencing the proliferation of political parties.

How healthy do you think this  trend is to the political culture of the country?

It poses many challenges, in fact, one article written by the economy of London says “Too many parties spoil politics” that is the title of the article. Because when you have too many weak parties, the traditional roles that political parties play, so many of those parties would not be able to lay them effectively. For instance political parties are supposed to reduce politics into simple list of choices in which voters can pick from. These parties are not focused on those kinds of choices and because they are not seriously and they are not deeply institutionalized, we don’t have structure that will be able to do so. So the traditional roles of parties defining polity areas and policy function to choose from, they are not able to fulfill those simple roles. What you are likely to have are many weak and ineffective parties that will  be able to put their thought across the country. They may be able to fulfill the requirement for registration, but they may not be able to fulfill the requirements of registration but that do not translate into effectiveness even in terms of reaching out to voters. That doesn’t mean we don’t have effective parties, but they also draw from the strength of that parties by promoting division in that parties.

When you have so many political parties, it will be difficult for you to form a coalition or form an alliance.  4:39 min you people floating around looking for where they can achieve their aim.

That means their function will multiply, you have to supervise or monitor 10 parties is different from how you will monitor over 100 parties, these are some of the problems. You also have it as  challenges for voters.

What are the implications for the electorate?

It is a very serious problem, especially in an environment where political intrigues is very high. You remember the issue of multiplied ballots in Florida, the problem that was imposed for people to vote for one party rather than the other. In fact people were voting for one party thinking they are voting for the other. When you look at the situation that you have now, you find out that the parties are so close that voter won’t be able to differentiate one party from the others. When you have so many parties on the ballot boxes that is the challenges it tend to pose for the holders and election management body.

Should the country take another look at the conditions for registering of parties?

I don’t think so, because one of the fundamental rights of the citizen as entrenched in the constitution is the freedom of association and those are the global standard for democracy and election, people frown at any attempt to party registration difficult or preventing them from forming party, in fact any attempt against this is a sign of dictatorship, but there are criteria for an individual to nominate a candidate for a certain positions which is called ballot entry, and for you to put your candidate in the ballot entry there are rules and regulations that must be strictly adhered to, which is a way of regulate the many problems that might arise from having too many candidate for a single election because we have so many candidate that are likely to have ballot papers that are like table cloth or even bed sheet and that will be very difficult for the presiding officer and even the voters themselves, so in order to regulate this act some certain measures and criteria were implemented to allow ballot access.

What are some of those criteria considered as appropriate in other part of the world you would want to recommend for Nigeria?

For instance in a presidential election in the united states you are expected to have provided a candidate for in a number of state before you can put a candidate on the presidential ballot, and if you are a new party, you can’t be registered today and be allowed to present candidate tomorrow, it is expected that, if you are forming a new party, the party need time to organize and build itself and be strong enough to present candidate for an election. You can’t form a party today and promote a candidate tomorrow which is the case in Nigeria presently. There are also conditions that states that if you want to have a candidate in a presidential election as an old party it is expected that you should have won a one seat in the parliament for you to be able to do that. There are ,many  criteria that  you ought to adhere when you look at the formation of political parties across different countries. Even in Nigeria, there is criteria you have to follow before you can be able to nominate a  candidate for a position, if you don’t follow the process, is like conducting party primaries ensuring that the process is transparent and democratic. Those criteria can be expanded to include additional criteria that will limit the number of parties.

We don’t have that kind of problem in Nigeria yet, even in 2015 when we had about 60 parties, the highest number of the presidential candidates was 14 or so. In most states I think it was on a average of 13.3. some states has as low as three in gubernatorial election,  while some have 22. We don’t envisage a situation where you have over 50 in  a single ballot, like I said earlier that most of the parties are small and inconsequential. But even then we have to prepare for a situation where the number of candidate in the  ballot will increase, even if it does not go with the convenience of the voters. What we can do is to look at means of how to regulate ballot access through setting and not setting criteria. It is not about ballot access too, it also help the political parties to be institutionalized. So when a party know he cannot just go and present candidates tomorrow he have to first put his house in order. It will mitigate against a situation where you just lost a primary in one political party and you float to another party or form a new one. You remember a situation where few days to an election the court said someone was the legitimate aspirant and INEC was worried about if they will print another ballot paper. Those kinds of challenges the criteria should be such that you avoid that kind of situation.

Is there anything we can learn from the India experience which is believed  to be the largest democracy in the world?

They have over 1000  political parties,  but the case with India is that most of those parties operate at the regional level. So one of the lessons we can learn is that for parties to present candidates at the gubernatorial, the senate and the house of assembly, they don’t have to be a national party. But that is actually the difference, there are parties who don’t even think about presenting candidates at the presidential level. If we have parties that think in that direction. So, when we have parties that are able to operate at the regional level and we begin to do things like that. Many of the parties in India are not interested in all election, they don’t pose a general problem in terms of ballot access even at the gubernatorial and at the national level, so that is the lesson we can learn from the India experience.