24 May 2012 By Salihu Moh. Lukman If
Nigeria's opposition parties ever hope to defeat the
PDP's stranglehold on Nigeria and the political
environment, the planning, mergers and alliances must
begin from now. Opposition parties must also promote
internal democracy by carrying out critical reforms in
the way the parties are run. Therefore, there is a
need to go back to the drawing board to re-examine the
rules and management of our parties to come with
dynamic party administrative structures. Part of the
requirement for registration as a political party by
the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC)
states that the party's constitution and rules must: This
has translated into the provision of uniform
structures with virtually the same designation of
officials across all the political parties. The
nomenclature, number and functions of the structures
and officials are virtually the same. What you find in
the PDP is almost word-for-word what you have in the
ACN, CPC, ANPP, Labour Party and others with respect
to structures and provisions of officials in the
constitutions of the party. The only variation is
where the parties' names are mentioned. All
our parties are governed by National Convention, Board
of Trustees, National Executive Committee, National
Working Committee, State Congress, State Executive
Committee, State Working Committee, Local Government
Area Congress, Local Government Area Executive
Committee, Ward Congress and Ward Executive Committee.
The small variation would be the existence of
Stakeholders/Elders structures at National, States,
Local Government Areas and Wards in different forms. In
terms of officials, all our parties have a minimum of
24 officials since the INEC registration requirement
stipulate that the "executive committee must belong to
different states not less than two thirds of 36 and
FCT". Arising from this, Nigerian political parties
all have a National Chairman, Deputy National
Chairman, Six National Vice Chairmen (one from each
geopolitical zone), National Secretary, Deputy
National Secretary, National Treasurer, Deputy
National Treasurer, National Financial Secretary,
Deputy National Financial Secretary, National
Organising Secretary, Deputy National Organising
Secretary, National Publicity Secretary, Deputy
National Publicity Secretary, National Legal Adviser,
Deputy National Legal Adviser, National Welfare
Officer, Deputy National Welfare Officer, National
Auditor, Deputy National Auditor, National Women
Leader and National Youth Leader. These
designations are cascaded down to states, local
governments and wards with slight variations. In all
cases, the main focus is not about recruitment or
providing services to members. References to
recruitment and services are hardly traceable in the
constitutions of all our parties. A quick explanation
would be the hurried way they were packaged in order
to meet INEC requirements and get registered as
political parties. A second explanation would be the
fact of originating from a common source given that
ANPP and AD were breakaways from PDP, ACN being formed
by AD leaders and splinter group of PDP, CPC being a
breakaway of ANPP, etc. The
questions would be: now that these parties are
opposing the PDP, why should they retain the same
structural outlook? Why should emphasis to membership
recruitment and services not be a major distinguishing
feature of these parties from the PDP? The answer is:
because the main focus of all our parties is to win
elections fairly or unfairly! Arising from this,
political practice and culture is the same across all
the parties. It is all about recruiting membership
based on individual aspirations for political offices,
capacity to buy/procure votes, employ thugs for
political campaigns, contract ballot box snatching and
capacity to organize rigging during elections. A
major determining factor therefore is financial
capability of individuals. Across all the parties,
once an individual aspirant is recruited with strong
financial capability, the party is surrendered to
him/her. Such a person would then proceed to
nominate/appoint party leaders from among his
loyalists. Accordingly, presidential aspirants
nominate/appoint party leaders at national levels and
gubernatorial candidates nominate party leaders at
states, local governments and wards levels. Candidates
for elections are also similarly recruited that way.
Presidential candidates recruits gubernatorial
candidates and gubernatorial candidates recruits other
candidates for lower offices from the ranks of
loyalists. As a result, a few individuals have become
the proprietors of our political parties.
Issues of participation and democracy are compromised,
professional management of parties ignored and
disciplinary conduct of members sacrificed. The
consequence is the preponderances of so many
unethical, unfair and uncivilized practices by party
leaders and public representatives of political
parties, including public officials. Knowledge, logic,
conventions, qualifications, skills and experiences
carry little weight. For instance, the Chairman,
Secretary, Publicity Secretary, Treasurer, Legal
Adviser, etc. of the party can be any ‘yes-person'.
Offices are reduced to territorial control with hardly
any focus on services. Cost considerations are hardly
regarded. It is more about access to resources. In
the circumstance, all party officials are full-time.
They are political, administrative and bureaucratic
leaders. In fact, the definition of structures in the
constitution of all our parties entrenches and
enforces this ambiguity. A good demonstration of this
is the fact that the Secretariat of the party, which
is supposed to be the administrative and bureaucratic
organ of the party, only ascribes its location, which
as the INEC rule provides should be Abuja, with
offices in state capitals, local government
headquarters and wards. There is hardly any further
definition with respect to functions and
responsibilities. Even provisions specifying that the
National Secretary shall be the head of the
Secretariat and its composition can only be assumed. Lack
of professionalism is therefore an inherent
characteristic of all our parties. Also, the absence
of viable democratic funding sources is a major
attribute of our parties. This partly accounts for why
the recent external auditors reports on the accounts
of political parties for the year 2010 released by
INEC produced virtually the same result. The summary
is:
a. Parties do not have internal audit reports and
accounts for the year under review (2010);
b. Conventional accounting books were not
properly maintained;
c. Budget and budgetary control were not in
place; and
d. The parties do not have a well defined fixed
assets register and assets were not labeled; In
addition, INEC reported the income and expenditure
claims of all the parties, which are hardly verifiable
given that there are no accounting books and budgets.
Interestingly, this is the situation with all the
parties with very minor differences. With no
exception, this report covers all the 63 registered
political parties in the country. And all the parties
have Treasurers, Financial Secretaries and Internal
Auditors. The question we need to ask is what are the
responsibilities of these officials? The
truth is that many of these officials don't even know
their responsibilities as provided in their respective
constitution. Besides, the constitutions of our
parties are in most cases blind or ambiguous on
matters of responsibilities for these officials. As a
result, our parties are at best models in bad
practices, inefficient and ineffective in service
delivery and excellent examples of dysfunctional
structures. This being the case, they cannot be the
harbingers of good and democratic governance. How
do we create a model party that can engineer the
development of democratic, efficient and effective
political organization that can mobilize Nigerians
based on an agenda of developing and harnessing the
resources of the country? This is not simply about
meeting INEC registration requirements. It is about
efficient mobilization and deployment of resources –
human resources especially. The
first reference point of our parties is mobilizing
citizens and strategically deploying them into public
services. From all evidences, our 63 existing
registered parties are anything but political parties
as far as human resource mobilization is concerned. As
for deployment into public service, it is more by
default on account of demands by aspiring politicians.
As a result, our parties are ambition rather than
inspiration driven. This is the factor which produced
the absence of choice. Choice, if it exists at all, is
more about the individual candidates and not the
party. A
crucial challenge before opposition parties in Nigeria
is the need to properly restructure internal party
organization with the objective of developing service
framework around which citizens' mobilization can take
place. Restructuring internal party organization would
require clear definition and delineation of
responsibilities. This would mean separating political
leadership from the administrative. It would also
further require outlining responsibilities of all
functionaries based on modern organizational
standards. In other words, there is the urgent need to
professionalize the workings of our parties if they
are to meet the expectations of Nigerians. A
situation where offices are designed based on
convenience and office occupants are recruited based
on personal loyalty is counter-productive and can only
breed undemocratic practices. Professionalizing the
operations of our political parties would necessitate
focus in two areas. These are membership mobilization
and party funding. The two are related. As it
were, it is the absence of focus in these two areas
that made our parties what they are – mere platforms
for contesting elections and not representatives of
any interest. To be able to mobilize membership would
entail making offers to specific interests' of
citizens. The strength of commitments to these offers
would determine financial contributions. Beyond offers
however, membership would be encouraged to make
contributions if they are guaranteed prudent
management of party resources. Also, apart from legal
requirements, good financial management is imperative
for the financial survival of parties and sin-qua-non
for internal democracy in the party. Financial
management should not be therefore only vested in the
hands of political leaders. Competent personnel with
requisite fundraising and bookkeeping skills must be
recruited and remunerated. In
addition to financial management, sound and proactive
communication strategies should drive our political
party membership mobilization programme. Therein lies
the role of propaganda, which is basically about
influencing the attitude of Nigerians towards
political and governance issues in the country. It is
the consistency of the message being conveyed and its
relevance to the realities of Nigerians that would
attract membership to the party. The main challenge is
to develop the internal capacity within our parties to
develop the messages and popularize them. It is not
simply the responsibility of a Publicity Secretary. It
is also imperative to consider the presence of
competent communication skills experts who can develop
the messages and create platforms for their
dissemination. This is not happening in any of our
parties today. The
other issue is the need to focus mobilization
specifically towards women and youths. This is because
women constituted about 50% of our population and
youths constitute more than 60%. Any party that is
popular to these categories of our population would be
guaranteed majority votes. Already, given the
provision for Women and Youth Leaders in the parties,
it can be argued that this is already recognized. What
is missing is the absence of clear mobilization
programmes or projects. Our parties need to
consciously invest resources to develop youth and
women mobilization programmes and projects. In
the debate about repositioning our parties, especially
opposition parties, if we are interested in achieving
a good measure of political and democratic progress as
a nation, all negotiating parties need to do at the
initial stage, is to prioritize issues of membership
mobilization and party funding with the objective of
developing a framework that would ensure delineation
of political and administrative responsibilities
within our parties. Good delineation would mean that
majority of our parties' political leadership are
part-time officials and very few are full-time.
However, it would also require that a conscious
decision is taken to recruit specialized financial and
communication experts to provide services to the
parties. This
would then define the day-to-day workings of the
party. In addition to these day-to-day workings of the
party, there are other periodic services that parties
must provide, which is not the case now. For instance,
the task of recruiting agents for elections can be
handled better by the party which can in the process
organize specialized trainings for them. As it is
today, in almost all the parties, the task of
recruiting agents is largely the responsibility of
candidates with little input from the party. Also, the
issue of managing the process of filing petitions
after elections can be better organized and handled by
the party. Many good cases have been lost on account
of poor handling by candidates and wrong choices of
lawyers. Given
all these, the challenge is for our opposition parties
to engage and negotiate political, administrative and
bureaucratic frameworks for service delivery. It will
be less controversial to have an agreement on these
issues. Once there is agreement on the need for these
reforms, it will be much easier to develop a strategy
on how to manage the resolution of more difficult
challenges such as the issue of leadership, staff and
candidates' recruitments. In
the context of our discussion of the need for ACN and
CPC to unite in order to present a stronger electoral
challenge to the PDP, these are the primary issues.
Capacity to have agreements on these issues would
fundamentally change the political outlook of our
parties. Comments 💬 التعليقات |