By Aiyeku Timothy
A former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Umar Ghali Na’Abba, has blamed state governors for the absence of internal democracy in political parties.
Speaking on Monday, he accused the governors of hijacking all elective offices by deciding those to run for all elective posts, adding that most of them have denied their people the dividends of democracy.
His words: “So, through this process, the governors have hijacked the politics from the people. In the last few years, you find out that people troop to government houses for them to be anointed by the governors.”
According to him, the ills have obliterated internal democracy as people cannot run and win elections in the political parties if they are not in the good books of the governors, which is the reason why the polity has become less vibrant, and this has affected many institutions of governance
“For example, today if you go to state assemblies, you will find out that most of them do not even know how to manage not to talk or even legislate. We, therefore, have a situation whereby state governors take control of the political parties they hold election in; they decide, therefore, most of the times what we have during primary elections are delegates’ elections and they decide what delegates participate in the election and they decide who is even elected so that anybody who is not in the good books of the governor cannot contest and win elections in the parties successfully,” he said.
Na’Abba also warned that obliteration of internal democracy has far-reaching effects, adding that that is why the country’s economy has refused to grow, “the polity has refused to grow, our political parties have not been allowed to grow; so, nothing is growing in this country; we are in a vicious cycle and that is why we have this situation where all the indices of a failed state are with us.”
Na’Abba said merchants had hijacked the polity thereby leading to the erosion of internal democracy in the political parties.
He said: “We need to get Nigeria’s political party back to a situation whereby internal democracy must be strictly observed in our political party and sanction must be imposed on any person who sabotages internal democracy because we are losing a lot of things. If you look at the quality of leadership in this country from 1990 to date, it has been falling. Look at the quality of leadership, look at what we have today and it is going to continue and it is not going to improve. We have to take this issue very seriously,” he stated.
“My experience and understanding in the last 20 years is that mercantilism has crept into our polity and that merchants have arrested our political system. They have captured our political system to the effect that whenever anybody seeks office, they need to have capital; either his own capital or must be sponsored by certain people.
“But what is worse is that you find out that this situation has been leading us to a situation where there is more corruption on a daily basis in politics because a lot of people participate just to come and steal as much as they want and go away with it,” he added.
Na’Abba concluded by stating that many politicians in the country are frustrated because they cannot participate in elections.
“They have been marginalised and they cannot do anything about it because of this issue of mercantilism,” he said
