INTRODUCTION

Should there be re-imposed a two-party system a la Babangida of the SDP/NRC "a little to the left, a little to the right" fame - as recently being canvassed again by the man himself (see attached) -  rather than the present apparently unwieldy 50-party system a la Obasanjo/Iwu?

Absolutely not!

Rather, what we need is room for a multi-party system where as many parties as possible flourish - with room for both national and sub-national (state) spread, but with strict provisions for grass-root membership and vote attainment as prerequisites for federal and state financial support and display on future election ballots.  We also need some electoral reform about INEC and the conduct of elections.

Let me explain.

PARTY MEMBERSHIP & STATE FUNDING

A political party without grassroot membership that financially supports it is an opportunistic political club of moneybags.  This is what we currently have in Nigeria, where no party can boast of 100,000 dues-paying members, not to talk of 1 million such members.  Thus you have one, two or no more than twenty people putting down hundreds of millions or even billions  of naira each - and canvassing money from some non-political businessmen with an eye for contracts in the future - money that is then used to fund all the activities of the party.

That is a recipe for godfatherism and the ignoring of the citizenry when the political party gets into power.

To avoid such anti-democratic tendencies, an electoral reform process must encourage grass-root membership of parties by mandating political parties to demonstrate SUBSTANTIAL support by such members, and DISCOURAGE an inordinate amount of party funding by any small-size set of individuals.

For example, suppose there are 60 million Nigerians in our voting population, and we start out by assuming that there will be six strong political parties, each on average with 10 million party members.  Then each member paying no more than N1,000 each as annual membership fee would give each party N10 billion to run its affairs every year. 

That is a lot of money.

But let us be more realistic and assume that no party will be able to garner 10 million paying members.  However, the law can state that:

1.  each party shall stipulate a membership fee of no more than N1,000 each (or whatever is consistent with average wage or economic conditions in Nigeria);

2.  the total non-dues DONATIONS to the party shall not exceed what is received from the membership fee stipulated.  The number of persons who make such donations shall be no less than 1% of the registered membership of the party.

3.  law shall require federal (and/or state) matching of 10 times of whatever each party has collected as membership fees and donations by March of each year.

I shall refer to the above as  RULES SET A.

Thus, if a party has only 500,000 paying members (at N1,000 each), and somehow manage to get internal matching donations of N500,000,00 by no less than 5,000 of its members, then the federal (or state) matches 10 times what is total collected sum, that is the party will have N11 billion in its kitty.

PARTY SUCCESS AT THE POLLS: FUNDING AND APPEARING ON THE BALLOT

Political parties primarily exist to offer alternative visions and then attract voters to themselves in order to capture power either  nationally or locally.  The capture of such power cannot be expected to be quick or immediate for all parties.  However, one expects that from election to election, political parties with favorable platforms will capture increasingly the imagination of more of the voters, and hence increasingly their votes.

Such parties should be rewarded with state financial support, which should not however be automatic.

Hence let us suggest some stipulations with respect to FINANCIAL SUPPORT and APPEARING ON THE BALLOT.

1.    Rules Set A above kicks in for ALL POLITICAL PARTIES at the very start of the new rules.

2.    We must assume and INSIST on free and fair elections thereafter; this is crucial.

3.    Only EXISTING political parties which participated at all in the previous election would be eligible for support based on Rules Set A and be featured on the ballot in the new election. There should be NO ROOM for political parties to receive state funding and yet stay completely on the sidelines of canvassing for votes.

4..  For those parties that participated to be eligible for funding based on Rules Set A above AND to be featured on the ballot in the new elections, they must have won some seats in state and national elections in the immediate previous general elections.  We may have to specify the minimum number of seats required - say 1% of seats contested for. 

and/or

5.  For those parties that participated to be eligible for funding based on Rules Set A above AND to be featured on the ballot in the new elections, they must have won a certain percentage of votes in a general election such as the Presidential or Gubernatorial elections in their state. We may have to specify the minimum number of votes required - say 1% of those cast.

6.  Only those parties should be given state financial support, and be shown on the ballot in the next round of general elections, but voters will be allowed to WRITE-IN whatever party they want, obviously including those NOT shown on the ballot.  That way, new or existing parties might still win enough seats and qualify in the next set of elections.

If these rules had been applied in the 2007 elections based on the 2003 elections, we would have had only about 7 political parties, which are not too many for a country with 140 million people.

The rules should certainly be applied in 2011.

NATIONAL SPREAD OF PARTIES SHOULD NOT BE REQUIRED

There should be NO requirement for parties to have NATIONAL SPREAD - that is in terms of membership and offices.  Free association promotes democracy.  However, obviously, based on the rules above, regional or locally-restricted political parties will NOT get FEDERAL financial support, but may actually get STATE financial support based on their membership contributions and voter strength in the state.

INDEPENDENT CANDIDACY SHOULD BE ALLOWED

Independent candidacy should be allowed, but an authenticated list of (say) 1% of the registered voters in 2/3rd of the electorate districts - which are states for the presidential, local governments for the gubernatorial and relevant number of wards for other positions -  must be required before such independent candidates are listed.  It should not just be ANYBODY who gets up and wants to be an Independent candidate that should be listed on a ballot paper.

(INDEPENDENT) NATIONAL & STATE (INDEPENDENT) ELECTIONS COMMISSIONS

For INEC and SIECs to be truly independent:

1.  they should be placed under the Judiciary and certainly not under the Executive;

2.  their chairpersons should be sitting or retired Judges, who should have tenure for ten years unless removed for cause;

3.  their funding must be first charge line-item

4.  their membership must have nominations from the Executive, the Legislature, from some of the Political Parties and from Civil Society.

5.  INEC should run ONLY national elections (Presidency, Senate and House of Representatives) while the SIECs should run all state-level elections (Gubernatorial, State Assemblies, Local Government).

Otherwise, we should drop the pretense of independence.

TERMS OF OFFICE & STAGGERING OF ELECTIONS

The set of offices that we refer to here are Presidential, Gubernatorial, Legislative (National and State), and Local Government.

1.  Presidential term should be one five-year term, with possibility of succession only once, but without possibility of self-succession. Thus a president must leave after one term, but can come back only once more, but not immediately.

2.  Gubernatorial should be four-year term, with possibility of succession only once, including self-succession.

3.  Senate should be four year term; House; State Assembly and Local Government should be three year terms without term limits, except for Local Government Chairman, which shall have possibility of succession only once, including self-succession.

4.  Related to the different terms - and somewhat as an outcome - elections should be deliberately STAGGERED,  both WITHIN each set of positions and ACROSS time so that there is no more than half of ALL members of a legislative house can be changed all at once, and no more than half of the states are having gubernatorial elections at any given time.

The above should start in 2011.

THE ELECTION PROCESS IS NOT ROCKET SCIENCE - 12 MONTHS AND THAT IS IT!

I am pressed to identify the key steps in any set of elections:

The above election process should NEVER be greater than twelve months: nine months from whistle-blow to announcing the results conclusively, and three months to attend to complaints before installing winners. If the steps above are rigorously adhered to without a "mago-mago" INEC (as we saw in April 2007), twelve months will be ample.

EPILOGUE

I rest my case.  Your comments are welcome.

Babangida in a recent The Sun interview:

Back to two-party system   

If you ask my honest opinion, 50 political parties appear too unwieldy to manage if we are really talking about national integration. Given our experience and history, what we desire to see is a combination of factors that bring us closer as a united country. That was what informed our two-party system of the 90s. When we took that decision, some Nigerians gave a different interpretation to our patriotic intention, but as it appears today, we can't run away from such option.   

We can streamline the present political parties to five, among which two will be stronger than the remaining three, and perhaps introduce independent candidacy from the local government level through the states to Federal elections. In order to prevent abuse of such option, we can set stringent rules for any independent candidate to meet, just like the registration of political parties. Many people who are genuinely interested in becoming local government chairmen for example, would have opportunity to participate once they meet the criteria set out for them. And the process will run through to the state and the Federal levels.

Of course we will need Constitutional amendment to accommodate such proposition but talking seriously, I think we are ripe for independent candidacy to complement the two-party option. Nigerians should be preaching tolerance and peaceful co-existence because of our multiplicities.

 If we have two party system for example, this culture of cross-carpeting will reduce and no matter where you come from, you will be compelled to find accommodation in X or Y party. That way, robust debate and issue-based dialogue will prevail over and above an individual's selfish desire. We will then use that process to learn new ways of living together and solving our problems. Nigeria is a peculiar country; hence we need to improvise peculiar ways and methods to address our peculiar problems

Robot  Villager

# 1 var sbtitle9446=encodeURIComponent(Some Quick ...Read the full article. Posted by Robot| 28.12.2007 03:19

NWANZA  Villager

# 2 Thank you my brother for posting this article at this point in our history. I believe issues like this is what we should be discussing in NVS, and round up some good ideas that can help Nigeria get where it is destined to be. Personally, I think a handful of parties is all we need to achieve a dynamic political process. Two or three strong ones, and the other two supporting ideas that balance the need of voters to desired outcome. The 50 or so parties we have right now should be whittled down to five or less, so we can build a viable opposition movement. The need for a strong opposition party to battle for voters in a democracy cannot be overlooked, understated, or neglected. Posted by NWANZA| 28.12.2007 04:21

overdryv  Villager

# 3 You asked for comments and you'd surely get it from me. How about jettisoning this democracy of a thing and look more inwards for solutions. I may not be adept in political science like you but my instincts tell me that Nigeria has been falling and stumbling like a new baby learning how to walk for too long. What you are advocating is a continuation of politics of exclusion by our corrupt elite. The bigger masses out there have never had an input into our political decisions. There are just puns in the hands of politicians. Democracy or lack of it has never been our problem. What we need is a re-orientation of our people and a restructuring of the country. For all I care, one person could continue to rule till the second coming of Jesus as long as such ruler is fair to everybody. But such a thing is a near impossibility in Nigeria since people owe their primary loyalty to their ethnic groups. For too long we have deceived ourselves that democracy is the most ideal form of government but a critical look at it shows it to be unsuitable for us. Democracy encourages strife and has in-built corruption. I will explain this: If an election takes place between two parties and one party wins with 51%, you dont expect peace to reign with 49% opposition. In the same vein, a presidential candidate is funded by money bags and eventually won. Later the president rewards such money bags with ministerial appointments. You dont expect such ministers not to temper with allocations given to them. The chief aim for making them ministers is to be able to recoup their campaign expenses. Is this not in itself corruption? What about wastes? For decades, Nigeria had thrown several billion naira into elections that either dont hold or are canceled. This is a big waste of resources that would have been put to good use of the people. Most of the money voted for elections are used to compensate the INEC chairman who was appointed in the first place to make sure the incumbent or a favoured candidate is return by hook or crook. Multi partyism is no doubt a recipe for corruption and confusion. We all saw what happened during the last election. As in everything typical Nigeria, some parties which have no chance of capturing 0.5% of all votes were formed just to get government grant. We must endeavour to do first things first. Appointing justices as electoral body chairmen is a good idea but we must make sure such persons do not belong to secret societies like ogboni and freemason. Any talk of electoral reforms and multipartyism would be an exercise in futility without restructuring the country. We have to look at how the states or regions could be self governing. Your mention of IBB and two party system was in bad faith. How can someone who formed two parties as government parastatals and engaged in an unending transition come out to tell us what must be? How many billions went into that venture? To conclude, I'd say as attractive as democracy is, it does not suit us as a primitive and illiterate people. What we need are honest and corrupt-free people to handle our affairs in well defined nationhood. With such people any system could do. Posted by overdryv| 28.12.2007 09:01