You've probably read all about it and formed your opinions by now. In case there is anyone who hasn't, you can read about the first 28 de-registered parties in this report from This Day, and the 3 additional de-registered parties from the Nigerian Guardian.
A lot of these parties were non-functioning. Many, if not most, were "briefcase" parties, to be offered (for a price) to ambitious politicians who had lost in another party's primaries and were looking for a platform-of-convenience from which to run for the office anyway.
Quite a lot of our politicians hop around from party to party, looking to settle in whichever one allows them to run in the immediately approaching election. The way it happens in practice is cynical and immoral, but in theory there is nothing wrong with this in terms of democracy. I don't particularly like politicians (and citizens) who are rigidly wedded to a particular party or ideology, and I am not opposed in theory to politicians and voters moving from one party to another.
Among the de-registered parties, there are one-man parties. These are not so much "parties" as they are the brand name of a particular political individual.
This can be a problematic thing, as when the late Alhaji Olusola Saraki used the Allied Congress Party of Nigeria as a tool in what was essentially an intra-family feud. The late godfather of Kwara politics wanted his daughter, Senator Gbemisola Saraki, to replace his son, Governor Bukola Saraki, as Kwara State Governor. Since Bukola had control of the state's branch of the PDP (seizing said control from his father), the late godfather more or less created or recreated the ACPN as a platform for his daughter to challenge his son's preferred successor (i.e. his son's political godson).
On the other hand, there is nothing wrong with this in terms of democracy, and in the context of Nigeria, where mainstream politics is inherently problematic, it can even be a good thing, in an ineffective sort of way. The National Conscience Party was for a long time the personal political vehicle of the late Chief Gani Fawehinmi. I agreed with Chief Fawenhimi's stance on many issues, and respected his courage to speak loud where others were silent with fear. I disagreed with his views on certain other issues. But it would have been a travesty to de-register his party based on some arbitrary INEC decision. Since Fawehinmi's death, it appears his son is attempting to keep the party alive. I wish him luck.
Perhaps a better example is the Peoples Redemption Party, which was de-registered, unlike the NCP. The PRP is now a personal political vehicle for Balarabe Musa, the 76-year-old ex-Governor of Kaduna State during the Second Republic. In theory, Balarabe Musa is trying to carry on the political tradition of the late Mallam Aminu Kano, a legendary figure in Kano State, Hausaland, Northern Nigerian and Nigerian politics. I am not sure how effective Balarabe Musa has been at continuing his mentor's politics in practice, but de-registering the PRP is something that is only possible in a country of arbitrariness, constitutional confusion, and a profound lack of appreciation of history. The First Republic's Northern Elements Progressive Union, and it's Second Republic continuation as the Peoples Redemption Party, were both, to a large extent, the personal political vehicles for the late Mallam Aminu Kano, but that did not diminish the importance and the impact of both parties on the Federal Republic. Is it really the business of the Electoral Commission to decide to junk a party with such history?
Seriously, what business is it of INEC?
Unlimited "freedom" doesn't exist anywhere in the world, and never has, contrary to the self-congratulation of certain commentators in certain countries. I am not advocating unlimited freedom to form organizations; I do think registered and recognized political parties should largely be congruent with Nigerian society and culture. To use an absurd example, if someone wanted to start a local branch of a racist European or American political organization in Nigeria, I do not think we are under any obligation to grant it recognition or civic protections. I was going to give an example of one of these racist organizations, but I don't want the internet to direct people searching for things like that to this blog. I have the same view of internal "racism" (if you can call it that), and do not believe a political organization
advocating violent attacks by one Nigerian community against any other Nigerian community should receive civic recognition or protection.
But so long as a political party or organization exists in normal Nigerian political space, it should not be the prerogative of the Electoral Commission to decide which political parties can or cannot be registered. If it is too unwieldy to manage the list at the federal level, then lists of registered entities should be maintained at the Third Tier of governance.
Perhaps there can be a minimum threshold of some kind for a party's candidate to be placed on the ballot, though these sort of rules (in Nigeria and everywhere else in the world) have a tendency of ruling out regular citizens and leaving politics in the hand of ... people who are less than ideal for the task.
Definitely, INEC should discontinue the practice of making payments to the registered parties. The Electoral Commission justified its actions in part by saying that some of the parties were created so the party owners can collect subsidy payments from INEC without actually doing any politicking with the money. But why is INEC giving any of them money in the first place?
If money must be given to support the smaller parties, there should be some kind of qualification, with the amount of money given tied to the degree to which a party meets or exceeds that qualification. For example, funds might be given only to parties that win a certain number of seats, with a higher sum given to those who win more seats. This should be based on the cheapest seats to run for, since it is difficult for a smaller party to win any kind of seat without support funding in the first place. Currently, the cheapest seat to run for is a local government council seat -- winning just one or two of these should earn a party a bigger infusion of support cash than they would get per seat for each subsequent seat. Of course, this won't be a perfect system (I still wonder why INEC is in the business of paying anything to the parties), but it is better than randomly de-registering parties.
A lot of people's instant reaction to the news of INEC de-registering 31 would have been to support it because they think Nigeria has too many political parties. Usually these people trot out foreign-country examples of "two party systems", portray this as being the ideal, and point to the admittedly odd sight of African countries with as many as 15 people running for President.
I am tempted to launch into an explanation of why the much-hyped "two party system" is not as ideal or optimal as the hype portrays it to be. But I think such a thing is best reserved for a volume of books, and not a blog ....
.... and a quicker, more shorthand thing to say would be to remind everyone that we are talking about the Federal Republic of Nigeria, a specific place with specific people, a specific set of cultures and a specific society. Shift away from the notion that there is a single, perfect way that EVERY country must be. Shift away from the obsession some Africans have with creating mimicry and facsimiles of everything they see in other countries, even if those things are specific, organic outgrowths of those other countries' specific histories, and have no relevance to Nigeria or Africa.
Instead of trying to shoehorn Nigerian into the political system of some other country, why don't we allow the political system of Nigeria be expressive of the Nigerian society, which is not a two-party society welded and wedded to something called "the left" and something called "the right".
It didn't make any sense when General Ibrahim Babangida attempted (or pretended to attempt) to shoehorn Nigerian into the Social Democratic Party and the National Republican Convention.
It doesn't make sense today when opposition politicians talk about creating a giant opposition alliance to challenge the Peoples Democratic Party.
And it only added fuel to a dangerous fire when the First Republic parties amassed into the United Progressives Grand Alliance and the Nigerian National Alliance.
Balarabe Musa's PRP might be inconsequential in the grand scheme of the Fourth Republic, but it is a more organic outgrowth of Nigerian society and politics than any of these other schemes.
And a massive part of the problem with Post-Colonial Africa has been the persistence of the Colonial Paradigm -- the existence of "governments" and (more importantly) systems of governance that have no real or virtual connection to the people and lands they purport to govern. Our governments are indifferent to us, and we are indifferent to our governments. Thus the tragedy of the commons, where nobody feels the need to maintain or secure a thing because nobody feels any sense of ownership of or responsibility toward the thing.
We the people can starve to death and the governments don't care because there is no mechanism for transferring or translating our desperation (or our anger) to the governments.
Conversely, one day, everyone could be hailing the supposed economic miracle of Cote d'Ivoire or the allegedly deepened democracy of Mali, and the next day these countries are doing their best impression of a failed or failing state, because, like the emperor without clothes, the political and economic institutions of the countries crumble the moment anyone challenges their claim toward being the legitimate institutions of that particular geographical patch of land. The fall of the government means nothing to us, because the government meant nothing to us.
Let us stop with the experimenting and constitutional gymnastics, and just allow for an organic politics, not a managed politics.
Post-script: By the way, all of those countries known as "two-party" countries actually have more than two parties. Indeed, there are, and have been, at any given time, far more than three parties represented in the British Parliament.
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