The move by the National Assembly to take over decision-making in political parties may be challenged in court as well as on the streets as more condemnations continue to trail the proposed amendment to the 2010 Electoral Act.
The Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) has vowed to go to court to stop the law, describing it as “selfish”.It also asked the civil society to organise mass protest against the National Assembly, just as the former National Chairman of the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), Senator Saidu Kumo, said the legislation is “tyrannical”.
Elder statesman and former secretary-general of the Commonwealth, Chief Emeka Anyaoku, also condemned the proposed law.
The amendment bill, which has already passed second reading in both chambers within days of introduction, seeks to make federal lawmakers automatic members of parties’ National Executive Committee (NEC) – the highest decision-making organ.
While the House version of the bill wants to make all federal lawmakers NEC members, the Senate wants all committee chairmen and vice-chairman as members – but they are practically the same since almost all lawmakers are chairmen or vice-chairmen of committees.
The sheer number of National Assembly members is expected to overwhelm other members of NEC, effectively placing the control of parties under the legislature.
The ACN, in a statement issued yesterday, by its National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, called on other political parties to also mount a legal challenge against the “obnoxious, self-serving, greedy and democracy-killing” proposed insertion into the Electoral Act 2010.
The party urged organised labour, civil society organizations and political parties to march on the National Assembly “to ensure such [an] anti-democratic law is not passed”.
ACN described the current National Assembly as the most expensive and anti-people ever in Nigeria's history, saying it is time to stop them from ruining the democracy that millions of Nigerians fought to entrench.
The party said: ''Our legislators are the highest paid in the world, with those of Kenya a distant second. Yet, they never consulted us before padding their pay to such high levels. The widespread story is that each of them earns a million naira per day, except on weekends and public holidays! This is not far from the truth, since each one smiles home with N45 million per quarter, in a country where most citizens live on less than US$1 a day, and the minimum wage being fought for comes to US$4 per day!
''Add this to the fact that while it took 3 per cent of the national budget to service the National Assembly in the Second Republic, the current National Assembly is gulping over 30 per cent of the national budget, and one will get an idea of how this legislators are draining the economy. If they dispute the figures quoted above, they should tell Nigerians what they earn and what percentage of the national budget is being used to service the National Assembly.”
The party said the proposed law offends the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, stifles the ability of the parties to make their own constitutions and decide who attends their NEC and shows how those elected to serve the people could not differentiate between the interest of one party, in this case the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) with the majority in both chambers of the National Assembly, and the country.
It said: ''As far as the dominant PDP members of the National Assembly are concerned, the interest of their party is the same as the interest of the nation. That is why there has been a cacophony of (PDP lawmakers') voices defending the toxic law being planned, with barely a whimper from the probably overwhelmed or quietly acquiescing legislators from the other parties.
''In the process of defending this law, logic has been turned on its head, with the sponsors and their supporters claiming it will enrich internal-democracy in the parties and broaden their decision-making base. No one has talked about the fact that it will turn the NEC meetings of the parties into a jamboree/rally, with praise-singers in tow.
''It will also mean that the lawmakers would have succeeded in smuggling into the various parties a uniform constitution, akin to making them the five fingers of a leprous hand, as we had during the [former head of state Gen. Sani Abacha years. Needless to say that the surest way to kill democracy and turn Nigeria into a one-party state is to do exactly what the PDP-dominated National Assembly is proposing.
''The proposed law will also make the lawmakers - in the case of the PDP more than 300 National Assembly members gate crashing into the NEC - the single biggest bloc in the NECs of the parties. Then, the dictatorship of lawmakers would have been entrenched, with dangerous consequences for all.”
The party said the various opposition political parties as well as Nigerians were to blame for the turn of events, adding that if the persistent warnings of the ACN had been heeded - that the National Assembly members were representing themselves instead of those who voted them into power - they (lawmakers) would not have been emboldened to try their latest antics.
Commenting on the controversial bill, Kumo said: “There are procedures of choosing NEC members and the automatic membership of NEC as envisaged by the National Assembly will make NEC meetings quite unwieldy.
“We shall use every available means including going to the court to contest this legislation that the National Assembly wants to introduce which is based on selfish and not the national interest.
“Much as the National Assembly has the legislative rights to make laws for the country, that law must be for the good governance of the country, not one based on selfishness.”
Anyaoku warned members of the National Assembly not to insert a provision that would give them advantage in their political parties in the selection of candidates for elective positions, saying it would be a “serious assault” to the country’s fledgling democracy.
Speaking at a lecture to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the coronation of the Alake of Egbaland, Oba Adedotun Gbadebo III, Anyaoku said one of the ways to strengthen democracy and the country’s presidential system is when there is a limit to how far the constitution should go in regulating how political parties seek to conduct their internal procedures and workings.
He warned that to ascribe undue influence and self-serving influence to the parliamentary group of the party in the selection of candidates would undermine the democratic process.
A vibrant democracy, he said, must protect the right of political parties’ conventions and or conferences at national and other levels, to serve as platforms for enabling delegates of the rank and file members of the party to determine their party’s manifesto and candidates for elective political offices.
He also called for the inclusion of one traditional ruler from each of the six geo-political zones at the federal level into the National Council of State who should each be elected by a college of certificated rulers on rotational basis within his/her zone to serve for two years at a time.
At the state level, he recommended one traditional ruler from each of the three senatorial districts who should equally be elected by a college of certificated traditional rulers on rotational basis within each senatorial district to serve in the State Security Council for two years at a time.
Anyaoku said he was not oblivious of the importance of the constitution prohibiting traditional rulers from getting involved in partisan politics and the need to protect them from victimization by the government of the day who might be tempted to co-opt them in pursuit of partisan political activities.
He noted that the fact that many Nigerians still regard it as a desirable social status symbol to accept chieftaincy titles from traditional rulers, showed that the position and role of the traditional rulers were still recognized, respected and revered.
He argued that in some aspects of the life of the society, such as in land matters and even in intra-community civil conflicts, traditional rulers and their Councils of Chiefs still wield significant benevolent influence.
He said: “Since the traditional rulers have continued to guarantee the sustenance of the history, culture and identities of their various communities, being the vehicles for the transfer of their people’s customs from one generation to the other, they still play an important part in sustaining the cohesion of societies thereby contributing to the maintenance of law and order especially in the rural parts of every African country.
“Thus, the traditional rulers not only provide essential and appropriate platform for guaranteeing the people’s fundamental right to culture, they also, as the rallying point of their various peoples, serve for the galvanization of the people for purposes of national solidarity.
“The strategic importance of the institution of the Alake of Egbaland to the Egba people amply demonstrates the vital role that traditional rulers have played in every African society, not only before the advent of colonialism on the continent, but also in this post-colonial era.
“At all times, African traditional rulers have always been the custodians of their people’s culture and the embodiment of their collective conscience.
“With the coming of European colonial domination, the traditional rulers remained the undisputed interface between the colonial authorities and the African peoples.”
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