Leadership Selection in Contemporary Nigerian Politics
By Abdullahi Usman
“Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.” – Dr. Seuss
Discussing the myriad issues around poor leadership selection in Nigeria’s contemporary politics has become something akin to the proverbial broken record – or, perhaps scratched compact disc (CD) may be the better term to apply in this instance, since we are talking about contemporary issues here, as opposed to the traditional ways of doing things. In other words, the problem with our candidates selection process – and I use the term “leadership” liberally to encompass any elective or appointive position, from the bottom up, which includes candidates for all appointive and elective positions, as well as the leadership of the various legislative houses after elections – is fast assuming the status of the conventional problem with the weather; everyone knows and talks about it, but nobody seems to be able to do anything to change it.
However, much unlike the weather systems, where there is little or nothing any one of us can do as humans to change the course of nature, the problem of our leadership selection process is well within our powers and wherewithal to work and improve upon, but we somehow always fail to do those vital little things that are required to make a marked difference. Indeed, the process of leadership selection in our own peculiar environment is a totally different ball game altogether in the sense that those who have somehow appropriated and cornered for themselves the rights to pick out or select from amongst the long list of aspiring politicians on our behalf appear to be either reluctant or strangely uncomfortable with pushing forward and implementing the kinds of reforms that will ensure only individuals who meet the relevant criteria of qualification, knowledge, experience, vision, skills, wisdom and courage, amongst others, are put forward for such positions. This is, perhaps, because such people may not be amenable to being teleguided or pushed around in a manner that their benefactors have come to expect over the years.
As a result, they often prefer the largely docile type, regardless of whether they possess or lack these vital criteria or skills set, or, indeed, even the necessary educational qualification to deliver on the job. In fact, more often than not, such ‘favoured breed’ usually end up having to use fake or cooked-up certificates – sometimes with the foreknowledge or even at the prodding of their benefactor(s) – in order to meet the prescribed minimum qualification for the envisaged office or position.
All this, happening in a country that is substantially blessed with highly educated and experienced pool of qualified personnel in virtually all spheres or disciplines of human endeavor one can possibly think of under the sun. Consequently, the envisaged realistic elimination of the “garbage – in, garbage – out” syndrome will take quite some doing, and one personally sees it remaining with us for a very long time to come. Unless, of course, this set of self-appointed ‘kingmakers’, also known locally as “godfathers”, who perennially go about oozing their familiar overbearing attitude on the rest of the population either change their ways, or we somehow collectively find a way to dislodge them from their current vise-like grip on our political leadership selection process, with a view to liberalising and democratising it, to make it a more open one eventually.
In addition to its prevalence in almost all the registered political parties we have today, the pervasive ‘godfather challenge’ also exists in virtually all parts of the country, and is not necessarily limited to any one state or geopolitical zone in particular. But you certainly witness more of such instances with the candidates submitted from one specific state in the South East, for instance, where the added problem of double nomination appears to be a persistent challenge and recurring decimal with virtually every election conducted within the last two electoral cycles. By and large, one is merely speaking in general terms, based on one’s very little experience and admittedly even far less knowledge of how these things played out in the past. However, that is not, in anyway, suggestive of the problem being particularly restricted to that specific state alone, by any chance.
Of course, one very much understands and appreciates the concept of expecting the voters to choose the best among the candidates on offer across party lines. But the main challenge here is that majority of our largely uneducated pool of electorate, on their part, do not still understand or appreciate the fact that they can, indeed, vote for the candidate of a different party other than the main party they support, depending on the quality of the candidate presented by each party. In other words, the concept they seem to generally accept and entirely go by, more often than not, is one which tends to imply that once they massively support a particular political party or candidate in a state or an area, it then automatically follows that they just have to vote and return any and all candidates presented by that party across all the conceivable election types conducted by Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) – i.e. Presidential, Governorship, Senatorial, House of Representatives and State Houses of Assembly elections – and possibly, even local government council elections conducted by the various State Independent Electoral Commissions (SIECs), regardless of whether or not other more qualified or better suited candidates may be running for the same position on another party platform.
The resulting dangerous phenomenon, which is largely fuelled by such mindset, has appropriately been dubbed and has since come to be known and regarded as the “bandwagon effect” in local electoral parlance. Again, since this kingmaker or godfather syndrome appears to have permeated virtually all or most of the major political parties that stand any chance of winning a seat in any election as we speak today, what this means is that even where the voters are sufficiently informed about the preferred or desirable type(s) of candidate(s) to vote in an election, they may sometimes actually end up being left with not much of a choice for a particular position (not all, perhaps, admittedly), if the godfathers in all the major parties decide to field less than desirable candidates. In that case, therefore, it simply becomes the small matter of choosing between the lesser of two or, perhaps, more ‘evils’, if you excuse the use of the term.
It is the full realisation of this fact, coupled with the vise-like grip of such godfathers on existing party structures that informed INEC’s decision to include amongst the list of amendments to the legal framework it submitted to the National Assembly as far back as late 2012 or thereabouts, the need for the introduction of Independent Candidacy in our electoral laws. The idea behind that is for the purpose allowing (an) independent candidate(s) – i.e. any eligible person(s) who happen(s) to meet a very strict set of specified qualification criteria for such – to be able to circumvent the influence of godfatherism in deciding who gets to be on the ballot as a party candidate. Perhaps, not totally unexpectedly, that amendment did not sail through in the end.
I recall one presentation at an international elections forum where the representative from the Electoral Commission of India informed the audience about a new radical inclusion on their ballot – the first and only country in the world to have done that, so far – during their last general elections known by its acronym, ‘NOTA’, which stands for “None of the Above”. This unique voting option, which was introduced following persistent pressure from the voting public who consistently complained that they often do not like any of the candidates vying for certain positions in an election, allowed such voters to still go out and cast their vote (a right they consider as their sacred constitutional duty), by rejecting all the candidates on offer, rather than the more traditional way of signifying such rejection by staying at home and abstaining from voting completely on election day.
During its first year of introduction on a test basis, over 6 million people opted to vote ‘NOTA’ in place of any of the party candidates, which sent a very clear message as a way of registering their utmost discontent with all the competing political parties in the elections over what they considered as their wrong choice of candidates. The next logical question I asked the presenter afterwards, which he wasn’t able to satisfactorily respond to, is what then happens if the faceless ‘NOTA’ ends up receiving the highest number of votes at the end of the day? The presenter could not come up with a satisfactory response, which may, perhaps, be because, even though 6 million votes may appear to be a huge number on the face of it, they do not envisage such a scenario happening any time soon.
For instance, while many relatively smaller countries within the African continent still marvel at Nigeria’s huge registered voting population figure of just over 70 million (i.e. those with valid Permanent Voters Cards) during the last general elections in 2015, the Election Commission of India put the number of people who were eligible to vote in their 2014 general elections at a whopping 814.5 million, representing an increase of a whopping 100 million people in a space of just 5 years over and above those registered for the 2009 elections! It would, of course, be nice to see how that figure compares with what may be obtainable in the world’s most populous country, except that China, with a population of 1.4 billion compared to India’s 1.3 billion people, is not a democracy, so we may never have a basis for such a comparison any time soon and, perhaps, never will.
And, yes, the legally permissible recall of elected officials in Nigeria is a rather tedious process, which probably explains why none has succeeded thus far in our recent history. I am not exactly sure what may have obtained during the First Republic, but as much as I can tell, nothing of that nature has happened ever since. Of course, there is this ideal notion that the voters should be free to choose the preferred candidates of their choice, regardless of party affiliation, and there are, perhaps, a number of instances one can possibly cite where that has, indeed, been the case. But, having said that, what about a probable situation where all the possible alternatives as presented by the different parties end up not being from among the “experienced bests”?
One might say that appears rather far-fetched or highly improbable, but it is not completely beyond the realm of possibilities, as far as some of these godfathers – who actually exist in most of the major political parties, by the way, although, admittedly, more prevalent in some than in others – are concerned. The most conceivable solution, therefore, still lies in the ultimate release of the party structures from the vise-like grip of godfathers and other money bags, to make way for a more open and democratic system of selecting candidates, because even the Independent Candidacy route is not entirely accessible to everyone, in the sense that one still has to have the wherewithal – mostly financial – to campaign and sell oneself outside of the formal party structure, even if the requirement for such has been met. As Abraham Bell rightly argues, “it is a moral and sociological absurdity if the best men are not elected”.
The major issue here basically deals with what usually happens before we even reach the stage where the voter gets to cast the vote in an open election.
And some of these godfather – induced actions are intrinsically behind-the-scenes ‘stunts’, perpetrated at the level of the party primaries, which are often well beyond what the electoral commission itself can do anything about, despite its much touted regulatory powers of ensuring internal party democracy and adherence to the national and party constitutional provisions and other extant laws, because they are essentially considered to be strictly within the realms of internal party affairs.
This is by virtue of the provisions of Section 31 of the Electoral Act 2010 (as Amended), which expressly states that once a party conducts its primaries and submits the names of candidates to INEC, the Commission cannot reject such names “for any reason whatsoever”.
Meanwhile, Section 87 of the same Act actually specifies that candidates should emerge via democratic processes, and both the Electoral Act and the Constitution of the Federal Republic have mandated INEC to monitor all party primaries. As such, any time parties are conducting their primaries – which can only validly hold in the presence of INEC representatives, by the way – the Commission does get notified and actually sends its personnel to monitor and prepare comprehensive reports on what has transpired. In addition, it also observes and ensures that the process has, indeed, complied with not only the electoral act and constitutional provisions, but also the constitutions of the respective political parties holding such primaries themselves.
However, having monitored the primaries and compiled comprehensive reports expressly detailing who has emerged tops in accordance with Section 87 of the Act, the parties may subsequently decide to hide under the provisions of Section 31 and submit the names of the 2nd, 3rd, 4th or, in fact, the last candidate, and many parties have gone ahead to do just that. In some even far more bizarre instances, they would simply ignore the entire list of results from such primaries and submit the name of an entirely different person, who did not even participate in the primaries at all as the candidate. And when that happens, there is absolutely nothing the Commission can do, other than to provide a certified true copy of the results of the primaries to any aggrieved individual that may be sufficiently provoked into exploring the legal option and, perhaps, also send its own lawyers and the monitors to testify at the courts when called upon to do so.
That is why in many cases, long after the inauguration of the purported candidate as the presumed winner of the election, you sometimes hear about the courts ruling in favour of the rightful persons that actually won the primaries, and this is all down to the shenanigans of these godfathers and their assigned agents, who happen to control the party structures for and on their behalf and often act at their behest.
Again, in order to check this bizarre scenario, and in full realisation of the fact that a meddlesome and not-so-straight INEC can still choose to fiddle with the authentic list of candidates submitted to it by the political parties in the future if the provisions of Section 31 were to be completely eliminated from the laws, the last Commission resolved to seek for legal avenues of making the process of candidate selection a joint or shared responsibility between INEC and the parties themselves. Consequently, rather than suggest that Section 31 be expunged, the Commission went on to propose that it should be retained, but made strictly subject to the provisions of Section 87, so that only the names of aspirants who have emerged tops at validly conducted open and democratic primaries can be submitted by the parties as candidates.
This formed part of the list of series of recommendations made to the 7th NASS by the Commission for the purpose of sanitising and improving the process, a clear two years or slightly more ahead of the 2015 general elections. But this important and useful amendment to the legal framework could not be achieved in time to have any useful impact on the last elections, perhaps, again, on account of the enormous influence this group of godfathers – some of whom happen to be state chief executives – wielded (and might still be wielding) on the vast majority of members of the then (and, perhaps, even current) legislature.
Therefore, as things stand now, it still remains the primary responsibility and prerogative of the respective political parties to purge themselves of these undue influences – if at all that is possible – so that, in the end, the voter is accorded the required free hand and option to choose from a long list of quality candidates to be presented by the various political parties in a credible and open voting process on election day. With the successful introduction, against all odds, of the PVCs and the Smart Card Readers commencing from the 2015 elections, the problem of voter manipulation during elections has largely been checked, but we are still left with the issues surrounding candidate manipulations at party primaries. In the final analysis, the political parties owe it to themselves and, indeed, to the rest of us to ensure that this problem is equally resolved – and very soon too – because we simply cannot afford to continue under the current far less than acceptable arrangement. In essence, things have just got to change, if we are to ever succeed and collectively march forward on our much talked about lingering journey and seemingly endless quest towards realising our manifest destiny of arriving at the proverbial promised land that we all aspire to get to.
For us to get there, however, we need to collectively embark on a massive and highly effective sustained campaign of value reorientation designed to move the electorate from their current tendency of selling themselves cheap by exchanging their votes for a mess of pottage. It is very common nowadays to see voters accepting petty gifts items and cash rewards that are sometimes as low as between N200 and N500 in some areas, in exchange for their votes. In the end, this set of voters along with other members of the society at large and generations unborn are left to suffer the harsh realities of this foolhardy bartering of their votes in the form of four solid years of unbridled bad leadership, as such elected officials unrepentantly fritter away the commonwealth, from which they will set aside a tiny fraction to enable them repeat the same process in subsequent elections. You sometimes cannot help but wonder exactly when and at what point did we consciously opt to collectively turn this very unforgiving and dangerous bend as a people, because things have certainly not always been this way in the past.
There is this timeworn argument that every nation gets the type of leadership or government it deserves. In other words, not only is any such leader that emerges a true reflection of our type, he or she is, indeed, elected or appointed from amongst us, no more, no less. But then, one just needs to pause a little while and take a look back at the kinds of selfless leaders this same country has produced during our very first experiment with democracy as an independent nation in the First Republic in order to be jolted back to the sudden realisation that things have not always been the way they currently are. Even the Second Republic, which was admittedly not as good as the one that preceded it, did not seem to be as bad as what we currently have under the existing arrangement where not much seems to be happening in terms of good governance, especially in majority of our 36 states and virtually all of our 774 local government councils of the federation.
This often makes one wonder aloud why our own peculiar situation always seems to defy logic, in the sense that instead of the usual natural human expectation of recording incremental progress in our affairs with the passage of time, things somehow progressively degenerate as we blindly navigate our way through the artificial darkness we have consciously created for ourselves as a people. Perhaps we may be lucky to replicate the success story of the First Republic if we – both leaders and the led – will simply go back to dust up, re-imbibe and reinvigorate our familiar time-tested norms and values that enabled us produce such leaders, re-energise and re-dedicate ourselves towards following through with them, and then take it up from there to see how much we can collectively achieve, going forward. In addition to properly placing the issues around the problems of our existing leadership deficit situation squarely on both the leadership and followership, we should also not play down or lose sight of the significant role played by our religious leaders in shaping the worldview that often guides the perception of the followers on the issue of leadership.
I remember attending one Eid prayer at my home town on one occasion (I deliberately choose not to be specific about the period, so as not to reduce this discussion into a kind of referendum, through which one is trying to pass judgment on any particular leadership), during which one of those spontaneous preachers that immediately spring up to ‘preach’ after prayers (you sometimes wonder whether they have no personal request(s) to make to God though the usual post-prayer supplications) started making certain comments and insinuations – I won’t call that preaching because it simply wasn’t – that I found a bit unsettling, to say the least. Rather than, perhaps, preaching about the origins and/or virtues of celebrating the Eid festival itself, or something along the lines of the importance for all muslims to attain heaven and what one needs to do to get there, the man simply stood there trying to make case or even excuses for the government of the day. The workers, for whatever reason, had not been paid their salaries, which they could have used to fund part of their Sallah celebrations, even though the Eid day fell well into the following month, and the governor had opted to travel for the Umrah at the time. There is no gainsaying the fact that the civil servants among the muslim faithful that thronged the central Eid grounds to pray were understandably disappointed and agitated at this seemingly strange turn of events, but the preacher just stood there literally admonishing all of us, to the effect that it was absolutely wrong of them to blame the governor, or the state government in general, for their plight.
He insisted, perhaps, for some added measure, that if it was predestined that they would receive their salaries before Sallah, the state government would not have declined to pay them the way it did, and this was very much unlike the current situation where there appears to be a general consensus and understanding around the issues surrounding our declining revenue receipts on account of the prevailing world oil price situations. Of course, as practicing muslims, I would want to believe that we all pretty much knew all there was to know about destiny, but in the situation the government workers found themselves at the time, I am not exactly sure that they would have appreciated being literally told off in such a harsh manner, and quite a number of them grumbled their seeming discontent. More often than not, it is these kinds of ‘additional pressures’ that are being brought to bear on the followers, which sometimes make them feel they just have to resign to their fate by sitting back and accepting their already predestined situation whenever they happen to be saddled with a bad leadership, rather than rise up to impose some kind of corrective action my voicing out their discontent. To do anything to the contrary would amount to questioning God, as it has constantly been ingrained in their conscience; a situation generally considered as a cardinal sin.
In conclusion, Nigeria has, indeed, been faced with significant leadership and followership problems in, perhaps, almost equal measure. We have certainly suffered from serious quality leadership problems at various levels over the years and, probably still do. As a result, the school of thought that attributes the issues around Nigeria’s chronic governance deficit on leadership is right, to a very large extent. To that same extent – or, may be, even worse – however, the one arguing on the side of bad followership is equally right because we have also suffered tremendously on that count, in view of our perennial willingness, as followers, to accept and settle for less than quality leadership, which is an even far more problem, in my own view, because such an attitude does not seem to provide the necessary incentive for any improvement at the leadership level.
In that wise, we all have a lot of work to do in order to solve this major problem once and for all, if we must collectively move our nation and its people in the right direction of promoting progress and development. In addition to those in charge of managing the affairs of political parties and their registered members and teeming mass of supporters, therefore, we equally need the support of all registered voters, other Nigerians – including the young and the old, schools, civil society organisations, religious bodies, professional organisations, traditional institutions, towns and markets unions, and just about everyone else, in the major task ahead of us all. In the words of the late French President, Charles de Gaulle, “politics is too serious to be left to politicians alone.”
Abdullahi Usman ([email protected])
(PA to former INEC Chairman)
