Political
parties in a democracy are made up of various groups with clearly defined
ideologies and manifestos registered under the law to field candidates in
elections at all levels. The popular perception here is one of party supremacy.
We have evolved into a state where members must be at the beck and call and do
the bidding of the party. Political parties and candidates forge an inevitably
symbiotic relationship because credible and generally accepted candidates are a
treasure to their parties the same way an ideologically sound political party
is the hub of credible candidates and followers. Remember, the main function of
a political party is to bring together minds with similar aspirations. No matter how diverse opinions are in a
party, all must share the core beliefs with regard to service delivery. This is
the basis upon which political parties seek elective office and claim a
critical stake in the electoral and democratic processes. It should however
allow for freethinking and for leaders to emerge through the party and even
challenge for the top post.
The party system in Nigeria, however, has
refused to separate the constitutional roles of its elected officers from
membership of the party. The implication of merging government to an extension
of the party machinery is grave. For one, it unlawfully and dangerously steals
the right of electoral supremacy from the people and hands it to party
officials. More menacing is how it can shut down governance whenever there is
internal rancor within a ruling party. The
result is that our votes have been stolen. We lose the exclusive right of our
representatives being answerable to us first and the party second.
This “family affair” philosophy introduced into
the Nigeria polity by the ruling party is offensive and grossly in violation of
our rights. They assume that they have the power to meddle with challenging national
issues because the players involved are mostly their members. The current sad but laughable crisis rocking
the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) is a case in point. We need not stare at the
crystal ball to know that governance has been done great disservice, due to the
PDP’s internal power crisis. Half way through the year, we are yet to pass a
budget, and the Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has declared that there
will not be salaries after September if the issues are not resolved. There is
work to do in the education, health, power and infrastructure sectors. Yet, all
political energies are being expended on who runs for election in 2015.
Where does this leave us the people? Well,
nowhere. In a system where the electorate is supreme, we would have turned to
the opposition for succor. But can the opposition help our situation? Judging by their composition, we have the
right to be skeptical about them too! The
intension of the opposition is to wrestle power from the ruling party but what
will they do with this power once they have it? Will it be more of the same
with new or recycled characters, or are we all going to get involved so that we
can start to create institutions with solid foundations that cannot be meddled
with?
We are at a time when opposition members of our
legislative houses are numerically capable of challenging the large-scale
mismanagement threatening to bring this nation down. But no worthy legislative
fight has been put up. We will wait forever if we expect a new Nigeria to
emerge through the present opposition elements. Nigeria is at a crossroads; we
are treading that thin precipice between success and failure.
As a people
battered by bad governance through poor leadership on the one hand and
dispossessed of our civic power to decide our fate by a deliberately detestable
political process on the other, only with our voices, hands and minds can we
reclaim that which is truly ours. We have to make sacrifices now and start
doing things properly, lest we allow external forces to continue using the weak
amongst us to perpetrate these ills and maintain the status quo. 
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