Nigerians are peculiar people, unique in every sense. They are simple and easy to satisfy. All you need is to earn their trust and you are good to go.
In their simplicity, they could occasionally scramble for everything – even the mundane and not so useful.
The outsider would easily see political life as exciting and alluring; hence the average Nigerian politician is seen as a tax-eating parasite – under-worked and overpaid. But in reality, particularly with the introduction of grassroots politics, it has not been a walk in the park.
Rather, politics in Nigeria has been one long string of struggles, only punctuated by static moments of delight.
Elsewhere, certain things are taken for granted but in Nigeria, the politician must struggle for everything, including some innocuous party offices for which there are no remunerations.
Nigeria is one place where the political party is particularly important only for its symbolic value: it gives members something to call their own, while at the palm-wine bar; and something to identify with, and vote for, on election day.
Fast track to the current democratic experimentation. I have mentioned elsewhere that it has not always been bread and butter. In the beginning, what looked like the national convention weekends of the political party were spent in the middle of nowhere, with all the attendant hazards.
There were delegates from all parts of the country. In the particular case of those of us from Edo State, we were sandwiched into three Edo City Municipal buses that set off around 9:00pm on the eve of the Convention. We drove all night and arrived in Abuja or Kaduna in the wee hours of the Convention Day.
Occasionally, we were lucky to have a place to freshen up before moving to the Convention Centre. On other occasions, we were there just in time to move straight to the Convention Centre in our raw form.
“The evil practice of camping delegates on the eve of primaries must stop”
Essentially, it was a journey from the bus to the Convention Centre on Saturday morning; and as soon as the Convention ended in the evening, we hopped into the buses back to Benin City. We arrived in Benin City on Sunday morning.
Call it starvation, fasting, or what you will; the truth is that we undertook those journeys on empty stomachs because they were undertaken at most unholy hours when food vendors, including the roasted yam sellers in Auchi, were fast asleep. Yet, at the end of it all, the politician is seen as the manager of enjoyment.
We have been looking at the formation stage of the political party. The real struggles set in as soon as the party is formed. That is when the various positions loosely called the Executive Committees at every level – from the Village to the Ward, to the Local Government, to the State, to the Zone and to the National – are constituted.
The major question at the center of all this is the allocation of scarce resources – who gets what?
As interests multiply, water begins to find its level. Very soon, people who used to be friends begin to identify different points at which they can fulfill their aspirations. And too soon, you find that even within one political party, there are many political parties. Factions have now been born in the political parties.
These factions start very small, but with time, they metamorphose into big networks. As long as you want to remain relevant in politics, the foot soldiers at the home base must be constantly nurtured. It does not cost a bundle. Mere recognition does it most of the time. The leader that does not remember his home support base soon fades away.
At the inception of the two-party contraptions of the Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida years, this writer found himself on the NRC side. Midway, things fell apart and the center could no longer hold.
I took my supporters, some of whom had positions in the NRC, to the SDP. We got to SDP at a time when all positions had been filled. And in politics, it is a capital error to ask an elected official to step down to make room for a newcomer. I needed the new party, and the new party did not need me any less. Meanwhile, I was sitting on the floor; and they pitied me. So, what do they do?
I devised a master stroke, and they bought it. Since all substantive positions were already filled, I talked them into creating the positions of Assistants, where none existed, at least as an interim measure till the next elections. At the end of the day, I had a hamper full of Assistant this and Assistant that, which I distributed among my supporters. It was a coup. We had taken over the party. At Ward meetings, the votes of each of the Assistants bore the same weight as that of the Chairman. At meetings, they sat at the high table; and in some cases, they were smarter than the person they were assisting.
I took the same idea to the Local Government, and it worked to an extent. From the smallest things, the greatest often grow. Before the next elections, some of these people had branched off to other areas: some had become Local Government functionaries (Chairman, Councilor, and Supervisor). I could travel anywhere, assured that the home base was secured.
The primary election has become the qualifying test for election into any position. It has gained such importance lately to the extent that Nigeria is happening to it. It has assumed a very disturbing dimension – enough to worry any right-thinking person. In the beginning, there was the direct primary. Adherents to this mode of primary believed that even when their party was organizing the primary, its product ruled over everybody, not just members of the party. It, therefore, made sense that everybody in the area should participate in the primary.
Yes, that was a sound judgement, but it was susceptible to abuse. Political opponents soon moved in massively and invaded the primary. They voted for a weak candidate that their own party’s candidate could easily beat at the general election. It was discontinued.
What we have in Nigeria are closed primaries.
As mentioned earlier, Nigeria has happened to these ones, and they have become totally bastardized. In the primaries of the various parties for the forth-coming gubernatorial elections in Edo State, each of the major political parties came up with many aspirants claiming victory at their primary election.
How did we get here? First, we see commercialization breeding corruption. Why should an intra-party exercise of picking the person to represent your party at an event cost N50 million, the amount of bashing received by the Naira lately, notwithstanding? That’s just the beginning.
A man who spends N50 million to buy a plant must be prepared to spend N500 million to water that plant to fruition. That’s how the exercise eliminates the good ones and springs up only the strongest as the fittest. It is anti-democratic.
The evil practice of camping delegates on the eve of primaries must stop.
And every Nigerian politician should have a second address, thus making politics a pastime.
Omorotionmwan writes from Canada
