It is such a tragedy that the Social Democratic Party, SDP, is stuck in the mud of its internal crisis. The party, as of this writing, faced the grim prospects of disqualifying itself from contesting the forthcoming presidential election next month. Laugh not, brother. Its tragedy is the tragedy of our party politics.
The facts are these. Professor Jerry Gana, former minister in x-number of governments, and Donald Duke, former governor of Cross River State, contested the party’s presidential primaries on October 6 last year. The results were: Duke, 812 votes; Gana, 611 votes. Duke won. The party duly forwarded his name to INEC as its presidential candidate.
Gana felt cheated by both the process and the election results. He took the party to court on two grounds. His first ground was that he scored the highest number of valid votes cast in the party presidential primaries. His second ground was that in allowing Duke to contest the presidential primaries the party violated article 15 (3) of its constitution. That article stipulates that the national chairmanship of the party and its presidential candidate must come from different geographical parts of the country. If one comes from the northern parts, then the other must come from the southern parts of the country. Gana argued that this was not observed by the party in the conduct of its party primaries.
On December 15, an Abuja high court agreed with Gana and declared him winner of the party primaries. Justice Hussein Baba-Yusuf held that the party violated its constitution in allowing Duke to contest against Gana. “In this instance,” said the judge, “the chairman, Chief Olu Falae is from the south and Duke is from the south too. The law is clear and there is nothing to write in between.”
The case is still perhaps winding its way through the labyrinth of the judicial process. Duke served notice that it would be appealed. As of this writing, it had not; at least to the best of my knowledge. The judgement raises some interesting points about the nature of our party politics. On the face of it, Gana would appear to be a bad loser. Bad losers, which our political parties have a surfeit of, never give up. They usually fight all the way to the Supreme Court and often with mixed results.
I find it interesting that the judge ignored Gana’s claim that he scored the highest number of votes cast at the election. Perhaps his lordship was unaware that in our political maths, lower figures are higher than higher figures. In this case, Gana’s 611 votes would be taken to be higher than Duke’s 812 votes. The judge instead dealt with a much more fundamental argument in Gana’s petition before the court, to wit, the obligation of a political party to act in obedience to its own supreme law, its constitution. Baba-Yusuf said that “the law has crystallised that political parties should abide by the regulations which they have made by themselves.”
That is the major problem with our political parties. None of them finds it convenient to abide by their constitutions. This has created at least two serious problems for them and, indeed, for those of us who believe in that difficult but important form of government called democracy. One, it has led to internal democratic deficit in all the political parties, bar none. Each party is sooner or later hijacked by a group of men that assumes and asserts their ownership of the party. They are powerful enough to ignore the provisions of their party constitutions and act almost entirely in accordance with the dictates of their whims and caprices as strong men. I believe impunity is not a strange word to you. This is the main source of this detestable show of power in the political parties. Wherever men and women assume powers and act with impunity there can be no peace.
Two, the obvious fall out from this is the instability that afflicts all our political parties. This is not a matter for the politicians alone; it has morphed into serious national problem. I have argued in this column and elsewhere that stability in the political parties is fundamental to our long walk through the extensive forest of political shenanigans to the ultimate in democratic rule. Political parties are the change agents in all democracies because they drive national development through their manifestoes. In any case, they rule in all countries, whether democratic and dictatorial. It should follow too that if the parties are fully committed to their internal democracies, they can, if they come to power, make the entire country democratic enough that the rule of law is not observed in the breach and our democratic credentials as a nation ring true in words and deeds.
However the SPD case is eventually resolved, it will leave a sour taste in the mouths of its leaders and followers. The party will have to contend with infected blood in its veins. Whoever, between Duke and Gana, flies the flag of the party in the presidential election, will now do so on the platform of a fractious party. He would merely make the grade in the rank of the also-run among the less serious political parties and their unknown quantities as presidential candidates.
I am saddened by this ugly turn of events for the party. SDP, either in its original form or revamped party must be one of the oldest parties in the country today. I believe it stakes its claim on one of the two parties founded by the AFRC in the Babangida transition to civil rule programme. SPD was a little to the left. The other party, NRC, was a little to the right. The two parties arguably accommodated the two broad spectrums of political ideologies. The SDP emerged the stronger party in the transition to civil rule programme. In the governorship as well as the national and sate assembly elections, it swept the country. It controlled more than half of the then 30 states. It also controlled the national assembly. Dr Iyorchia Ayu was elected senate president on its platform.
Its ultimate victory was the 1993 presidential election that its presidential candidate, Chief Moshood Abiola, won. He never received the crown because the election was annulled but that took nothing away from the acceptability of the party such that its Moslem-Moslem ticket did not scare the majority of Nigerians. It put to the torch the supposed fear that such a ticket would not fly because ordinary Nigerians bothered about concentrating political power in the hands of two men of the same religious faith.
In 1999, Chief Olu Falae was the SDP presidential candidate. That very civilised and cool-headed politician is now the national chairman of the party. I had hoped that under him, SDP had the potential to resurrect and grow to become a strong national party and a credible third force in our two-legged party politics. I expected the party to stand out in this motley crowd of men and women of unlike minds united by naked ambitions.
So, why did the party blow it by not observing its own constitution? I thought it was the least it could do if only to show that rules are not made for the fun of them but to regulate the affairs of men and women in accordance with the principles of forming associations, be the village associations or political parties. The question is not, who, between Gana and Duke, is a better presidential candidate; rather it is who, given article 50 (3) of its constitution, should be the party’s presidential candidate?
I had nursed the cautious hope that the party would offer the electorate a third platform strong enough to help them make a rational choice outside the fractious APC and PDP. But things are not looking pretty for SDP right now. Perhaps, I did not get my political maths right. It saddens me each time I get the political maths wrong. I need your sympathy, believe me.
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