By Ibrahim Habu Sulaiman
As political parties in Nigeria head towards their primaries starting from this September, one nagging issue that has become headline news across the country has been the high cost of parties’ nomination and/or expression of interest forms. Although majority of the parties are guilty of this All Progressives Congress, APC leads the pack. The governing party’s fees range from a whopping forty-five million naira for presidential aspirants and twenty-two point five million naira for gubernatorial aspirants to eight point five million naira for would-be senators and three point eight million naira for aspirants to the House of Representatives while one point one million naira is for every House of Assembly aspirant. The PDP is a distant second as its presidential aspirants have to cough out twelve million naira each, gubernatorial contestants to pay six million naira while every aspiring senator must put down three point five million naira, while aspiring members to the House of Representatives would pay one point five million naira, and for the states House of Assembly contestants it’s six hundred thousand naira only.
As expected a flurry of criticisms trailed the announcement; most critics term the practice as commercialisation of the nomination forms. Prominent amongst these critics are Human Rights activists. Femi Falana, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria SAN declared the sale of nomination forms illegal and unconstitutional; he has since threatened to take the federal government to court. According to the Human Rights activist it was regrettable that President Muhammadu Buhari who had expressed disappointment on taking twenty-seven million naira to purchase the APC presidential form in 2015 could not stop the practice.
Others, particularly youth groups and the opposition argued that the chances of youth embracing politics are much slimmer now even with the passage of the bill on not-too-young-to-run. Similarly, the millions of naira being expended on procuring these nomination forms could better be used to save millions of poverty- stricken Nigerians from eternal penury. Moreover the practice seeks to mortgage the country into the hands of moneybags, thereby preventing the most competent, reliable and trustworthy people emerging as our leaders. Evidently Nigeria’s democratic system which is a corrupt adoption of the American system, seems to have prepared the country towards capitalism.
Unfortunately the country is nowhere realising her full potentials. The process of creating the Wealth of the Nation has been stunted or crippled by moneybags who do not have the interest of the nation at heart. Indeed, the 18th century Scottish economist who wrote The Wealth of Nations, would have been flummoxed by the chaos the level of the country’s development has attained. Nevertheless, Karl Marx in his works including the classical manual entitled, Capital outlined the process and stages of production, explaining that throughout the history of mankind there has always been class struggle. The irrepressible contradictions in the free market economy persist even as inflation or even recession would always rear their ugly heads. Trade wars, like the one being waged by the US under President Donald Trump against the rest of the world might keep coming and going. But all these might still not be enough to warrant a revolution as predicted by Karl Marx.
Obviously, Nigeria’s democracy is not only at its nascent stage but also fragile. That is why advanced Western powers hover around us knocking at our doors ostensibly to help in propping up our democracy. These Western Nations have already reached the highest stage of capitalism – that is monopoly capitalism. Most of these nations were the colonial masters of our developing countries and having helped in under-developing these poorer countries now adopt neocolonialism and international monopoly to further subjugate the weaker nations in the absence of sound leadership qualities, devoid of corruption and profligacy.
Once more another election year is approaching and Western donor Nations come knocking, offering their assistance, government should be ready to at least strike a better deal. Besides, the issue of high cost of nomination forms is mainly for developing countries where the level of poverty is so high that only a tiny minority can afford. Hence these moneybags see nothing wrong in this practice. They brace up for victory at the polls at all costs so that they can recoup their monies and find partners in most of these Western powers to help in draining their country’s resources with ready destinations to launder their loot. It is business as usual.
In its defence, the governing All Progressives Congress, APC said it intends to use the money it would realise from the sale of the forms to run the 2019 election. The acting National Publicity Secretary of the party, Yekini Nabena explained that unlike the opposition PDP that used to deep their hands in the national treasury to run elections, the APC would only use the funds realised from the sale of the forms to do so.
At any rate, although the intention of the APC might be genuine, even with the political vibes embedded in the argument, the reason given for collecting such high fees for the forms becomes warped and enshrouded in delusion when the impact of taking so much monies from politicians is taken into consideration. Many of these politicians would struggle to actually raise these exorbitant fees mostly through bank loans or sponsors, through godfathers who would also want payback with interest.
Of course, parties in the country are not run on the basis of membership dues, but evidence has shown that contributions from party members were collected as far back as the 2nd Republic. Hence the APC has an option. The governing party could develop the process of collecting dues and adopt it into the party structures. If this policy is adopted nomination fees could even be scrapped or reduced to an affordable minimum to the majority of people – all in the interest of the greater good.