Political Parties’ Internal Crises Portend Danger For 2019 Polls – Jega
BY AMOS DUNIA, ABUJA – Former Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Attahiru Jega, has expressed serious concern over what he described as the unprecedented electoral challenges likely to confront the electoral umpire ahead of next year’s general elections.
Jega said the concern is taking into cognizance that the unprecedented violence witnessed in the just-concluded congresses of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) portend great danger.
He also expressed worry over the flurry of upcoming elections in Nigeria in view of the rising danger signs and the bribe taking in government which has increased especially at the National Assembly where he alleged that committees are notorious for demanding bribe.
The former INEC boss, who stated these on Monday at the Democracy Day celebration at the International Conference Centre, Abuja, also said that there is danger ahead if political parties cannot observe internal democracy and conduct peaceful congresses, stressing that the increase in hate speeches by the political actors, opinion and religious leaders are capable of sparking violence.
Jega asked that if political parties cannot organise their internal elections peacefully, how can they engage the other parties with civility in the general elections?
He further said; “It is very very important that this is addressed because if there is crisis in the elections, some of these issues are outside the scope of electoral commission, but in the end it is the electoral commission that gets blamed. The first thing to consider is electoral violence and there is no better way to address this than what happened in recent party congresses and its potential danger.”
He suggested the need to quickly improve our systemic mechanisms of addressing violence and conflicts related to elections and in particular improving the score of internal democracy within political parties, adding that some aspects of existing legal framework could have created constitutional crisis in 2015 if not for God’s intervention.
Jeaga explained further; “For example is a constitutional provision that requires the electoral commission to conduct a runoff presidential election within seven days. It is impossible to meet this constitutional requirement because by the time the electoral commission announces result, it would have been two days and then if you take out those two days, you will be left with five days to prepare for the next runoff election.
The former INEC Chairman noted that some aspects of the Electoral Act are contradictory to party democracy, adding that while a section of the Act recommended that political parties must conduct free and fair primaries, another section stipulated that whatever names of candidates the parties submit to the electoral commission cannot be rejected for any reason whatsoever.
He further said; “INEC is supposed to monitor party congresses. So, INEC has a list of those candidates that emerged at party primaries but political parties have a penchant of hiding under Section 31 to send to INEC people who have not even participated in party primaries and I saw this happened in 2015.
“We wanted to reject it but we were advised by lawyers that if we did that, the electoral commission will now be interpreted to be partisan and in Nigeria, people are often ready to drag the electoral commission into politics and once that is done, the entire integrity of the commission would be undermined.”
