May 01, (THEWILL) – In 2008, at the 56th quadrennial presidential election of the United States of America, the unlikeliest candidate, a young, black junior senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, did the improbable. He beat frontline aspirants in the Democratic Party primary: Hillary Clinton, Bill Richardson and John Edwards, to clinch the party’s ticket and went on to defeat Senator John McCain in the general election to become the 44th President of the US. What was considered a daring attempt turned the history of the American presidency around, bringing first-time voters and Americans advocating for change to the polls. This demography helped to drive the campaign of the Democrat, who had only come to national consciousness through a stirring speech he delivered during a previous party convention, to make Obama the first black President to lead the United States.
The change that Obama wrought to the 2008 electioneering process was hinged on the remarkable campaign the politician put together to promote his candidacy, exploit the use of emerging technologies, wake a majority of mostly young Americans to their responsibility of changing the way they are governed and unite a diametrically divided population.
America may be years ahead of Nigeria in terms of political maturity, election integrity and the targeted use of voter data, yet as the truism goes, Rome was not built in a day. That is why I have chosen to reflect on the need to move our political trite of surrendering elective positions to the highest bidder, which appears to be at the background of the exorbitant fees charged for elective nomination forms, to a system of politics that is value-driven and mobilisation-based.
The reason for reliving the Obama example here is to highlight the positive difference that a campaign, which places merit on the ability to mobilise voters in their numbers makes and how it makes the politician so brought to position by people-power to feel responsible to the electorate that made it possible, as opposed to one who simply “buys” the position at full price and does not feel beholden to the service of governing. The point I am making here is that there are untoward consequences to attaching more value to the financial windfall that these exorbitant nomination forms will bring to the coffers of these political parties over and above the true character of the nominees, their capacity to govern, their manifestos and their ability to mobilise numbers capable of bringing any of the parties victory at the polls.
The outrageously exorbitant price of N100 million, which the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and the N50 million that the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) have fixed to obtain nomination forms for the presidential ticket shows that their leadership is out of touch with present realities in the country, promotes corruption and supports the notion that the parties are not in the business of elevating the best hands to steer the ship of the country to better tides, but in the trading of seats to the highest bidders, irrespective of their antecedents. Such a decision, reached after scrutinising other alternatives, makes it easy to reach the conclusion that the presidency and by extension, other positions in the party, is technically up for sale. It means that they have reserved these positions for only those with the wherewithal to afford the high costs of buying these forms.
What makes it even more insidious is that the cost of seeking the party’s nomination begins to balloon afterwards for the aspirant from this point. For instance, a serious aspirant for president will have to build and oil political structures across the 774 local governments and meet directly or indirectly with these local leaders, who are voting delegates to intimate them of their ambition and solicit their support. Such visits, which are called consultations, are not done empty handed and each local government will leave the candidate a few millions of naira poorer.
All aspirants perform this political ritual of “watering the ground” and “greasing the palms” of those with whom they consult with cash to influence their support. Our royal fathers are not exempt from the giveaways. The prospective aspirant must then prepare to dole out millions of naira to voting delegates on the day of the primary, as well as have millions of naira for the party officials that will conduct the exercise. In most cases, the person that pays the highest amount to each delegate is elected as flagbearer. A presidential aspirant of the APC or PDP would likely expend at least $150 million at the minimum to stand a chance of winning the primary.
How such an aspirant, whose entire salary in the four-year-term, for which this form was obtained, will not exceed N60 million, from a summation of all allocated allowances that include leave, hardship, consistency, duty tour, constituent and estacode allowances, motor vehicle loan and gratuities, all of which come up to about N14 million plus annually, will recoup his investment except he steals from government, remains to be seen.
Not only will an aspirant, who has spent that much for a nomination form and a lot more in campaigning, believe he or she owes his or her victory, not to the people, but to the huge sums of money spent in the process, one of his or her principal objectives, while in power, will be aimed at fraudulently recouping the capital invested in gaining the position in the first place. It will have reduced the original political call to service to nothing short of a money game, a business transaction, a barter of patronage and an avenue of corruption, which is one more nail in the coffin of the government’s anti-corruption stance.
The spokespersons of both parties have laboured to defend the fees with the weak argument that it will discourage unserious candidates, clean out pretenders from the pool of those signifying their interests for the highest office in the land and provide the party with the financial muscle to organise a free and fair internal process of picking their flag bearers, while giving them enough to prosecute next year’s general election. Already, based on the number of candidates that have declared to contest the presidential elections under the APC and PDP banners, the parties are clearly reaping a windfall.
Yet, where does this leave a country where the ruling party prides itself as the one that effected the Not-Too-Young-To-Run Bill? If promising youths, with the mental capacity, intellectual drive, political sagacity, consummate maturity and desire to step up at different levels: local, state, federal and presidential, to contest for positions with ideas that will move the country forward, how do they scale through the exorbitant pay walls erected with the aid of exorbitant fees that are designed to keep them locked out? Where is the empathetic intelligence of the current government to dare to place such a high price tag on nomination forms for their party’s candidates in a country where, for every one Nigerian struggling to find two meals a day, there are two more scraping the bottom of the barrel for one meal a day. About 100 million people live below the poverty line, more than 10 million children are out of school, 2,350 children below the age of five die of preventable diseases, power supply remains epileptic and it impinges on industrialisation, thus increasing the abysmal levels of unemployment and underemployment in the country.
Even countries that do not have a fraction of the ills that are bedevilling Nigeria dare not sacrifice human capacity development on the altar of political expediency. Still, a country with embarrassing levels of development deficiency is once again demonstrating how cut off it is from reality. If we revisit the improbably meteoric rise from the Illinois Senate that Obama rode an insurgent campaign to presidential victory in 2008, what becomes apparent was how he brought his grassroots mobilising chops to bear. It worked while he campaigned for the Senate. He only had to scale it to the national level to go against the more established Clinton, McCain and the might of the Republican Party. By exploiting the potential of the Internet as a tool for organising, mobilising and fundraising, he ran the first true campaign of the 21st century. The political parties in Nigeria owe us something similar, to evolve a novel system of selecting candidates that does not reek of selling out slots to the highest bidders. There are alternatives to ensuring that a party puts forward quality, driven and serious-minded candidates that can win elections, govern well and positively promote the party at all levels.
One system that I will recommend is to task any aspirant wishing to contest elections through the party’s platform to demonstrate the efficacy of their candidacy via a pre-convention mobilisation effort that will test their mettle and prove their capacity to bring in the numbers required to be successful at the general election. To put this in practice, the party may decide to make it mandatory for aspirants seeking to fly its flag at the general election, to indicate their interest by organically obtaining a set number of signatures of verified party members spread evenly across the areas of their contest after acquiring a form with a nominal fee for administrative purposes. Because democracy remains a game of numbers, this immediately rules out pretenders that are devoid of mass appeal, while ensuring that candidates, who make it to the primaries, are individuals with the ability to mobilise numbers, have something to offer in their candidacy and have convinced party members that they can win.
This will immediately transform our politicking from a transaction that welcomes all comers, even with dubious backgrounds and questionable wealth, to one of ideas and the capacity to lead men and manage resources at the scale of Nigeria. It is the practice in saner climes and matured democracies, which we can reproduce here. It may not compulsorily begin with the presidency, but it is worth considering to wean our democracy from an over-reliance on moneybags whilst reducing the influence of money in the system as a whole.
Until we resolve to change the influence of money in our primary and general elections, we will continue to elect people who will get into public office with the mindset of corrupt enrichment and our country will never develop to its true greatness.
