Nigeria’s political parties are too powerful —Salami

THE retired president of Court of Appeal, Justice Isa Ayo Salami, has posited that political parties under Nigeria’s kind of political arrangement, are too powerful to be left unattended to.
Thus, the legal icon said courts must always be concerned about how politicians get into elective positions when such issues were placed before them and ensure that political office seekers did so only by the legally set down means.
Justice Salami said this in a lecture, entitled: “2015 general election and sustainable democracy: Judicial challenges and public expectations,” delivered at the 2014 Justice MMA  Akanbi Annual Lecture in Ilorin, the Kwara State capital, on Thursday.
He said a situation where political parties were allowed to dictate to the exclusion of other bodies how issues of national importance were carried out was too dangerous for the well-being of the polity.
“Our political parties are very powerful. It is true that by the provision of 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended), a citizen of the country could aspire to contest for any elective post (once he possesses the requisite qualifications), but it is equally true that same constitution makes such ambition unrealisable, except through the instrumentality of a political party.
“A person cannot contest for a political position except that person joins a political party and then contest under the banner of such a party. The resultant consequence of this arrangement is that it is these political parties that eventually determine who occupies what position-governors, deputy governors in all states of the federation, ministers, commissioners and other key governmental funtionaries.
“It is, therefore, upon the realisation of the significant impact that these parties have on our national life that it becomes imperative to get the best out of them. A situation where the culture of impunity is allowed to continue within the political parties will adversely affect the country too. Every facet of the economy will likely suffer.
“Like many democracies of the world, our kind of democracy is party-based
. It means political parties determine who eventually occupies which elective position. The choice of the winning party will eventually be crowned as the choice of the people. As a result, therefore, party election or intra-party election must be taken seriously.
“In essence, if democracy must find its footing in the country as a whole, the political parties must be made to serve as a fertile nursery, where its roots are allowed to form and its leaves tendered to survival,” he said.
“Unfortunately, however, the current regime of our electoral laws is one that seems not to allow for enduring democracy within the political parties. It is widely believed that political parties belong to the members, who are free to organise their affairs as they deem fit without let or hinderance from anybody. They are free to present any of their members for elective position, no matter how the process for such was conducted.