BY Prof. Adele JINADU
Introduction
My starting point will be a number of general comments about the history, functions and responsibilities of political parties in Nigeria, as the broader context for indicating a framework for approaching the problem of inter-party dialogue in the country and posing questions about not only its desirability and framework but also the framework for pursuing and putting flesh into it.

Section 2 attempts to define political parties and to indicate their significance for liberal democracy. Section 3 offers a sketch of the historical sociology of the development of political parties in Nigeria, in terms of their “developmental circumstances.”

Section 4, offers some observations on the functions and responsibilities of Nigerian political parties. Section 5 looks at the justification for and scope of inter-party dialogue, in the broader context of party reform as an aspect of constitutional, electoral governance, and political reform; while Section 6, the concluding section, poses questions about what should go into the design of the architecture of inter-party dialogue in Nigeria.

Party: Concept and Origins
“What is a party?”  The answer depends on whether one offers a structural or functional definition of the notion of a political party, and how such a definition is linked to or influenced by the development of democracy. [See, Epstein 1967:14-15].

In the west a political party has generally been defined more in functional than in structural terms, with two core elements, namely that a political party helps to (a) structure electoral choice and (b) conduct the business of government, under a party label or banner.

A party needs not perform both functions but generally all parties tend to perform both functions, more or less. In short, the core functions of a political party, not its organizational structures, are what typically distinguish a political party as a conceptual category from other organizations.

It also follows from the functional definition that the significance of political parties for liberal democracy is that under conditions of competitive party and electoral politics, a political party (i) presents the electorate with a choice of candidates and programmes from which to choose; and  in doing so (ii) helps to decide which party or coalition of parties should govern for a fixed number of years.

In other words, this functional definition of the party is predicated on the assumption of the competitiveness of the electoral process.

Thus, in a liberal democratic system, the party provides the medium through which the accountability of the executive and the legislators to the electorate is exercised through periodic elections under a multiparty electoral politics. This is of course the theory.

The reality is and can be much different, because of the constricting effect on the choice of the electorate of (i) contradictions such as oligarchic and undemocratic tendencies in political party organization; and (ii) market imperfections and structural distortions in the economic organization of the liberal democratic state.

A useful framework for analyzing the historical sociology of Nigerian political parties is provided by the following “developmental circumstances,” adapted from Epstein [1967:19-43], which molded the character of the country’s political parties  (i) the colonial experience, particularly the anti-colonial movement and enlargement of the suffrage; (ii) changes in a country’s social structure, reflected in the rise of an educated elite, and the challenge they posed to traditional chieftaincy authority, and the emergence of the military as a ruling class ; and (iii) federalism.

Outline of the Historical Sociology of Party in Nigeria

Constitutional reform and the meaning of party in Nigeria:

Because of the centrifugal consequences of the ethno-regionalization and the personalization of party politics, particularly between 1951 and 1965, Nigeria has moved, since the constitutional and political reforms of 1975-1979, from a functional definition of a political party to a legal- constitutional one, which primarily defines party more in terms of structure than of functions, with emphasis on structural requirements for political party registration as (i) national outlook and spread; (ii) internal organization or democracy, and (iii) recognition and registration by an electoral body.

But as Nigeria’s experience since 1979 has shown, there are limitations to the social engineering assumptions of the structural definition of party.

Developmental circumstances of party in Nigeria

The colonial experience: The foundational “developmental circumstance” of party in Nigeria is colonial rule and the opposition to it by the country’s nationalist movement, which transmuted into political associations to contest for legislative elections as the country progressed between 1922 and 1960 from non-representative government (legislative council), through representative government and responsible government to independence, under competitive party and electoral politics.

Ngou [1989] estimates that including the three [major] political parties, a total of fifteen others contested the ‘critical’ election of 1959.

However, the more prominent of the parties in this emergent multiparty system between 1922 and 1960 were the Nigerian National Democratic Party (1923), the People’s Union (1923), Union of Young Nigerians (1923), the Nigerian Youth Movement (1937), the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (1944), the Northern Elements Progressive Association (1945), the Northern Elements Progressive Union (1950), the Action Group (1951), the Northern Peoples’ Congress (1951), the United National Independence Party (1953), the United   Middle Belt Congress (1955), formed through the merger between the Middle Belt League (1950) and the Middle Belt People’s Party (1953)., Bornu Youth Movement (1956), the Dynamic Party (1955), and the National Democratic Party of Nigeria and the Cameroons (1958).  [Azikiwe, 1961:301-334, Hodgkin, 1961:195-197]

Impact of social structure: Another critical “developmental circumstance,” of the party in Nigeria is the country’s social structure, which can be disaggregated variously into class, religion, language, ethno-communal, rural/urban divide, ideology, and educational levels.

But the emergent political parties from the mid-1920s reflected the dominance of the nationalist movements by a combination of petit-bourgeois middle class and proletarian strata of the country’s social structure.

Yet the logic of competitive party and electoral politics and the unfolding ethno-federal political structure in the country meant that the emergent political parties had to cultivate the support of traditional rulers and traditional institutions, as part of their electoral strategy.

This comes out clearly in the close, sometimes symbiotic relationship between ethno-cultural associations or organizations and a number of political parties, which, like the Action Group and the Northern Peoples’ Congress grew out of or became the political wings of these cultural organizations.

Although class and ideological divisions seemed not to have been significantly salient elements of the social structure of Nigeria, there is a sense in which the emergent party system in the 1950s and 1960s reflected class and ideological differences.

While most of the Nigerian parties during this period were what might be characterized as elite parties, with the exception of the Northern Elements Progressive Union (NEPU), a rough distinction can be drawn between conservative parties like the Northern Peoples’ Congress   (NPC) and centrist ones like the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC) and the Action Group (A.G.), based on their manifestoes and programmes.

That class and ideological cleavages were insignificantly salient, in spite of the sometime close alliance of some of the parties, like the NCNC, with the leadership of the trade union movement, might not be unrelated to the pervasive salience of ethnicity, which cuts across class and other social divisions in the country.

Ethnicity, federalism and party: Ethnicity, therefore, is a major element of the country’s social structure, which has had a profound impact on the origins and developmental trajectory of political parties in Nigeria, and on the practice of federalism in the country.

The intersection of ethnicity, federalism and party politics illustrates another aspect of the “developmental circumstance” of political parties in Nigeria. Indeed this intersection accounts, by and large, for the substantial ethnic origin or power base of not only the three major parties—the AG, the NCNC and the NPC—but also a number of parties like the Bornu Youth Movement (UMBC), United Middle Belt Congress (UMBC), and the United National Independence Party (UNIP).

The impact of the process of the ethno-regionalization of Nigerian politics set in motion by the 1946, 1951 and 1954 Constitutions no doubt encouraged and contributed to the emergence of ethnic based parties in the country

This ethno-regionalist orientation of the parties, reflected in the fact that the national leaders of all the 3 major parties preferred to stay in the regions, becoming regional premiers, impacted in turn on the country’s federal system: between 1954 and 1960: its emphasis on regional autonomy resulted in strong unit level or regional governments, with the consequential weakening of the central government.

As Watts [1966:340] puts it,  “ the main effect of the party system [between 1954 and 1959] was ‘to provide three powerful organizations intent on maintaining regional rights.”

Yet by 1960, there was going on a simultaneous process of the regionalization and federalization of party politics and of the party system in the country.

Although the major parties retained their regional strength, competitive logic of federal party electoral politics forced these parties to become national and to look for alliances, particularly among minority ethnic group-based parties, outside of their regional base in order to strengthen their national electoral vote.

The result of this federalization of the party system was a de facto two-party system, cutting across ethno-communal lines, at the federal level, and a single-dominant party system, reflecting majority ethnic group solidarity, at the regional or unit level, with the notable exception of the West, where the NCNC was strong.

It is the contradictions unleashed from 1962 onwards by this federalization of the party system —the declaration of emergency rule in the Western Region in 1962, the creation of the Mid-West Region in 1963, the 1962-63 census controversy, the party realignment before the 1964 regional elections and the 1965 federal elections, involving the alliance between the NCNC and the A.G, on the one hand, and the NPC and the rump of the NCNC and AG in the new NNDP, on the other hand—that contributed significantly to the political and constitutional crisis and the civil unrest of October-December 1965, which precipitated the fall of the First Republic in January 1966.

Impact of military rule on party:  It is in order to de-emphasize the dysfunctional or centrifugal salience of ethnicity in party politics, based on the experience of the First Republic, that military-brokered transitions in the country in 1975-1979 and 1985-1999 tried to proscribe or discourage the formation of ethnic-based parties.

The proscription has involved the attempt to engineer political parties with national outlook through a number of structural or organizational requirements, which political associations seeking recognition and registration as political parties would have to satisfy, and to create the environment conducive to free and fair elections and to the reduction of electoral violence that engulfed the country between 1962 and 1965.

Other structural reforms of the post-military party system were intended to (i) facilitate internal democracy within the political parties, through requirements like party conventions and party nomination primaries, and the establishment of a party bureaucracy, involving a distinction between career politicians and party technocrats; (ii) engendering a new political culture through encouraging and nurturing the emergence of a “new-breed” of politicians, with a more positive and system-supporting orientation to politics;  and (iii) emphasize issues-based or ideological differentiae, to distinguish one party from the other, and to de-emphasize the personalization of party politics.

The objectives of these reforms of the party system, brokered under military-initiated democratic transitions in the country have not (i) resolved the problem of the political mobilization of ethnicity as a salient factor in Nigeria’s competitive party and electoral politics, although they may have domesticated it within the parties; (ii) brought about internal democracy within the parties; (iii) reduced election-related violence; (iv) created  an atmosphere conducive to inter-party dialogue and credible competitive party and electoral governance.   However, if the 1975-1979 did not completely remove the old divide in party politics, as was clear in the composition of the major political parties that emerged as clones of the parties during the ancien regime, the post-1987 as well as the post-1999 political parties reflected some break from the political parties of the First Republic.

Prof. Jinadu was a Commissioner in the defunct National Election Commission, NEC between 1987 and 1993. He delivered this paper at the recent Inter Party Dialogue convened by the United Nations Development Programme in Abuja.