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POLITICS is a process of social or political engineering that is all about horse-trading, give and take, disagreement and compromise.

It is indeed the basis of consensus. But as practised presently among Nigerian politicians, a consensus has become a dangerous instrument of exclusion, of disenfranchisement and manipulation. It is against the spirit of democracy and cannot be the basis of anything good.

The consensus was the anthem on the lips of delegates suborned into giving up their democratic aspirations, some in tearful or angry outbursts, to the advantage of favoured members of the All Progressives Congress, APC, in their just-concluded convention. All of this in the name of deferring to the wish of the putative father of the party, the President, Muhammadu Buhari. 

One would have imagined the outrage that greeted the anti-democratic tendencies of our political processes that recently played out as consensus would have been sufficient to discourage any further pursuits along that line by others. But that seems like asking too much of Nigerian politicians. For after the charade of the consensus arrangement of the APC convention, it became the turn of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, to join the gravy train. Up and down the streets and byways of the country, leading members of the PDP have begun a campaign and search for a so-called consensus candidate that will be the party’s flagbearer for next year’s presidential election.

Bukola Saraki, a former president of the Senate who was also governor of Kwara State, and Aminu Tambuwal, ex-speaker of the House of Representatives and current governor of Sokoto State, themselves presidential hopefuls, have been at the forefront of the search for a consensus candidate for the PDP in complete defiance of the zoning arrangement of their party that should ordinarily keep them out of the race in this round of elections, being politicians of Northern extraction. Without prejudice to its appropriateness or otherwise, as a power-sharing principle, zoning of political offices is proving burdensome for the PDP as it is for the APC. It says a lot of the deception of our present state of politics that politicians in the two leading parties, especially the PDP that was hitherto loud about it, now find it difficult for reasons of personal interest to abide by zoning that could be regarded as a form of consensus within the internal arrangement of their own party.

The only reason, it would seem, behind the present drive for consensus among Nigerian politicians is to constrict the democratic space and ensure that those they do not want have no place in the country’s political life. Many of the advocates of consensus candidacy know they are headed for nowhere in terms of their eligibility for public office. But by sticking their necks out while pushing for a consensus candidate in the same breath they are determined to clear space for themselves and ensure their relevance and political survival in the emerging dispensation. Otherwise, they set up electoral roadblocks that could only be to the disadvantage of new entrants to the field.

The consensus arrangement is an incestuous scheme that will keep certain categories of politicians and their ilk in power in perpetuity. It works against the spirit of recent electoral, legislative and political reforms that were put in place in the last three decades beginning with the creation, by a military decree, of two political parties, namely: the National Republican Convention, NRC, a right of centre party and the Social Democratic Party, SDP, a left of centre party, to cut down the influence of ethnic, religious and pecuniary considerations, etc., in the electoral process. The goal of the Ibrahim Babangida regime in creating these parties was to legislate into existence a new social order to be led by a new generation of politicians nicknamed the new breed, away from the moneybags.

There have been a series of calls for reforms in the political order since then culminating with the Not-Too-Young-To-Run bill that was passed in the National Assembly in 2017. President Buhari assented to the bill in 2018. But since then, not much has been achieved beyond the tokenism of putting a few new but known faces in some inconsequential ‘youth’ wings in the different political parties and public offices. Had the opening up of the democratic space that the 2018 Act was meant to achieve been met, the hateful anger that characterised the #EndSARS protests of October 2020 would have been more manageable. While that Act lowered the qualifying age for most political offices, including the presidency, to between 30 and 35 and made room for independent candidacy, the politicians have through the backdoor erected barriers to keep unwanted groups out of the political sphere.

One way they have maintained their hold on party politics is by the imposition of huge nominations or expression of interest fees. These are non-refundable fees that could pauperise any new entrants to public office and cannot but ensure that only the richest Nigerians can nurse any aspiration for elective offices while hoping to recoup such needless expenses. You must be either a thief or a millionaire at the very least to aspire to any of the available offices under these circumstances.

How many young or ‘new breed’ politicians can afford the N40 million to N45 million nomination fees for presidential aspirants of the PDP and APC? How many of them can afford the cost of opening offices across the country even when their interest is limited to particular offices that are located within state boundaries?

 We are not yet talking about the cost of purchasing operational vehicles, hiring aides and campaigning across the states of the federation. If it took the tortuous process of a constitutional amendment to enact the Not-Too-Young-To-Run bill into an Act of parliament, what does it take for political parties to bring down the astronomical cost of nomination forms for aspiring public officeholders? What is the purpose of imposing such an amount if not to undermine the purpose of recent democratic reforms?

Is it not remarkable that even the politicians themselves recognised the criminality of their activities and are too ashamed or unwilling to be seen as condoning them as is to be seen in their eagerness to attribute the purchase of their nomination forms to faceless groups operating under strange names? How many presidential aspirants of the PDP or APC have openly owned up to paying for their own nomination forms? Is it Aminu Tambuwal, Bukola Saraki or Pius Anyim? In the last seven years or thereabout since political parties turned nomination fees into instruments of offence most politicians from President Muhammadu Buhari to Abubakar Atiku and their fellow travellers have bought their nomination forms through their ‘supporters’. Add this trick to the consensus stratagem and you have some idea of how democracy is hobbled in Nigeria.

Vanguard News Nigeria