Not less than three years out of a four-year tenure of a truly representative government ought to be devoted to the execution of development projects. This is a target that all third world countries should strive to achieve in order to improve the living conditions of their impoverished people.

Unfortunately, it is not what is currently happening in most developing societies. In Nigeria for example, the trend has been for the politicians to divert all attention to politics for all times as if politics is the sole purpose of government. Political campaigns that were mounted during the peak of the electioneering period of 2022-2023, have not significantly abated. At the same time, internal crises especially among opposition political parties have heightened, leaving the polity in a state of political tension

What further exacerbates the dilemma is that two strong societal institutions – the media and the judiciary that are best positioned to rectify the situation have failed to appropriately meet their mandate. Indeed, both have been found to operate in many instances as though they are more interested in serving as catalysts of politics without end. To certain judges, the day-to-day management of political parties is also a judicial function. As a result, every political activity or event, no matter how pedestrian is now handled not by party officers but by one judge or the other. This is certainly unacceptable because it can stultify the growth of political parties just as it can divert the attention of our courts from all other cases to only those concerning politics thereby creating outstanding cases.

Just before the 2023 general elections, the nation was rather shocked to find a judgment of our apex court which confirmed the decision of the ruling party to make Ahmed Lawan, the then Senate President the flagbearer of his party even though he was not one of the aspirants that contested the party’s senatorial primary election. Although many citizens found it hard to rationalize the decision, everyone had to adjust to the reason behind it, which was that the case was a party internal matter for which the decision of the party ought not to be questioned. We did not expect courts to dabble into internal matters of political parties after the celebrated case and a few other similar cases which came up later and for which the apex consistently directed our courts to hands-off.

Based on the above one can authoritatively argue that two courts, the Abuja federal high court presided over by Justice James Omotosho and the Oyo state high court presided over by Justice Ladiran Akintola merely added fuel to Nigeria’s political tension with their conflicting directives on the convention of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). The argument that it is the litigants and not the judges that are to blame is not persuasive. Whereas it is possible that judge B may not be aware of what had transpired in court A, but both courts ought to have heard the directive of their own professional superior, the Supreme Court that political parties should be allowed to handle their internal matters. Otherwise, both courts must either be hard of hearing or are victims of selective hearing who hear only what they probably want to hear.

It is not every matter that should end in court which is why the judiciary also encourages people to settle their cases out of court. Nigeria cannot afford to run a political system in which every political matter must be settled by a court of law. The PDP is a large political organization which formed the government of Nigeria from 1999 to 2015. During the period, it also was the ruling party in majority of the states of the federation. The party can therefore not convince us that it cannot remember how to organize political activities. To all of a sudden insist that it is only a court that can teach them when, where and how to sell nomination forms to political aspirants is unacceptable because the rules of party conventions are not new to them. In fact, they know all such things especially the intrigues involved more than judges. They only go to court on such matters just for distractions.

In the case of the media, its contribution to the increasing level of political tension in Nigeria is not less than that of the judiciary. To start with, it is a known fact that whereas the media had for years been in charge of setting the agenda of the nation, it has since lost that strategic role to the politicians. Now that the political class is left to dictate how far it wants to take its rascality, Nigerians are virtually on edge. First, the schedule for politics has been extended to all levels. Politics is not just the only thriving endeavour in the nation, it has become a non-stop phenomenon leaving no room for governance. Rather than striving to stop such politicisation of the nation, the media is supplying the oxygen for its sustenance.  Premature campaigns for instance that should have been discouraged by the media are effectively publicised by them.

In fairness to the media some of these events are pure commercials which can help the media remain afloat in a depressed economy. But having found that what the media would ordinarily not have covered are transmitted live when paid for, the politicians now pay for live coverage of events which inadvertently give legitimacy to such events. The media is yet to work out how to handle such issues of public interest that are affected by their own financial gains. Hopefully that may soon be worked out. But that is not all that is happening. When the major broadcast channels created political slots, the public expectation was that they would boost public enlightenment. The slots have unfortunately been turned into avenues for propagating conflicting political views thereby heating-up the polity.

 The case of intra-party conflicts is worse because the publicity they get has firmly established a disorganized political system. By bringing different factions to air their views either at different platforms or same slot, the media achieves what looks like balance and objectivity. The truth however is that like in the case of the judiciary, the media space does not offer settlement, it instead hardens positions which should be avoided in the interest of public peace. It also encourages some paid agents to continue to destroy their own parties using such media platforms. More importantly, by empowering factions, the media inadvertently confuses the general public on who the legitimate leaders are; more so, when some dissidents are referred to as leaders only because that is what they claim to be.

After the last general elections held in 2023, the next is due in 2027. Until then, we are supposedly in the era of governance which suggests that our attention should be on what the party that won the election is doing to improve the state of our development as well as an improvement on the living standards of our people. We are not in an era where the focus is on how the party we did not vote for is engaged in fruitless factionalization. Accordingly, the focus on the crisis in the PDP or any opposition party such as intra-party squabbles or weak conventions are misplaced. To do so, confirms that we are still tied down to electioneering period instead of the era of governance. The media ought to change such a focus by playing down on distractions while holding government accountable.  As insecurity is rising on a daily basis, there is no better time than now, to insist that the security and welfare of the citizenry ought to be the primary purpose of government and not politics.

The said primary purpose can hardly be achieved under a period of distractions where politics is the substance while governance is the shadow. But the focus should not be on the federal government alone.  The media has a duty to also remind state governors that the constitutional immunity they enjoy was to prevent citizens from distracting them adding that now that they are the ones distracting themselves through political defections instead of development projects, it is time to cancel the immunity clause. In addition, their unwarranted defections have left an impression in the international arena that Nigeria is fast moving away from democracy. It is hoped that this type of admonition would bring it home to the political class that there is a need for a change of heart from political tension to national development.