Need to probe political parties

The need to reduce the number of political parties in our country becomes imperative by the day. This is because many of the existing ones are mere social organizations or pressure groups.

One is distressed to note, however, that INEC is planning to register more political parties when many of the registered parties are known only by their leaders who collect grants from our common wealth. They exist only on paper and in the records of INEC. They are not on ground. They have no roots in the electorate.

The planned registration is coming on the heels of a suggestion that any party that fails to produce certain percentages of winners in future elections should be deregistered. Many of these pseudo-groups called political parties operate from the sitting rooms of their leaders or at best from the beer parlours of their concubines where they share the grants received from our nation’s wealth.

This should be seen as another way of defrauding the nation as these nonexistent parties serve as conduit pipe for siphoning our money. The present admini-stration should extend its sanitisation activities to the registered parties and ensure they give account of the money given to them . It is only then that we can know the truth about them. We cannot be on top of a bridge and deny being on top of water. The electoral reform committee, too, should look into the above with a view to addressing it in its report.

Adelani Olawuyi,
Obada (Odooba),
P.O Box 2,
Ijeru Post Office,
Oyo State.

Is Nigeria’s democracy nearing extinction?

Even though PDP is in no doubt about the political strength of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar in the country and in his home state, Adamawa, they were reported to have mobilized all the PDP governors to donate funds to fight him to the finish so he could lose his grip on the state. The general belief among Adamwa indigenes and other Nigerians is that the victory of PDP’s Murtala Nyako at the April 26, 2008 re-run governorship elections is another fraud and electoral robbery perpetrated against the good people of the state.

If the results released by INEC are anything to go by, then one has no alternative but to believe that PDP has done what it knows best again. Murtala Nyako of the PDP polled 361, 729 votes to defeat his major opponent Ibrahim Bapetel of AC who polled 201,767 from the 21 local government areas of the state. The most surprising aspect of the result of the Adamawa election was that it was a total victory in all the council areas for PDP. Atiku and the AC candidate were defeated by PDP in their wards and local governments. Could this be believed by any sane person?

It is very clear from the preparations that INEC headed by Maurice Iwu is a major culprit in the strangulation of the people’s right to vote in leaders of their choice. INEC as it is today has severally subverted the people’s wish by doing things that are largely considered partial and a way of denying Nigerians the leaders they voted for. Even the line up of the parties logo in the ballot papers in Adamawa state was done in such a way that AC was put in a serious disadvantaged position which resulted in it loosing its votes to AD and MRDD. INEC has deliberately done so to disenfranchise the AC supporters who are ordinarily more than those of PDP. And one can say that INEC has succeeded in doing so because more than one hundred thousands votes were invalidated against AC.

Like the AC candidate, Bapatel said at a press conference shortly after the results were announced, “the results were not a true reflection of the votes of the people of the state. This is just a fairy tale”. Over the years, results of any elections so far in the state were never a landslide victory to one party because of the heterogeneous nature of the state.

One has therefore no alternative but to believe the threat of the national chairman of the PDP, Vincent Ogbualofor that his party will rule the country for the next 60 years. In other words, the party is ready to turn the country into a one party state, thus practising monocracy and not democracy as it is practised the world over.

We thank God for conscientious and selfless politicians and statesmen like Atiku, who had saved this country from Obasanjo’s third term agenda. I have no doubt in my mind that Atiku will use his party, AC and other platforms to fight for the sustenance of true democracy in the country.

Hajiya Hafsat M. Zanna
musahafsat@yahoo.com