By Ehichioya Ezomon
In advance of the 2019 general elections, a trend has developed along with the rush to conduct local government council elections across the states: That’s the tendency of political parties to boycott those elections on rather nebulous excuses.
For instance, of the elections conducted since late 2017 in eight states, four were outrightly boycotted by the two leading parties in Nigeria: the All Progressives Congress and the Peoples Democratic Party.
While the APC spurned the elections in Ekiti (and withdrew midway into the balloting in Akwa Ibom), the PDP abdicated participation in Osun, Kano and Edo states. Already, the PDP is planning to ditch the council elections in Oyo in May. Ditto the APC in Rivers in June.
The big question: Will the APC and PDP pass up the 2018/2019 elections in the states they snubbed during the council elections? For starters, will the APC evade the governorship poll in July in Ekiti, and the PDP doing the same in Osun in September?
Perhaps, the implications of this trend are not lost on the Chairman of the APC, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, who would rather the PDP abandon the rest of the elections in 2018 and 2019. He was reacting to PDP’s dumping of the March 3 council polls in Edo.
To him, however low a political party rates its chances, participating in election is an “opportunity to mobilise and energise its followers,” failing which “the injury is to the boycotting party,” adding that, “from our history in this country, you do not boycott elections. If you do so, you are paying a heavy price for it and we wish it (PDP) luck. But I pray that they will boycott the others also.”
Certainly, Chief Odigie-Oyegun isn’t “earnestly yearning” for the PDP to shun the polls in 2018 and 2019, but he’s only expressing indignation that a political party that prides itself as the “largest in Africa” could abandon elections at the grassroots.
Ironically, in the rush to judgment, the APC chair failed to allude to his party’s pulling out of the council elections in Ekiti, not once but twice in two years – in December 2015 and 2017, respectively. And to think that the APC is the dominant political party in the country!
It’s not unusual, though, for political parties to shun elections, especially at the national level, if they stand no chance of winning any seat that would qualify them to exercise political or administrative authority. This necessitates the calls to give recognition to parties, that so desire, to operate only at the zonal, state or council level.
Political parties adduce various reasons for ducking council elections: from the seemingly genuine, such as having legal issues with the State Independent Electoral Commissions (SIECs), to the tenuous and downright ludicrous.
For example, the Ekiti chapter of the APC withdrew from the December 19, 2015 council polls on the allegation that officials of the EKSIEC were card-carrying members of the PDP, and as such “they could not be trusted to conduct a credible election.”
Then in last December’s polling, the party had recourse to its ongoing legal action against the EKSIEC, promoting that it could not participate in an exercise conducted by an “unlawful body.”
In Edo, the PDP vowed non-participation due to “lack of confidence in the EDSIEC,” and urged voters to shun the exercise. It also challenged, at the state High Court, the “unlawful amendment of the notice of election, from 90 to 45 days, by the House of Assembly.”
Even in council elections that are earmarked for May and June in Oyo and Rivers, the main opposition parties in the states have given notice of their opting out of the voting. What are their reasons?
The APC in Rivers has cases against the leadership of the local government councils, which have run through the courts – High Court, Appeal Court and Supreme Court, and the “constitutionality of the RSIEC Law 2018” being litigated at a Federal High Court.
So, in bowing out of the council polls in June, the Rivers APC, through its chair, Dr. Davis Ikanya, reminded the RSIEC chairman, retired Justice Chukwuneye Uriri, that there’s “no vacuum” in the local governments, as the councillors’ tenures had not expired.
The Oyo chapter of the PDP is “boycotting” the May council polls on the advice of a chieftain of the party in the state, Prince Adeyemi Saheed Arowosaye, who alleged that “information available to me” indicated that “the state government has perfected plans to rig the election in favour of the ruling All Progressive Congress.”
Actually, the fear of the controlling party, using its state governor and the SIEC to “manipulate” the system, is the beginning of wisdom for the opposition party to boycott council polls. Such abracadabra manifested in virtually all the states that had held elections in recent times.
To quote former Senator Domigo Obende (Edo North), “Political parties do not want to participate in elections so that it will not look as if they were defeated. They want the easy way out and to say, ‘We did not participate in the elections; otherwise, we would have won.’”
But the boycotters beware: Surrendering council polls undercuts a political party’s viability for the next big elections: State House of Assembly, Governorship, and National Assembly and Presidential elections.
According to the chairman of the Edo chapter of the APC, Mr. Anslem Ojezua, the decision of a political party to boycott council elections “is as good as signing its death certificate.”
So, haven’t the APC and PDP signed their “death certificates” in states they dodged council elections? Well, the Ekiti governorship in July and in Osun in September will likely show how wise both parties were in ditching the states’ council elections. Expedite
* Mr. Ehichioya Ezomon, Journalist and Media Consultant, writes from Lagos, Nigeria.