The National Assembly recently amended the 2022 Electoral Act which consequently prescribed direct primaries as mandatory mode of primary elections of political parties.
The National Leader of the opposition Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC), Seriake Dickson, has admitted that the NDC witnessed some irregularities during the party’s recent primary elections.
“I want to tell all our members, particularly aspirants and their supporters, that we feel what they feel.
“They feel some of the processes (in the primaries) were not perfect, and I will be just one of the first to admit that,” he said.
“I’m not here to say that the primary processes were perfect. Far from it.”
Mr Dickson, however, blamed the amended Electoral Act 2026 as the major cause of the irregularities and attendant crisis in the party’s primaries.
He argued that the introduction of direct primaries by the electoral act, instead of the traditional delegate system, complicated the primaries of many political parties.
“Direct primaries, in the way and manner the electoral act stipulated, has created a crisis,” he argued, adding that the crisis could have been worse for a new party like NDC.
Continuing, the national leader said: “I made it clear from the day the Electoral Act was passed that it was a legislative overreach; that the Electoral Act had no business in prescribing, composing, mandating direct primaries, and that the issue of the mode of primaries should be left for the political parties to decide
“There were complaints from people who went to court (during indirect primaries), but the system was controlled because they had a delegate system.”
Mr Dickson noted that the principle of direct primaries insists that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) must be present in all the wards and local government areas during the exercise which, he argued, was conceived without considering the infrastructural needs of the method.
“INEC doesn’t simply have the capacity to do it. So what you do, and in our own case or in the APC, and also for a new party, what happens when you say direct primaries?
“This is the root cause of this issue, which is affecting all parties, and we are managing it far better, even without any government influence,” he said.
Mr Dickson also argued that direct primaries were responsible for irregularities and manipulations of primaries by aspirants.
“I’m saying that in a direct primary situation, for any party, if more so for a new party, you go to the field, and people begin to gather their crowd, declare themselves, and then tell you they won.
“Most of these guys (aspirants) who are making claims that they won. If you look at it properly and investigate their claims, most of them, they are brandishing results,” he said.
He expressed confidence that irregularities will not be witnessed during the NDC’s next primaries because the party would have completed the introduction of electronic voting by then to eliminate contentions.
Charles Aniagolu, the programme anchor, asked the NDC leader about the allegations of “ill-treatment” and manipulations by a senatorial aspirant of the party, Aisha Yesufu.
But Mr Dickson, in response, suggested that Ms Yesufu felt she was “popular on social media” and “might not want to play by the rules of the game.”
‘NDC not selling its tickets to the highest bidders’
The NDC national leader dismissed suggestions that the party was selling its tickets to some aspirants who pay higher in some states in Nigeria.
“Let me tell you as a fact, the NDC does not sell nomination tickets to people based on the highest bidders,” he said.
He stressed that, as the NDC national leader, he was not involved in the day-to-day administration of the party, acknowledging that the party’s officials who coordinated the primaries might have compromised the process.
“The national leadership of the party, of course, sends people to conduct these things. And as the mother monkey says, you can’t speak so much for the ones you are carrying on the back,” Mr Dickson said, insisting that the party’s leaders did not approve of selling tickets to the highest bidders.
The national leader, however, contended that the NDC usually considers the financial capacity of aspirants to fund their campaigns effectively to stand a chance of winning in the general elections.
“In the comfort of an air-conditioned room, people can make all kinds of claims and talk like activists and so on. In the real political world, resources are key.
“It’s perfectly legitimate in the real political world to say, ‘gentlemen, can you let us know your sources of funding?’ I’m sure that that’s what the stakeholders did,” he said.
“What is not tolerable is when you say, ‘okay, give me this or this before you get a ticket.’ No, that doesn’t happen in the NDC.”
