By Taiwo Adisa
Politics, they say is a game of numbers. In its pure form, the majority would have their way, while the minority have their say. But the Nigerian breed of politics is more than that. There is thuggery, tactical and bullish gerrymandering, and then barefaced brigandage, which ensures whether some persons would have their way or keep silent.
In the early days of the Fourth Republic, all of the above were on display in different measures on election days. In many states, hoodlums had field days on election days. Some politicians engage cult groups, some employ thugs, and area boys to embark on ballot snatching, ballot destruction, maiming, and killings. The target is to ensure that the popular will of the voters is subverted. The strong and the streetwise usually carried the day in those elections.
A politician once shared with his inner circle how he knew he had won an election in 2019, even before the votes were completely collated. He said that at 2 pm on that election day, only four ballot boxes had been reported snatched. He said that when he compared that to the situation he faced in a 2007 election when over 200 ballot boxes had been destroyed by 10 am, he concluded that he had won the election. Such was the type of election we witnessed years back. But you would think that the continuous introduction of electronic components into the election management system and improvements to the Electoral Law meant that the nation was rising above brigandage.
Last week, the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) under Comrade Joe Ajaero returned the nation to that vomit when it attempted a violent overthrow of the National Chairman of the party, Julius Abure by picketing the party’s national secretariat and forcefully gaining entry. Leader of the Political Commission of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Comrade Theophilus Ndubuaku, and a number of its footsoldiers attempted to smoke the embryo out of the mother before the due date, by picketing the party’s national secretariat on Wednesday, March 20.
During that raid, the protesting NLC members forced their way into the secretariat and demanded the sack of the National Chairman who was out of Abuja at the time. Their words were firm and unshaken: Abure must go! They also claimed that their action was informed by the need to prevent the said Abure from plotting to turn himself into a “sole administrator” of the party. The body claimed that as the parent body of the LP, it has the power over the affairs of the LP. But that is where they got it all wrong.
That your organisation midwived the registration of a political party does not give you the power to dictate the pace in the running of its affairs. Once a party is registered by the Independent National Electoral Commission(INEC), it becomes a legal entity, whose operations are subject to its constitution, the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, and the Electoral Act. Anything done or undone without recourse to those law books is liable to be subjected to judicial review and can be declared null and void in the estimation of the courts. So, in the instant case, the LP, a child of the NLC, has grown beyond mere corporal reprimands. For the NLC to take control of the LP as things stand, it must follow the law.
Yes, there are contentions between the party and the NLC. The LP has been busy planning for its national convention, where it would elect national officers. It is understood that Abure would be putting himself forward for election at that convention. I understand that some persons in the NLC have issues with that. So the next step they thought was necessary was to seize the national secretariat of the LP and declare that the chairman had been sacked, that’s brigandage, pure and simple.
I do not understand the allegations the raging group leveled against Abure. That he was planning to make himself a sole administrator or something. The constitution of the LP allows a national chairman to seek re-election. But in the case of Abure, he would be seeking election for the first time if he contests the next national convention. He first came in to complete the tenure of the late national chairman, Abdulsalam Abdulkadir, who died in December 2020. In June 2023, when Abdulsalam’s original tenure lapsed, chieftains of the party were still involved in some shadowboxing over its leadership structure but the National Executive Committee (NEC) extended the tenure of Abure’s National Working Committee (NWC) by a year to calm nerves. That extension was to enable Abure to conduct the general election and would afford him the time to organise a fresh national convention to usher in a new term of the NWC. It should come as a surprise that the party is enmeshed in another round of trouble just as the one-year extension was getting to a close.
The NLC might have recorded several victories through protests, rallies, and picketing exercises. But that body needed to realise the boundary between politics and activism. A political party can only be run according to its constitution. Resorting to brigandage or activism models cannot yield the desired results. Incidentally, the LP is not the first party to be midwifed by a group or association. The Peoples Democratic Party(PDP), which came into being in 1998, was an agglomeration of different political groups. The Alliance for Democracy(AD) was also a brainchild of the Pan-Yoruba Socio-political organisation, Afenifere. Neither Afenifere nor any of the groups that launched the PDP has ever restructured the leadership of the parties through picketing. They usually go through the organs of the party.
Incidentally, the LP had, in its reply to the NLC declared that even though the NLC facilitated its establishment, only members of the Labour Union, and other Nigerians who have been paying the party’s dues are its known members and stakeholders. So the NLC needed to purge itself of such brigandage as exhibited on Wednesday. That the NLC facilitated the registration of LP does not confer on it the ownership and control in a civilised setting.