otukpo:

There has been a debate at many levels on the type of party system Nigeria should adopt in order to achieve a better democracy in the country.

The House of Representatives have rejected the 2-party system likewise some top politicians with the arguement that it negates the law of freedom of association. This arguement i see as selfish on the part of the politicians because Nigeria has been practising this multi-party system and it has not yielded any good result other than producing one stong party and numerous weak ones. It is also a way the politicians get their own portion of the national cake as they recieve allocations from the federal govt.


Nigeria is not yet mature for this present multi- party system and it has continued to make a caricature of our democracy.

We just need one other strong party, a party that can compete intensely with PDP. If not, PDP will continue to rule this country and continue to swallow up some other weaker ones until we have a one party system which is dangerous for this nation.

The politicians have said their own, but what do the youth of this country think?

Your contributions will go a long way in enlightening some of us.

wirinet:

You cannot decree parties, just as you cannot decree the number of companies or associations in a country. We keep chasing after shadows while avoiding the substance. Parties would drastically reduce to less than 5 if the following steps are taken;

1. Stop government funds to parties. Is is not abnormal for government to fund privately created parties?
2. Organized free and fair election. No body would waste his money forming parties if he cannot have a reasonable chance of winning an election.

wirinet:

You cannot decree parties, just as you cannot decree the number of companies or associations in a country. We keep chasing after shadows while avoiding the substance. Parties would drastically reduce to less than 5 if the following steps are taken;

1. Stop government funds to parties. Is is not abnormal for government to fund privately created parties?
2. Organized free and fair election. No body would waste his money forming parties if he cannot have a reasonable chance of winning an election.

otawa:

The number of party is not the problem.

The problem is we are multi-nation country.

Each nation that makes up Nigeria will always want to be President since all power is concentrated at the center.

otukpo:

There has been a debate at many levels on the type of party system Nigeria should adopt in order to achieve a better democracy in the country.

The House of Representatives have rejected the 2-party system likewise some top politicians with the arguement that it negates the law of freedom of association. This arguement i see as selfish on the part of the politicians because Nigeria has been practising this multi-party system and it has not yielded any good result other than producing one stong party and numerous weak ones. It is also a way the politicians get their own portion of the national cake as they recieve allocations from the federal govt.

In my opinion, a 2-party system which can produce 2 strong political parties is what Nigeria needs at this time. 2 parties that can compete favourable with each other, or a multi party with a maximum of 3 or 4 political parties should be adpoted.

Nigeria is not yet mature for this present multi- party system and it has continued to make a caricature of our democracy.

We just need one other strong party, a party that can compete intensely with PDP. If not, PDP will continue to rule this country and continue to swallow up some other weaker ones until we have a one party system which is dangerous for this nation.

pro01:

I disagree totally. I think, to start with, Nigeria seems cursed with leaders that are bereft of ideas. Our leaders are experts in policy flip-flops and this explains why they always go back and forth on issues; they remind me of the lazy workman who prefers to blame his tools for his incompetence. We have had restrictive party systems at different points in our political history (two parties, three, four, and five). Indeed, we tried the two-party system during the Third Republic (SDP and NRC) and the experience was not so positive. There was so much bad-blood within the parties arising from the competition for party tickets for different elective positions. In fact, why there wasn't an outbreak of full scale political assassinations during that era was because the military were in charge then and did not leave room for much internecine conflicts among the political class. Thee problems continued into the present fourth republic when we had a three party system (PDP, AD, and the then APP). The bitter experience arising from that era is still fresh n our memory; it was for this reason that the judiciary gave a landmark judgment (in the suit instituted by the late Gani Fawenhimi) permitting the formation and registration of multiple parties. If we make the mistake of reintroducing a restrictive party system now that the democratic space has opened up more than ever before, then that would be a recipe for disaster: the politically motivated murders we witnessed in the recent past would be child's play compared to what would happen during election seasons.

The reason why a two-party system cannot work is not far-fetched. We all know that political parties in Nigeria do not have a sufficient degree of what is commonly referred to as “internal democracy”. In other words, the determination of which aspirants would be nominated as party candidates for elective positions is almost always left for a few (or single) party leader(s) to decide. An outstanding example of this was the imposition of Umaru Yar’ Adua on the PDP by OBJ as the presidential candidate for the election in 2007. Of course there were several other aspirants who felt they more qualified and that they would have won the ticket if there had been credible and transparent primaries. Two of such candidates, i.e. Atiku Abubakar and Orji Kalu exercised their democratic rights by opting out of the PDP to contest the election under the platform of the AC and PPA respectively. What if we had a two-party system, would this have been possible? This sort of imbroglio is even more pronounced in gubernatorial and legislative elections. If there had been a two-party system in place, we may not have had governors like Theodore Orji, Olusegun Mimiko and Peter Obi – all of whom won elections with parties that are not so ‘grounded’ as it were. The truth of the matter is that adopting a two-party system, apart from being a negation of the democratic right of freedom of association, will amount to a constriction of the political space – which will reduce options, inhibit positive competition, and thus promote desperation and uncontrollable conflict within the ranks of the two parties.

Having made the foregoing points, I must also admit that the multi-party system comes with problems of it own – especially the huge cost the government incurs in financing the parties, most of which exist only on paper (husband & wife parties), and have never won even a councillorship election. The solution to this problem is very simple. Rather than abolish the parties and institute a two-party system, stricter measures should be set down for parties to qualify for state funding. For instance, parties would need to have functional secretariats in at least 18 states of the federation, and produce at least one individual holding elective office in at least half of these states. With this sort of framework in place, all the ‘face-me-I-face-you’ parties would fizzle out and only the serious parties would survive. Indeed, the current norm of state funding for political parties could even be jettisoned altogether!

We must also understand that two-partyism is not the panacea to a ‘one party state’ which we fear the PDP’s dominance could lead to. Indeed, the PDP’s supposed dominance of the political space is a function of the defective electoral process, and the party’s awesome rigging machinery which is probably the largest and most ruthless in the history of mankind. If we manage to achieve electoral reform, and future elections become more credible, free and fair, the PDP’s macabre hegemony will whittle away – making way for other parties with more popular candidates. You don’t need a two-party system to achieve this; all you need is free and fair elections.