Razaq Bamidele
A former Minister of the Interior and current senator representing Benue South Senatorial District, Comrade Patrick Abba Moro, has supported the amendment of the Electoral Act by the National Assembly to make direct primary mode mandatory for political parties to choose candidates for elections was a welcome development and a step in the right direction.
Sen. Abba Moro, during an interview, said he could not believe why anyone who wants the best for the country through advancement of democracy in the Nigeria would be antagonistic to the adoption of a direct primary system that would give power to the people and a sense of belonging to the entire members of a political party, reminding that democracy is the government of the people to the people and by the people.
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The Federal Legislator on the ticket of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), frowned at the indirect primary system where a handful of people would decide who becomes the candidate of a political party not minding the views of the generality of the membership has been vehicle that has bastardized and debased democratic ethos in Nigeria.
His words, “Quite frankly I support direct primaries because I think that is the best and right way to go now in this country. Our democracy has been bastardized by the delegate system (indirect primary mode) which has become a cesspool of corruption that democracy is on sale.
“People now ask for as much as N500, 000 per delegate. People now propose to give to delegates as much as one million Naira per delegate to buy their votes. This is certainly a classical situation of democracy on sale which is unacceptable.
“In the beginning of our present democratic dispensation it was option A4. It was direct primaries in which rather than narrowing down the electors to a few number of delegates, a sizeable number of registered party members are allowed to choose their leaders. It was smooth. It was hitch-free,” Moro explained.
He spoke further thus: “People express fears of the cost of direct primaries, and I said that it is self-serving for anybody to input high cost to direct primaries and scaring the government into believing that it would amount to huge cost on the part of government. Government doesn’t conduct primaries for political parties.
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“Political parties conduct primaries but they don’t bear the cost of primaries. Of course yes, they pay officials to go conduct primaries. But candidates who aspire to political offices are responsible for persuading and inducing delegates to primaries whether direct or indirect to vote for them. The government doesn’t bear the cost.
“INEC has been supervising elections even from the level of delegates. They have been supervising. INEC has been observing. There are INEC officials in all the local governments. So, it’s not going to be new deployment of INEC to local governments. INEC employs ad-hoc staff to conduct elections. In any case, if that is the price that we have to pay for deepening democracy, if that is the price that we have to pay for ensuring transparency in the selection process of our leaders to make the people more relevant, so be it!
“For instance, my political party PDP has a slogan of power to the people. How do you justify that slogan other than asking your members to select their own leaders? If we have in the past been unable to properly manage our selection process, and it becomes necessary and imperative that we must resort to direct primary to allow people to have a say in who leads them, so be it!”
In conclusion, Abba Moro said, the current amended electoral bill has very many fantastic provisions if you look at the whole gamut of the reforms that have been introduced into the current Electoral Act Amendment Bill, insisting “it would be very, very unpatriotic of anybody to urge Mr President not to sign it into law because it would be like throwing the baby away with the bathwater.”
