By; DAHIRU SULEIMAN, Dutse
A former Jigawa State Governor, Alhaji Sule Lamido has described the recent controversial legislation by members of the National Assembly (NASS) on direct primary elections on the country’s political parties as breach of the provision of Nigerian Constitution which guarantees political parties the mandate to regulate the conduct of their affairs.
The former governor made the assertion in a statement issued and signed by his humble self a copy which was made available to our correspondent, accusing members of the ruling APC in the Senate for an attempt to enforce direct primary election on other political parties, despite the Constitution makes it clear that only political parties are mandated to adopt any means of choosing their leader’s without external forces.
“Direct or indirect primaries is a prerogative of every registered political party to apply in preparation for any given election either within it’s internal structure of it’s leadership or queuing to partake in given general elections without any external interference of government or INEC,” he said.
The PDP stalwart said, “the APC dominated Nigerian Senate legislation that political parties must conduct direct primaries in choosing their candidates into elective offices is a clear indication of the APC Senators turning selves into sole administrators of political parties which is tantamount to political self help of APC’s dwindling political fortunes.”
Alhaji Sule Lamido explained that, “the Nigerian Constitution guarantees the safe guarding of our plural democracy, the same Constitution inherently guarantees the parties to regulate the conduct of their affairs and mandate the Independent Electoral Commission (INEC) to oversee compliance of their (parties) constitution a copy of which is deposited with the electoral body”.
According him, “there was a time in our political evolution in the past when we had parties headed by late Air Marshal Alfa as the sole administrator of SDP and NRC! But that was when the political parties were invented and owned by the government with full compliments of offices from the national, states and local government areas, office furniture, motor vehicles, motorcycles, full funding of all the parties activities including transportation and accommodation during congresses and conventions and what have you”.
He noted that even at that, it simply puts the parties that are not sovereign but mere government appendages, “we all know the attendant consequences,” he added.
Lamido maintained that given that this legislation stands, “will the Senate make the required budgetary provision to all political parties to meet up the expenditure of fulfilling this piece of law?”
