CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1Background of study

Political parties are an integral part of the process of consolidating democracy. Democracy depends on political parties to survive, since the structure of elections, from citizen participation to candidate selection and presentation of competing for political programmes, are done by political parties (Lamidi and Bello, 2012). There is, therefore, a link between political parties and democratic consolidation. However, there is an absence of democratic consolidation through political parties in Nigeria. The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the former ruling party, was unable to entrench democratic culture and behaviour in Nigeria’s political space.

Democratic consolidation for Gasiorowski and Power (1998) connotes an acceptable qualitative improvement in democratic practices and it is the process by which a new democracy matures, in a way that makes it unlikely to revert to authoritarianism without an external shock. Democratic consolidation connotes “the challenges of making new democracies secure by extending their life expectancy beyond the short-term and making them immune against the threat of authoritarian repression…” (Beetham in Ainabor, Idomeh and Braimoh, 2010, P.17). This makes it clearer why Obasi (2001, P.21) posited that “democracy is…the opposite of arbitrary, the despotic or tyrannical rule”. The conditions for democratic consolidation are: popular legitimization; the diffusion of democratic values, the routinization of anti-system actors, civilian-military relations, party building, organization of functional interest, the stabilization of electoral rules, judicial reforms, alleviation of poverty and economic stabilization.  Meanwhile, to consolidate democracy, political parties are expected to exhibit the following features: they must be composed of like-minded people whose world views are similar, they must promote a set of programmes embodying the vision, mission and manifestoes of the party and designed to meet the needs of the public; they must be mass-based, which helps to legitimize them; they must evolve gradually and systematically over time, with identifiable leaders who constitute their rallying points; they must exhibit characteristics of internal democracy in their operations (Kehinde and Adejumobi, 2007). Once political parties exhibit these features for a considerable time the democratic process can be characterized as consolidated. Yet democratic theorists maintain that parties’ internal functioning must conform to democratic practices because the quality of democracy in a state mirrors internal behaviour of parties. According to Mainwaring (1999, P.11), "the way political parties behave and carry out their activities affect such vital questions as the nature of, and citizens attitude to democracy, the level of accountability and quality of elections in a country".   Hence, since Africa’s democratic renaissance, there have been calls for African parties to be internally democratic in order to promote democracy within society (Gyimah-Boadi 2004; Bratton 2012).

Mainstream rhetoric in Nigeria media and popular discourses of the polity is often centred on the claim that Nigeria is “consolidating its democracy”. The evidence on the ground, however, contradicts this claim.  With the transition to civil rule in 1999 (Signaling the commencement of the Fourth Republic), political parties had the mandate to produce the right calibre of people to govern (Momoh, 2013).

The People’s Democratic Party (PDP) emerged as the dominant political party in 1999 with the return of democracy in Nigeria. PDP since its formation in 1998 had one unique feature of being the only party that has a national outlook.  As the ruling party in Nigeria between 1999and 2015  four general elections were held 2003, 2007, 2011 and 2015. Thus, it sustained the nation’s nascent democracy for as long as 16 years. This is the first ever in the political history of Nigeria. However, the last 16 years of the PDP rule witnessed a profound assault, rape, debasement, travesty and reversal of democracy. The two general elections in 2003 and 2007 held under the PDP government were characterized by notorious electoral malpractices. The general election were like warfare with a flurry of intimidation, thuggery, outright violence, widespread electoral irregularities, horse trading, ballot box stuffing with thumb printed ballot papers, ballot box snatching, election rigging, manipulation and falsification of election outcome and announcement of preferred candidates as winners. Starting its origin, the then ruling PDP was described as mixed bag of persons with different ideologies, that is, the conservative, the radicals and the progressives; who do not only misunderstand themselves but are regularly feuding (Amadi, Echem and Nwoko ,2017).

Within the PDP there has also been a serious erosion of democratic values. Its primaries, conventions and congresses, which are the democratic institutions for nominating party candidates for elections and electing party officials, have little been regarded. This scenario led Ibeanu (2013) to note that political parties largely pursue (and profess) democracy outside the gates and resist it within the gates.  Eni (2006); Owuda (2005) in their different submission noted that the  PDP as political party  witnessed the development of ‘godfatherism’, ‘babaism’, personality and military cult of the highest dimension, Horse-trading, browbeating, talk to step aside culture and imposition of preferred candidates of the godfathers in the party have characterized the party primaries, congresses and conventions. Some of the party leaders tell candidates nursing ambition with air of finality to forget it because there is no vacancy for their desired political offices.

 Rather than concentrating on consolidating the nascent democracy, the tussle for power and control of the party, machinery become the order of the day and this makes democratic consolidation difficult. Sambine (2004) posited that those who own or play major roles in the formation of the parties end up being dictatorial. In PDP for example, Ogbe (2004) lamented that there were individuals who did not see themselves as being members of the party, who rather sought to own the party or to own part of it and to dictate to the party.

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