The Youth Party, a political party registered by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), is set to conduct its Primary Elections in preparation for the 2023 general elections.

The Party’s National Organising Secretary, Mr. Segun Adeniyi, announced that in conformity with the INEC Guidelines on the conduct of party primaries, the Youth Party’s National Executive Committee (NEC) has issued guidelines for the conduct of the Party’s primaries.

Read More about the Youth Party 2023 Election Primaries here https://bit.ly/3DlU78z

See our Guidelines for Primaries here https://bit.ly/3EJrAKQ

On the 14 February 2022, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) embarked on a one-month nationwide warning strike and yesterday, 13 March 2022, the Union resolved to roll-over the strike for another eight (8) weeks which will once again see teaching and learning halted in all public universities in the country due to the failure of the government to fulfill its undertakings and implement the Memorandum of Action (MOA) it signed with the Union in December 2020 amongst other things.

Since this government has been in power, students have lost years of academic learning. You recall that in 2020, students in federal tertiary institutions in Nigeria lost over eight (8) months of academic learning due to ASUU’s strike action and the pandemic — as schools were shut down and the government failed to provide the right infrastructure for technology enabled remote learning.

The actions and inactions of this government have consistently shown that education is not a priority.

Read more about our position paper on Fixing Teritary Institution here https://bit.ly/3JiaxRu

The Youth Party has resolved to initiate contempt proceedings against the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, Mr. Mahmood Yakubu, “for refusing to obey a Court of Appeal judgment”.

The Party made this known yesterday after an emergency meeting of its Board of Trustees and the National Executive Committee, NEC.

In a statement by the National Publicity Secretary of the party, Mr. Ayodele Adio, the party described the actions of Mr. Yakubu as unbecoming, regrettable, undemocratic, and unacceptable of a supposed electoral umpire.

He said: “Despite a Court of Appeal judgment in our favour, INEC has gone ahead to exclude us from the electoral process by denying the party access to the voter’s register. Additionally, the Commission has refused to receive or acknowledged any of our letters.”

The party also stated that should INEC continue its unconstitutional exclusionary policy against the party, there is every chance that the general election will be deemed null and void for failure to allow a registered party to participate in the election.

“To avoid a constitutional quagmire, we are urging INEC to do the responsible and democratic thing by respecting the Court of Appeal’s judgment to include us in all election processes leading up to 2023,” Mr. Adio said.

He further expressed grave concern for the fragility of Nigeria’s democracy, noting that the first sign of the failure of a democracy is the abuse of judicial decisions.

He added that “We must never tolerate a situation where public officers can flagrantly disregard judicial decisions or judgments from the court.

“It doesn’t matter if the person is the Chairman of INEC or the clerk in ministry. Nothing threatens democracies more than the destruction and humiliation of its judicial institutions.”

 The party finally noted that it would be releasing the guidelines for the 2023 elections, having received recommendations from the committee setup to review and advise its NEC.

On Friday, 25 February 2022 President Muhammadu Buhari after much delay over
the years signed the reworked Electoral Amendment bill into law. The Bill has the
potential to significantly strengthen the legal framework governing our electoral
system and set the pace for a better and more credible elections in 2023.

The Youth Party welcomes the new Electoral Act 2022 and is pleased to have
contributed significantly to the final outcome of the Act through numerous policy
advocacy interventions. The Youth Party was one of the few parties that responded
to the invitation by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in a letter
dated 18th June, 2019 to submit recommendations1 for reform of the electoral
process after the last general elections. The Party also submitted an extensive
memorandum to the National Assembly Joint Committee on INEC and Electoral
Matters which was also presented at the public hearing of the Bill by our Financial
Secretary, Mr. Ifeanyi Nwoye even though we were given a very short notice.

Read more about the Electoral Act 2022 position paper here https://bit.ly/3KzT33u

The Youth Party has expressed great dismay that the Federal Government has not held any official to account for the sheer incompetence of importing 3 million liters of substandard petrol.

The party, through its spokesperson Lawal Ayo, noted that the negligence of duty has cost the country billions of Naira when resources are scarce. Even worse is that several car and generator owners have suffered huge damages from the substandard petrol that knocked down their engines.

Lawal said: “sadly, the government has shown no remorse for its incompetence that has cost many Nigerians their cars and generators. Neither has it demonstrated the will to punish the agency’s leadership responsible for such a catastrophic error. For us, this is unacceptable. If an agency is charged with the responsibility for quality control in the importation of petrol, it should be held to account when it fails to deliver on its mandate”.

“On the one hand, we cannot claim that the country has no money to fund education and hence the insistent strike action from ASUU, and then fail to come down hard on officials who have cost the government billions of Naira from their negligence. Furthermore, we call for more transparency and accountability from the NNPC and every other agency operating or regulating the oil sector.

“Well-meaning Nigerians will no longer tolerate the opaqueness and impunity that has characterized that sector. Nigerians have a right to know how their resources are managed and how their wealth is distributed (or spent)”.

The Government through the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed earlier announced that the government would stop subsidy payments on petroleum products in June. Unfortunately, the government reneged on its initial position in a meeting reportedly convened by Ahmad Lawan, President of the Senate with Zainab Ahmed, Timipre Sylva, Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Mele Kyari, Group Managing Director, NNPC Limited in attendance. 

The statement that the President is unaware of the commitment to remove subsidy is misleading. The real issue is not whether the President is aware of its removal or not because the President presented the 2022 budget, and signed the Appropriation Bill into law which signaled the removal of subsidy in June as only N443 billion was appropriated for subsidy payment from January to June 2022. 

Read more about the Fuel Subsidy position paper here https://bit.ly/3g2ezRd

Given Nigeria’s current fiscal state, the Federal Government must speedily adopt and implement the Bold Revenue Plan in order not to avoid debt and economic crisis, the Youth Party has said. Reacting to the passing of the 2022 budget, the party, in a statement signed by the National Publicity Secretary, Mr. Ayodele Adio, noted that “our current revenue realities cannot move the country forward. If we continue to borrow and do nothing about growing our revenue base as other countries are doing, a severe debt crisis awaits us.”

The party also criticized the Federal Government for having no clear strategy on revenue generation, relying mainly on borrowing such that the country spends 98% of its revenue on debt servicing. “There is no evidence of a coherent strategy by the Federal Government to improve our revenue substantially and to manage our debts. Even the Director-General of the Debt Management Office has warned that unless the country’s revenue profile is raised significantly, the country will face debt sustainability challenges.”

Expressing their disappointment with the government’s funding priorities, the Youth Party sounded an alarm that “shockingly, we are currently borrowing to fund a high recurrent expenditure, petrol and electricity subsidy, an expensive National Assembly, over-bloated civil service and the largess of politicians. Meanwhile, the government plans to spend only 5% of the budget on health and 7.9% on education, both of which are less than UNESCO’s recommendation of 15% for developing countries.”

After its criticism of the government’s handling of the economy, the party urged the Federal Government to adopt its Bold Revenue Plan to rescue the economy. Noting some of the recommendations in the plan, the party’s Publicity Secretary expressed confidence that the country will increase its revenue to GDP ratio from 8% to 14% within three years of implementing the Bold Revenue Plan.

Some of the recommendations in the plan include: the immediate implementation of the Petroleum Industry Act, implementation of the Stephen Oronsanye report to reduce the cost of governance, phased removal of petrol and electricity subsidy, and strict adherence to the Fiscal Responsibility Act, which states that budget deficits must not exceed 3%.

A few weeks ago, the President Muhammadu Buhari refused to assent to the 2021 Electoral  Bill, which was passed by both chambers of the National Assembly on November 18, listing  the inclusion of the compulsory direct primaries for political parties as his major concern.  

President Buhari argued that the compulsory mode for selection of candidates is subject to  manipulation and will lead to high costs of conducting primaries, violate citizens’ rights, lead  to litigation and cause security challenges.  

Read our Position Paper on the President’s rejection of the Bill https://bit.ly/3I1EMLI

On Friday, 31st December, 2021, the President signed the 2022 Appropriation Bill as well as the enabling 2021 Finance Bill which sets the tone for fiscal year by providing the legal backing to the government’s expenditure.

Fiscally speaking, the budget clearly shows once again that Nigeria is broke, significant steps have not been taken towards revenue generation and our rising debt is leading us towards the path of an unsustainable debt crisis.

Read our Position Paper on the budget here https://bit.ly/3zNYHe0

Strong democracies are built on the idea of equality, justice and liberty. But democracies endure because citizens are empowered with the inalienable rights to freely assemble and to determine their future through a free, transparent and credible electoral process. Once the electoral process is exclusionary, such a system rigs democracy in favour of a tiny elite in pursuit of narrow and selfish interests. It is for this reason that democratic societies must continue to reform their electoral systems to be more inclusionary. Except a level playing field is created for all persons to compete favourably in an electoral process, citizens are denied the most crucial element of a democracy – the right to choose.

Rather than attempt to further open the democratic space, the Independent National Electoral Commission has placed before the National Assembly, a Bill that would make it almost impossible for new and smaller political parties to grow organically. INEC seem to have been persuaded by the tempting but faulty assumption that political parties are solely in the business of winning elections. This is incorrect. Although winning elections are important for political parties (as this allows them to govern and implement their ideas), it remains only one of several functions of political parties some of which include moulding the public’s opinion of various issues, offering alternative ideas of governance, effective opposition, monitoring actions of officeholders and educating the electorate (or citizens) on various issues that affect them.

To therefore reduce political parties to mere vehicles for winning elections will inadvertently create a desperate and self-defeating system where politicians’ singular focus will be winning elections rather than the socioeconomic development of the society. Perhaps, this explains the lack of imagination in our current state of affairs that has resulted in record numbers of poverty, unemployment and insecurity. A system that is intolerable of new ideas will struggle to make meaningful progress.

So, what is INEC proposing and how does it stifle the electoral space?

INEC is setting impossible criteria for new parties that can only be met by a Party that has being in existence for a few years. Section 78(7)(a)(ii) of the Electoral Bill provides that:

“The Commission shall have power to deregister political parties on the following grounds-

(ii) For failure to win Presidential or Governorship election or a seat in the National or State Assembly election.”

The Bill sets an unrealistic and limiting criteria that for a political party to remain in existence.

The proposed provision is at variance with Section 225A of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (fourth amendment), which gives INEC the powers to deregister a political party for breach of any requirement of the registration, failure to win at least 25% of votes cast in one state of the federation in a presidential election, one local government of the state in a governorship election, one ward in a chairmanship election, one seat in the national or state house of assembly or one seat in the counsellorship election.

It is retrogressive to reduce the existence of a political party to its ability to win a presidential, governorship, or state house of assembly election. This is a blatant attempt to restrict the political space to the two dominant political parties – the APC and PDP, the appointors of the INEC leadership. This will always leave citizens with the short end of the stick. Emerging political parties should be given at least four-year election cycle to meet the requirement of section 225A of the 1999 constitution.

Another issue is who deregisters a political party? The current practice is that INEC unilaterally decides whether a political party has fallen short of certain requirements and then goes ahead to deregister the party. It is my view that only a court order from a court of competent jurisdiction should empower INEC to deregister a political party. This is to enact a legal framework that protects smaller political parties from being unduly disenfranchised. To deregister a political party is to take life away from a lawful assembly and such powers should not be left to the discretion of INEC but an unbiased judge after giving both parties a fair hearing. It is illogical that only a Court of law can disqualify a candidate from running in an election but INEC has the unfettered power to deregister his or her Party which includes the candidate and many others. In the banking industry, only a court, upon application by CBN can withdraw a banking license. This permits fair hearing and avoids abuse of power. It is noteworthy that the INEC leadership is appointed by the Ruling Party; Thus, leaving the power to deregister competitors solely in the hands of such political appointees offends the principle of natural justice.

The focus of INEC and the National Assembly should not be about drastically reducing the number of political parties without any real basis. It should be on how to expand the political space and create a level playing field that encourages smaller political parties to grow at their own pace. After all, South Africa has 93 registered political parties, The United States has 32, Ghana 24 and the United Kingdom 18.

Not every political party wants to contest the presidential election. Some political parties are contented with operating at the grassroots and competing only at the local government level. This should not be crippled; because it allows political education and participation at the grassroots. It is fair to concede that the APC and PDP are big political parties with a national spread. The Electoral Bill is tacitly promoting only these parties as having the God-given right to participate in electoral process.

The position of the law is clear on the fundamental right to freely associate. The Constitution and other international treaties to which Nigeria is a signatory protect this inalienable right, they include:

Section 40 of the Constitution, Article 10 of the African Charter of Human and Peoples Rights and Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly.

Elected members of the National Assembly must therefore rise above partisanship and reject any bill that stifles the electoral space and discourages political association at all levels.They

owe it a duty to their constituents to uphold the oath they swore to defend the constitution and to preserve our democracy. The country is better off with robust political participation.