By Azu Ishiekwene

Nigeria’s main political parties are in the thick of their primaries ahead of the 2027 general elections. That politicians can still manage to hold primaries in the midst of a worsening wave of horrendous attacks on communities and kidnappings in parts of the country, not to mention the economic hardship, suggests we must be living in different worlds.

It reminds me of what the British historian Orlando Figes said in his acclaimed book, A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1924, about the situation among the Russian elite before the revolution.

“The upper classes,” he wrote, “lived in a world of luxury and privilege that seemed utterly divorced from the reality of the vast majority of the Russian people.”

Russia was sitting on a volcano, yet its elite was comfortably unaware.

It’s either we’re lost or have grown so used to bad things that they no longer matter. Whatever the case, it’s a dangerous place to be.

‘It’s coming home!’

After weeks or even months of attacks on communities and places of worship in Kwara State, the bridge to the country’s South, this monster is coming South in full swing, with the reported attacks on communities in neighbouring Oyo State on May 15, and the abductions of 39 students, seven teachers and a two-year-old child. At least two of the teachers have reportedly been killed in the most gruesome manner.

There has been no shortage of mic-chewing, as usual. The Federal Government has condemned the abductions as “barbaric” and promised to intensify rescue operations, while the state government has acknowledged a “failure of intelligence gap.”

Yet, before the last echo of these worn-out phrases faded, or any genuine comfort or help reached the distraught and broken families and communities, the politicians had bolted to monitor the results of their party primaries. This is how it was in Russia. Much of the aristocracy and court elite were attending dinners, theatre outings, receptions, ballets, and court ceremonies. Tsar Nicholas II was, in fact, outside the capital, writing about the weather, his meals and conversations with aides.

Let them comfort themselves.

What does it matter? After all, the May 15 abductions in Oriire Local Government were only just one more surge in a relentless wave, going back to the Chibok girls, the Dapchi girls and many other abductions that piled on. The families and communities affected will be fine.

And so, in their misery, these families are left to scrape the promise of hope from useless press statements and the social media handles of politicians whose primary job is to keep them safe. There’s no sense of shame or feeling of loss, except for the families and communities to whom the loss of even one person means everything.

No need to ask where these politicians came from. They’re from amongst us, and to some extent, our choices also helped to make them the monsters they have become. That’s why the party primaries are more important than the dozens of children kidnapped or the lives of their teachers murdered by abductors, despite the repeated promises of this and previous governments to implement the Safe Schools Initiative.

Primaries like no other

One thing I thought would never fail was politics – yet even the outcome of the recent party primaries makes you wonder just what our politicians are good for. The outcomes of the primaries, in many instances, were neither good for humour nor useful as a reference. They were grotesque jokes.

Watching the political barometer across party lines is almost like waiting for floodwaters to recede before assessing the extent of damage. Direct, indirect or consensus arrangements have been the practice among parties in the current political dispensation since 1999. In all but a few instances, the ongoing ones have served a dual purpose – manufacturing winners and multiplying grievances among losers.

Yet, the primaries are supposed to be meaningful exercises to decide not only which candidates will run, but also who really controls a party, generate internal cohesion, gauge the political pulse, and pave the way to the general election. It’s the party’s version of housekeeping.

Of much concern, however, is that the primaries are assuming the image and likeness of the desperate politicians themselves. Increasingly, they have become a war in which politicians and party members practice on themselves what they intend to unleash on the electorate: ambition, self-interest, and power without responsibility.

Without exception, the primaries or adoptions look like a mix of organised manipulation and elite horse trading. There’s no better evidence of high-cost tolling than the prices of nomination forms, which are pegged with the intention to exclude all except those armed with political long knives wantonly.

The presidential primaries, especially, have always exposed the charade that passes for internal party democracy. Unfortunately, these theatres of absurdity not only provide the leeway for Nigeria’s underwhelming leadership recruitment process but also underpin the entrenchment of transactional politics.

Counting in their millions

The ruling All Progressives Congress’ (APC’s) presidential nomination form, priced at N100 million, favoured wealthy aspirants or those with strong patronage networks. It narrowed the field to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and Stanley Usifo, providing the needed formality and a convenient but inconsequential challenge that gives legitimacy.

President Tinubu’s vote tally of 10.99 million at the primaries surpassed the 8.79 million he obtained in the presidential election of 2023. The results point to one of two likely scenarios: either the 31 governors in the APC fold are working overtime to deliver a second term to the President, or the party has finally landed a bogey that approximates President Muhammadu Buhari’s legendary 12-million voter base.

Same of the same

Also, after Tuesday’s court eligibility ruling, there’s a huge guessing game about whether former President Goodluck Jonathan will contest on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). This party already has a factional candidate in Governor Seyi Makinde of Oyo State. But Jonathan is a scarecrow; he will not run.

The African Democratic Congress (ADC), on its part, is living up to its billing as the party of Vice President Atiku Abubakar, formed by Atiku for Atiku. It’s painfully amusing that it has taken two aspirants, Mohammed Hayatu-Deen and Rotimi Amaechi, months to see what they didn’t need glasses to see.

For its part, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) has dispensed with the nonsense of the so-called direct primaries in which persons who cannot accurately count the fingers on their own hands are appointed to count voters. The party crowned Peter Obi as its consensus candidate, sparing him his mortal fear of a contested primary.

The joke is on Banire!

My good friend, Dr. Muiz Banire, SAN, who stubbornly insists that Nigeria’s political parties cannot grow without internal democracy, can now see that internal democracy is what the strongest faction of the party says it is.

And in a system like ours, where party members are hardly financial members and have no idea how the party was formed or what it is about, the “owners of the party” will always have their way, which quite often, also means having not just the party, but also the courts in their pockets.

Now that the wanton joke called party primaries are over – or nearly over – I hope politicians, and the security men taken off their duty posts as monitoring agents, will go after the Oriire abductors.

It should concern politicians that winning the party’s ticket is one thing, but more important, having a country in which to contest the election and govern is quite another.

This column will be rested until June 19

Ishiekwene is the Editor-In-Chief of LEADERSHIP and author of the book, Writing for Media and Monetising It.