Gullible partisanship

Also published in Daily Trust

The level of political sophistication of a country is primarily determined by the level of political awareness of its people, which is reflected by their voting attitude and the extent of their commitment to partisanship. In advanced and other established democracies, the average voters are basically inspired by the proven moral integrity and leadership qualities of the candidates, as well as their precisely prepared and realistically implementable manifestos.

In such countries the issue of party affiliation of a candidate is secondary and hardly, if at all, plays any significant role in determining his suitability or otherwise in the eyes of the voters. This objective voting attitude inspires voters to vote for the best candidates notwithstanding their political party affiliations.

Besides, this explains why no matter how a particular political party enjoys popularity, it can hardly gain total control of all the branches of government in a given period. And even if this occurs, one can easily observe that the officials elected on its platform are relatively the best anyway, and being from the same party is largely coincidental not deliberately designed.

Nevertheless, such coincidental total control hardly lasts long, because the unpredictable but realistic voting attitude of the people would simply restore the status-quo where representation is appropriately balanced among the parties, which, as a matter of course, means better transparency and efficiency in governance.

Though instances of this trend are common in all established democracies regardless of the system of government adopted in a given country, it is particularly interesting in countries where parliamentary system of government is adopted e.g. the United Kingdom. Incidentally, I consider the parliamentary system of government the best democratic system for its decentralized structure, which enables as many different parties and individuals as possible participate in the process of decision-making.

For instance, though a lot of behind-the-scenes moves influence official decisions everywhere, deliberations in the parliaments of advanced democracies especially the UK House of Commons in London always impress me a lot, especially when I see the Prime Minister being grilled by the members of the parliament (MPs).

Anyway, while I address partisanship and voting attitude of the average electorate in developed democracies, I regret the situation in many ostensibly democratic countries and, of course, I refer to Nigeria in particular, where, unfortunately, every Dick and Harry can capitalize on the gullibility of the average electorate to get elected into public office.

Interestingly enough, contrary to the general assumption, vote-rigging is not always responsible for the emergence of corrupt and incompetent leaders in Nigeria. Ironically, in many cases, notoriously corrupt and incompetent candidates are actually elected into various public offices by such gullible voters, who are either too narrow-minded to see beyond some irrelevant yardsticks, or are simply too clueless to identify the right candidates.

By the way, this is why I always argue that, it takes either an inexcusable gullibility or sheer narrow-mindedness or both to hold the increasingly detested People’s Democratic Party (PDP) or any particular political party solely responsible for the leadership failure at the national level, or indeed any other particular party at state and local government levels in the country.

It equally takes a great deal of naivety to assume that a particular political party is capable of single-handedly solving Nigeria’s numerous challenges. After all, many equally corrupt or even worse politicians from other parties have taken advantage of the PDP’s notoriety to fool the electorate and get elected only to unleash their thieving pens on the public treasury to manipulate figures, add, multiply subtract and eventually loot it with impunity.

Likewise, many notorious PDP members, who lost out in power struggle have cleverly switched to other parties, and capitalized on the gullibility of the average electorate to regain their slots in the plundering circle.

Therefore, the reality is that, corruption in Nigeria is too endemic to be confined within a particular political party or even a particular sector; after all, the civil service sector is, by the way, equally rotten to the core. The average civil servant, for instance, is as corrupt as any average PDP elected member or any politician for that matter.

As a matter of fact, the average civil servant is not different from the average bribe-taking policeman on the street, only that, the latter has accumulated his unmatched notoriety because he largely deals and indeed extorts money from people in the open, while the former, who enjoys the privacy of his office plunders the public treasury away from the public eye.

I am therefore not excited by the apparently terminal illness bedevilling the PDP; in fact, even if it eventually collapses I would only cautiously rejoice, for I realize that, that might not necessarily be the end of the mess in the country.

This is because there are already many equally corrupt and, in fact, either former convicted or disgraced public office holders in both the two newly registered parties i.e. All Progressives Congress (APC) and People’s Democratic Movement (PDM), who apparently lurk in order to take over power from the PDP to perpetuate the culture of corruption and impunity in the country.

After all, exodus from the PDP to the two newly registered parties has already started, which warns of the possible emergence of another PDP in disguise, if care is not taken.

Amid these gloomy circumstances, the only realistic approach to address this persistent phenomenon is to vigorously promote the culture of assessing aspirants and candidates based only on their individual merits, regardless of their partisan affiliations or indeed any other irrelevant yardsticks.