By Dele Moses, Ilorin
A legal luminary, Yusuf Ola-Olu Ali, has said democracy would thrive better in the country if there is no ownership of the political parties by certain sponsors.
He said a party should not be funded by government or some individuals who would on account of their sponsorship claim ownership of the party but the party should belong equally to everyone of its member who should all fund it.
Ali who is a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) stated this in a lecture he delivered at the 2020 Press Week of the Correspondents’ Chapel of the Kwara state council of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ),
The lecture was enitled, “Effectiveness of Party Supremacy in Strengthening Democratic Principles and Promoting National Development”
The lawyer said during the first republic there was the practice of every member of a party funding the party and that this aided party supremacy and strengthened democracy.
He condemned the arrangement under the Ibrahim Babangida military regime where the two political parties of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and National Republican Convention (NRC), were funded and had their programmes and manifestoes written by the military authority.
While saying government should no longer encourage such an arrangement the senior lawyer also advised that no individual or group of individuals within a party should be allowed to assumed position of the owners of the party
“Political parties should not have owners. They should be mass organizations that give high and low, the rich and the poor the same opportunities. Ownership of political parties by individuals is directly antithetical to the democratic principle. If a political party will be all inclusive, it is important that it should be owned by a wide range of individuals drawn from all segments of the society,” he stated.
The legal luminary said there were threats to democracy and good governance in the country by intraparty conclittcs occasaioned by lack of internal democracy.
“This has played out several times in the Nigerian politics, as soon as the disputes arise within the party, the effect is usually felt in the quality of governance,” he said.
Ali also said that with the presence of over 50 political parties in the country there was proliferation of parties and advocated existence of about four functional parties.
He said: “As much as politics should be all inclusive, that does not mean every family should set up a political party. At present, Nigeria has well over 50 registered political parties. Some of these parties often have nothing on the ground in terms of membership, influence or geographical spread, and may not even have more than a couple of offices in a few cities.
“As a matter of fact, proliferation of parties is usually used as a ploy by politicians to plunge electorate into confusion as well, pose administrative hurdles for the electoral umpire during national elections.
“To make matters worse, they do not get a single vote during elections. INEC should have the right to deregister political parties that do not garner a certain percentage of votes cast in a general election, may be five per cent'”