To Fund or Not to Fund Political Parties, that is the Question

By

Kabiru Muhammad Gwangwazo

kamgwangwazo@yahoo.com

Former Kano State ANPP Chairman Kabiru Muhammad Gwangwazo who was at a Bayero University Kano (BUK) organised parley on funding political parties last October canvasses for more direct funding to all levels and organs of all Political Parties and calls for set up of a dedicated Independent Political Parties Commission (IPOPAC) Mallam Aminu Kano’s Mambayya House at Gwammaja is home to the Bayero University Kano think tank concerned basically with politics and politicians in Nigeria. Haruna Wakili, Ph.D., is the Mambayya Centre’s Director. The last Saturday of October, this year, the Mambayya Centre for Democratic Research and Training invited an array of people who can all be said to be politicians. Of those I could easily recognize some are or were top political party leaders, one only recently a governorship candidate; another a defeated/rigged out AC aspirant for Kano Governor (my humble self); an aspirant for the national assembly; a couple of former secretaries to the Kano State Government (SSGs); a one time national electoral commission top executive; some prominent Kano Islamic scholars; some university dons and some NGO men and human rights activists.

Another participant I was introduced to at the end of the event is the decently Shariah compliant clad wife of my friend and classmate the bearded Mullah Isma’ila. She is a university lecturer and one of the daughters of late Abdu Dawakin Tofa, Deputy Governor to Muhammad Abubakar Rimi who later took over from Rimi as Kano State Governor in 1983 before that year’s NPN landslide that came just before the General Muhammadu Buhari-led gun-slide which swept the politicians off the scene for 16 years; paving the way for Olusegun Obasanjo, the retired General who had twenty years earlier (in 1979 to be precise) handed over to Shehu Shagari’s NPN. The retired General was left to lord it over Nigerians for another eight years (1999 to 2007), effectively giving the military 24 years of suzerainty since their return to power in 1983.

Today Umaru Musa Yar’adua, the younger brother of Obasanjo’s Deputy in 1979, late General Shehu Musa Yar’adua with whom they had handed over power to NPN has being handed over the baton of running Nigeria by Obasanjo while General Muhammadu Buhari, the man who led the sacking of civilian democratic political structures in 1979 is still in court challenging this handover as a contestant in the 2007 musical chairs for the leadership of Nigeria.

Anyways this is not the topic today, even if we should one day return to it to review what is it in this small band of Nigerians, soldiers, political and politician Generals that makes them stick to Dodan Barracks and Aso Rock. I haven’t forgotten IBB who is a recurring decimal in all the manouvers for Nigeria’s plum seat or even Atiku Abubakar, Yar’adua’s boy who was to become Obasanjo’s deputy for eight years since OBJ’s 1999 return to power.

Nor have I forgotten many times chief spook and NSA, General Aliyu Muhammad Gusau either. He has always been quite close to late Yar’adua; nor yet again have I forgotten late MKO Abiola, friend of the Generals who gave the June 12 excuse for Obasanjo happening. Or the many other coup star Nigerian Generals; and you dare not call them “coupists and carpet baggers” even though we are in a supposed civilian democracy now.

These are all issues for another day. We are now on about the invitation I got for this roundtable on politics and funding of political parties, whatever partying the Military allows in Nigeria. Someone, may be at Mambayya House must one day do a proper study, if it hasn’t already been done yet by our brilliant ivory tower political scientists on this dynastic politics with its militarist blend surreptitiously taking shape under our very noses in Nigeria. The invitation which I had the honour of also receiving was to brainstorm on party funding. Looking round and seeing the many eminent faces at the well attended Mambayya House Roundtable I felt so proud and eminently pleased at being invited; And why not? Just looking at the faces is enough to make any politician feel proud of being in such eminent company, eminent and for many of them truly controversial for many varied reasons. There was my friend and fellow APP, ANPP man, Alhaji Ahmadu Haruna DanZago of the General Buhari Organisation (TBO). Some cynics who would recall the Danzago history would say he is only in TBO for now and for as long as it serves his interest! Not for any Buhari ideology. There was also atrophying (the Political Party mark you, not the Dr.) PSP National Chairman, Junaid Muhammed, medical doctor and PRP Federal House of Representatives 1979/’83 member whose younger brother another “Dr.” (Salik) Muhammed is now controversial ANPP second-term Federal House of Reps member for the same (Dr. Junaid’s) Dala Federal Constituency.

There was teacher, politician and administrator Mallam Ado Gwaram, former national election commissioner, founding father of REPA in Kano State Secretary to the State Government (SSG’s) office and two-time SSG facing another ex-SSG, his mate at the Kano education ministry who just like current Kano Governor Mallam Ibrahim Shekarau was a mathematics “Mallam”, Alhaji Haruna Ungogo, the 2007 PRP candidate for Kano Governor. And Mallam Ibrahim Khalil, of Radio Kano “Fahimta Fuska” Muslim fatwa programme fame, the undisputed Mallam Shekarau Government’s liberal Islamic theology ideologue.

As for the young men, young lecturers and NGO men around I saw Kabiru Kura ex of PPMC, now a lecturer at Kano State Polytechnic, one of the PDP’s Young Turks, of the very few in the PDP today who can truly be said to be driven by ideology and deriving their inspiration from their NEPU/PRP history. I also saw Nasiru Kura, the radical young man making waves in Human Rights circles from Kano. And there was youthful Muhammad Mustapha ex of MAMSER and NOA, who now heads the NGO Democratic Action Group. He was a frontline candidate for the PDP Federal House of Reps from Gyadi-Gyadi Ward of Tarauni LG, who found himself on the wrong side of the PDP’s power brokers in the run up to the 2007 polls in Kano.

My goodness! I haven’t mentioned our father in journalism from Kano NEPU, Mallam (Comrade) Adamu B.K. Gabari who came with a copy of a July 24th 1955 letter to NEPU branches writ in Hausa by NEPU national secretary “Naku, mai Kaunarku” Mallam S.G. Abubakar Zukogi, asking branches to mobilize funds to the tune of three hundred and seventy-five Nigerian pounds (#375) in support of the required one thousand, one hundred and fifty-five pounds (#1155) to cover traveling expenses for NEPU representatives attending a Political Conference in England.

Branches were expected to top up the sum before 31st August of 1955. The four NERPU men and woman traveling included Mallam Aminu Kano, Mallam Abubakar Zukogi, Lawyer Nwajei and Mrs. Shehu. In the fundraiser, money was to also be provided in aid of Yerima Balla, Adamawa’s Representative and Mallam Ibrahim Imam. Incidentally Yerima Balla is the father of pioneering female Kano doctor, Dr. Balla, I remember espying this gracefully ageing doctor who’d inspired many a student to go for medical studies at her duty post at Murtala Muhammed Hospital in Kano City; I saw her from afar at the reunion of NEPU/PRP on the May 29th 2007 swearing in ceremony of Sule Lamido as Governor of Jigawa State in Dutse, a seat or two away from irrepressible Musa Guza in his splendidly multi-coloured NEPU cap, that he has kept well hid for more than forty years. NEPU veterans sport this cap to announce their history of struggle. Only prominent NEPU fighters get such caps on the day they are released from prison to celebrate their return from detention for political crimes.

Back to the NEPU Secretary’s letter. The Party branches were asked by Secretary General Zukogi to begin preparations for the 1956 elections with pep talks on victory and references to those tough areas, then tough for NEPU like Wukari and Bida. Zukogi recalls how NPC activists are now on their own since the North’s Emirs, who are NPC’s support base say they had no business with NPC anymore.

My invitation to the event, a distinct honour I do repeat, could have been because of one of my many relationships with politics. As former political Party (ANPP) Kano State Chairman in 2003 to 2004 as defeated – even if I still insist neither fair nor square – candidate for Governor in Kano State AC in December 2006 or as former Chairman of Kano Municipal Council, 1996/1997. Journalism is also related to politics, so may I have qualified for an invite due to my initial vocation of journalism where I did a stint as editor at Kano State owned Triumph Newspapers, some time at Radio Kano and then CTV 67. Yet more reasons might have been my time at the BBC in London in 1992 and as its reporter back in Kano, Nigeria for a few years as the fact of my being the Publisher of the now rested/resting (?) Pyramid Newspapers in Kano. As for more political excuses may be my appointment as Special Adviser to Kano’s Governor Shekarau may have earned me the invitation. If there is more of an excuse needed, a little nepotism could come into play since I was a fellow Bayero University mate of Dr. Haruna Wakili, the Mambayya Centre’s director in the 1980s. Not that I haven’t been a BUK student before and after. Whatever the reason (or reasons) I was glad I got the chance to vent my views on politics and funding of political parties. In fact that is why I decided to bore you with my life history here. So that you would have no reason but agree with me if I bamboozle you with my “expert” views on Politics and Political Parties! And views? There were very many different views. But the dominant views were that political parties shouldn’t be funded. That Political Parties should have their numbers trimmed. That the Constitution should be amended to make politicking less attractive to those who now populate the political space and gorge themselves on the people’s resources with little to show for the people. That the funding of parties was what has led to the deterioration in quality of politics. That there should be independent candidates and quite a few other ideas I wasn’t able to capture well enough; some rather brilliant ideas too I later learnt were canvassed before I arrived on account of the “go-slow” at Kofar Mazugal gate being reconstructed.

To support the views of those who see funding of parties as wrong there was the NEPU case as adjudged against other figures presented by Comrade Adamu BK Gabari, the senior political activist and journalist, who was one of Kano State Triumph newspapers’ first set of board members at its set up in 1980, revealing the hundreds of millions of Naira used to finance the little to the left SDP and little to the right NRC by Military President Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida in the late 1980s and early 1990s. As the Mambayya event got on, late though I was, thank God I got the chance to comment from session chairman, Mallam Ibrahim Muazzam Fagge, one of our political science lecturers from 1979 to 1983 at Bayero University to whom we owe what I am told is the apparently radical political disposition I and the many of my then university mates affect. Of the many other chief influences we had then were late Dr. Bala Muhammed, Governor Rimi’s Political Adviser assassinated in the Kano rampage of July 10th 1981, organised as a reaction to Governor Rimi’s alleged plans to remove Kano’s Emir Ado Bayero; BUK’s current Vice Chancellor, Prof. Attahiru Jega; Usman Adamu Mailumo, and my senior at Government College former House of Reps Speaker Gali Umar Na’abba too who all taught us one or other aspect of politics as science that I have had the privilege of being fairly well involved with at the practical level these past three decades, from the PRP at my local branch to the highest level in Kano as State Chairman of the ANPP. My views on politics and Political Party funding differed from those of some of the older contributors at the session. And I am supported by the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. It explains how the National Assembly has powers to legislate over political parties and how the Assembly can order for punishment for default of rules regarding management or control of political parties. In “Chapter VI, Part III – Supplemental, D – Political parties, section 228”, the Constitution explicitly says “the national assembly may by law provide, for an annual grant to the Independent National Electoral Commission for disbursement to political parties on a fair and equitable basis to assist them in the discharge of their functions”. This time as in many other areas I agree wholly with those who crafted the 1999 Constitution. Like all others before it, I am on the side of those who lament the failure to allow consistent practice of the provisions of the constitution. With the latter day truthful, just and fair activism of the Judiciary today assisting in interpreting the constitution all the ideas those who drafted it want actualized could ultimately be achieved. Those who say political parties shouldn’t be funded by government say this gives room for lazy lay-abouts to mess up the funds and the parties. They say we should allow a return to the days of NPC, NPN, NEPU and PRP where each class of Nigerians had their own parties and got funded by members. That the problem of Nigerian politics began since the Party funding spree by IBB’s Government meant to create the new breed we ended up with. Those who want a return of days past may have a point. I remember the days we would go buy badges and other party emblems at PRP rallies. And I think there were times we had to pay for admission at Eldorado Cinema, airport road or the Sabon Gari stadium to listen to Mallam Aminu Kano and other top PRP men. At the few NPN rallies, the two I think I attended for curiosity’s sake, one to see and listen to Shehu Shagari, early 1979 at Shahuci near Murtala Muhammed Specialist Hospital, before he started sporting those outlandishly tall caps and garishly embroidered dresses, the “Shagari Style” that became his hallmark, I also saw party emblems and badges on sale. Even at Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s UPN and Chief Nnamdi Azikiwe’s NPP rallies in 1979 it was the same pattern. Parties raised funds from supporters who believed in their cause. But much as this makes sense and indeed made sense before the practice of funding of parties by government, now that we are used to funding of political parties by government such funding too makes sense now; a lot of sense.

If you say parties and politicians that populate them are havens for jobless lay-abouts and that you shouldn’t waste government’s resources on them you may not be far wrong. But have you considered that it is through parties that you get into government? Have you considered that in their own way political parties are very much like other recruitment grounds and groups that prepare the citizenry for leadership? They are as much an integral and core Institution of State responsible for leadership in society, for good or bad. Just like the Nigeria Army, the Civil Service and the Traditional Institutions that have our chiefs and emirs at their head. Political parties and politicians are no better or worse than the police force, the immigration and customs and the many other institutions that keep the state on course. And if you argue that there is corruption, rascality and irresponsibility, which I wholeheartedly agree are obvious in Political Parties, which sector in the nation is free of such afflictions? Not even the university system, and its lecturers, radical as they are (or rather were!), is spared nor are clerics of all religions free of such afflictions. Would you as a result of this say they should all be refused funding? That because the Nigeria Army and its Military Governments have bred the most corrupt breed of Nigerian leaders like General Obasanjo especially in his civilian tenure as President that the Military is all bad? Or simply because NADECO and its June 12 allies and the Obasanjo Presidency claim corrupt practices against General Abacha or the more astounding claims against General Abdulsalami and his boss IBB would you deny the military the good and great men it has given Nigeria as heads of state? Would you deny that late General Murtala Rahmat Muhammed, General Muhammadu Buhari, his deputy, late General Tunde Idiagbon were all great and upright leaders just because they were soldier presidents? Or would you deny the military administration such performing governors as Late Abdu Bako of Kano or gentle souls like Nigeria’s amiable civil war Military Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon? Would you on the other hand also deny the Nigerian politician credit for spawning greats like Late Mallam Aminu Kano, the ascetic leader who taught the Talakawa to say “No!”, to oppression and injustice and Sardauna Ahmadu Bello, the North’s visionary Premier who literally pulled the North up by the scruff of its very neck as it were, to compete most favourably with other Regions and peoples in the new Nigerian nation the colonial powers left to him and his peers? Political parties need be funded, if for nothing but the desperate and very real need to sanitize them and deny money bags in government or from without government the unseemly leverage they still have despite so-called funding (that opponents of funding now want stopped) which leads to blatant and ungodly rigging and theft of Nigerians will at elections.

In my view and indeed from my personal experience as a Party Chairman and as a Local Government Chairman Parties should have more serious direct funding. And such funds must be monitored to ensure all levels of the party get the funds. At the moment it is as if they are not funded at all. Because the funds are inadequate. And they don’t seep down to the level of those Party organs that desperately need to be empowered.

In such a situation those parties that are lucky to have captured political power suffer the ill-luck of been hijacked by the governments they form. Some other time I might even tell on how we got funded while I was chairman of ANPP and the little I know of how the Shekarau Governorship election was funded. And how we survived when as Party Chairman I got pitted against the Government we worked to enthrone, the Shekarau ANPP Government. That is why parties must be properly funded. Like other tangential topics here this are issues for another day.

If Parties are adequately funded and the funds get to the level of those organs that need them the quality of leadership and their self esteem will be enhanced. The party leadership at all levels will thus grow from the status of beggars tied to the apron strings of the executive. Those in the executive are after all fellow politicians whose only difference with those in Party posts is that they are now elected or appointed through the vehicle of the Parties. And a significant difference is they control the treasury. And for the funding to properly serve the purpose the national assembly should be categorical about how the funds are to be used.

At the state and local government level the Party should have functionaries who are paid clearly articulated salaries and allowances of the type paid those who are in government as approved by the national assembly and national revenue commission (RMAFC).

The legislature should be empowered to ensure the parties are truly democratic, or a special commission not just the INEC that has more than enough and some on its plate conducting elections, but a truly Independent Political Parties Commission (IPOPAC) be set up charged with ascertaining the parties are truly free, democratic and properly funded, such that they get treated like other establishments and institutions of the State. That way we should be more assured of stability, quality and consistency in Politics and Political Parties. This may yet save us the blunders we see committed because delegates and Party Congresses end up producing incompetent leaders whose only qualification is that they have the capacity to buy their way.

Some of the ideas canvassed here have not been submitted to the Mambayya parley because of obvious constraints, given the large and distinguished turn out. And these ideas are by no means exhaustive. In fact they may not even be acceptable to many Politicians and non-Politicians too. But looking back at recent elections (or more realistically, selections) in 2007 which turned out to be a multiplication in geometric proportions of the mess of 2003 by the supposedly “independent” electoral commission (INEC), I do believe something drastic needs be done to ensure only quality candidates with the true desire and capacity for service to the people get to pass through the sieve of Political Parties. That is why we need a regulator for political Parties -- as we have in NCC for GSM and other phone operators, Dora Akunyilii’s NAFDAC for medicine men and women and “pure” sachet water vendors too, the CBN for banks and insurance Ndidi Okereke’s for money bag corporations etc -- an Independent Political Parties Commission (IPOPAC) that should provide space for independent candidates too whose performance determines the level of funding they get through the Commission.

If we starve Political Parties of funds how do we expect them to sift what good there is from the pool of bad politicians? More so as the Parties are under the thumbs of those wily and greedy Politicians in Government? Just look at how the Parties select candidates for Party posts and elective posts over the past nine years of this phase of politicking and you would know what I mean. So funding parties must continue in a bigger and more elaborate and organised fashion. Additionally, to ensure proper Partying gets done in the Political arena the dedicated Independent Political Parties Commission (IPOPAC) canvassed here ought to be set up for the purpose with the national assembly continuing its oversight functions on the Parties as guaranteed by the Constitution while the INEC should be left alone to continue with elections and elections alone.