The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and a coalition of civil society organizations in Nigeria are urging political parties to strengthen their internal democracy system ahead of the 2019 general elections.
According to them, the way political parties make choices of their leaders and candidates during conventions and primaries has effects on the credibility of the election process.
Although 2019 when Nigeria is expected to conduct another general elections is about three year away, members of the civil society groups believe that this is the best time to start engaging political parties on internal democracy in other to get the elections right.
The Executive Director of Partners for Electoral Reforms, Ezenwa Nwagwu, said, “2019 looks far away but it is here on us. We should actually have started this in 2014 in preparation for 2019 so there is no better time to interrogate this issues than this time”.
Responding to the procedure for selecting candidates in political parties, another member of the group said, “It reflects on their party values both internally and how they wish to behave once in power. It also reflects on the kinds of relationships they want to have with their members and with the public at large as voters.”
He stressed the need to address these issues immediately, saying that political parties “do not really have the luxury of stepping back and thinking about how our internal systems are working for us as a party, Nigeria and democracy”.
