FORMER ENUGU SSG DECRIES FAILING POLITICAL PARTY INSTITUTUON

Former Secretary to the Government of Enugu State, Dr. Dan Shere, has decried the failing values of political parties being the embodiment of the foundational principles and  institutional platforms for realisation of the objectives of individual and group aspirations to political power in Nigeria. 

He said this in his first Lead Speech in the maiden edition in the Igbo Eze North, Enugu State political conference held on Thursday, June 19, 2025 at the Local Government pavilion, Ogrute. 

In the speech entitled, "Roles and responsibilities of political party executives" the Medical Doctor turned politician, said, "I may not have the immediate answer to the question why the organisers of this most important event decided on this particular topic, roles and responsibilities politicalexecutives, not that it is not germane, even as answers to the questions raised by the topic ought to have been answered at least two decades ago." 

According to him, "two decades ago was the year 2005, being the 6th year of democracy as commenced in 1999."

He recounted that "it was the year when the necessities, roles and responsibilities were cut, designed and underscored for executives of political parties."

He argued further that these "were cut to bear the burden of their own fields, if they must stand to be counted in the sphere of politics."

He said that for purposes of pinpointing the straight record, the assignment to hold forth in political parties as the executives were made that defibed their roles or responsibilities. 

Shere recalled that the Presidency of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo having, by 2005, gone two years into its recently secured second term of office in 2003, and the governors, also having romped into the second year of the second tenure in offices, roles and responsibilities of party executives had been made manifest much as many executives did not have the training or experience to be the masters of the emerging institutions. 

He regretted that party execurives started falling by the way side from that point, for some reasons of power play.

"Some members of the government, in most states, including Enugu, h

Shere said, "had already been faced with the fear, apprehension and desperation which literally hibernated on the fringes of despondency as their days in office were now counted.

It was also a time the thirst for elective offices had been reignited, not as having been newly rediscovered but both as providing the fillip for finishing of the battles lost and won in 1999 and 2003 and sudden realisation that democracy may have come to stay.

"In some cases," he said, "many were, after all, smarting for vengeance in the approach of 2007, over defeats after the loud mouthing of 2003 in which many State Chief Executives who were threatened with sack from offices, had wrung their palms, squeezed their faces and smiled right back to their offices."

He recalled that "at the the NEC of the PDP, the then President, Obasanjo, had asked the question, where is the role of the party in building the character of the politicians if this democracy would be sustained?"

He recounted that "in response to himself, Obasanjo had growled, 'it cannot be beyond us to erect political party traditions that make the candidates and which the candidates, whether in or out of the government, can mar."

In his opinion, this meant that he, the President & Commander-in-Chief of the Federal Republic, had deeply appreciated the depth of the malaise assailing the political parties wherein the Executives are less than the toothless bulldogs."

This was one of the reasons he said that he had asked, "have we tried to build the Party Institution where Executive roles and responsibilities are spelt, understood and practiced, not as appendages of government in power or men of money and influence?"

Below are details of his lecture:

"In understanding the points herein, we must be forced to appreciate the profound declaration of our own Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe when he made that historic funeral speech, entitled, We stand before the open grave. It was a speech made as the great Herbert Macaulay was about to be lowered into his grave, and there had arisen the necessity to compel emerging Party men to appreciate the depth of tasks standing before managers of political Parties in the struggle for Nigeria political emancipation. 

“The struggle to build Africa as free and independent societies, ready, determined and trained to take the reins in management of peoples and the resources, must have its foundation in understanding the dynamics of managing the collectives; in managing the groups; in conceptualizing the groups ideologies and philosophies; and in accepting that views held as both independents and collectives, which represent the collective, the cohesion and common thrust, form the foundation of future stability of the envisaged free States.”  

I believe that there are challenges in this position of the Great Zik. The challenge Zik posed in the funeral speech was for co-travellers, in the struggle for independence, to understand the departed Macaulay’s dream in joining with other visionaries to establish the then National Council of Nigeria and Cameroons, NCNC. The Party was later to become the National Council of Nigeria Citizens, same NCNC, when Southwestern Cameroon departed Nigeria, by plebiscite, in 1961.

So, what are the few cruxes of Zik’s pointers which ought to be reviewed in 2005?

Party officials are expected to understand that they are the bosses of those sponsored by their Parties into elective positions and whose roles and responsibilities must be carefully monitored, supervised, directed and motivated or disciplined (First draft of the NCNC guideline, 1944).

Party officials have the responsibilities to protect, defend and fight for appointee-members in government, or for those who are elected into offices, provided that they are strictly operating according to the guidelines of the Party. 

Party officials must not act to be subservient to please persons in government, so that the independence of the Party shall remain to retain the force to direct the affairs according to principles and ideologies of the Party.

Much later, after the NCNC had cut deep in its workings and uses of group principles and ideologies, the Action Group, sprouting, 1949, from a cultural group known as Egbe Omo Oduduwa, enunciated similar principles in carving the deserving cohesion and focus of the emerging Party. 

Two years afterwards, in 1951, the Northern Peoples Congress, NPC, also sitting atop an already cohesive ethnic organization, Arewa, rode into the scene with similar principles. What makes its enunciation more brutal was that some acts of possible negation of Party principles were threatened with ostracisation and possible physical harm. This did not deter its challenger, the Northern Elements Progressive Union, NEPU.

Please, make no mistake. I am not into the history of political parties in Nigeria. I am looking at what should form the foundations for roles and responsibilities.

When again the whistle for party politics was sounded in 1977, leading to the forming of civilian/democratic administrations in the Presidency and the then 19 states of Nigeria, 1979, political parties where called to collate, aggregate, agglomerate and anchor the principles, values, ideologies and ambitions of the active political citizens. Largely at play were:

National Party of Nigeria, NPN, which though spotted good doses of the characteristics of NPC, still managed to post a nationalistic posture to grip the leadership of government.

 Unity Party of Nigeria, UPN, born of the original tenets of the Action Group, AG, succeeded in maintaining the territorial hold of its original founder, who never departed from his exclusive principles in both management and responsibilities of the Party. 

The third plank, Nigeria People’s Party, NPP, which looked like it pandered to the fancies of the Great Zik, arrived like a troupe which missed its train or which bought the wrong ticket. Whereas its drives and reaches were attempted on the same NCNC principles of global Nigeria initiative, in which its party officials were inserted on the necessary spread to represent the nation, it was savagely assailed by the more forceful lures of the other parties which weighed anchor on ethnic appeal. To finally snuff the life out of it, the other Parties did not hesitate to covet its key players wherein an RBK Okafor was a stalwart whose overflowing gown was caught by the copper wire of the NPN; MCK Ajuluchukwu, its fiery writer and Publicist swung and staggered and was soon spotted in resplendent UPN trails. There were many more

Again, please, do not think that I have departed from the topic, roles and responsibilities of Party Executives. 

I have not. 

I have been struggling to lead us into appreciating that when the Party Executives fail to comprehend and internalize the ideologies, the principles and the ethos of the Political Parties, they must be understood to have prepared to fail in delivering on what they do not even know or understand. It is not particularly too difficult for me to begin to reel out what I have read as roles and responsibilities of Executives, especially in foreign journals. The Party Organising Secretary ought to know what ‘organizing’ entails, just like the Party Publicity Secretary. Those offices are there, but are they there whereas functionality in the traditional sense of playing institutional roles in an organization is absent? 

Let me also let you into other practices that have savagely assailed Party Officials and their responsibilities.

Poor funding of Parties.

Weaponisation of poverty of political party functionaries.

We take them one after the other:

Poor funding: Today, political parties are funded, from start to finish, from conception to implementation of any initiative, from welfare of members to elections, by the government in power. 

In the past, it was not that way. We still remember it. As students in the 2nd Republic, many of us belonged to the youth and student wings of political parties. We never went to the Local Government Chairman, or Commissioner, or any appointee of government for financing of any of our programmes. Each member had a membership card designed to record the monthly dues/levies of each member. Projects of the party at that level, as other levels were likewise funded. Today, it is a different thing. Nobody remembers that his financial steady ought to be the foundation of his basis. 

But we know when the trouble started. It was in 1988, when the military government of Ibrahim Babangida ruled that those who contributed more money to parties were taking the lion share in the affairs of the parties. It soon evolved the mantra: equal joiners, equal partakers. Of course, even as it seemed attractive then, it was bound to fail because so soon after it commenced, the same government started dictating the affairs of the parties, and those who had strong connections with government began to rule the waves in the then National Republican Convention, NRC; and the Social Democratic Party, SDP. Matters came to head in 1997 when the General Sani Abacha government imposed total government control on the then five political parties, CNC, GDM, NDP, NCPC, etc.    

With the benefit of the hindsight, would you think that there would a political party setting fully funded by government but which officials are capable of asserting their offices like the players of the Zikian era? Is it possible for the Party officials to receive government funding running into millions only for the party officials to raise publicized memos against policies and programmes of the same government? Is it even possible for the party officials to spot independence of thought whereas their entire existence rests on the government?

Weaponisation of poverty: This is a principle arising from the description of the gesture of the brutal Josip Stalin, dictator of the Soviet Union, to his totally de-feathered and stripped chicken in the middle 1940s. He said as other members of the Politburo watched in bewilderment: 

if you want complete and unquestioning loyalty,

strip the chicken of its entire feathers, 

then feed it abundantly at the initial stage, 

then starve it almost to the point of death;

then begin to drop a few nuts at measured intervals; and now, it has known abundance; 

as it has experienced intense lack and starvation; 

it is now not in a position to make any choice; 

you walk and it follows, even to its slaughter!

Comrades, he thundered, this has nothing to do with chickens!

The political parties of the era of Party Officials designed and empowered to represent the interest of political party, which ordinarily can vary from that of the individual in government, couldn’t have been any different from the parties of the present party system. The Parties and their officials are caps-in-hand, begging the officials of government to look in their direction. Of course, the party principles are there, at all times, but to whom is the party official yelling the rules of Party to? The elected government or its appointed officials, many of whom cannot, at a chokehold, pronounce the Party in government in the particular State. Some do not even belong to the political parties in power.

So, my dear party men, we all crave the return of the Political Parties which had the capacity to form the operating principles, guides, roles, responsibilities, ethos, and of course, the party Grundnorm.

It is desired for the longevity and good health of our democracy, as it adds to the multiplicity of forces on which the grounded democracy is anchored. 

However, until we have that foundation where formation of political parties rides the wave of commonality of interest, which anchors roles and responsibilities, as was the case in the years of the founding fathers, we shall be left in the unending search for roles, responsibilities and even functions, for ages, without ever weighing the anchor. 

In Enugu State, so far, we have had incidences now split into four sessions:

The 1999 – 2007 political party time zones in the Peoples Democratic Party, PDA, and other parties. The parties had effectively contested elections, propelled, in some cases by noted political godfathers, and in other cases, rode on the wings of ambitious players and power seekers.

The 2007 – 2015 party era was the time for entrenching of forces and re-strategising of practices, tactics and political forms.

The 2015 – 2023 was supposed to be the era of deepening the tradition of Party management, cultivating the Political Party bureaucracy and electioneering formulas, but I am afraid these were hardly the cases owing to what looked like deliberate flight from the responsibility, or at best ignorance of the job in establishing definite party character, forms and traditions.

The present era is, all things being equal, 2023 – 2031. It can be said to be one in its embryo, owing that it appears given that each era lasts eight years, even when it may operate on the straight run one-eight-year stretch under one State Chairman. This is where the spark appears. For the first time, we have the Chairman of the Political Party, who is a solid professional, and who is considered worthy of an added executive position in Government.

Dr. Martin Chukwunweike is a medical doctor in practice, who is not even a first timer in government. About 20 years ago, he was Commissioner in the administration, 1999 - 2007, and he was known to have given a good account of himself in office. He was also known to have conducted himself well in the post-regime turmoil and anguish that had, either way, befallen many appointees and office holders in that era. He was not bended by the deliberate construct of pressures designed for humiliation and deprivation by some elements of men of power of the subsequent era. There were many co-travelers in that ordeal.

Now, serving as both the Chairman of the PDP in Enugu State, while at the same time deemed fit to hold office as a Commissioner, tells so much about some qualities or talents yet untapped. And notwithstanding the possible heavy load this amounts to, his is an evidence of a bundle of talents encapsulated in a person which the Governor does not want to go to waste.    

It is our hope that his evolving Party Management style, which already evinces subtle and benumbed engagement at all levels,  would set the pace in commencing the process of institutionalization of the political party system in Enugu State, such that would effectively shorten the searches for roles and responsibilities of Executives.

And for the roles and responsibilities of Party Executives to emerge and crystalise, the tradition must be created whereupon party functionaries shall operate and contribute to development, functionality and visibility of Political Parties.           

I commend the organisers of this gathering and posers of the teasers in the proposed topics. The points of their worries cannot be lost on us. We all crave the evolution of Political Party traditions where the Political parties shall run, among other offices, 

Functional Party research desks;

Party publicity and propaganda desks;

Party secretariat administrations,

Party membership improvement and development desks,

Party research & development desks,

Party voter education and electioneering desks,

Party legal desks,

Party medical outreach desks,

Party Community relationship desks, etc.

It is when these begin to happen, as they are billed to under the leadership of Dr. Chukwunweike that political party functions shall cease to be one-man-shows, and we would be in a position to slap our chests and say that we are institutionalizing Democratic Party systems.

May our searches never take longer than our active years in politics!!!" 

Dan Shere, at various times, served as the Pro-Chancellor and Chairman of Governing Council of the following universities,

Enugu State University of Science & Technology, ESUT; 

Federal University of Agriculture, FUA, Makurdi,

Federal University of Agriculture, Umudike (Michael Okpara University of Agriculture), MOUA;

University of Port Harcourt, UNIPORT;

Renaissance University, Ugbawka – Enugu.

And prior to these enviable positions, Shere was:

The Secretary to the Government of Enugu State; 

Enugu State Commissioner for Youth & Sports; 

Enugu State Commissioner for Finance & Economic Development; and, 

two-term, Chairman of Nsukka Local Government Area, Enugu State.