Political Parties Primaries: Consensus or Coronation?        

By  Anthony Ubani

There is nothing wrong with consensus in politics. In fact, in a disciplined political culture, consensus can reduce bitterness, save money, prevent needless internal war, and help parties present their best candidates without tearing themselves apart.

But what Nigeria is witnessing under the consensus candidate provision of the Electoral Act 2026 is not consensus in its noblest sense. It is increasingly looking like elite imposition dressed in legal clothing. It is the old politics of godfatherism wearing a new suit.

The Electoral Act 2026 recognizes only two methods for the nomination of candidates by political parties: direct primaries or consensus. This is a major shift from the Electoral Act 2022, which allowed direct primaries, indirect primaries, and consensus. Under Section 87 of the 2026 Act, a party that adopts consensus must secure the written consent of all cleared aspirants, showing their voluntary withdrawal and endorsement of the consensus candidate. Where that consent is not secured, the party must revert to direct primaries. A special convention or nomination congress must also be held to ratify the consensus candidate.

On paper, this sounds neat. In practice, it is becoming dangerous. The law assumes that written consent means free consent. That is a lazy assumption. In Nigerian politics, a signature can be extracted through pressure, fear, inducement, intimidation, exclusion, or the quiet warning that an aspirant’s political future will be buried if he or she refuses to “cooperate.” A document may carry a signature and still carry no legitimacy. Consent obtained under pressure is not consent. It is surrender. That is the heart of the problem.

Consensus is supposed to be agreement. What we now see in many places is coronation. Party members are not persuaded. They are bypassed. Aspirants are not freely withdrawing. Many are being boxed into silence. Party leaders meet behind closed doors, decide who should fly the flag, then invite the rest of the party to clap for a decision already taken.

That is not democracy. That is selection by a few powerful men pretending to speak for millions.

Recent reports already show that the growing reliance on consensus, especially within the ruling APC, is creating internal tension, allegations of imposition, sidelining of aspirants, and regional grievances ahead of 2027. This matters because party primaries are not private family meetings. They are the first gate of democratic choice. When that gate is captured, the general election is already stolen before voters arrive at the polling unit.

Those defending the practice will argue that parties are voluntary associations and should be free to decide how they select candidates. That argument is not completely wrong. Political parties need internal autonomy. They also need room to manage conflict. No law should force every party into endless internal conflict.

But party autonomy is not a license for political robbery. Parties are not social clubs. They are constitutional vehicles for democratic representation. They receive legal recognition from the state. They nominate candidates for public office. Their internal decisions shape the options citizens are allowed to vote for. When a party shuts out its members, it narrows the choices of the electorate. When it imposes candidates, it weakens the sovereignty of citizens.

This is why the consensus debate must not be reduced to an internal party matter. It is a national democratic question. The Electoral Act 2026 has also removed many of the detailed statutory safeguards that previously governed party primaries and now relies more heavily on party guidelines and internal rules. PLAC’s analysis notes that the new framework removes indirect primaries, recognizes only direct primaries and consensus, deletes some detailed procedures for direct primaries, and shifts more responsibility to party discretion while INEC and the courts remain oversight actors.

That shift may look efficient, but it is risky in a country where most parties are weak institutions controlled by strong individuals. Nigeria’s parties are not yet mature enough to be trusted blindly with such discretion. Many do not have clean membership registers. Many do not hold transparent ward congresses. Many are built around governors, presidents, financiers, and godfathers. To give such parties wide room for consensus without strong enforcement is to invite abuse.

The timing makes it worse. INEC’s revised timetable for the 2027 elections requires parties to submit their membership registers by May 10, 2026, and conduct primaries, including dispute resolution, by May 30, 2026. The presidential and National Assembly elections are now scheduled for January 16, 2027, while governorship and state assembly elections are scheduled for February 6, 2027.

That is a tight window. PLAC’s electoral calendar analysis warns that the new timetable compresses the transition period for parties adapting to the new legal framework and creates practical risks around nominations, compliance, and disputes. In a compressed calendar, party leaders can easily weaponize urgency. They can tell aspirants there is no time for proper consultation. They can rush meetings, pressure dissenters, and present imposition as necessity.

That is how bad law and bad political culture combine to damage democracy. To be fair, consensus is not automatically evil. There are situations where it can serve democracy. If a party has three aspirants and, after open debate, ward consultation, transparent negotiation, and fair concessions, two aspirants freely step down for the strongest candidate, that is legitimate consensus. If party members understand the process and ratify it in a real congress, not a rented crowd, that can be democratic.

But what we must reject is the Nigerian version where “stakeholders” means a few powerful people in Abuja or a state government house. We must reject consensus where aspirants are summoned, pressured, and told to sign. We must reject consensus where the party’s ordinary members hear the result before they hear the argument. We must reject consensus where the electorate’s choices are decided by men who treat politics as inherited property.

The danger is bigger than party primaries. If citizens conclude that candidates are imposed before elections, they will lose even more faith in the democratic process. Many Nigerians already believe elections are shaped by money, violence, manipulation, and court judgments rather than the will of the people. A corrupted consensus process will deepen that cynicism. And when citizens lose trust, democracy does not merely weaken. It begins to atrophy.

The National Assembly must revisit this provision before it becomes another instrument of political capture. The law should not merely require written consent from aspirants. It should require a verifiable democratic process before consensus is accepted. At the minimum, INEC should issue strict guidelines requiring public notice of the consensus process, disclosure of all cleared aspirants, video-recorded withdrawal declarations, independent confirmation of consent, and proper ratification by registered party members or accredited delegates at the relevant level.

Parties must also be required to publish the signed withdrawal and endorsement documents, subject to privacy safeguards. Any aspirant who claims coercion should have a fast-track complaint process before INEC and the Federal High Court. Where coercion, forgery, inducement, or procedural fraud is established, the consensus nomination should be voided immediately.

The courts must also understand the democratic weight of this issue. They should not treat every signed consent form as holy scripture. Judges must ask whether the process was free, fair, transparent, and consistent with the law. Democracy cannot survive if courts only inspect paperwork while ignoring political reality.

INEC, too, must stop behaving like a passive observer in party nomination processes. The Commission has a legal duty to monitor primaries and party activities. Monitoring should not mean sitting in the hall and watching powerful people announce a pre-arranged outcome. It should mean asking hard questions: Were all aspirants present? Did they withdraw voluntarily? Were party members allowed to participate? Was the congress properly convened? Was dissent recorded? Was the process transparent?

A consensus that cannot survive scrutiny is not consensus. It is fraud. Political parties should also be honest with Nigerians. If they want to impose candidates, they should stop insulting citizens by calling it consensus. Let them call it what it is. Let them say the governor has chosen. Let them say the president has endorsed. Let them say the godfather has decided. But they should not use the beautiful language of agreement to cover the ugly practice of exclusion.

Nigeria’s democracy has suffered enough from violence, vote-buying, result manipulation, weak institutions, and endless litigation. It cannot also survive a candidate selection system where the people are spectators from the beginning. The electorate cannot be sovereign only on election day. Their sovereignty must begin inside the parties, where candidates first emerge.

Consensus must be earned. It must be transparent. It must be voluntary. It must respect party members. It must expand democratic legitimacy, not shrink it. Anything less is not consensus. It is elite hijack. It is coronation. It becomes what Samson Itodo calls “organized theft of the people’s franchise and the proscription of political aspiration.” And no democracy can grow when its candidates are produced by private bargains and then sold to the people as public choice.

Anthony Ubani is a democracy, leadership and governance expert. He serves as the pioneer Executive Director of #FixPolitics Africa.