26/05/2026
*Should Party Primaries Look, Feel and Sound Like a War?*
Ishaq El-Qassim
There is something deeply troubling about watching Nigerians arrive at party primaries only to meet fear, intimidation, confusion, and organized disorder instead of democratic participation. What should be a civic exercise increasingly resembles a territorial battle. Political thugs move openly around polling areas, genuine party members are shouted down or dispersed, and some officials adopt openly partisan postures instead of institutional neutrality.
More disturbing is how normalized this has become.
In many places, party members now believe the only way to protect their votes or aspirants is through rival gangster groups acting as unofficial security buffers. Yet these groups are often made up of heavily intoxicated young men with unstable loyalties, moving between
political camps depending on money and opportunity.
Rather than securing democracy, they mostly produce chaos, violence, theft, injuries, and sometimes deaths.
Ironically, the Electoral Act 2026 framework emphasizing direct congress primaries was intended to reduce manipulation associated with delegate systems, especially vote buying and elite control. But weak implementation has merely shifted the problem elsewhere. Instead of credible accreditation, many polling units witness fake voters, unauthorized participation, selective exclusion, and deliberate confusion.
Security presence is often either absent or overwhelmed. In some cases, thugs allegedly linked to political actors intimidate and disperse voters in areas considered unfavorable to certain interests.
But should party primaries really look, feel, and sound like war?
A primary election is supposed to test popularity, organization, and persuasion among members of the same political family — not the ability to intimidate or suppress participation.
The long-term solution lies in modernizing party primaries through electronic accreditation and electronic voting systems tied to verified party membership databases. If banks, telecom companies, and government agencies can verify identities digitally, political parties can do the same internally.
Such systems would:
reduce fake voting,
improve transparency,
limit physical intimidation,
and make results more auditable.
Technology alone will not solve every problem. But it would significantly reduce the chaos and loopholes through which manipulation currently thrives.
A political party primary should resemble a civic consultation, not a military operation.
Democracy cannot mature where internal competition is treated like warfare.
