2027 electoral: YIAGA Africa’s Samson Itodo highlights problems with consensus

Executive Director, YIAGA Africa, Samson Itodo, has insisted that electing a candidate through consensus by political parties is not the problem but how the process is implemented.

Some political parties, including the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, are currently experiencing internal wrangling over the implementation of the consensus method of selecting their candidates as prescribed by Section 85 of the Electoral Act 2026.

Some candidates feel they were not carried along when their political parties came out to announce a preferred candidate, insisting on primary elections instead.

Speaking on Arise News on Friday evening, Itodo said, “The problem isn’t consensus, I think the point is the whole philosophy around around consensus isn’t the problem. The problem is how it is implemented.

“And you can clearly see in the build up to the primaries what I call organized theft. It is actually a suppression of political aspiration of people; also a situation where power is concentrated on a few to determine for the vast majority of party members.

“You cannot say that is democratic in every respect. Keep in mind that before the 2022 electoral act, there were only two modes of candidate nomination, direct and indirect primaries. 

“In this particular case, it was the late President Buhari that blackmailed and pressured the national assembly to introduce consensus, just to legitimize a process that has always been part of political parties’ candidate nomination process. 

“So when you look across board, you clearly see that it is implemented in a way that it not only suppresses the political aspiration of aspirants, but it limits the space for contestation, and that itself is problematic because what you see is really imposition of candidates and it’s not in any way consensus.

“And by the way, what I argued was that there are instances where consensus is acceptable, where everyone in a political party endorses that. That’s why the electoral act provides for the conduct of a special convention to ratify the consensus.”