Political Parties’ Crises: NILDS Sets Up Elite Consensus Platform

•Says members non-partisan professionals  

•Unfolds plans to transform institute to varsity

Sunday Aborisade in Abuja

The National Institute for Legislative and Democratic Studies (NILDS), yesterday disclosed it was mobilising non-partisan elites to come up with pragmatic solutions to the series of crises rocking political parties in Nigeria.

The Director General of NILDS, Professor Abubakar Sulaiman, stated this while addressing journalists on his achievements in the last six years at the institute’s complex, in Abuja.

Sulaiman noted with concern that the series of crises bedeviling political parties in Nigeria were emerging threats to the nation’s democracy and needed to be curbed urgently.

He said the institute believed the problem was beyond what the politicians could solve by themselves.

He said: “We have come up with what we call Elite Consensus Platform. This is because we cannot allow these things to be addressed by politicians alone. This country is beyond the politicians.

“The numbers of the people in politics, is very insignificant compared to the larger population of the country. Where a country’s democracy is failing, I think the best thing is to bring out the elites, to show the direction and the perspectives.

“So, the institute has come up with this elite consensus platform. We have mobilized elites from the various sectors, across the country. We have identified the issues, areas of conflicts and have proposed ways and methodology to address the issues.

“We have enough people in this country that can guide our policy making in the right way. They are not politicians. They don’t have any special interests in politics.”

Abubakar also hinted that the institute had in the past, engaged with politicians, the civil societies and the nongovernmental agencies to produce a lot of reports on how to strengthen the nation’s democracy.

 He said the institute was also planning another round of training for senators and members of the House of Representatives who were not part of the orientation programme organised for members of the 10th National Assembly at inception.

Apart from this, Sulaiman, who is a former minister of National Planning said the institute was making efforts to ensure gender inclusion in the nation’s polity through research, training and advocacy.

He also pledged to expand and continue the institute’s National Quiz Competition among primary and secondary schools on democracy in order to inculcate the culture of civil rule in them from childhood.

The DG said: “We believe when you talk about democracy, inclusivity, good governance, we need to get this imparted to the younger ones, to our children.

“The curricula in the university must change. It’s not just teaching about government and history. It’s about teaching democracy, teaching good governance.

“So, the essence of the quiz competition is to get our students assimilated into the ethics of governance, of democracy, the ethics of dialogue, and other values.”

Sulaiman added that for democracy to flourish in a country like Nigeria, series of trainings must take place at the grassroots.

He said: “What is missing in our democracy, among other things, is lack of inclusions of the people that own this country.

“How do we get our services down to the local government level? We are in talks with Nigeria Governors Forum on how to train all the local government chairmen and councilors.

“This is the only institute we have in Nigeria that, by acts of parliament, is mandated to play the role of capacity enhancements of our democratic actors.

“So, we are hoping that even in non-political way of support, we want to go down to the grassroots. We want to get the councilors, get the local government chairmen, and most importantly the procurement officers and train them.

“The problem in Nigeria is not about transparency, it’s about oversight, it’s about ensuring that what we are protecting funds that are being used. It’s about the judicious use of our resources.”

The DG advocated more funding for the institute to enable it carry out its numerous constitutional responsibilities.

In doing that, he said, “we need more funding because we need the expansion of our infrastructure. We need to complete the infrastructural complex centre. If completed, it will be better than what we have at the end of the day.

“Our projection is to transform this institute into a university for democracy and democratic studies and to do that, all of these facilities must be in place.

“In principle, the leadership of the National Assembly but it has to be backed up with a lot of resources and that is yet to come.”