Stop granting waivers to decampees, political parties urged

A former federal commissioner, Public Complaints Commission, Obunike Ohaegbu has condemned the rate at which political parties are granting waivers to politicians that defects from one party to another.

Ohaegbu also blamed the trend of money bags dictating the politics of the country.

The PDP Chieftain while speaking at the Zoom meeting organized by ‘Governance Index‘ revealed that many candidates of his party both in Anambra and at the national level are always granted waivers adding that the issue of granting waivers to decampees is not limited to PDP alone, but cut across other political parties in Nigeria.

His comments came in the wake of what is happening in Edo State where an APC governor decamped to the opposition party, PDP, last week and the former PDP candidate in the penultimate governorship election in the Edo decamped to APC and became their candidate for this years governorship election.

Ohaegbu berated a situation where by National Working Committee (NWC) of a political party will take decisions without considering the position of the people at the local level .

The PDP Chieftain said, “how a candidate is selected is a very big challenge to political parties.

“A few people at the center take a decision on who is a Councillor, members of the House of Assembly, and in some few cases, you grant automatic tickets for everybody, it usually does not go well with the people in the party, that is where voter apathy starts.

“It is a very big problem, that is why we will continue to have money bag politicians, that is why we will continue to have few people at the center hijacking positions because they have some people behind them.

“For us to get it right in our democracy , we need to make the people party of the process, we need to make people to understand that they have to participate, they are the bosses of who is representing them.

“There is one politician in Anambra state that believes that everybody has a price, during the election he will come to you and pay you to get his candidate elected.

“Vote buying did not start during the general election, but starts at the party level.

“A situation where by people collected N200,000, N500,000 from you before you can be voted for a particular candidate.

“We need to change our mindset before we can get our political parties right.”

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