TDNigeria’s democracy is not compromised only on election day. It is often compromised earlier, at the point where political parties decide who may appear on the ballot.
If party primaries are manipulated, exclusionary, violent, monetised or conducted in defiance of party rules and the Electoral Act, the general election becomes a contest among candidates produced by private bargains rather than democratic choice.
For too long, Nigerian courts have invoked the doctrine that candidate selection is an “internal affair” of political parties.
That principle has a legitimate foundation: courts should not run political parties or substitute judicial preference for party judgment.
But when the mantra is applied mechanically, it becomes a shield for impunity. Political parties are not private clubs in any ordinary sense.
They are constitutional gatekeepers to public power. Their primaries determine the realistic choices available to millions of voters.
The Electoral Act 2022 recognises this by requiring candidates to emerge from valid primaries and by allowing an aspirant to challenge non-compliance with the Act or party guidelines.
Yet the practical judicial posture remains uneven.
Where courts decline intervention despite clear breaches of due process, they effectively tell party elites that internal rules are optional.
The result is predictable: imposition of candidates, disenfranchisement of party members, weakened public trust, and a judiciary increasingly perceived as technical rather than justice-driven.
This is dangerous for a fledgling democracy.
Democracy depends not only on voting, but on meaningful choice, accountability and confidence that rules matter.
If parties can manufacture candidates through opaque processes and then escape scrutiny under the banner of “internal affairs,” the voter is presented with a fait accompli.
The ballot then ratifies elite selection instead of expressing popular sovereignty.
The answer is not for courts to become super party executives.
The better approach is disciplined judicial intervention: courts should not choose candidates, but they must enforce mandatory statutory rules, party constitutions, published guidelines, fair hearing, transparency and credible evidence of compliance.
Party autonomy should end where illegality, arbitrariness and democratic exclusion begin.
Nigeria’s democratic foundations remain fragile because parties are the first arena of electoral legitimacy.
A judiciary that refuses to police minimum democratic standards at that stage risks enabling the very decay it later struggles to correct in post-election litigation.
Credible general elections cannot be built on fraudulent primaries.
If internal party democracy collapses, national democracy is already wounded before the first ballot is cast.
