The Catholic Archbishop of Lagos, Most Rev. Alfred Adewale-Martins has faulted the delegates method being used by political parties in the country to choose party flag bearers, ahead of the 2023 general election.
Adewale-Martins said this in Lagos on Tuesday.
He said an arrangement where only a few party members are accorded the right to elect party standard-bearers would not give room for the best candidate to emerge and described it utopian and defective.
Adewale-Martins expressed disappointment on moneybag politics and called for the removal of the clauses in the electoral laws that allow parties to select their flag bearers through delegates.
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“There is a need for us to change the process with an open party member’s primary to make the process more acceptable and an all-inclusive.
“Its fault is that a moneybag politician can buy the conscience of the delegates to do his bidding at the expense of the party and the polity at the end the worse candidate may emerge.
“If you feel the impulse of the people on what is happening; the kind of characters this lopsided process is manifesting, you will observe that the people are unhappy with the products of the process,’’ he said.
Adewale-Martins said the nation’s democratic process should have surpassed this `backward system’ and rather entrenched universally acceptable principles that would bear positively on the polity.
He decried the high cost of living and human carnage caused by bandits, urged civil society organisations and interest groups to prevail on state actors to take right right steps to halt the country from drifting.
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