Immediate-past National Chairman, All Progressives Congress (APC), Chief John Odigie-Oyegun has advised the party to do away with godfatherism if it must achieve unity and promote internal democracy.
He said that godfatherism resulted from lack of internal democracy which was responsible for the plethora of court cases involving party members after primary elections.
Oyegun added that democracy and political parties in Nigeria were suffering terribly because of godfatherism.
“I think the basic problem we have all over is the godfather thing. Internal democracy simply means that if 10 people want to vie for an office, so be it. Let the electorate decide.
“But when party leaders are the ones deciding who is fit or who is not fit, that becomes a problem.
“That is the decision of the electorate. And when they start displacing persons with their friends and other undesirable inducement, that is totally unacceptable.
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“The damage it does is that you are destroying the belief of the electorate in due process. So, it becomes more difficult to accept the result of an election.
“The moment people start believing that they cannot get a fair share, that the system cannot be fair to them, whereas if you painstakingly pursue the process of letting the electorate decide, eventually you will find out that this going to court will begin to go down.
“But once you do otherwise, people would have at the back of their minds that they are not fairly treated and would look for every manner of excuse to go to court.
“That alone opens up the judicial system and the entire political system to another level and different levels of corruption.
“So, the damage is intense and I pray that our politicians will see the need for a proper internal democracy and allow due process and allow the people to thoroughly decide.”