Former Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Muhammadu Uwais has canvassed the payment of grants to political parties by the Federal Government.
This, he said, will assist the parties in offsetting their electoral and other bills. Uwais told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), in Abuja that subscriptions from members were inadequate to fund the operations of political parties .
“Ideally, parties should finance their campaigns. But even in advanced countries like Germany and France, grants are given to parties to assist them in contesting elections.’’
Uwais said that the Electoral Reform Committee he led recommended that only the political parties that won elections should be given grants and be funded during elections.
“We made some recommendations on that in the sense that after elections, depending on how many votes a political party received, some grants can be extended to it.
“It is not just every party that should be given grants, those of them that have performed and at least the public showed it has support for them, should receive the grants.’’
He, however, expressed worries that as the law provided, there would be no grants to political parties from the government.
“The National Assembly, in its wisdom, said there should be no grants whatsoever.’’
He said that the essence of the grant was to assist democracy and ensure that every political party contested elections .“
“I don’t think any political party can raise enough money from subscriptions paid by its members to be in a position to contest elections.’’
Uwais said Nigeria could not operate a two-party system because the nation subscribed to international treaties that provided that people should feel free to form their parties.
“The country’s Constitution also allowed people of the same opinion to come together to form an association.
“There is an ECOWAS convention on that, there is the UN treaty also on that, so it is not advisable.’’