Are Party Delegates Our New Electoral College

It was on the beginning of this January that we witnessed an affirmation of the predicted departure of the Nigerian electoral system, from all the known norms, character, values and tradition of the carnal context of the democracy as a people's approval project, yet the activities of the representative and candidacy elections has also confirmed the generality of Nigerian people as willing accomplices in the subversion of all accompanying processes that must be available for stable democracy to exist and blossom, though the citizens of the Federal Republic of Nigeria could claim ignorance to this allusion of guilt on them, however the individuals basically accused of these chain of electoral and indeed moral infractions are the disclaimer delegates of the various political parties, that have constituted themselves into an impromptu electoral college, thus while the people could claim ignorance of the delegates as their status as their representatives, the executives of the amalgam political parties and indeed the colluding favored aspirants of the political parties, have bestowed upon them the eminent status of representative agents without of principals, for while the Nigerian people seemed to have been deluded into giving them representative power by presumptive acclamation of the treacherous party executives, as there is usual silence of the graveyard on the whole charade which is easily misconstrued as acquiesce and an approval of the subsisting situation.

According to The Wikipedia, an electoral college is a set of electors who are selected to elect a candidate to a particular office. Often these represent different organizations or entities, with each organization or entity represented by a particular number of electors or with votes weighted in a particular way. Many times, though, the electors are simply important people whose wisdom, ideally, would provide a better choice than a larger body. The system can ignore the wishes of a general membership. The origin and genesis of the concept of an electoral college, could be traced to the Germanic Law were it stated that the German King led only with the support of the nobles. Thus, a Pelayo needed to be elected by his Visigothic nobles before becoming the King of Asturias, and so did Pepin the Short by Frankish nobles in order to become the first Carolingian King. Though later most Germanic nations had to develop a strictly hereditary system due to the need for self preservation of lineal dynasties. However Holy Roman Empire could not follow the trend as the King of the Romans, who would become Holy roman Emperor or at least Emperor-elect was selected by the college of price-electors from the late Middle Ages to until 1806's.

The concept of an electoral college is usually an indirect representative mode of choosing a person to represent a certain interest, either at an elective office or a through representation at a constitutional congress or conference, thus the elected delegate to that position of a representative in an electoral college must attain that position and status through the of grace of popular vote, in an election that is conducted for the generality of all citizens of an area requiring an electoral college representation, unfortunately the Nigerian political party delegates do not fall within the category of people that were elected to their positions of representatives, as even the members of their own political parties find them as merely the products of imposition by party leaders and their elected principals. Even in the context of an ideal situation where a properly constituted electoral college is regarded as the legal norm like the case of the United States of America, it was found to be inadequate, archaic and undemocratic and susceptible to creating the swing vote syndrome, where election results could be predictable manipulated to arrive at a particular form of verdict, indeed after the 2000 American presidential elections conundrum between President George Bush and Vice President Al Gore, a 2001 Gallup article so stated: "a majority of Americans have continually expressed support for the notion of an official amendment of the U.S. Constitution, that would allow for direct election of the president."

The Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 has clearly stated that elections into governing offices must be through a direct form of voting, however in a circumstances and situation where all the political parties conspired to unveil an electoral college, through the fielding of favored and incompetent candidates by manipulating the process of nomination for political offices, the inherent constitutional right of universal adult suffrage of the generality of the Nigerian people in determining who accesses leadership positions would have been stolen or at most subverted, whereupon lie the legitimate right of the Nigerian people to graciously confer political power and positions to any individual that desires a governing mandate in an electoral democracy such as ours, the basic cardinal context of democracy anywhere in the world is the grace of free choice, that ensures an electorate is not precluded from getting the type of leadership it so wishes, thus the idea is if a particular party or rather a group of parties made a bad decision of fielding an undesirable candidate, that electorate have wherewithal to exercise their franchise of not voting them, however in a situation where all the parties conspiratorially field unmerited candidates what happens to our inalienable right of choosing competent leaders.