Nigeria: Is This Democracy?

 By Mike Ikhariale

After the celebratory hype about how the almighty BVAS and PVCs which were coming to revolutionize electioneering and democracy as a whole in Nigeria in the build-up to the current election that is fast turning into an unimaginable nightmare for many, I think we should go back and reflect on the poser we made about democracy in 2019 during the general elections of that year and see how much things have changed for Nigeria politically since then. 

Nigerians were made to believe that the hardship occasioned by the unmitigated collapse of the currency exchange policy was a deliberate design to ensure that there would be no cash available for politicians to “buy votes” and Nigerians were also fooled to believe that they were been called out for a sacrifice that would usher in a better democratic society for them tomorrow, more less like the brave and heroic Kohima epitaph which declares that “ for your tomorrow we gave our today”, but as we are all beginning to see, these politicians have callously taken both our today and tomorrow with them in one fell swoop by terribly discrediting democracy before the same people.

In the wake of the 2019 presidential election, we raised the seemingly pessimistic poser, “What is Democracy Worth for Nigerians?” for which we really didn’t expect any immediate answer but the events of the last few days have certainly given some clue as to what the answer is. Now read on: “The late President Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana once told his fellow Ghanaian compatriots who were at that time still languishing under the colonial suzerainty of Britain to seek “first the political Kingdom” and all else shall be added unto them while paraphrasing a biblical statement (Matthew 6:33) where Jesus was reported to have told his disciples who were puzzled about their goals in life that they should rather “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you”.

Nkrumah’s envisioned “political Kingdom” was the eventual arrival of self-rule in Ghana within the context of a constitutional democracy – self-determination. Well, independence did come but for a very long time, the people were not quite sure what else, other than chaos and misery, that was added onto their already wretched lives with the arrival of democracy.

Instead of the projected bliss and tranquility comparable to those of Heaven, what democracy actually brought to Ghana unfortunately turned out to be evils like corruption, ethnicity, incompetence and general degeneration of society in spite of the abundance of all that were necessary to positively turn the country around until the revolutionary political reset that was executed by the gun-toting J. J. Rawlings who left a trail of unimaginable mayhem and extreme bloodletting in his wake as a fair desert for bad politicking.

Nkrumah failed to attach the very important proviso, the condition precedent, similar to that which Jesus offered his disciples as they dreamt of the kingdom of God. Jesus clearly told them that they should seek the kingdom of God AND its righteousness. He did not promise a paved thoroughfare to the kingdom. Instead, he frankly told them that righteousness was a major component of the requirements for heaven, a sort of visa to qualify them to enter that beautiful city of God. In the same way, Nigerians are promised democracy without educating them about values and principles that make the concept of democracy meaningful. Instead, they see it as an extension of tribal and religious warfare.

By failing to emphasize the critical conditions precedents that are required for gaining entrance into the political kingdom where democracy flourishes, Nkrumah with hindsight, made a fundamental mistake, one that would turn out to be very costly down the road for Africa. That then leads us to the question which forms the theme of today, i.e., What is our democracy really worth? 

This question has become very apt to us in view of the frenzy and tension that have gripped the land over the pending elections as if there is actually any hope that after all the din and hullabaloo that Nigerians would then be ushered into a blissful new era where all the present ills besetting the nation such as unemployment, corruption, incompetence, declining quality of life and general immiseration of the populace would disappear automatically. That is very unlikely because the product of any effort is a direct function of the input: garbage in, garbage out!

The public space has been unusually choked with endless and pedantic discussions and contrived lamentations aplenty. Families and friends from ages past are rapidly falling apart simply because they no longer see “eye to eye” on who to vote for.

As a governing mechanism, democracy has been in use for thousands of years, probably well before the Greeks perfected it in their polis. In its original conception it was a direct process wherein citizens gathered at the city square to make their choices as to who would govern them, but the modern large-scale states structures have made it inevitable to be operated on a representative basis.

Properly practised within the framework of accountability and checks and balances, democracy could indeed be the most acceptable mode of managing the affairs of modern societies. It is empirically well-demonstrated that most of the more successful societies of our contemporary world are running their governments along the prescriptions of democracy in which citizens are ruled by those they freely chose to do so on their behalf. A universally acceptable summary of this notion of democracy is that provided by Abraham Lincoln at the 1863 Gettysburg address where he declared that democracy is “a government of the people, for the people and by the people”. In this Lincolnian postulation, the People are at the heart of democracy which is further encapsulated in the popular slogan: “People’s Power”.

Unfortunately, we cannot locate ourselves within the arena of our present democracy in Nigeria because the process has been unduly hijacked by a few political buccaneers who run the show as if they are conducting corporate business transactions. There are certain reasons why democracy, if expanded to mean any form of government in which the leadership is chosen by way of majority decision, may be quite flawed. For example, a band of robbers can come together to choose their own leader by way of a “true and fair election” and a genuine democratic leadership would emerge, but its purpose would naturally be to promote anarchy and criminality, something that formal democracy ought to abhor.

In the same way, elections could regularly be conducted in a country all in the name of democracy but the leadership that emerges therefrom (actually state capture) do not function in the interest of the society but for themselves. In other words, democracy may not always be the much-needed avenue for good governance if the processes are carried out in ways and manners that are corrupt and improper while the key practitioners are themselves incorrigible deviants.

Many nations are still being well governed even in the absence of democracy as we understand it through the prism of Western-type state management. China, which is heading to become the largest economy in the world and global leader in technology, is not a democracy. There is no democracy in Dubai, no political parties, much less, a constitutional democracy, but it is a million times better managed than Nigeria that is endowed with a voluminous written constitution, Rule of Law, separation of powers and is serviced by a rancorous and economically debilitating democracy. So, if democracy was that important for good governance, the UAE would still have remained the desert nation that it was and they would have been the ones coming to Nigeria to “enjoy” but that, sadly, is not the case. 

I am sure most Nigerians who were wrapped in uncommon enthusiasm a few days ago and were ready to put up with the unbearable hardship in the land just for the benefit of democracy are this morning already wailing and gnashing their teeth as the much-expected Uhuru is turning into a mirage. 

*Professor Ikhariale is a commentator on public issues