PDP’s Gang Of Five: A Danger To Nigeria’s ‘Representative’ Democracy

 By Olu Fasan

In theory, Nigeria is a representative democracy; in practice, it is not. Unlike in a direct democracy, where people determine how they are governed by voting on policies and laws themselves, in a representative democracy, they elect those who govern them, who make policies and laws for them. However, to be truly “representative”, a democracy must have certain key characteristics. Sadly, most of these characteristics are lacking in Nigeria’s “representative democracy”. I’m particularly interested here in political competition!

*The G-5 PDP Governors 

But what are the characteristics of a representative democracy? According to political scientists, a representative democracy has the following key characteristics: universal participation, political equality, political competition, political accountability, government transparency, majority rule, civil liberties and rule of law. Anyone who understands what each of these characteristics entails would readily admit that Nigeria’s representative democracy is hollow. Before political competition, let’s consider a few other characteristics.

First, take “universal participation”. This means that all adults should be able to vote. But where is universal participation in Nigeria’s representative democracy when voter turnouts are so abysmally low? Take the two recent presidential elections. In 2019, 73 million Nigerians collected the Permanent Voter Cards, PVCs, but only 29 million, about 36 per cent, voted. This year, 87 million collected the PVCs, only 24 million, about 27 per cent, voted, the lowest turnout since Nigeria returned to civil rule in 1999.

Of course, the low voter turnouts in successive elections are caused, largely, by deliberate disenfranchisement of Nigerians through voter intimidation and suppression, electoral violence and perennial failures of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC. In every election, a cumulation of adverse forces push Nigerians further away from the polling units, from voting. As a result, Nigeria operates a representative democracy that lacks a critical element: universal participation! If voter turnouts continue to fall precipitously, Nigeria won’t have a democracy that can be described, even remotely, as “representative”.

What about “political equality”? It means everyone has one vote. But, historically, everyone has not had one vote in Nigerian elections because of overvoting and ballot stuffing. The Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, BVAS, introduced in the Electoral Act 2022, was meant to eliminate such malpractices through electronic accreditation of voters and electronic transmission of results. But with INEC’s failure to use BVAS in the presidential and some governorship elections, there were not only widespread incidences of overvoting, including underage voting, but also alleged manipulations of results. So, Nigeria’s representative democracy lacks another key element: political equality, based on one man, one vote!

Then, there’s “majority rule”, which means that a winning candidate should receive “50 per cent plus” of the total valid votes. Well, Nigeria’s democracy is not based on a majority rule. Bola Tinubu secured 8.79 million out of the 23.4 million valid votes in this year’s presidential election, rejected by the vast majority, 14.6 million. He won only 36.61 per cent of the votes cast, rejected by a whopping 63.39 per cent of the voters. In a recent column, I described Tinubu’s administration as a minority government. I would have said the same of Atiku Abubakar or Peter Obi if either was declared winner on a minority share of the total votes. For, put simply: a true representative democracy should be based on a majority rule!

Which brings us to “political competition”. This means that a representative democracy must have a multi-party system to give citizens real choice in elections. Of course,Nigeria is a multiparty democracy, but there’s no real voter choice because parties are based on personalities, rather than ideologies. APC calls itself “progressive”, but many of its current chieftains are former PDP leaders. So, who are the “progressives”? Even the intrinsically ideological Labour Party has long been home to disgruntled politicians from other parties. 

But, while ideological differences matter, what really undermines political competition in Nigeria is the lack of a level playing field. This is caused by two factors, namely: abuse of incumbency to gain electoral advantage; and political cannibalism, where one major party hollows out another and renders it electorally feeble.

Take abuse of incumbency. Earlier this week, former President Muhammadu Buhari said he delayed the removal of the oil subsidy “to allow Tinubu to win the election”. In a statement issued through Garba Shehu, his former spokesman, Buhari said: “Polls after polls showed that the party would have been thrown out of office” if the oil subsidy was removed. 

So, by his own admission, Buhari effectively “rigged” the election for Tinubu. He withheld a difficult decision that was in the national interest to give Tinubu an electoral advantage. Such abuse of incumbency distorts political competition. It’s hard to imagine a former president in a true representative democracy saying that he deliberately manipulated government policy to allow his party’s presidential candidate win an election, instead of letting him compete with others, based on his manifesto, on a level playing field. 

But what about political cannibalism? APC came into power in 2015 by helping to cripple PDP. Truth is, had PDP not splintered, fuelled by external forces, APC probably wouldn’t have won in 2015. Similarly, Atiku probably lost this year’s presidential election because of the deep division in the PDP, caused by the self-interestedness of Nyesom Wike, the ultra-narcissistic former governor of Rivers State, and his “Gang of Five”; the hare-brained arrogance of Iyorchia Ayu, PDP’s former national chairman, now utterly shamed into silence; and the crass opportunism of Tinubu, who fuelled and exploited the PDP crisis.

Henry Kissinger, former US secretary of state, famously said that “power is the ultimate aphrodisiac”.  Well,  Tinubu has been using the enormous patronage and power of the office of president to muscle his way through politically. Although his party has a slim majority in the Senate and no majority in the House of Representatives, Tinubu dangled political favours before Wike and his gang to secure his preferred presiding officers. Now, Tinubu and Wike are in cahoots, plotting to impose “friendly” Minority Leaders in the National Assembly.

There can’t be political accountability and government transparency without a robust legislature and a strong opposition party. By working with Tinubu to neuter the National Assembly and cripple the mainstream PDP, Wike and his gang are playing disruptive politics and undermining representative democracy. If they have any integrity, they will join the APC! 

*Dr. Fasan is a commentator on public issues