By Olu Fasan
Trust Nigerians, some will scoff at any comparison between Britain’s democracy and what Nigeria calls democracy. But if democracy is, as Abraham Lincoln famously defined it, “government of the people, by the people, for the people”, then Nigeria must be held to universal standards.
*UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer
The critical electoral link between the government and the governed must not be severed, and democracy must not become ineptocracy, a system run by inept people. In any representative democracy, the irreducible core is the will of the people freely expressed in credible elections. That’s why last week’s UK general election offers some lessons.
What happened in Britain last week was people power,
and nothing, absolutely nothing, was done to thwart it. The critical starting
point in any election is its logistics, to ensure that no eligible voter is
directly or indirectly disenfranchised. But in virtually every election in
Nigeria since 1999, millions of Nigerians were disenfranchised.
First, because of the incompetence of INEC, the
electoral body, which often failed to ensure that everyone got a voter card,
which often failed to ensure that voting started early, and which often failed
to ensure that the technologies worked smoothly without avoidable “technical
glitches”. Several elections were postponed for logistical reasons, and yet
they still failed. Then, there are electoral violence, vote-buying, ballot-box
stuffing, ballot-box snatching, and myriad other irregularities that cumulatively
frustrate the will and free consent of the people.
None of those happened in the UK
general election. The voting time was between 7am and 10pm, and those starting
and closing times were sacrosanct. Like many people, I went to work and left my
office in central London around 7pm, got to the polling station at 9pm and
voted with absolute ease. By midnight, the first constituency result was
announced and by 5am it was obvious who had won the general election.
There were recounts where the
results were close, and everyone accepted the outcome. Party thugs did not
snatch ballot boxes and electoral officers did not collude with any party or
any candidate to alter the results. Twelve members of Prime Minister Rishi
Sunak’s cabinet lost their seats; Liz Truss, a former prime minister, also lost
her seat. They all accepted the results because the election was free, fair and
transparent, and reflected the will of the people.
Some would say the above elide
the “fact” that Nigeria is a developing country. But that stretches credulity
given that Nigerians are running international institutions, such as the World
Trade Organisation, and are making their mark globally in all spheres of life.
Professor Mahmood Yakubu, the chairman of INEC, is a product of both Oxford
University and Cambridge University, obtaining a doctorate from the former. In
principle, he could run a global institution.
So, why has he failed as INEC
chairman? The answer is simple: Nigeria lacks strong and independent
institutions, and those running the country’s public institutions lack the
values and courage to do what’s right. In other words, Nigeria’s democracy
lacks guardrails, both institutions and individuals that can protect it against
destructive forces.
For me, the critical issue is
the will of the people, the consent of the governed. In his book Enemies of Society, Paul Johnson
argues that the true essence of democracy is “the ability to remove a
government without violence, to punish political failure by votes.” But where
that ability is taken away through the incompetence of the electoral body,
through vote-buying, rigging and other forms of electoral malpractices, then
there is no democracy. That’s why I have repeatedly said in this column that
Nigeria is not a democracy. For, let’s face it, there are too many people in
power who got there by electoral frauds, helped by INEC officials.
Last week, in the UK, the
electorate were angry. They were fed up with 14 years of Conservative
governments, with five prime ministers in eight years, and they wanted change.
The same thing happened in South Africa where the voters punished the African
National Congress, ANC, and cost the party its majority, reducing it to 40 per
cent of the vote, for the first time in 30 years. Earlier this week, the French
electorate penalised President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist alliance, Ensemble,
pushing it into second position after the second round of the National Assembly
elections. That’s true democracy in action. It’s people power!
But tell me, if Prime Minister Sunak,
President Macron and President Cyril Ramaphosa could manipulate their country’s
electoral system to favour themselves and their parties, would they? I think
not. Why? Well, first, their moral consciences and values as true democrats
would not let them to do so. Second, and more importantly, the British, French
and South African electoral institutions, and those running them, are so robust
and independent that they would not allow any incumbent leader, indeed any
politician, to distort the electoral system. But not so in Nigeria. Truth is, a
typical Nigerian president will exploit his incumbency to manipulate elections
to his or his party’s advantage, and the institutions are too weak, and
absolutely lack the independence, to constrain him.
Last year, President Buhari said
that he changed the Petroleum Industry Act to postpone the withdrawal of the
fuel subsidy so as “to allow Tinubu to win the election,” saying Tinubu would
have lost if he had removed the subsidy before the election. So, if Buhari deliberately
changed a law to allow Tinubu to win the presidential election, what else did
he do? Did he lean on INEC to tilt the balance in Tinubu’s favour?
Democracy is the ability to
punish political failure by votes. Thus, given Buhari’s disastrous eight-year
presidency and the unpopularity of Tinubu, who selfishly foisted him on
Nigeria, their party, APC, shouldn’t have won the presidency last year. And, if
you ask me, APC did not win, or, at least, did not have a popular mandate. INEC
said Tinubu got 8.8m or 37 per cent of the 24m votes cast. Thus, he was
rejected by a whopping 63 per cent or 15m voters!
Well, this is where Britain and Nigeria have
something in common: the perverse first-past-the-post electoral system. Last
week, the Labour party got only 34 per cent of the vote nationally, yet secured
a landslide in parliament, with 412 or 63 per cent of the 650 seats. The
pressure is growing in Britain to change the system; it should in Nigeria too.
But leaving aside the first-past-the-post, elections must be competently run
and devoid of manipulations. On those, Britain’s democracy puts Nigeria’s
in the shade. It is ineptocracy!
*Dr. Fasan, Visiting Fellow at the London School of
Economics and Political Science (LSE), is a commentator on public issues
No comments:
Post a Comment