By Ikechukwu Amaechi
I am worried that Nigerian leaders have captured the Nigerian state, taking beleaguered citizens hostage in the process and yet carrying on as if all is well.
*Nigerian politiciansI am even more worried that the grossly abused citizens, afflicted with the debilitating Stockholm syndrome, rather than standing up to their abusers are actually coping, having over time developed positive feelings toward those who have persistently treated them cruelly, violently and unfairly in the name of leadership. But I am most worried that with the way Nigerian politicians are carrying on, sooner or later something will give and we will all be worse for it.
Nigerian leaders, particularly
the political class love clichés. So, most often, they mouth former British
Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s quip: “Democracy is the worst form of government
except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time” and
harangue everyone with the “democracy is the best form of government” platitude
even when they wilfully rubbish the very idea.
The word democracy, which comes from the Greek words demos (people) and
kratos (power) as a governance paradigm may well be the best form of government
but that is predicated on the conditions that the people freely choose their
rulers and it guarantees them inalienable freedoms. In other words, democracy
is a value-driven governance model that celebrates the three totems of freedom,
respect for human rights and the principle of holding periodic, genuine
elections by universal suffrage.
Holding free and fair elections
periodically is the leverage the electorate have in a democracy. The idea is
that if an elected official does not perform, the people in whom the sovereign
powers of the state reside, will not re-elect him.
It is in this context that the
definition of democracy by Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the U.S. in
his November 19, 1863 address at the Gettysburg National Cemetery in
Pennsylvania, remains immortal.
In the 271-word Gettysburg
address widely considered one of the most notable in American history, Lincoln
said: “that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and
that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish
from the earth.” Five years earlier – three years before he became President in
1861 – Lincoln on August 1, 1858 also drew a fundamental parallel between
democracy and freedom using the anecdotal scourge of slavery. “As I would not
be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.
Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy,”
he said.
So, democracy without the
fundamental freedoms it guarantees the people, particularly the freedom of
choice is a misnomer and an aberration. Therefore, any system of government in
which the supreme power is not vested in the people and exercised directly by
them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system, can be anything
else but democratic.
If these are incontestable
truisms, why then are Nigerian politicians behaving in a manner that suggests
that the people don’t matter in the country’s democracy? Who will tell them
that by so doing they are endangering democracy?
How is it that those who insist
the worst democratic government is better than the most benevolent military
junta and who aver that the antidote to bad governance is a change through the
electoral process are not worried that politicians are working assiduously at
ensuring that votes do not count in elections?
So, which democratic process are
they talking about? While it may be true that democracy is the best form of
government, the question needs to be asked whether a system where the sovereign
powers do not reside in the people who in turn use same during periodic
elections to determine those that should make the authoritative allocation of
their collective values, qualify to be called a democracy.
Can we equate civilian rule with democracy? No! Granted,
there is a school of thought that believes democracy is an illusion, but some
countries are thriving democracies because the people exercise their
inalienable right of determining who governs them in free and fair elections.
A lot is wrong with Nigeria’s
democracy. There seems to be a conspiracy among politicians to undermine it by
unconscionably subverting free, fair and credible elections. To be fair, these
shenanigans didn’t start today. Olusegun Obasanjo, as president between 1999
and 2007 shredded the democratic rights of the people to decide who governs
them by making elections a do-or-die affair.
But things have gotten a lot
worse in the nearly ten years since the All Progressives Congress, APC,
supplanted the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, at the centre in 2015. But even
as toxic as the eight years of Muhammudu Buhari’s stint in Aso Rock was to the
health of Nigeria’s democracy, things are a lot worse today under President
Bola Tinubu’s watch. It is as if all caution have been thrown to the wind as
politicians continue to act without regard for risk or negative consequences.
What is worse, the judiciary has
been sucked into the maelstrom orchestrated by actors in the executive arm of
government with judges giving judgements that are overtly partisan.
In the 2023 elections,
politicians, particularly of the APC hue, spurred by Tinubu’s hackneyed
political philosophy of power not served à la carte, became more brazen in
their malfeasance. Time was when the popular refrain in the political circles
is that you can only rig elections where you are strong politically. That was
the era of voter inducement, ballot box snatching and burning of ballot papers.
Not anymore!
Today, nobody cares about those gambits. All anyone needs to win elections in Nigeria today is to control the structures of criminality. Politicians don’t care about the people anymore if only they are able to suborn officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, security agencies and thugs.
Today, thugs no longer snatch
ballot boxes after the votes have been cast. Days before elections are held,
they send out messages that if you are not going to vote for their political
party of choice, don’t come near any polling booth on Election Day. The
reprehensible act started in Lagos before it was adopted by political actors in
different parts of the country.
And because Nigerian politicians
don’t take prisoners, they have elevated their devious gambit by writing
election results weeks before the first ballot is cast. As if what happens
during general elections are not frightening enough, governors have upped the
devious ante through the so-called local government elections, which in all the
states, without any exception have become a ruse.
To make matters worse, the
electorate who should be mourning at the very ugly turn of events, quaff at
their own political castration by applauding their tormentors, who they,
nevertheless, hail as astute politicians for the simple reason that they are
adjudged adept at subverting the electoral will of the people.
Today, many Nigerians believe
that Tinubu’s “re-election” in 2027 is already a fait accompli not because of
the yeoman’s job he is doing in Aso Rock but because he is the only one that has
the capacity to win elections the Nigerian way. That is unbecoming. And many
would-be voters have decided not to give such shenanigan any legitimacy by
keeping their distance from the polling booths henceforth.
I am worried for Nigeria and its democracy. The questions that
concentrate my mind everyday as I reflect on the shamelessness of the political
actors and their unbelievable lack of emotional intelligence are: Who will call
Nigerian politicians to order before it is too late? Who will tell them that
they are endangering Nigeria’s democracy by denying the people the right to
decide who governs them through the ballot box?
*Amaechi is the publisher of TheNiche (ikechukwuamaechi@yahoo.com)
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