Democracy in Nigeria: tested, not trusted

“I have one life and one chance to make it count for something… My faith demands that I do whatever I can, wherever I am, whenever I can, for as long as I can with whatever I have to try to make a difference”.

JIMMY CARTER

“Good trouble is simple. When you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have a moral obligation. You have a mission. You have a mandate to speak up, to speak out”.

JOHN LEWIS

John Keane is a professor of politics at the University of Westminster and the WZB(Berlin), a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, founder of the Centre for the study of democracy. He is a consultant to the United Nations, and a recent member of the American Institutions of Democracy Commission.

In 2009, he wrote a scholarly book titled ‘The life and death of Democracy.’

In the aforementioned book, he did a graphic description of what democracy is and wrote thus: “It is even fair to say that it made history possible. For understood simply as people governing themselves, democracy implied something that continues to have a radical bite: It supposed that humans could invent and use institutions specially designed to allow them to decide for themselves, as equals, how they would live together on earth. The whole thing may seem rather straightforward to us, but think about it for a moment”.

He proceeded to add this: “The little dream that carried the big thought that mere mortals could organise themselves as equals into forums or assemblies, where they could pause to consider things, then decide on a course of action – democracy in this sense was a spine-tingling invention because it was in effect the first ever human form of government”. (the Life and death of Democracy by John Keane).

Well, this is not an academic piece. It is purely a reflection of the general impressions that most people have about the texture, quality, form and type of democracy that we have had for years. Since 1999, when the last military dictator left the stage of governance of Nigeria by military fiat and decrees, there have been series of administrations that purport to be democratic in context, in texture and form.

However, if we look at the quality of life, the cost of living, the quality of infrastructures and social services that Nigerians get, can we truly compare the system of government that we have in Nigeria with the democracy that obtains in other Countries from which we derived the political model soon after we became a Sovereign nation in 1960? Can we say that the incipient kleptocracy that the political elite including Nigeria have embraced is to be known as democracy?

The reason for this question is to gauge if democracy, tested as it were in Nigeria, whether this system of government is trusted. The immediate and direct response is a capital NO.

Aside Nigeria, democracy has also not worked in many African nations so much so that some of these nations, poor as they are statistically rated, have in the last couple of years, chosen military dictatorial regimes as alternative to representative democracy which they claimed has failed.

But has democracy actually failed or is it that Africans and especially the citizens in the Sahel region have failed to allow democracy to be deeply institutionalised by allowing institutions of checks and balances and separation of powers to work? Can we blame the people of these African nations for working in a sort of partnership of the evil vicious circle to install a bunch of power hungry persons who parade around as democrats? Why are the people intolerant to massive electoral heists and sometimes partake in the making of these notoriously rigged elections by accepting bribes for votes?

The questions are seemingly bottomless, but suffice it to say that I think democracy is tested but is not trusted any longer in our clime because of the activities of power drunk African politicians who do everything outside the rules of politics, to undermine institutions that ought to be strong enough to check the excesses of the executive arm of government.

African government officials who get into their positions by hook or crook, usually introduce all kinds of policies aimed at impoverishment of the greatest numbers of citizens and this is so that the people who actually under normal circumstances are the owners of the sovereignty of Nigeria, would become so engrossed in chasing after bread and butter to the extent of not knowing how to safeguard democracy but concentrate on putting foods on their tables.

This systemic impoverishment of the mass of the people of Nigeria through not well thought-out policies, is a deliberate scheme to keep them hungry and not having the economic power to resist the temptations of their votes been bought by politicians who have amassed illicit wealth from their previous or present public offices which they seek to extend through the votes of the people- the same people they use the instrumentality of governance to hold down in the dredge of perpetual and absolute poverty.

The weakening of institutions that are of necessity creared ab initio to defend democracy such as independent judiciary, independent legislature, the electoral commission, have all but been sabotaged and allowed to degenerate thereby creating a big-man sort of totalitarian and non- accountable Presidents. The degeneration is systemic abd deeply rooted in Nigeria. We have just seen it in the way the President withdrew subsidy on fuel hurriedly, then claimed that he has saved about a trillion Naira from the withheld subsidy and then quickly allocated N70 billion to the judiciary with less than five thousand Nigerians and then another N30 billion to the legislature at the centre with less than a thousand Nigerians. If these aren’t bribes towards weakening checks and balances in government, what then is it? Mind you, both the judiciary and legislators in Abuja are handsomely paid. Yet those who are at the National Assembly are gulping the greatest percentage of the revenues that Nigeria generate. The Economist once described the National Assembly members as the most expensively maintained legislators far more than the Congress of the USA, the Westminster Parliament of Great Britain and other Parliaments of advanced societies. Yet the Nigerian ruler has allocated so much to them and almost next to nothing to over 130 million multidimensionally poor Nigerian households. What then is the essence of democracy and is this not why most Africans are now becoming nostalgic wishing that military tyrants stage a come back?

The truth is that Nigeria hasn’t witnessed military take over like many of her neighbours including Niger Republic which is only a stone throw away from us, but there is a general atmosphere of discontent and dissatisfaction with the government at both the national and sub-national levels.

At the sub-national levels, most States are administered by persons whose main interest in contesting election is for corrupt enrichment and so in most States of Nigeria, the governors who have pocketed their state houses of assemblies, rule their states with iron fists and lack accountability and transparency. This is the tragedy that confronts governance in Nigeria today.

This tragedy escalated on May 29th after the newly inaugurated President failed to hold consultation with anyone but rushed to announce a major economic policy of withdrawal of fuel subsidy that almost immediately, ignited a whirlwind of the harshest kind of poverty on a very massive scale because the cost of living became unbearable for hundreds of millions of Nigerians.

The President who never consulted anyone from the Organised Labour unions, organised civil rights bodies, Students, market women and artisans, unleashed a gale of excruciating economic pains on a massive scale because that singular announcement which he made on the day of his inauguration off the cuff, caused the price of fuel to be jerked up beyond the purchasing power of over 130 million multidimensionally poor Nigerian households.

And because the cost of fuel determines the general costs of services and essential commodities, the costs of these items of values soon ballooned out of the reach of millions of Nigerians to an extent that poor workers especially in both the Organised private, public sectors and the Small and medium-sized enterprises, can’t afford to continue their businesses going by their incapacity to afford the costs of fuel to power their systems, power their houses because even with irregular power supplies, the electricity rates go up virtually all the time.

There is currently a plot by the transmission and distribution companies in the electricity sector to hike the cost of electricity for Nigerian households by at least forty percent.

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Most Nigerians who go for daily paid works are now trekking the long distances because the costs of transportation have jumped so high that they can’t afford. In other climes whenever the costs of living are going up, governments of those nations have churned out palliatives and have worked out seamless social welfare for the poorest of the poor. Their governments dont make academic primises through broadcast but put their foot and boots on the ground and releases finances to back uo their pronouncement.

In Nigeria whereby the lower cost of fuel prior to the advent of the All Progressives Congress government in 2015 till date is the only subsidy enjoyed by poor Nigerians have been taken away without consultation and now the masses are grumbling so much so that many are applauding the undemocratic take overs of governments in neighbouring nations to Nigeria.

This nostalgia for the return to military dictatorship is very tragic and dangerous just as everything must be done by the present crop of politicians to stop pushing Nigerians beyond the limits of their human endurance because if you push millions of Nigerians to a near-death situation, they will generally endorse military take over which wouldn’t bring any good governance either.

Worried by the general climate of anger in the public, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu few hours back addressed the nation in an electronic broadcast which he sought to convince the suffering masses of Nigeria that AFTER DARKNESS COMES THE GLORIOUS DAWN, whatever that means.

He then read the following prepared speech: “My fellow citizens, I want to talk to you about our economy. It is important that you understand the reasons for the policy measures I have taken to combat the serious economic challenges this nation has long faced.

I am not going to talk in difficult terms by dwelling on economic jargon and concepts. I will speak in plain, clear language so that you know where I stand. More importantly, so that you see and hopefully will share my vision regarding the journey to a better, more productive economy for our beloved country.

For several years, I have consistently maintained the position that the fuel subsidy had to go. This once beneficial measure had outlived its usefulness. The subsidy cost us trillions of Naira yearly. Such a vast sum of money would have been better spent on public transportation, healthcare, schools, housing and even national security. Instead, it was being funnelled into the deep pockets and lavish bank accounts of a select group of individuals.

This group had amassed so much wealth and power that they became a serious threat to the fairness of our economy and the integrity of our democratic governance. To be blunt, Nigeria could never become the society it was intended to be as long as such small, powerful yet unelected groups hold enormous influence over our political economy and the institutions that govern it.

The whims of the few should never hold dominant sway over the hopes and aspirations of the many. If we are to be a democracy, the people and not the power of money must be sovereign.

The preceding administration saw this looming danger as well. Indeed, it made no provision in the 2023 Appropriations for subsidy after June this year. Removal of this once helpful device that had transformed into a millstone around the country’s neck had become inevitable…”

Tinubu’s Speech is comical because he is on one hand blaming persons he has identified as belonging to a group that have siphoned public funds under the guise of fuel subsidy, he failed to arrest even one of those persons he knew are outlaws. Sadly, the President is justifying the thoughtless decision to withdraw subsidy from fuel to the criminal activities of the fuel subsidy cartels whereas his government only just succeeded in spreading poverty, pains, pangs of hunger amongst the already economically depleted 130 million multidimensionally poor Nigerian households.

This tendency is satanic, that of punishing innocent members of the public through harsh, thoughtless, irrational withdrawal of subsidy from fuel sold to Nigerians but allowing members of the fuel subsidy cartels who diverted billions of public funds in US dollars under the guise of fuel subsidy, to go and sin no more.

This is exactly why millions of Nigerians now think that democracy that we practice is not trustworthy since it rewards criminals known to government but inflicts pains, punishment and poverty to the hoi polloi in a very massive scale. There is no social justice embedded in this whole hullabaloo of withdrawal of fuel subsidy.

Most people I meet during my work as a civil society activist, have often asked me whether democracy is still relevant in Nigeria.

I, too think that we aren’t practicing the real democracy. When on August 2nd 2023 as Labour unionists in Nigeria protest against the harsh economic policies of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, I listened to a broadcast of a radio interview of Prime minister Rishi Sunak whereby he took random calls from members of the audience and was frankly responding to their questions. He even told them that he is soon going on vacation to the USA with his family so that he takes his children to the Disney land in the USA. And then debates are already going on as to why the Prime minister is embarking on this vacation to a far distant country whereby he will accumulate huge carbon footprint. So I ask myself why those who are in government in Nigeria don’t consult the people when making public economic policies but do things that favour only the few rich class who bankrolled their rigged elections?

This is because as I read in a well written essay online in which the author succinctly informed us that in the dictionary definition, democracy “is government by the people in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system.” In the phrase of Abraham Lincoln, democracy is a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people.”

Freedom and democracy are often used interchangeably, but the two are not synonymous. Democracy is indeed a set of ideas and principles about freedom, but it also consists of a set of practices and procedures that have been molded through a long, often tortuous history. In short, democracy is the institutionalization of freedom. For this reason, it is possible to identify the time-tested fundamentals of constitutional government, human rights, and equality before the law that any society must possess to be properly called democratic.

Democracies fall into two basic categories, direct and representative. In a direct democracy, all citizens, without the intermediary of elected or appointed officials, can participate in making public decisions. Such a system is clearly only practical with relatively small numbers of people–in a community organization or tribal council, for example, or the local unit of a labor union, where members can meet in a single room to discuss issues and arrive at decisions by consensus or majority vote. Ancient Athens, the world’s first democracy, managed to practice direct democracy with an assembly that may have numbered as many as 5,000 to 6,000 persons–perhaps the maximum number that can physically gather in one place and practice direct democracy, the author wrote with clarity.

Democracy has also faced tumultuous times in our neighbourhoods. The British Broadcasting Corporation ran a piece which stated that Nigeria’s neighbour of Niger is the latest country in the Sahel region of northwest Africa to experience a military coup.

It reports that elected officials are overthrown amid growing dissatisfaction with the political regime, which is often accused of corruption and failing to fend off Islamic extremist groups operating in the region.

Coup leaders then promise to implement a new, more democratic regime, but this process gets delayed and tensions remain unresolved.

In some countries, this has resulted in further coups and instability, which leaves them vulnerable to hostile forces, including both the Jihadist groups and Russian mercenaries.

Here Sky News looks at the timeline of events across the Sahel belt in recent years and what the consequences have been. BBC then asked, Why the Sahel?

BBC wrote therefrom that the Sahel region of African nations below the Sahara Desert include Mali, Burkina Faso, Chad, Niger and Guinea. They are some of the poorest in the world and vulnerable to both political instability and climate change.

Since French colonial rule ended in the 1960s and democratic regimes were instated for the first time, France has maintained a military presence there. But in the last decade Jihadist groups linked to al-Qaeda and Islamic State have been growing in power and influence from northern Mali into neighbouring states. Eager to minimise instability and Islamist influence, France and other Western nations have invested heavily in security – using it as a base for the wider fight against terrorism in the region. But after France withdrew troops from Mali in 2022, military leaders are moving away from their former Western allies and towards Russia – whose Wagner mercenary group now operates throughout the belt. On Niger, we know that Last week Niger’s President Mohamed Bazoum was ousted from power by the military, led by General Abdourahmane Tchiani.

Mr Bazoum was the first democratically-elected leader in Niger since the end of French colonial rule in 1960. He was overthrown after soldiers surrounded the presidential palace in the capital Niamey. They claimed they wanted to “put an end to the regime” amid a “deteriorating security situation and bad governance”. The Junta has since closed all borders and imposed a curfew. Western allies have condemned the coup, fearing the armed forces will move away from their backing and increasingly towards Moscow. Earlier in Mali, precisely in the summer of 2020 saw a wave of protests grip Mali, reports the BBC. Demonstrators were angry with the government’s failure to control fighting between warring factions in the north and south of the country, allegations of corruption and mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic. On 18 August the Malian Armed Forces staged a mutiny. Soldiers led by Colonel Assimi Goita overthrew a military base in the town of Kati before trucks closed in on the capital of Bamako. President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita and other government officials were detained by the group of military leaders who called themselves the National Committee for the Salvation of the People. On 12 September they agreed to an 18-month timeframe for civilian rule being reintroduced.

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But seven months into the transition process in May 2021 the interim president and prime minister were ousted in a second coup and Col Goita was made president of the transitional government. France withdrew its troops from Mali in the summer of 2022.

On Burkina Faso, the BBC recalled that Burkina Faso saw two coups in just eight months last year. On 24 January 2022, soldiers appeared on national TV to say they had seized power from democratically-elected President Roch Marc Christian Kabore. Lieutenant Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba was sworn in as his replacement on 16 February. But on 30 September soldiers ousted him and instead named Captain Ibrahim Traore as transitional president. At the same time, there was growing discontent with France’s ongoing presence in the country.

On Sudan, we were told by BBC that following three decades of autocratic rule under President Omar al-Bashir, in 2019 the military overthrew him and imposed the Transitional Military Council to oversee a so-called peaceful transition of power. This was led by transitional prime minister Abdalla Hamdok and a power-sharing body of military officers and civilians. But in October 2021, fighting between the army and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) saw the prime minister and his family detained and the power-sharing agreement abandoned. The coup was led by General Abdel Fattah al-Buhran. Since then fighting in Sudan has resulted in hundreds of deaths with no clear path to a democratic resolution. Earlier this year al-Buhran accused the head of the RSF, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, of an attempted coup.

In Chad, it is known that it remains under military rule since its long-time president Idriss Deby was killed in fighting against rebels in the north of the country in April 2021. His son, General Mahamat Idriss Deby, now leads the country as the interim head-of-state, a move that goes against the country’s constitution.

Besides, in Guinea the coup began on 5 September 2021 when President Alpha Conde was overthrown by the leader of the army Colonel Mamady Doumbouya. Justifying the decision, the former French legionnaire said the army had no choice but to take action against corruption, human rights abuses and economic errors.

Democracy must be made to work for the people and this can be done when the institutions that are created for the purposes of checks and balances are allowed to work. Sadly, under the current administration, all the instruments of separation of powers have been emasculated and captured by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu who is gradually making himself an emperor who can’t be tasked to live by example and rule the Country lawfully. This creeping and deadly virus of totalitarianism under the nose of Bola Tinubu must be removed so the people can have trust in democracy.

*EMMANUEL ONWUBIKO is head of the HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA and was NATIONAL COMMISSIONER OF THE NATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION OF NIGERIA.