IS NIGERIA PRACTISING DEMOCRACY SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT OR PSEUDO-DEMOCRACY SYSTEM?
By: Olamide Akinwumi
After gaining independence in 1960 from Great Britain, Nigeria fell prey to civil war and the first of so many military coups in 1966. Democracy was briefly restored from 1979 to 1983 to the country, but for most of its independent history, Nigeria was ruled by a series of military juntas. The last major military ruler, Gen. Sani Abacha, died suddenly in 1998. His successor, Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar promised a transition to democracy, and accordingly a new constitution was adopted on May 5th, 1999. Elections
Democracy ought to refer to ‘government of the people, by the people and for the people. By this simple definition, a layman can easily comprehend the meaning of the meaning of this. A system of government whereby people or citizens of a country elect a government by themselves to protect and assist them in realizing their life dreams and expectations. But can we say we are practising this in Nigeria?
Democracy in Nigeria has since changed to the government of the politicians, by the politicians and for the politicians only. Just look around you and see. There is no manifestation of democracy on the faces of the masses, the have-nots, the down trodden, the masses despite the noises about democracy and its invincible dividends, they are still wallowing in abject poverty, squalor, hunger, disease, underemployment, and other nefarious man-made problems. How else can one explain the bloated salaries allotted to the high ranking public officers and the servants are being owed many months of pay despite the meagre amount?
Even the educated ones among the masses, graduates of various fields of ten to twenty years in service aren’t even enjoying the dividend of the so called democracy. This is because the salaries of the so called educated man are struggling to meet up with the demands of the society. Majority of government facilities enjoyed by the masses such as portable drinking water, electricity, good health care system, free education etc. are all a story of the past. The common man has even become his own government, providing power, security, water and so on by himself.
From 1999, since the civilians took over governance under a democratic arrangement, we have suffered progressive deterioration of not only the country’s infrastructural network, practically all our institutions critical to socio-political and democratic advancement have collapsed. Even governance itself is grinding to a halt.
What is evident beyond any dispute is that most politicians, especially of the ruling elite have no positive idea what democracy is about, and it is debatable whether they have any clear cut plan for moving the nation forward. If our experience thus far is the benchmark, then we won’t be wrong to say that for the current breed of politicians in power, democracy is a government of the privileged few for the benefit of themselves, their families and their friends. The democracy we practice here at this point in time is one that fosters the most despicable level of corruption ever known in Nigeria since independence. It is choking the life out of majority of Nigerians.
Therefore, as far as an ordinary Nigerians are concerned, democracy is not for them, but for the politicians and their cronies. The masses are yet reap any dividend if ever there is any, of their democracy. What the masses are expecting to see is genuine, real and concrete improvement in their standard of living, and not fleet of foreign flash luxury cars, mansions and paraphernalia. We are tired of empty promises, rhetoric propaganda and long grammar. We need to see action, real action and not deception. Let the masses see the dividend of democracy on ground; we want to see it with our naked eyes, not on paper or on TV screen.
It is high time we stop living in a world of illusion, deception, hypocrisy or hide and seek game. We should face reality and stop deceiving ourselves. The world is changing very fast, some smaller counties, less endowed than Nigeria have gone far in terms of human development. Some countries are going nuclear, while we are still backsliding.
This is a plea to Nigerian politicians to emulate honest leaders like Tafawa Balewa, Dr. Nnamdi Azikwe, Gen. Muritala Mohammed, and the likes who are all of blessed memory. All these people did not accumulate billions at the expense of the masses. They did not acquire or pile fleet of expensive cars while majority of the people (electorates) are suffering in silence. Our present political leaders should remember that they are not going to stay in this brief world over hundreds years. All of us in one way or the other will leave this world, whether we like it or not and definitely account for our deeds. It will be too late to cry when the head is cut off.
Okay, Nigeria clearly is not in tandem with the tenets of democracy, check the last EIU report on democracy and you will come to realize that Nigeria practices what is at best termed: “pseudo-democracy”.
Haven said that, for me that’s not even the discuss we should be having. The key converse here is: Is Democracy working for Africa? Is Democracy working for Nigeria? Do we need to sit down, design a form of government that can deliver the sort of social, economic and political growth and development that we sort and begin to practice it? Is it only Democracy that functions in other developed societies?
Japan is a highly structured and developed economy (in fact the third largest economy in the world) does not practice Democracy. Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong have made giant strides since 1960 till date and are highly industrialized. Do they practice democracy? Who says democracy can work for Africa. Is there any African nation where Democracy works and they are making significant progress? Don’t even mention South Africa, because it is not even making progress. Its GDP for instance is on a slide, there is high unemployment rate (over 20%), there is high crime rate, there is high HIV prevalence, and so on). Ghana is certainly not making significant progress, with inflation rate skyrocketing of recent, North Africa have been forced to embrace Democracy and since then, its been chaos upon chaos, wars here and there, which has continue to spiral to other nations (butterfly effect), with weapons finding its way into the wrong hands…
Our socio-cultural diversity makes democracy a difficult form of government for our continent, the bitter truth is: IT CAN’T WORK FOR AFRICA, not now, not in the near future. Perhaps, in further future.
There are stages in the life of a nation, just as there are stages in the life of a human being. When a nation is still at cradle stage, it certainly cannot adopt democracy to function or grow, just as a child cannot be left to choose just whatever he/ she wants. As the child develops and grows, then it begins to have some level of independence to choose and at adulthood, it can completely choose for itself. A nation must also be seen this way.
Third world nations must adopt a different form of government from Democracy at this crawling stage, when giant strides of development take place, then and only then, can such grown and educated populace begin to adopt democracy as a form of government. The nations where democracy works are made up of highly educated populace who mostly understand what leadership means and what is best for them and certainly practice almost similar form of religion (with a clear majority religion to add to that).
Third world nations are made up of highly uneducated populace, who do not understand leadership, and who do not know what is best for them (or do know but choose to turn blind eye to it) and highly diversified ethnicity and religion. (Even North Africa that is dominated by Islam cannot survive democracy, there Elder Brother Saudi Arabia does not practice democracy, yet peaceful, yet the United States is their friend and do not intend/ plan to force democracy on them). Just for information purpose, Saudi Arabia is now the largest importer of Arms and ammunition, the largest spender: spending over $10 billion for their defense. That is a working nation: without democracy.
It is high time, Nigerian youths began to have such discuss as: Can Democracy even work for us? If not, then what system can we design and adopt? Or is it that we are so dumb as to not be able to think and design our own functional form of government? During our best years between 1960-66, 1970-1979, when we were net-exporters, when naira was stronger than dollars, what form of government did we practice? Was it this pseudo-democracy or regional form of government. If we can’t go back to regional form of government, then do we follow Singaporean model with a tweak, or what? Let’s think, the world only stands up for those that THINK. Democracy or pseudo-democracy that we currently practice can simply NOT work for Nigeria.
PAMBAZUKA NEWS VIEW AND OPINION ON DEMOCRATIC SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT IJ NIGERIA
DEMOCRATIC DISAPPOINTMENT
With such a low dividend on democracy, and with ‘democracy’ being so costly and toxic to the body politic, it is no surprise that many Nigerians have begun to question their loyalty to the received wisdom that democracy is superior to its alternatives.
For many Nigerians and Africans democracy has failed. It has failed to live up to its publicised benefits – tangible and intangible. So glaring is this failure and so painful are the betrayals of Africa’s ‘democrats’ that ten thousand Nigeriens recently poured into the streets of Niamey to rally in support of the new military regime there. Westerners may be scrambling to comprehend this dramatic reversal of public opinion from a craving for a democratic overthrow of a military dictatorship eleven years ago to an enthusiastic embrace of a military overthrow of a ‘democratic’ regime today. But this is something that people in neighboring Nigeria can explain and understand. The exuberant Nigeriens at the rally were not expressing a preference for military autocracy. They were voicing their disillusionment with a failed democracy.
Nigeria’s democratic setbacks may not yet entitle us to reject democracy altogether or to be receptive to military rule. But we are at a crossroads, and if we continue with this charade, a Niger-like scenario of democratic disillusionment may be in the horizon. We cannot continue along this path: Abusing democracy, invoking it to legitimize all that is abhorrent but neglecting to fulfil its utilitarian promises to Nigerians.
America and the rest of the West have the luxury of evaluating democracy from a purely idealistic standpoint. They can afford the long wait necessary for democracy to register – the gestation period needed for democracy’s more visible benefits to trickle down and permeate society. They can comfortably absorb the overhead cost of democracy and the financial and political burdens of partisan gridlock. Their economy is big enough to soak up the imperfections and dysfunctions of democracy – which are many. Their political system is decentralized enough to withstand partisan and procedural impasse at the centre. Not Nigeria and Nigerians.
Our perception of democracy is a purely utilitarian one. Americans obsess intellectually about what democracy means; Nigerians ask what it can deliver to them. Nigerians evaluate democratic practice not in abstract or futuristic terms but in terms of its immediate benefits to their lives. Democracy will only be as popular as the results it delivers for Nigerians. Nigerians want democracy to deliver quantifiable gratifications, and they cannot wait too long for these. Eleven years is long enough.
It is not the fault of Nigerians either. The rhetoric of democratic advocacy in the military era made glib, enticing connections between Nigerians’ economic plight and the lack of democracy in their country. The suggestion was clear: Democracy brings development and improved living. Nigerians’ expectation of democracy rests on this promise. It is time they began to see some of the promised returns. If they don’t, they have a right to question the assumed connection between democracy and development and to become disillusioned.
It is unrealistic to expect that in a developmentally-challenged country where poverty is an inescapable companion, citizens would perceive democratic governance from a non-materialist perspective. Their needs are starkly material, so are their expectations from democracy. Nigerians should not be expected to muster the idealism and patience required for a long-drawn process of democratic maturity when their bellies are empty.
WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
There is no innate or sacred loyalty to democracy in Nigerians – or, for that matter, in any other people. The degree of Nigerians’ attachment to the concept corresponds to the benefits that they see it delivering or the damage it is doing to their lives. This is why democracy is suffering setbacks across Africa.
So what’s the alternative to a broken, dangerous democracy? It’s not so simple. Dambisa Moyo, the Oxford-educated Zambian author of Dead Aid, offers one of the most eloquent critiques of democratic practice in Africa. Democracy –multiparty democracy – prevents timely action that may be the difference between a life-saving economic initiative and life-taking inaction, gridlock, or disaster. Democracy fosters costly ethno-partisan impasses that stifle development and productive economic change. She climaxes her critique by prescribing ‘benevolent dictatorships’ as the practical model for Africa. At least dictatorships get things done – if they want to, and are capable of pushing needed reforms through without the costly and time-consuming observance of democratic rules and processes. The procedural red tape of democracy is an enemy of development, she argues.
It’s hard to disagree with Moyo’s critique of democracy in Africa. But it’s hard to sympathize with her prescription because benevolence and dictatorships rarely co-exist in Africa, or anywhere, and it takes a naive mind to assume that they could. Nonetheless, she deserves commendation for going against the grain of universal democratic orthodoxy – the unquestioned dogma that democracy can simply be transplanted to Africa in its Western form with its stifling multiparty squabbles, expensive electoral rituals, and costly, divisive deliberative quagmires.
Here is the bottom line: This democracy is fatally broken. We are headed for an implosion if we fail to do something. Ikheloa may be hyperbolic in his characterization, but the disenchantment with democracy and its many failures is real. We ignore this reality at our collective peril.
Events in the last few weeks have underlined the anxieties that underpin this reflection on democracy. Yar’Adua’s sneaky re-entry into the country and the gale of confusion and scramble that it unleashed exposed the fragility and shallowness of our democracy.
The debate over the succession crisis devolved quickly and predictably into familiar North-South brickbats. The nation truly screeched to a frightening halt; a tepid shove would have taken us over the cliff.
So, again, much as we are inclined to defer the discussion and to toe the politically correct line of advancing democracy as its own cure, we are frequently being confronted with political crises that threaten the very foundation of the union. The question is: What is democracy worth if the way we practice it imperils our country and its people and widens the crevices that divide us? Would we rather preserve a pretentious democracy and lose the nation?
WHAT ARE THE CHOICES BEFORE NIGERIA?
Earlier, I introduced Dambisa Moyo’s prescription of ‘benevolent dictatorship.’ It’s not a new idea. It’s been around since the 1960s. It used to be called developmental dictatorship. The poster country of that model today is China. But China is China and Nigeria is Nigeria.
Because of Nigeria’s history of military rule and because of the strong elite unanimity in opposing non-representative political templates, this model would only heighten our crisis of governance and stifle development. In other words, it would be a dictatorship but it would be anything but developmental. Even if the contraption were possible in practice, its deficits would wipe out its benefits.
How about military rule? I have found that most Nigerians do not share the irreconcilable hostility of the schooled elite to military rule. Much of this hostility is founded on abstract, theoretical objections, not on crude or even enlightened interests. Most Nigerians are more pragmatic. They would prefer an effective military regime that consciously improves their lives to a ‘democratic’ regime that is preoccupied with a systematic violation of their lives and rights.
Nigerians are not the only ones who entertain episodic fantasies about the virtues of decisive autocracies during moments of democratic disappointments and stalemates. Even the Americans occasionally bemoan the problems of democracy and its elevation of bickering above action. Frustrated that some of his agendas were stuck in the traffic of congressional partisanship, former President George W. Bush famously remarked that ‘a dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier.’ He was joking, of course. But he was also expressing a genuine frustration at the slow pace of democracy – at the roadblocks that democratic rules and procedures place in the way of policy, initiative, and problem-solving. The frustrations of democracy are more intense, more burdensome, and more consequential in Nigeria than they are in America.
Nigeria’s intellectual and political elites are fond of saying that the worst democratic regime is better than the best military regime. This is at best elitist, out-of-touch rhetoric, a talking point of pro-democracy advocacy. Most Nigerians would reject this proposition outright. The poor, anguished farmer in my village who desires the positive physical presence of government in his life and community would disagree with it. So would the slum-dwelling day labourer in Kurmin Gwari, Kaduna. He would gladly accept a performing government of any stripe.
This is, of course, a false choice scenario. Most Nigerians would prefer the ideal: A democratic government that is also an effective governing machine, a prudent, fair, and humane allocator of resources. In the absence of the ideal however they would settle for a regime – any regime – that gives them the roads, schools, water, healthcare, electricity, and food security they crave.
A critique of democracy is not an endorsement of military rule. It need not be. The enlightened segments of Nigerian society are firm in their agreement that democracy is inherently better than military rule. Since these segments, not the brutalised and desperate masses, are the drivers of political paradigm shifts we can take the military rule option off the table.
But that does not mean that we have to engage in the fatalism of accepting the invidious, ‘democratic’ status quo. It means that we have to craft something in its place.
For starters, why can’t we modify this unwieldy American presidential system that is undermining our people and our country? Even the Americans, with all their wealth and strong institutions, are complaining about the financial cost (transaction cost, to use a chic political science jargon) of their democracy and its divisive, do-nothing hyper-partisan gridlocks. Our gridlocks are more costly because they are not just partisan; they are complicated by our ethno-religious and regional fissures.
Why do we need to have two legislative, money-guzzling legislative chambers instead of one lean, inexpensive one? Why, in the name of all that is good, do we have three senators from each state when we could have just one and spend a fraction of what we do now to maintain them and get them to actually work and earn their pay? The Americans that we ape have two senators representing each state, not three.
Many African cultures are authoritarian in nature. The figure of the big man who sits atop the political food chain with magisterial command, taking care of his subjects’ needs but demanding total subservience from them, is very seductive. When the American executive power system and this preexisting cultural reality converge you end up with the kind of vulgar abuses of power we are seeing from our executive office holders across the country. We don’t need a system that intensifies our authoritarian cultural disposition. We need a system that attenuates it. Such as a parliamentary system or any other arrangement that approximates its virtues.
These are just a few examples of how we can reform and customize our democratic practice to fit our peculiar needs, problems, and pocket. The choice is not between military rule and the unsustainable status quo.
Abuja will understandably oppose reforms that will reduce executive power and its abuse, shrink the stealing field, and expand the pool of resources available for developing the lives of Nigerians. Already, its answer to the problem of dwindling developmental revenue (caused by excessive democracy expenses and corruption) is to inflict more taxes and levies on Nigeria’s economically beleaguered middle and lower classes.
This is a welcome blunder. It should backfire with a positive outcome. With taxation comes the clamor for accountability, hostility to government recklessness, and demands for effective representation. With taxation comes citizen vigilance.
Maybe the failures of this democracy and Abuja’s frantic reaction to them will fertilize the ground for corrective action and for the installation of a true, concrete democracy.
