BY AHMED AMINU-RAMATU YUSUF
NIGERIA is marking 12 June as Democracy Day. It is the commemoration of the military annulment of the 1993 presidential election, considered by many as the freest in our history. Many of the ‘celebrants’ would be politicians who are most likely to thank Nigerians for their uncommon support for an uninterrupted “democracy” since 1999.
They will underscore the ‘progress attained’, and highlight challenges of this “democracy.” They will plead with Nigerians to continue sacrificing for unborn generations.
But majority of Nigerians will be asking: “What democracy are these politicians talking about?” “What progress are they talking about?” “Development of corruption, inflation, hunger, poverty, diseases and insecurity?” “Have we not been sacrificing since 1999?” “So what sacrifice are they still demanding from us?”
Such questions would reflect that Nigeria has been facing serious crises, since the present “democracy” was birthed a quarter of a century ago.
Democracy, to most Nigerian politicians, simply means Civil Rule as against Military Rule; multi-partism as opposed to a zero party or one party system. It means constitutionalism, even if the constitution is undemocratic; electoral competitions, whether rigged or unrigged; and separation of power, even if the power is fused.
Historically, democracy arose to check authoritarianism and despotism. Humanity in general, conceived, built, and developed it. In some pre-colonial Nigerian societies, rulers were not only accountable to the people, they were answerable for natural calamities, outbreak of diseases, and environmental disasters.
But, democracy primarily seeks to negate all monopolies of power, so that people can decide on issues and impose those issues on the state. Democracy seeks to enthrone people in the affairs of the state, the economy and society. It aims at making the electorate or masses kings, and the elected politicians, servants. Which is why democracy is popularly defined as “government of the people, for the people and by the people!”
Nigerian politicians generally liken development with modernisation. With transcending the traditional. They equate development activities with constructing high-rise buildings, railways, airports, tarred roads, overhead bridges, street lights, and beautification of the urban areas, amongst others.
But, modernisation creates never-ending problems. It endlessly dissolves the hitherto self-sufficient economy. It negates the traditional system of education, family values, and social security system. It continuously births things like unemployment, homelessness, poverty, diseases and disorderliness.
Modernisation compels people to increasingly generate activities or search for employment which brings money, to pay for things like accommodation, education and healthcare.
Modernising activities become “development” only, and only when they tackle the problems brought about by modernisation.
Development is, therefore, tackling and solving the problems brought by modernity. Development activities are those which improve peoples’ material conditions, promote their welfare benefits, ensure they live peaceful and better lives, progress their lives, guarantee the future of their children; and bring about discipline, orderliness, predictability and humanism in the affairs of the state, the economy and the society.
Democracy and development are like six and half a dozen. They are interconnected and interrelated. Both are against the monopolization of politics and economics. They are for the humanisation of society and humanity. While democracy is the development (improvement) and humanization of the political arena, development is the democratisation and humanisation of the economic arena.
Democracy without development or viceversa, is, therefore, unnatural, unsustainable and it endangers the collective existence of a people and a nation. This is why Chapter Two of the Nigerian constitution categorically states, amongst others, that: “the security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government.”
Unlike the First Republic when political parties were grass-rooted, membership funded, ideologically informed, and development-driven, those of this “democracy” are the exact opposite. They are owned and funded by the political gladiators who founded them, and by business corporations which support the gladiators.
The gladiators monopolise the parties, monetise its affairs, and decide who contests or, even, who wins. They transform elections into rigging matches, refereed by the Independent National Electoral Commission. They pay security officers to intimidate and harass voters. They raise thugs, who they drug, arm, finance and direct to disrupt elections in opposition strongholds, and attack, injure, and kill political opponents. They even pay to legalise electoral injustices.
Politics, to them, is for profit and the primitive accumulation of capital; not for service, democracy or development. Also, if religion, regions and ethnicity must be used for these ends, so be it.
Democracy is being subverted by the political leaders who ignore constitutional provisions, rules and regulations, extant circulars, and administrative principles, procedures and practices in the administration of state affairs.
Politicians have been adopting Pharaoh’s political arrogance, pomposity, extravagance, and despotism. But they ignore Pharaoh’s economics of production, engagement, integration, poverty elimination, and societal development.
They have been underfunding educational institutions, and refusing to implement critical decisions reached with staff unions to revamp and progress education. They are forgetting that no nation has ever been greater than its universities, which are the centres of excellence all over the world.
They have deliberately refused to refine petroleum products and other raw materials, preferring to burn our foreign earnings on the importation of finished products. They have refused to complete the construction of various power projects, which would help generate electricity and make it accessible and affordable to fire Nigeria’s development.
They have failed to secure the nation. By their actions and inactions, they have encouraged crime, kidnapping, desecration of places of worship, raping of females, banditry, terrorism, pillaging of villages, seizing of lands, obstruction of farming, and destruction of agricultural produces!
The legislators are no different. They have reduced law making, overhead functions, appointments into critical sectors of the state and economy, amongst others, to a cash-and-carry business. They are “settled” to approve foreign loans, even when such loans are unnecessary, and are clearly meant to be looted.
They have failed to hold the executive responsible, accountable and answerable for its anti-democratic and anti-development practices. Yet, they approve selfishly stupendous salaries and allowances for themselves, capping it with unverifiable constituency projects.
Other actors responsible for Nigeria’s crisis of democracy and development are those businesses which sponsor and bribe politicians for contracts, and for monopoly position in the various sectors of the economy. There are also judicial officers who legalise injustice and monetise justice.
There are the enslaving international institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World
Bank (WB). Their policies facilitate the privatisation of state corporations, devaluation of the naira, liberalisation of international trade, and de-subsidisation of essentials like petroleum products, fertilisers, electricity and health services.
The results are de-industrialisation, retrenchment, inflation, crude exploitation of the working people, unemployment, underemployment, hunger, hopelessness, mass exodus of Nigerian academics and professionals across the globe, especially the West. There is also huge migration of youths to Europe, through the Mediterranean Sea.
If Nigeria’s “democracy” would survive, it must embrace democracy and development, without which it would negate itself.
