Many suggestions which come to mind each time we undertake a review of the democratic course revolve around ways to grow the Nigerian democracy beyond its dysfunctional state and make it more beneficial to our people. The idea behind these recommendations is not to deprecate the concept of liberal democracy but to enrich its content and practice in Nigeria and many other countries in sub-Saharan Africa where this form of government is relatively new compared to other climes in the global North.
There’s no denying the fact that our own variant of democracy is in dire need of profound reform of the electoral system, governance structure, and the disposition of the operators who apparently lord it over those that they derive their mandates from. This perspective is ever present in most of the recommendations at seminars, conferences as well as opinion polls because of the gaps between the unmet expectations of the citizenry and the pervasive poor performance of most of our political representatives. It’s not debatable that only a handful of elected officials can beat their chests in terms of selflessly activating and executing programmes primed to enhance the lives of their constituents.
Among eminent Nigerians who had spoken on the issue under discourse is ex-President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo. A particular ceremony which he hosted late last year at the Green Resort Legacy, within the precincts of Obasanjo Presidential Library, Abeokuta, and suggested a review of the democracy practice to accord with the historical and cultural peculiarities of Africans, made the rounds for a good reason.
What struck me most was his appropriate identification of Western democracy as a “government of a few people over all the people or population, and these few people have representatives of only some of the people and not full representatives of the people.” He even noted that “invariably, the majority of the people are wittingly or unwittingly kept out”. In Obasanjo’s words, “the weakness and failure of liberal democracy as it is practiced stem from its history, content, context… For those who define it as the rule of the majority, should the minority be ignored, neglected or excluded?” I think he was on point.
Twenty five years down the line, it’s of course desirable for us to look at the entire framework of what we have at the present time. Interrogating the current political system provides a mirror for us to see its defects and at the same time seek ways to reinvent and make it more workable not just peripherally but optimally for the country. The overall objective is to emplace a newer version of a political system that works the citizenry and responds to their yearnings and aspirations irrespective of their pattern of behaviour in an election season.
Just as Obasanjo pointed out, my greatest worry is the deliberate exclusion of the so-called minority in a democratic setting. I remember asking one Mr. Akpeghgha, brilliant man who taught us Advanced Level Government in one of the early classes in February 1988 at Government College, Ughelli, about the basis of neglecting minority opinion or votes in a constitutional democracy.
While he was momentarily thrown off balance by my question, his response that democracy had no place for the minority as conceived in the Western hemisphere did not convince me. That incredulity still persists to this day.
So, one of the most important aspects that we must consider is proportional representation in the constitution. This plays out in the legislature but not in the executive, being the most visible and most powerful for obvious reasons. The appointment of ministers into the federal executive council should reflect percentage quota of total votes won by political parties in the presidential election. This model of representation will minimize the unsavoury variant of opposition politics and generate collective sense of shared ownership of government, taking a cue from the communal disposition of black Africans.
The scenario of the 2023 presidential elections presents an apt contrast to the above suggestion. The two leading opposition candidates, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and Mr. Peter Obi of the Peoples Democratic Party(PDP) and the Labour Party(LP) respectively polled over 13 million votes together, but President Bola Tinubu won with only 8,794,726, votes having satisfied the constitutional requirements. Of course, Tinubu’s assumption of office and subsequent appointments had expectedly favoured members of his political party because of the inherent winner-takes-it-all system that temporarily sends opposition members to exile once they lose elections.
It’s important to remedy this exclusionary aspect as it’s unhealthy for the envisaged cooperation of political actors. Given the socio-cultural and political milieu of its origin, democracy essentially reflects the individualistic attribute of the Western world and its influence on the quest for political power in Africa, which, currently exacerbated by avaricious virus, continues to breed poor governance and disillusionment of the citizens. The result effect is widespread political instability and civil disturbances in many cases and outright sack of elected rulers by military adventurists as witnessed recently in parts of West Africa. With the growing economic hardship, there had been calls for military takeover of political affairs in Nigeria since last August, but the fear of the unknown and the apparent overindulgence of the armed forces by President Tinubu had restrained them from walking the familiar, unconstitutional, and disruptive familiar paths of yesteryears.
We also need to rework the system with a view to reducing the huge cost of running the system which privileges political office holders at the expense of the well-being of the electorate. The Nigerian system is too prebendal to the extent it catapults a large number of politicians from penury to the exalted status of billionaire while the citizens are mired in poverty from one season to another. Reducing the remuneration and allowances is key to making the service of politicians truly selfless and patriotic.
Above all, we must strive to strike a balance of the evidential difference between African culture and norms and liberal democracy as a Western import. Agreed that democracy is theoretically deemed as the best form of government, but I’m at a loss as to the inability of Nigerians and other black Africans to indigenise the system to suit our cultural peculiarities. It’s a failure on our part to have swallowed hook line and sinker what we received from our colonisers without the minutest refinement or cultural adaptation. As it’s generally known, a new concept be it language or other forms of expressions is expected to take on the colouration of the new environment it’s implanted.
If we did so by creating a pidgin and even Nigerian version of the puritanical English as it obtains in England, United States, Australia, and New Zealand, what stops us from Nigerianising democracy in some creative way?
One of the good ways of doing this is to adopt the Option A4 model which was created by Prof. Humphrey Nwosu of blessed memory. That pattern of voting, as exemplified by its utilisation for June 12,1993 presidential poll, was creatively indigenous, more transparent, and less expensive than the so-called open secret ballot imposed on us by importers of Western democracy.
If we had continued with it, we would not be witnesses to the seasonal large-scale electoral fraud, huge expenditures incurred by litigants in post-election matters and the emergence of billionaire judges who are compromised to deliver embarrassing judgements.
It’s incumbent on us to rethink our democratic system and work earnestly to give our country a pattern of governance that’s considerably indigenous and also accommodates the four features of democracy.
A country can only grow optimally through an infusion of its cultural ethos rather than a perennial flirtation with foreign ideologies.
