Maurice Iwu
6 July 2009
opinion
Lagos — Our country's electoral process and indeed all of its political system have been characterized for long by crisis of values and methods. As many times as our country has tried in all of its forty nine years to organize what should be normal civic duties of democratically choosing its leaders and representatives, the exercise almost always snowballed into acrimonious interest group disputations. In many cases, election-related disputes do not end at polarizing the society and promoting discontent - which is bad enough. More often than not, disputations over elections in Nigeria are deliberately externalized by certain elements whose intents cannot be anything but mindless and self-serving; as if the solution to any society's problems has ever come from abroad.
Of course, contention for power has always been keen in all societies and in all systems. In civilized settings however, there are always rules to the game of politics and all participants comply with such rules and also know the limit beyond which pursuit of individual or group ambition cannot be stretched. That is the only way to side step anarchy. But not exactly so with politics in Nigeria. Here, there may be rules quite alright, but the predominant belief in our society is that politics and its allied engagements, especially elections, are games without rules. This disposition has lingered for long and has indeed become a threat to the healthy growth of democracy in the country.
Even where it is reluctantly accepted by some within our system that there are rules guiding participation in politics and elections, the common tendency is to see such rules as being binding only on those who do not have adequate financial or political weight to muscle their way through. Ironically, many of the ordinary citizens and even professional who complain persistently today about the shortcomings of democracy in our system are at the very foot soldiers of some big men or god fathers whose words they accept as gospel in political reckoning and whose decisions cannot be challenged within the parties even when they are wrong.
The problem with this situation is profoundly captured by Niccolo Machiavelli who reminded us long time ago in one of his discussions that " we can never hope to live in freedom under the rule of a prince" as "he is particularly interested in how those who fall into servitude may be capable of regaining their liberty." The disruptive influence of the many princes or godfathers of present day political process in Nigeria has become rather too costly to be ignored.
We shall return to how much this matter constitutes a problem for the electoral process as well as other impediments to the development of our electoral process, but first let us turn to the potentials and relative bright side of democracy in the country in recent times, for in truth Nigeria's democracy has posted remarkable strides as well.
Penultimate month, May 2009, marked ten consecutive years of democratic governance in Nigeria. Against the backdrop of the political history of the country, especially the volatile and capricious changes of governments and regimes in the not too distant past, and also considering the ever steaming conspiracy of the political elite against its members and against the system, attaining ten years of uninterrupted democracy is, by every standard, a landmark for Nigeria. It speaks of progression, of increasing maturity, an acceptance that a system can only improve and grow with time and consistent mastery of its values and nuances.
Democracy as it has been rightly noted is not always a very elegant system. The operationalisation or practical expression of the lofty aspirations of a democratic order is not without its shortcomings and discontents. Indeed a famous statement of Winston Churchill, the former British Prime about democracy has it that it '(democracy) is the worst of all systems of governance, except for the others'. While it is true therefore, that democratic governance in Nigeria in the last ten years could be better in all ramifications, the persistent loud complains about what our society has not accomplished since democracy was re-established in 1999 tend often to forget where we were coming from. There is also the tendency to underrate the impact of the society's long existence under autocratic regimes, even as the hangover of that experience constantly dogs our national life.
The flourishing individual and group liberty in our society today; the freedom that the judiciary enjoys which in turn offers the citizenry opportunity for redress when wronged; the representative nature of governments as well as the provision for accountability in leadership count weightily as some of the benefits of democracy which should not be written off at every moment of individual dissatisfaction with what democracy offers at a point in time. We may have some distance to go, but we sure have started out on the journey.
For Nigeria's democracy, the expectation is not out of place that having for the first time thrived for ten uninterrupted years, the next phase in the evolutionary process will be marked by greater deepening of the fundamentals of the system. The new phase in the scheme of development of democracy in the land will expectedly be that in which various inelegant thrusts of the system during the past decade will steadily be fine-tuned, such that actions and steps that are not in consonance with the culture of democracy will cease to be explained away as manifestations of a nascent system.
It is important to state here without wasting time that there is nothing automatic in this evolutionary process and expectation. The commitment of the various stakeholders to the development of the culture and structure of representative democracy must remain consistent and uncompromised. That is the only way to achieve a realistic symmetry between the ideals we aspire to and what we have before us on the practical realm.
The common recourse today by some of the regular critics of Nigeria's electoral process to comparisons with processes and outcome of elections in other countries and systems without first establishing similarity in the systems being compared reflect a lack of rigour and penchant for playing to the gallery. As Mathew Hassan Kukah had cause to observe once, "The only thing we seem committed to is unrelenting cynicism which we parade as a landmark of honour". This tendency does not begin in any way to address our problems.
Except for India and Australia which are federal states in the same mold with Nigeria, most other countries which traducers of Nigeria's electoral process easily compare their elections with Nigeria's are entirely on different structural orbits. There is indeed no central election management body in either United States of America or United Kingdom. Elections in these countries are conducted at state levels and the outcome pulled together nationally. And these are countries with far more developed logistics management systems and general infrastructure.
Beyond this fundamental difference in structure, the rules guiding elections and politics in the societies we love to refer to are stringently adhered to by the participants. The regulation on campaign finances (donations and expenditure) in United States of America for instance, is so strictly adhered to that it will be a grave risk for a candidate to try to circumvent the law.
Before the 2007 elections, the Independent National Electoral Commission produced a campaign finance manual based on the provisions of the law. The Commission sought thereafter to ensure compliance by the political parties and candidates to the expenditure limits the law established. Unlike what obtains in the systems and countries we love to refer to, no other group, not even the media showed interest in following through this initiative to rein in campaign expenditure and the obscene deployment of money in our politics.
Thus it was that in the elections of 2007 in particular, some participants in the electoral process, including elected public servants had amassed such wealth and personal troops that placed them in enough strong position to challenge the government in any front necessary. And some of them did. The scenario of heavy deployment of money to determine the outcome of elections or better still to subvert the will of the majority reinforced the point the Commission had consistently harped on that the excessive use of money is among the most pernicious impacts on elections in Nigeria. In the systems and countries the critics of our system love to refer to, such is not the case.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
