Today is the fifth edition of Nigeria's new Democracy Day. Before June 2018, our Inauguration Day (May 29) was also the Democracy Day, as dictated by the military regime of General Abdulsalami Abubakar in its 1998/1999 transition to civil rule programme.
Nigerians clamoured for, and finally got former President Muhammadu Buhari to grant June 12 as the annual Democracy Day, to commemorate the freest and fairest election ever held in Nigeria on June 12, 1993. Though the election was annulled and its winner, Chief Moshood Abiola, murdered in jail, that date remains evergreen because it was the day Nigerians defied ethnicity, religion and regionalism to choose their leader.
Nigerians carried the June 12 flag aloft because it represented the very best example not just for our democracy but for the African continent. If we rise above our primordial limitations, we will elect good leaders who will take Nigeria to Eldorado.
The just-concluded general elections put serious question marks on our democracy. We have virtually repeated our ugly history and must suffer the consequences of it. In 1993, the transition to civil rule programme was accepted by the people. The National Electoral Commission, NEC, headed by Professor Humphrey Nwosu was, patriotic and committed. It delivered a fool-proof, people-centred presidential election. The people closed ranks and voted but the military government of General Ibrahim Babangida annulled the result and thus triggered a prolonged political impasse. People lost faith in the ballot box and election became a criminal enterprise.
Towards the 2023 elections the same scenario as in 1993 was re-enacted. The electoral laws underwent elaborate reforms, and fool-proof technology was introduced. It was tested in several elections by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, led by Professor Mahmood Yakubu, which promised to give the country the best election ever.
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Just like in 1993, Nigerians, especially the youth, trooped out in their millions determined to use the 2023 election to reset leadership in the country. But on Election Day, Prof. Yakubu's INEC plunged Nigeria into confusion with real or contrived technology failure in the presidential election. He ignored calls for the failure to be rectified and announced Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the candidate of the All Progressives Congress, APC, as the winner.
With this second state-manipulated confusion, it may take some decades and major radical changes in the polity before the confidence of Nigerians on the ballot box can be restored. In addition to the hijacking of the people's mandates with gun violence and vote- buying, the 2023 election introduced ethnic profiling, especially in Lagos, to intimidate and disenfranchise targeted voters.
So, the immediate future of our democracy looks bleak. We are sinking deeper towards state capture of our democracy, where the people will be shut out.
There is not much to celebrate.
