Nigeria, a nation in dire need of genuine democracy and true federalism

 

 

By Cyril Mbah, Abuja.

 

Democracy has suffered in Nigeria from too many negative influences that hinder this process of governance from growing faster into maturity. There have been too many undemocratic practices that stall the smooth sail of democracy to the Promised Land. Some of the undemocratic practices included thuggery, ballot box snatching, falsification of ballot results, manipulation of the voting process, intimidation, actual physical violence and disruptions of voting, pressures from godfathers and the influence of money bags, among many others.

 

Until former Minister of State for Education, Chukwuemeka Nwajiuba approached a High Court in Abuja to ask for the disqualification of the All Progressives Congress Presidential Candidate, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu and the Peoples Democratic Party [PDP] flag bearer, Atiku Abubakar, claiming that the candidates heavily bribed delegates with American Dollars, many Nigerians had grumbled hopelessly over the desperation and monetization of the nation’s electoral process especially the congresses and the national conventions.

 

Before Nwajiuba’s action, former Minister of Transport, Rotimi Amechi, at a public forum where he was a guest speaker, also made similar allegations of massive vote trading during the APC congresses and national convention. The irony of the entire situation was that the two former ministers are staunch, active members of the ruling All Progressives Congress and both had contested to become presidential candidates of the party in the convention.

 

Chukwuemeka Nwajiuba, who was the immediate past Minister of State for Education was joined by a group, known as the Incorporated Trustees of Rights for All International, to file originating summons before a Federal High Court seeking an order declaring Nwajiuba, who got only one vote at the convention, as the authentic Presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress [APC].

 

The plaintiffs also prayed for the cancellation of the votes garnered by Bola Tinubu and Atiku Abubakar, the presidential candidates of the APC and PDP respectively. Nwajiuba was very hopeful when he joined the list of aspirants who purchased the N100 million APC presidential forms but he got only one vote during the primaries held on June 8, prompting him to accuse Tinubu of bribing delegates with dollars. As evidence, he attached several video footages, including the one showing the former Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amechi lamenting that delegates to the APC primaries sold their votes.

 

The ex-minister also asked the court to determine whether the composition of the delegates contravened Article 11(A) 12(1) and 13(1) of the Constitution of the All Progressives Congress and to determine if all the votes cast in favour of Tinubu and Atiku at the special national conventions of the APC and PDP are illegal, null and void, and of no-effect whatsoever on the grounds of corruption and selling of delegates’ votes and voter inducement.

 

While tackling Bola Tinubu, the plaintiffs asked the court to declare that Tinubu should not be recognized as the APC flag bearer because the money used to purchase the N100 million presidential forms could not be traced to any business. Nwajiuba also prayed the court to make a declaration that Tinubu lacked the minimum qualification to run for the presidency declaring that Tinubu failed to provide the document but rather submitted his university certificate instead of a secondary school certificate.

 

Just recently, supporters of River State Governor, Nyesom Nwike, led by Prince Michael Newgent Ekamon, also filed a court process in Abuja seeking cancellation of the PDP National Convention which produced Atiku Abubakar as presidential flag-bearer. Although Governor Wike has repeatedly denied authorising anyone to proceed to court on his behalf, documents tendered in court [obtained by the writer] has his name boldly written as the second applicant while the PDP, the Independent National Electoral Commission [INEC], Governor Aminu Tambuwal and Atiku Abubakar were listed as 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th defendants respectively. Wike, who came 2nd behind Atiku with 237 votes at the PDP convention, has not made any move, since the case was filed, to backup his public denials with instructions to remove his name from the court documents, suggesting that the litigants have his approval for the suit.

 

Like in the APC case, the action filed against PDP and Atiku Abubakar sought similar reliefs, including the cancellation of the outcome of the PDP convention, which the applicants alleged was flawed, over monetized and skewed to favour the presidential candidate pointing out specifically that it was wrong for the votes gathered by the third respondent [Tambuwal] to be allegedly added to the votes received by Atiku Abubakar.

 

Many Nigerians align with Nwajiuba, Amechi and the PDP litigants in their assessment of the entire political party processes leading to the national conventions, especially the delegates system of choosing officials. A sizeable number of people regard the delegates system as primitive, fraudulent, a huge joke and a step backward for the nation’s electoral process and democracy. This is because money bags allegedly bought-over gullible delegates, starting with the ward congresses to the national conventions of the major political parties and because of large-scale trading in votes, the system allegedly threw up mediocres, who emerged as winners at the expense of more popular candidates.

 

Nigerians have continued to wonder when the nation’s democracy and especially the party political election processes would properly transit from its present infantile stage to a refined, genuine democratic level, free of desperation, intrigues, sectional influences, divisiveness, do or die struggle for power and monetization. In order words, people are wondering whether Nigerian politicians will ever allow politics, governance and democracy to grow to maturity in the country.

 

The congresses and national conventions of the major political parties threw up certain critical questions about the nation’s democracy and how it is practiced. It also questioned the credibility, the intentions and the capacity of the present crop of politicians to advance Nigeria’s democracy beyond its infancy. It is very obvious that the present attitude of Nigerian politicians, if not checked, can truncate the growth of democracy and good governance.

 

Many analysts, including election observers, described the congresses and conventions as a rape on democracy in the sense that the will of the people was subverted, discarded and replaced with handpicked proxies of powerful party leaders even when it is obvious that some of those anointed as candidates for the 2023 general elections have nothing special to offer in terms of advancing the nation’s democratic system.

 

In the 36 states of the federation, what came out as results of the congresses was the recycling of exhausted, unproductive office holders, who performed nothing tangible in their first four years in office. Yet, the same persons were chosen and are expected to still occupy the seats for another four years without exploring the chances of replacing them with better choices.

 

What came out so clearly from the congresses and the litigations that followed include the fact that lobbying, dialogue, tolerance, inclusiveness and collective bargaining processes, which are part of democratic practices, have gradually left the nation’s political space. They have been replaced by group interests, crude partisanship, blatant disregard of party constitutions and by extension, the nation’s constitution, the winner-takes-all syndrome and the struggle by the affluent few in politics to grab the reins of power and hold onto it by all means possible, whether or not the majority of citizens are comfortable with it. Nigerians need genuine democracy, the type that is free from desperation and monetization.

 

Several questions are calling for answers but our clever politicians will provide none because they do not have the answers to the conflicts they create or the problems that their disagreements generate, or the worsening national malady that were caused by lack of vision by the same set of politicians, who are again making false promises to the people on how to return the nation on the part of growth and prosperity. What are the assurances and the guarantees that the next four years would be used to produce something more tangible and better for the nation or for democracy?

 

Apart from not being properly inclusive, the nation’s political culture is still very crude and needs thorough reconstruction. Major actors in the political theatre still believe that elections cannot be won except they play dirty and manipulate the process. For this reason, everything nasty, including blackmail, insults, thuggery, kidnapping and crude smear campaigns must be thrown into the ring against their opponents to detract attention while field lieutenants are busy buying-up votes or scheming feverishly about how to influence ballot papers and results before, during and after the polls.

 

Perhaps our politicians need to critically reassess themselves and their performance to judge whether they have advanced the nation’s democracy or are actively contributing to its nosedive and its inability to grow since the First Republic.

 

The 2023 general elections will provide the people the opportunity to set the right agenda on the type of leaders and the government that we want for Nigeria. If democracy was universally described and accepted as a system of government in which power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or through freely elected representatives, then it behooves on the electorate and the general populace to wisely use their voter cards to produce better leaders for the nation. This is possible because democracy is still the best system of government for the people. ENDS