Indian voters took up the one most precious instrument that their democracy gives them—even when all else fails—the vote, and they exacted their vengeance against venal, arrogant, complacent governance. Two-thirds of India’s 800 million plus eligible voters turned out to vote—the highest percentage in Indian history, and the largest number of voters in any national election in the history of the world. The next time that an incumbent Nigerian government begs for understanding of substandard electoral administration because of the difficulty of running elections in a poor, complex, and populous country like Nigeria, I hope someone will ask: How is it that India is able to produce clean and competitive elections over nearly a million polling stations, across a terrain even more challenging and diverse than Nigeria’s, when Nigeria cannot do so for an electorate less then a fifth the size?
There are serious concerns about India’s new prime minister, Narendra Modi, who is alleged to have abided or even encouraged anti-Muslim rioting in his state of Gujarat in 2002, during which at least 1,000 people, most of them Muslims, were killed. Many Indian observers worry that even if Modi governs more respectfully toward religious minorities, he is an autocratic personality who demands sycophantic obedience from his subordinates and is likely to wind up abusing executive power. But India has strong judicial and civic institutions that are likely to restrain this abuse. Moreover, Modi has delivered spirited economic growth and relatively clean governance in Gujarat state, and Indian voters have clearly signaled that that is what they want.
As a result of elections functioning honestly to achievepolitical accountability, India is likely to get much needed policy reform, significantly more effective governance, and dramatic acceleration of economic growth. That is precisely what did not happen here in Nigeria in 1964 and 1983. And it is precisely what many Nigerians have felt for some time their own country is in mounting need of.It is noteworthy that several opposition parties have succeeded in unifying under the banner of the new All Progressives Congress, promising to make the 2015 elections the most competitive of the Fourth Republic. These coming elections will thus represent a historically crucial test of the electoral process in Nigeria, and it is vitally important to political stability in Nigeria that they be credible, free, and fair.
Corruption and The Curse of Oil
There is another simple and profound difference between Nigeria and India. Nigeria has huge oil reserves. Fortunately for India, it does not. Thus, it has had to develop agriculture, industry, and services in order to grow the economy organically. And the government has had to tax the people in order to get the revenue it needs to operate and deliver public services. Public taxation in India is about 17 percent of GDP. That proportion will probably need to grow significantly, perhaps by half again, if India is to move up the ladder of public services and productivity and achieve more rapid development. But this 17 percent is the same level as China, and in absolute terms it represents a huge mobilization of individual income for public purposes. In Nigeria (and Angola) only about 6 percent of GDP is captured by the state in taxes. The reason of course is oil.
We know what happens when a government gets most of its revenue and an economy most of its wealth from oil rents. It is the long sad story of Nigeria over the last half century, which is only beginning to change. The structure of production becomes distorted. Agriculture withers. Manufacturing is retarded because investment pours mainly into the easy money of the oil sector, and most individuals with ambition and entrepreneurial gifts channel them into politics, government contracting, and government services, not the creation of real business enterprises. Corruption booms, because the money is there for the taking—unimaginable amounts of it—and it is not really anyone’s money anyway, it is just spewing up from the ground. Indeed, if it is not really anyone’s money, why bother waiting for it to enter the national accounts and then have to figure out a way to hide it, embezzle it, misappropriate it, or leverage it for bribery. Just lease a tanker, drive it up to the offshore well, and sell the stolen oil straightaway on international markets.
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