Promise Adiele
Democracy means different things to many people. Unfortunately, some Nigerians conceive democracy as the absence of military rule. Surely, the military mutilated democratic physiognomy in the country over the years. They enthroned a grotesque mode of social cognizance and collective self-apprehension in the polity. Without a doubt, the military perpetuated a culture of primal infamy in these parts since independence.
Therefore, Nigerians think that the military is the problem of democracy in their country. So, the populace instinctively repudiates core democratic responsibilities while rejoicing over the absence of the military in the political equation. Without the military, democracy makes progress, so Nigerians think. It does not matter the form or content of the progress. What is important to Nigerians is that civilian governments have succeeded other civilian governments in the country. As far as the khaki boys remain in the barracks and do not interfere in political engineering, democracy is flourishing in the country, so Nigerians think. Since, by some inexplicable, perhaps divine orchestrations, the khaki boys have remained in the barracks in Nigeria for twenty-four years, then democracy is thriving in the country, so Nigerians think. In that case, we must embark on a redefinition of democracy to accommodate all the putrid appendages which the Nigerian experience has added to the democratic phenomenon.
To say that democracy is thriving in Nigeria because the military is not involved, to aggregate our understanding of democracy in such puerile, uninformed terms is to disambiguate democratic culture in the most uncharitable manner. If indeed, we disabuse our minds of all mental abstractions, if we look at one another eyeball to eyeball, speaking truth to power, democracy in Nigeria since 1999 has gradually maintained an inconsolable fractured façade. By our daily political realities, democracy in Nigeria consistently maintains a steady slide towards the proverbial slippery slope to indeterminate categories. Of course, the truth is bitter. Democracy in Nigeria is different from democracy as enunciated by the progenitors of that representative ritual of governance.
Nigeria’s democracy lacks a name. It lacks definition. It is difficult to classify it among other democracies of the world. So, as we have Nigerian English, Nigerian literature, and Nigerian festivals, we must attempt to designate our component of democracy, to properly situate it within the affinity of its spirit, ancestral beings that find expressive outlets in the polyphony of amoral depravity.
In Nigeria, once you remove the military from the equation and add lack of accountability, destroyed judiciary, political patronage, unmitigated profligacy, continuous pillaging of the treasury, compromised electoral umpire, and other anti-people policies, you have a glimpse of Nigerian brand of democracy. It does not matter if all other indices of genuine democracy are willfully obliterated through an unconscious affirmation of diverse criminal indulgences. It does not matter if Nigeria’s democratic experience since 1999 has birthed the most unconscionable, iniquitous group of politicians in the world. It does not matter that the people are impoverished and the country has ingloriously become the poverty capital of the world. Indeed, it does not matter that people of questionable characters have managed the country since 1999. It does not matter that a coterie of political scavengers has managed to take over the commanding heights of the country’s governance structure. What matters is that democracy is slumbering down the road in Nigeria. The Nigerian brand of democracy is unrecognizable, battered, weather-beaten and bludgeoned beyond pluriversal identification.
When former US president Abraham Lincoln explained democracy as “the government of the people, by the people and for the people”, he certainly didn’t have a country like Nigeria in mind or he forgot to also understand that a brand of democracy known as ‘pretentious democracy’ will emerge somewhere in Africa. Nigeria’s brand of democracy, in all its fractured potential, can be called ‘pretentious democracy’. This is because the original definition of democracy is far removed from the political ceremony conducted in Nigeria every four years. It cannot be called democracy unless democracy, as we know it, has acquired a new name which many of us do not know about. Nigerian democracy is not driven by the people, it is not enthroned by the people, and it does not exist for the people. Therefore, the original definition of democracy runs at cross-purposes to what obtains in Nigeria.
Nigerian democracy is driven by filthy lucre. It is enthroned by a barefaced electoral umpire and a derelict judiciary. Then, it exists for politicians, their family and friends. The people, who should ordinarily be the direct beneficiaries of democracy are devasted by hardship and crippled by poverty to understand the meaning of real democracy.
A further testimony of Nigeria’s fractured democracy occurred at the joint session of the national assembly recently when President Bola Tinubu presented the 2024 budget to the legislators. Ordinarily, in a normal democracy, the legislative arm of government is constitutionally positioned to act as check on the executive arm headed by the president. But regrettably and unfortunately so, what we have in Nigeria is a legislative arm acting as a docile, reprobate arm of the executive gleefully rubber-stamping all executive decisions. In a shameful re-enactment of the Orwellian Animal Farm obsequious, reverential fawning, elected members of the Nigerian legislature did the unthinkable. Before Tinubu presented the budget, the legislators stood up in an inerrant blind impulse to applaud him and sang, like little children ‘on your mandate we shall stand’. The legislators, all adults and suspected reasonable people, tossed the Nigerian National Anthem into the dustbin and replaced it with a hackneyed song of inane, asinine origination.
That action by the Nigerian legislators will compete as the worst case of democratic desecration in the annals of the country’s political documentation. It was offensive to the sensibilities, questioning our collective claim to the practice of democracy. The question to ask is, on what mandate were the legislators pledging to stand? Even legislators from other political parties were involved. Democracy? Absolutely no. Why would legislators elected by the people pledge to stand on the mandate of a president shortly before he presents a budget that the legislators should subject to critical scrutiny? Is this a swansong for Nigeria’s democracy? Should we bid goodbye to democracy and search for other names for the kind of pervasive enchantment which rules our political corridors?
If Buhari’s vicious eight years at the helm of affairs as Nigeria’s president redesigned the country’s democratic architecture, Tinubu’s six months in power portends something more sinister given the obvious paralysis that has hit other arms of government. Under Tinubu, the judiciary and legislative arms of government have elected to profane their offices by cringing and kowtowing to every whim and device of the executive arm. We may applaud Tinubu for disingenuously offering Greek gifts to members of the national assembly by expending 60 billion naira of taxpayers’ money to procure exotic vehicles for them. Now, Nigerians are beginning to know why the gift of cars was made when various sectors of the country are begging for immediate attention, the health and education sectors leading the way. The press, a very important component of democracy, have lulled into hypnosis which is why they connive at various intransigencies of the current administration. There is certainly a fever of complacence across the country whose geography of victims extends even to the most vocal critics of former governments over the years. No one talks or wants to talk. Therefore, the country has become APC and Tinubu’s conquered fiefdom.
Nigeria’s democracy cannot make much progress under such negotiated circumstances. True democracy demands all-inclusive participation in various classifications whether as benefactors, critics, neutrals or commentators. Nigeria cannot become a one-party state because all the people who should act as watchdogs are either compromised or scared to speak truth to power. There is excruciating poverty in the land. People are dying daily through hardship while the government indulges in mindless profligacy. Any attempt to point out these anomalies and strengthen our deformed democracy is termed hatred for the emperor. The recent Dubai procession underscores the mindset of the current government – to surpass the previous Buhari government in every area of extravagance and financial decadence. Such acts of wastefulness will surely recur as long as everyone in the country is quiet. The governors are quiet. Five billion naira each for palliatives did the job. But in our quietness, in all our doddering posture, we have a responsibility to save democracy in Nigeria. There is more to democracy than the absence of the military.
*Promise Adiele PhD
Mountain Top University
Promee01@yahoo.com