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(Speech delivered at the Chatham House, London, United Kingdom. July 18, 2011) PART 1
Mr. Chairman and member of Parliament, Hon. Chi Onwurah, Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen
I am honored to be here at the Chatham House to rub minds with you all about the state of democracy in my homeland, Nigeria, where drama and democracy sometimes seem interchangeable. This city and this nation, will always occupy a special place in my heart, each time I reflect on our protracted struggles to enthrone genuine democracy in our country. This city and this nation provided the Nigerian opposition leaders and activists refuge when we were hounded out of our country by the military dictatorship of General Sani Abacha. Some of the leaders of this country, especially of the Liberal Democrats and Labour, provided some impetus to our democratic struggle, by helping to step up the pressure on the military junta at home. We remain indebted to political leaders such as Eric Reginald Lubbock, better known as Lord Avebury and the former foreign secretary, the late Robin Cook. They played salutary roles in the Nigerian struggle. We are grateful.
Throughout its nine-decade history, the Chatham House has been a forum for discussion of the great issues of the day. It has been a receptive venue to raise and examine the ideas that shape the contours of history and make up the fabric of our political economy. It is thus my pleasure to be here to share my thoughts on Nigeria's political development by focusing on the status of Nigeria's democracy and the resurgence of a viable political opposition in the country. We cannot talk about the vitality of Nigerian democracy without talking about the vitality of the political opposition. For there is no democracy without diversity in substantive opinion and political affiliation.
To underscore this fundamental concept, our party spurned an offer by the ruling party to join a nebulous 'Unity Government'. Our ground of rejection was that our democracy would be better nourished and better served if we, as a minority party, remain outside the loop of power to nurture the culture of opposition. I must report that the ruling party appeared to have bought the idea when it excluded cabinet nominees of a string of small parties grovelling to be part of the government.
The past quarter century has seen the expansion of forms of democratic governance throughout the world, including Africa. Democracy is so well considered the most legitimate form of government that no one dare publicly speak ill of it. The lack of vocalization does not mean the lack of enmity. It would be premature and naIve to conclude that true democracy has emerged triumphant. History is still being shaped and the verdict is yet to be rendered. We must not err into thinking democracy has been anchored in Nigeria or in other countries just because of the conduct of elections and the existence of certain institutions usually found in a democracy.
We must be careful not to read too much into the increasing visibility of processes that appear democratic. If we lend too much credence to the outward appearance, we will fail to look critically at the inner workings of government and the substantive quality of its output. We dare not mistake the image of democracy with real democracy any more than we should mistake the image in a mirror with the real person. If so, we will be applauding a form of government that looks like democracy but does not act like it. We will be applauding as Nigeria's political economy becomes a corporatist entity in democrat's clothing.
It is of utmost importance when talking of Nigerian democracy, that we not only highlight the existence of certain institutions but weigh those institutions on two scales. First, do these organs procedurally function in a democratic manner? Second, do they produce outcomes that advance the public welfare in ways that further democratization? Based on this analytic construct, we should assess Nigeria's democracy. I say this, not due to anything learned from a book but due to my own humble experiences. I have fought, struggled and suffered to help promote democracy in Nigeria. This has been the main pursuit of my adult life and remains my guiding light. Thus, I know well the snakes that lurk in the garden.
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There are many people who are all too willing to take advantage of the democratic process. They advocate democracy up to the point of gaining power and no further. Onc~ in power, they eagerly whittle down the very democratic mechanisms that enabled their political ascent. Upon making it to the rooftop, they kick aside the ladder to prevent others from making a similar climb.
Nigerian democracy is not yet strong enough to have corralled these errant forces. Actors with democratic phenotypes but authoritarian genotypes abound in the current political landscape. I dare say Nigeria has more of this ilk than of genuine democrats. If not kept under watchful eye, these personalities will deface what already is a sparse edifice. We are positioned at the fulcrum where Nigeria is as likely to incline toward artificial democracy as it is toward the real specimen.
2003 and 2007 Elections: Less Than Meets the Eye
A discussion of the state of Nigeria's democracy must look at the recent elections.
Before we do that, a brief historical sketch is in order.
Nigeria has gone through four or five major governmental changes. The first was the movement from colony to independent state in 1960. The second was the military coup of January 1966 and the counter coup of July 1966. Both events were bloody and marked our nation's transition from civilian rule to military rule. The two events inexorably led to Nigeria's first civil war, which ended in 1970. In 1979, after several aborted attempts at democratization, the military finally handed over power to elected civilians. Four years after, in the dying hours of 1983, the soldiers seized power again. A renewed attempt at democratization began in 1992 with elections into the national and state assemblies and the governorship posts.
The crowning poll was the presidential election on 12 June 1993, won freely and fairly by the Nigerian businessman, Moshood Abiola. This election, adjudged the best in our nation's history, was inscrutably annulled by the military tyrants. A democratic transition that was in full gear was abruptly terminated. Hell was let loose. Protests were crushed by military tanks. Hundreds of protesters died. Freedom of expression and political rights taken for granted in this land of Magna Carta and the Human Rights Act, were rudely curtailed in my country. Some media houses were shut down, titles proscribed, journalists detained without charge or spurious charge. The winner of the election was imprisoned for four years for demanding the actualization of his mandate. And he died under incarceration. Politicians, especially those affiliated to the National Democratic Coalition, NADECO, had charges· of treason dangling on their heads. Scores of politically endangered Nigerians scurried into exile. I was among this group, spending about five years marooned outside my country of birth. In June 1998, the military dictator had a sudden death, with the successor, paving way for another attempt at democratization. The militarycivilian transition was consummated on May 29, 1999 with elected officials taking charge of governance.
The superficiality of the transition, its many contradictions sooner began to manifest. The newly minted political system was found to possess many attributes of the parent. Our country's democracy was a parody of true democracies: ours mimicked some essential aspects of military and authoritarian rule.
President Obasanjo had the chance to become the father of democratic Nigeria by using his tenure to accelerate the drive to federal democracy by establishing a fair and tolerant political culture. Instead of raising a unifying banner and standing as a father to the nation, he became a hector who fought all and sundry. In the end, his great failing was his attempt to superimpose a barracks mentality on a fledgling democracy. Thus, he entertained themes such as a one party state. He and his close acolytes resonated with undemocratic anthems such as the PDP ruling for sixty years or a millennium as if this were the blossoming of a Nigerian Reich. He even attempted to rewrite the constitution to rule for a third term!
When the 2003 elections came, Obasanjo and the PDP pilfered more elections than they properly won, using brute force and brazen fraud. In the Western part of Nigeria, where my former party, the Alliance for Democracy had won five states in 1999, our control was sharply reduced to just one state, Lagos State, then under my watch. In all, the PDP emerged from the 2003 polls as a party with a super-majority in all things except performance. Opposition parties had been ruthlessly emasculated. The PDP would henceforth rule without any viable opposition. Come 2007, the PDP raised its electoral rascality a notch higher. First, President Obasanjo declared the election a "Do or Die" affair. PDP stalwarts openly commandeered election materials everywhere it could. Phantom results were announced for phantom polls. Candidates were illegally excluded from the ballot paper. Opposition candidates, who went to bed cocksure they had won in their constituencies, woke up the next day to learn that the result had been altered to favour the PDP rivals. That election was a monumental embarrassment and a mortal threat to the pursuit of democracy. Things at that juncture seemed very bleak for the opposition. In retrospect, by this gross overreach, the PDP had become its own most potent adversary, triggering both international and national backlash. After eight years of shoddy arbitrary governance, it belied logic that the PDP in 2007 would capture 80 percent of the gubernatorial seats, literally enjoy a clean sweep in most State Assemblies and maintain supermajorities in both chambers of the National Assembly. It appeared that Nigeria orbited in a strange universe where the· poorer the ruling party performed, the greater was its electoral reward. However, the wholesale confiscation would come unglued. It was too blatant for even a relatively quiet public to stomach. The electoral robbery actually energized some of us in the opposition and spurred moves for the building of a coalition of political forces. To be continued. |
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