2015 elections: Nigeria and Nigerians should be the winners

This quote by one of America’s greatest Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt elaborates the theme of this year’s annual Daily Trust. 2015 ELECTIONS: HOW TO MAKE NIGERIA THE WINNER. That the issue of focus is the Elections– a process through which Democratic Governments are formed is very instructive. That it is only one form of political […]

This quote by one of America’s greatest Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt elaborates the theme of this year’s annual Daily Trust. 2015 ELECTIONS: HOW TO MAKE NIGERIA THE WINNER. That the issue of focus is the Elections– a process through which Democratic Governments are formed is very instructive. That it is only one form of political system — Democracy– that respects the the right of citizens to choose their rulers is remarkable. No wonder Churchill considered it the least worst alternative against all other options when he stated , “It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.”
The distinguishing feature of democratic governance explains why President Roosevelt so unequivocally subordinated all who derive legitimacy from the vote of citizens under them because while their office may be high, it is in fact from the “office of the citizen” that they acquire their “delegated authority”. This quintessential feature of Democracy is reflected in Article 21 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations in 1948 that “Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives. The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.”
Thus even before Nigeria became an independent nation in 1960, the world had already framed “genuine elections” as an indicator of any country’s adherence to the highest standard of Governance. Like all other nations therefore, Elections in Nigeria when they have been conducted are forms of choosing representatives to the Nigerian federal government and the various states and local governments as the case may be. Whether it was under a Parliamentary system of government in the 1960’s or a Presidential system of government in the 1980s until now, our elections in Nigeria have reflected our federal structure. As a Presidential system, we as citizens of Nigeria elect the President and a federal legislature with two chambers at the federal level.
At a more localised constituency level, we collectively vote for 360 members of the lower chamber known as House of Representatives. We elect 109 members of the upper house known as the Senate which has three senators representing each of our 36 states in the federation plus the single senator for the Federal Capital Territory. The residents of each of the 36 states have elections to elect governors of their states and the members of their state’s houses of assembly. The federation is divided into 774 local governments which conduct their elections to elect chairpersons and council lord under a different and separate from the electoral cycle of the 2015 Elections of our focus. Nigeria operates a multi party system and so although two strong parties now straddle the country with broad membership the 2015 elections has fourteen parties fielding candidates for the Presidential elections.
Elections are the means by which in modern representative democracy, citizens are given the opportunity to make the formal decision making process of who to choose from among those who seek to gain legitimacy to lead in public office from the rest of society. Elections are not an end in themselves but merely a means to an end. Election although a process is an activity or an event with an extremely short time span. However, the outcome it produces is the end and ideally should be democratic governance that citizens installed through the exercise of their votes. To stretch the idealism, such democracy ought to produce the kind of future that the voters conjured in their minds when they respectively made the decision of whom to choose from among those that posited themselves capable of solving their common problems collectively.
The history of democratic elections in Nigeria is tumultuous and our record less than sterling. Although the first election by the entity called Nigeria was held in 1923 through the Clifford constitution of 1922, I would rather focus history on the independence (1960) elections which held in 1959 through to the one of 1964/65 leading up to military coup of 1966 and the civil war in 1967. From 1967 up until 1970 when the war ended Nigeria was under military rule. The next democratic elections was the 1979 transition to democracy which was followed by the 1983 elections and then another military truncation that led to two successive military governments until the 1993 transition to democracy and the elections that were shockingly annulled, robbing then first time voters like yours sincerely our voting rights. Next was an interim national government that was displaced by yet another military intervention which viciously ensconced itself in power lasting until the 1999 elections. Since the 1999 transition, Nigeria has held three more elections without interruption in 2003, 2007 and 2011. For the period of fifty four years of our independence therefore, Nigeria has conducted 9 Presidential elections with varying degrees of completion of their tenures.
More striking is that for the 54 years of our independence we have had three cycles of democratic governance of the 60s ( 1959-66), of the 70s ( 1979-1983) and of the 90’s (1999- date). With the first two cycles being an average of five years it was only since 1999 that the culture of Democratic elections and uninterrupted transitions are becoming entrenched as the means of determining governments in Nigeria. In many ways therefore, we can say that Nigeria which was once legendary and globally reproached for interrupting its democracy through aberrant military adventurism has in the nearly two decades since 1999 reordered its ways by subordinating the military to the constitution. Even in moments of vulnerability and uncertainty, our military has learned that the era of military adventure in the governance of our country is permanently over not just because of the standard of the rest of the world that we have signed on to through sub regional, regional and global treaties but because WE the citizens have resolutely decided that Churchill was right. However rickety democratic governance may be WE choose it above any other form of governance. And so although as a country our challenges and checkered record of the quality of our elections and governments remain major source of concern, we can at least declare that since 1999 Nigeria reasonably joined the league of other countries that have embraced the global standard of a system of governance which aspires to place the citizen at the centre of governance.
Measured singularly by this yard stick of the conduct of elections and formation of democratic governments, we can say that Nigeria has been on a winning streak since 1999. Nigeria won in 2003, 2007, in 2011. Nigeria therefore could also potentially win again in 2015!
But, what does Nigeria wining in 2015 really mean?
When credible elections are conducted in stable polities that are matured democracies; there are certain features that are generally and inherently assumed. The key among them is that there will be a clear winner and a loser and that the latter will gallantly concede defeat by congratulating the other candidate(s). The reason is often an acceptance by the losing party that the elections were genuinely, freely, fairly and transparently conducted. The international standard of “free and fair elections” refer to elections with process and participation that suffered no shenanigans that cast a doubt on the integrity of its outcomes. Therefore, it is assumed that having equally offered the voting public the options of candidates for public office who persuaded them on their respective approaches for tackling the most pressing of priorities to the electorate, the citizens would in exercising their voting right, declare their preference for the plan of the winner of the election above that of the loser.
Another feature therefore is usually that the entire country regardless of which party wins would at the emergence of a winner, prepare themselves to head into a new era of either policy continuation, redirection or complete change depending on the the promises of the winning party.
However, the public and political opponents do not disengage from public discourse of the plans of the    winner after elections but rather resort to using the democratic tools of formal and informal Debates to contest those ideas and to demand accountability from the winner. The winner does not appropriate the right of citizens to demand accountability by antagonising that basic feature of Democracies.  The demand for accountability is integral to the principle of delegated authority after all.

No one to whom society has given the privilege of serving them can arrogate supreme authority to himself or herself for such action negate the essence of President Roosevelt’s assertion that the citizens as voters are the “ultimate rulers” in a democracy.
In such societies, the loser does not destroy the rest of society because they failed to win an election; neither does the winner and his supporters prepare themselves for a zero sum game — winner-takes-all- capture-and-abuse of the resources and institutions of the state. The winner does not act churlishly as though they were the losers who in fact are themselves expected to continue to conduct themselves with sports “woman” ship. The winner mobilises those who voted for and against his or her plan to a united society of people who though differing in the views of their common problems and solution have learnt to cherish the things that unite them above those that divide them. Hardly do we see stable polities where the existence of the country is threatened by the outcome of party elections. No. Since the turn of the millennium, it is only on our continent that we still find such destructive conducts where electoral outcomes that merely affected the political fortunes of its political elites are elevated to substantial threat to the continuing existence of their countries and citizens. It is therefore not rocket science that such ruinous electoral conducts are somehow also correlated to poorly performing economies on the global economic league table.
It strikes me that Daily Trust worries that the 2015 elections are high risk enough to pose existential threat to Nigeria. Therefore, by asking us to dialogue on how we can avert this and make Nigeria the Winner, somehow our event today can help reduce the risks of a ruinous and destructive aftermath of our 2015 elections.
I doubt that they are alone in this escalating fear of what we can expect from our crowd of political elite if the rising and hardening tone of their name calling and Brit brat against one another is anything to go by. The stakes are considerably high for the politicians who are in a fight to finish mode with opponents across their fences. But the stakes are patently higher for the country Nigeria which finds itself currently brittle and weaker in the spectrum that measures capable states.
So, what would we work together to achieve in the next few days as uncertain signals that Nigeria has won in the 2015 elections?
They would include features like the following:
1. That the Elections of 2015 are actually conducted and concluded with results announced according to a minimum local and international standard of having been “free and fair”.
2. That there are no pre-election, election and or post election violence or acts of destabilisation that threaten the tenuous in the land. Therefore that following the elections all segment of the Nigeria remain together and despite disagreements choose the path compliance with the rule of law to seek redress of electoral conflicts and grievances.
3. That a clear winner emerges from the electoral or judicial processes that follow with a national spread of mandate sufficient enough to make them a President of the entire Nigeria.
4. That the transition process for the present administration to a new one is appropriately conducted with the swearing of the new President and elected Governors of States on May 29, 2015. Also the convening of the 6th Assembly and the newly elected senators and representatives from across the country.
5. That the entire Nigerian populace will at the end of the electoral process choose to remain citizens of Nigeria regardless of the pull by politicians to drag the populace into their never ending squabble to “control power more than to offer service”.

To be continued…