Democracy without democracy

By this time next year, it would be a quarter of a century since the current democratic dispensation in Nigeria—the longest in our history ever—was birthed. That’s equivalent to the total 29 years the military were in power in this country. The comparison is important because, among other things, the military were accused, rightly, of […]

By this time next year, it would be a quarter of a century since the current democratic dispensation in Nigeria—the longest in our history ever—was birthed. That’s equivalent to the total 29 years the military were in power in this country. The comparison is important because, among other things, the military were accused, rightly, of running an illegitimate government, corruption, and of stunting Nigeria’s growth and development. But has democracy done any better on each of these?  Hardly.

Since the return to civil rule itself, our democratic journey has so far recorded two significant milestones: peaceful transfer of power from one president to another in 2007 and from a ruling party to the opposition in 2015. The integrity of our elections has also improved considerably, at least over the past three general elections. Beyond these, however, the quality of democracy in Nigeria has rather been receding, reflecting a dangerous trend across the African continent that has seen a return to military coups in several countries.

• Why Nigeria’s N261.8bn catfish industry is in danger
• Intrigues, realignment in PDP as North pushes for open contest, South zoning

Nigerian political parties, and the politicians who people them, are the chief culprits stunting the growth of democracy in the country. In October last year, the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) held a national convention to elect a new crop of party leaders, after having done the same at states, local government and ward levels. Yesterday, the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) finally held its own national convention following months on internal party convulsions and leadership crises that have not still been fully resolved. Both conventions have a veneer of democratic participation, but in reality, they were anything but.

In fact, the idea of a consensus candidate, although normal and acceptable in a democracy, has become the main instrument for blunting internal democracy within both major parties. Consensus candidacy, at least as practiced in the main by both the APC and PDP, constricts and closes off the democratic space, and not just for party members but also for the wider electorate. In most cases, a few party bosses single handedly select who the candidate for a party position or state office would be, without the necessary consultations and trade-offs that make any consensus worth the name. the result is a massive disaffection among party members and a plethora of court cases arising from conventions and congresses.

If party members cannot freely choose their leaders or candidates for elective offices, then many things are lost that combine to erode the quality of democracy in the country. It denies political parties and the country of the opportunity to generate new leaders who have the ideas and disposition to lead the party or country in more positive directions. It chalks off political and policy debates that help to educate and mobilize voters. It stifles popular participation by presenting voters with choices of candidates and policies that are, in effect, no choices at all. This leads to having whole political parties that are barely different from each other because none offers anything or anyone that remotely meet the yearnings and aspirations of Nigerians.

All of these, in turn, worsen voter apathy and low turn-out during elections, and by implication delegitimize governments and reduce popular confidence in democracy itself. In this sense, elections, at party level or involving the general electorate, become superficial rituals for conferring a veneer of legitimacy on hand-picked and possibly underserving candidates, rather a democratic mechanism for choosing between competing visions of society. Nigerian democracy is already at that point today. While some 52% of the nearly 58 million registered voters voted in the 1999 presidential election, just about 33% voted twenty years later in the 2019 presidential election, even though the total number of registered voters had increased to over 82 million, and the cost of the elections had ballooned into hundreds of billions of naira. There is little indication that things will get better in 2023.

More immediately, Nigeria is in an election year but hardly any elections are taking place because both major parties are choosing to select candidates via consensus rather than an open contest on a level playing field that gives everyone equal opportunity to test their mettle. After having decided party leadership on the basis of consensus, opposition PDP is currently embroiled on a needless narrow politics to decide their presidential and possibly governorship and other positions by consensus. The ruling APC might yet follow the same path in their primary election process. This will not augur well for the future of democracy in Nigeria and stands in sharp contrast with the Second Republic where open contests were the political order.

At Daily Trust, we are not against consensus candidacy per se. But we are deeply concerned by the undemocratic and non-consultative manner both major parties in the country are presently going on about it. A situation whereby the president, governors—individually or as a group—and a few other party leaders select and impose candidates on the parties, and by implication on Nigerians, in the name of “consensus” is not only undemocratic but also corrupt. It is the classic case of abuse of power and influence peddling. We stand firmly against these.

As the primary elections season enter into top gear, we urge all the political parties in the country, particularly the opposition PDP and the ruling APC, to throw the political space open for all by embracing open contests—direct and indirect primaries—as the dominant methods for electing candidates for the general elections, not because consensus candidacy is not a legitimate means of electing candidates, but because what is permissible is not always advisable. Nigerians deserve better than consensus without consensus.