Elections and Democracy in Africa: Restoring Nigeria’s Leadership
It therefore has much to contribute to bridging this growing divide in international affairs. Nigerian Muslim leaders are as strongly committed to constitutional democracy as their non-Muslim compatriots and the same could be said of prominent members of the country’s ethnic and sub-regional groups. So, there is no fundamental dispute in Nigeria over the desirability […]
It therefore has much to contribute to bridging this growing divide in international affairs. Nigerian Muslim leaders are as strongly committed to constitutional democracy as their non-Muslim compatriots and the same could be said of prominent members of the country’s ethnic and sub-regional groups. So, there is no fundamental dispute in Nigeria over the desirability of a stable and consolidated electoral democracy.
But something has to be given up to acquire it and that something is the pursuit of electoral victory at any cost. “Do-or-Die” are words that should never be uttered regarding the conduct of elections in any nation seeking to strengthen its democracy.
I will conclude by briefly discussing four major considerations that pertain to the journey to a fully consolidated electoral democracy.
I. The Imperative of Enlightened Leadership
Like Nigeria, Brazil experienced many years of military rule, some of it very authoritarian and repressive. That tradition was decisively broken in Brazil in the late 1980s and the country has since enjoyed successive peaceful elections and power transfers. The most recent of its presidential elections took place two days ago. Although I am writing this piece before that event, there is no need to speculate about the observance of Niall Ferguson’s criteria – the rule of law, non-violence and the alternation of power.
The governing party is expected to win the presidential election. No one expects that the election will not be peacefully conducted, that the rule of law will be observed before, during and following the vote. In the event that the opposition wins [we now know it did not], power and authority would have been smoothly transferred to the victors as occurred when Lula da Silva and his party first came to power in 2002.
A recent article in the Financial Times on September 27 compared the achievements of Brazil’s outgoing president, Lula da Silva, with South Africa’s Nelson Mandela. Gideon Rachman writes that, in both leaders, “a moving personal story has merged with a compelling national story, turning a single man into a potent symbol of a whole country’s transformation.”
Although “Brazil grew richer and more powerful during his presidency”, Rachman continues, “like Mr. Mandela, Lula resisted the temptation to cling to power. He has not tried to rewrite the rules to get a third term in office.”
These comments resonated powerfully with me and I am sure they will with you as well. Across Africa, we have seen the opposite phenomenon of leaders of new electoral democracies rewriting constitutional provisions that limit the number of consecutive terms of office. In his keynote speech during a conference on election reform at the Shehu Yar’Adua Centre in 2005, I heard former U.S. Ambassador to Nigeria, Princeton Lyman, plead with then President Olusegun Obasanjo, to emulate Nelson Mandela and endow Nigeria with an efficient electoral system. According to Ambassador Lyman, such an action would rank as one of Obasanjo’s greatest achievements. Well, you know what subsequently transpired with the failed attempt to amend Nigeria’s constitution to make possible a third presidential (and gubernatorial) term, and the awful elections that ensued in 2007. Each of these episodes has set Nigeria further back on its political calendar.
The mantle of foundational leadership, which South Africa will forever celebrate in Nelson Mandela and the United States in George Washington, waits to be assumed in Nigeria. All executive office holders in Nigeria take a pledge that they will faithfully uphold the constitution and the office of president or governor. Nigerians need to find a way to extract more binding pledges to strengthen the key institutions of their democracy including the conduct of free and fair elections.
How such a commitment can be accomplished could be taken up in public meetings across the breadth of this land. Such consultations can involve political aspirants, electoral officials, and a wide range of pro-democracy forces. In a poignant moment during the Achebe Colloquium last year, after his organization had been pummeled by the audience for its alleged misadministration, an INEC official bluntly stated: “The problem, as you all know, is not just with INEC but the corrupt behavior of Nigerian politicians.” No one in the audience demurred.
The transformation that has taken place in Brazil and South Africa from authoritarian systems to electoral democracies required leadership of a high order. I know that such leaders exist among the political class in Nigeria. They must be encouraged to be resolute in seeking to win office fairly and credibly and then to devote substantial attention to entrenching the democratic system itself. President Goodluck Jonathan has made such a pledge. Others should follow and also articulate the specific actions that would follow their noble words.
II. Claiming Democracy: Rights and Responsibilities of all Nigerians
My colleagues, Michael Bratton and Carolyn Logan, in their chapter in my 2009 book co-edited with Alexandra Gillies, Smart Aid for African Development, advanced an apt expression, “claiming democracy”. The Afrobarometer program, in which they are involved, have demonstrated how the demand for democracy in Africa exceeds the supply. In other words, the aspirations of the African people, as shown in survey after survey including in Nigeria, have not been matched by what politicians actually do once they are elected.
Democracy is therefore compressed into a voting act performed every four or five years. In view of the declining quality of elections, even these acts can be drained of meaning. The outcomes are often sham or pseudo-democracies. At best, they are what political scientists call “delegative democracies” in which, once elections are over, office-holders do pretty much as they choose with little input or influence from the electorate.
Nigerians can embrace the notion of “claiming democracy” in all its dimensions. Claiming democracy would involve the insistence on honest and efficient elections. It would include what in Nigeria is called “mandate protection”, namely, insisting that the official voting results actually reflect the preferences expressed by voters at the polls.
Several organizations have emerged to make use of modern cell-phone and other technologies to transmit promptly voting decisions in farflung communities, thereby narrowing the time and space for manipulation and fraud. Nigerians, who are so adept in the use of these technologies, can be expected to contribute significantly to their innovative use.
Claiming democracy enthrones representation and accountability as the central features of a democratic system. If offices are filled through processes of intimidation and fraud, the vital link between citizens and representatives is severed. Chief R. A. Fani Kayode, the acerbic Nigerian politician in the 1960s, is reported to have once said of a forthcoming election: “Whether or not you vote for us, we will remain in power.” The collapse of civilian governments in Nigeria over the past five decades can be traced to such cynical attitudes. Putting Nigeria right in so many ways depends on making sure that rules and procedures truly count. And there is no rule or procedure in a democracy more fundamental than the equal value of each individual’s vote. That is the bedrock of citizenship in a democratic system.
III. June 1993: Never Again
To avoid repeating the past, you have to know the past. Following the ending of the Cold War, pro-democracy movements swept through the former Soviet states of Eastern Europe. They also swept aside single party and other authoritarian regimes in Africa. In 1993, Nigeria should already have completed four electoral cycles after the 1979 elections and be well on its way to becoming a consolidated democracy. On June 12, 1993, a substantially free and fair election did take place.
What is more, the election results –never officially announced – demonstrated that there was broad national support for the party led by presidential candidate, Moshood Abiola. Then, the election was annulled and the country collapsed into five years of dictatorial rule. Olatunji Dare has recently published a book that further documents this tragic episode: Diary of a Debacle: Tracking Nigeria’s Failed Democratic Transition (1989-1994).
To be continued
Professor Richard Joseph Of the Northwestern University delivered this excerpt from his paper at the Shehu Yar’adua Centre, Abuja, and the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, 5 and 7 October 2010.
Had the 1993 elections not been annulled, and had Nigeria found a way to overcome its difficulties within the framework of the constitution rather than outside it, we might today be talking, not about Restoring Nigerian Leadership, but celebrating its democratic achievements. In all countries that make a decisive break from praetorianism, as is apparently now taking place in Turkey, the very idea that a properly conducted election would be quashed, no matter who the victorious candidates and parties are, would be unthinkable. What happened in June 1993, therefore, must be consciously addressed by Nigerians. We cannot run from the tragedy of June 12 and its sequels, or sweep them under the carpet. Nigeria and its people have paid too great a price for those derailments of democracy.
In 2011 Nigerians will have the opportunity to avoid repeating 1999, 2003 and 2007, all increasingly flawed elections. In view of the commitments made by President Goodluck Jonathan, and under the leadership of INEC by Professor Jega, and with the vigilant actions of civic and professional groups, the 2011 elections can be an occasion to repeat the achievement of 1993 with regard to the performance of the electoral system. If that happens, and the decisions of the electorate in federal and state contests are honored, then the nation can start putting June 12 1993 and its unfortunate sequels squarely behind it, and begin building for the future.
IV. The Road to a Developmental Democracy
My friend and colleague, Dele Olojede, Chairman of 234NEXT, shared an important insight with me a year ago. According to Olojede, better governance in Nigeria depended on better elections. If elected officials do not really owe their positions to the electorate, they are unlikely to regard public service as the main reason for holding office. Improving Nigeria’s deplorable electoral system was therefore critically linked to tackling the many problems caused by decades of misgovernance. Olojede’s argument was straightforward and compelling. We are all aware of how the natural wealth of Nigeria has not been used to better the lives of its people, and how much the nation’s progress has been blocked by the failure to make progress in providing services that are taken for granted in many countries, such as the provision of a stable and adequate supply of electric power.
We have seen how government leaders such as Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola SAN of Lagos State has radically transformed awareness of what can be done to improve the lives of Nigerians and build the physical infrastructures required for accelerated growth. If office-holders do not believe they will be held accountable by the electorate for how they perform, then all the self-serving prebendalist practices I discussed in my book on the making of Nigeria’s second republic will be manifested.
There is a sense that real progress will now be made in the handling of Nigeria’s finances as evidenced by the leadership demonstrated by Mr. Lamido Sanusi, Governor of the Central Bank. Genuinely enterprising corporate leaders have emerged in many sectors, and a young generation of Nigerians is rearing to invest their talents and energies as occurred in many of today’s rising economies. In addition to becoming an electoral democracy, Nigeria therefore has the prospect of becoming a developmental democracy. I was intrigued to read Yusuf Maitama Sule’s recollections in the Financial Times special supplement of September 30 entitled Nigeria@50. Mr. Maitama Sule described how, as a minister in the first post-independence government, he read a report that identified three countries that were likely to join the industrialized nations of the world: India, Brazil and Nigeria. Goldman Sachs, the major international banking firm, has identified Nigeria as one of the Next 11, that is, countries likely to join the rising powers of Brazil, Russia, India and China. Over a decade ago, the Economist magazine reported that if Nigeria had used the vast earnings from the export of petroleum wisely, it would now be an economic colossus. How long will we keep hearing what Nigeria could have been and what its prospects are? When will we begin celebrating how much it has met and even exceeded expectations?
Nigeria will not get its economics right until it gets its politics right. Its political system must be democratic, and federal, for reasons of its own history and its diverse composition. In the foreword I wrote for Olatunji Dare’s Diary of a Debacle, I quoted a statement Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka made at a conference convened at my university in November 2006: “The Nigerian people have always approached democracy and the elites have always pushed them back.” Nigerian citizens will approach those gates again in a few months time. At home and abroad, Nigerians often declare how much they desire governments that will truly lead the way in building their nation, reduce its appalling levels of poverty, and nurture a productive economy. The road to such a future passes through the gates of the 2011 elections. If those elections are substantially free, fair and credible, Nigeria can experience a new birth of freedom.
To conclude: The dignity, integrity, and high purpose of national elections in Nigeria must be restored. They have been brought low in many places with ballot boxes stuffed with ballot-papers already thumb-printed, or snatched at gunpoint; election monitors and journalists chased away and sometimes beaten; and voting results announced for polling stations where no voting had taken place. Such actions are never uniform across the nation and so, even when the elections are as terrible as they were in 2007, there are also localities in which peaceful and efficient balloting took place.
I conclude by echoing words from the Second Inaugural Address of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln: Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray that Nigerians will be empowered to use the rights and privileges conferred by universal suffrage to choose the finest and most honorable men and women to represent their wishes, their dreams, their interests, and their future while in office, and to hold them accountable to those solemn commitments.
We know the way forward for Nigeria. We know the roads to be taken and the ones to avoid. The question is not what must be done in 2011, but will it be done.
Professor Richard Joseph Of the Northwestern University delivered this excerpt from his paper at the Shehu Yar’adua Centre, Abuja, and the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, 5 and 7 October 2010.