Roll back the hands of the clock. It is January 13, 1986. General Ibrahim Babangida assembled a solid cast of 17 technocrats and intellectuals into a new body he set up called a political bureau. Dr. Samuel Cookey headed it. The military president had begun his “vigorous search for a new political order.” He wanted the bureau to help him find that magic formula, “a viable political arrangement” that would give our country sustainable democracy. This was the legacy he wanted to bequeath to the country. Not a wrong-headed ambition.
Babangida was actually looking for the impossible, trouble even. Searching for a political system not found anywhere else in the world did not look like a productive venture. But the foolishness of the search must be moderated by the fact that the good book says if you search you will find. In any case, as a corrective military regime, anything was possible. Those redoubtable technocrats and intellectuals, proud products of the best universities in the world – Oxford, Yale, Cambridge, MIT, London, Harvard, Columbia, etc – went to work but despite their diligence, they did not find the unique formula.
Now, I am happy to report that the PDP has found the formula that eluded three generals – Yakubu Gown, Murtala Muhammed and Ibrahim Babangida. There must be great rejoicing in the land. The magic formula is as unique to Nigeria as the 419 scam. It is called Democracy sans Democrats. This is the authentic Nigerianisation of democracy. No, I am not being cynical though I do take some perverse delight in the fact that the bloody civilians have done what the generals could not do.
I am not sure if this was what Babangida wanted but in so far as it is a home grown political formula, my suspicion is that it comes close to his ideal. Democracy sans democrats seems like a contradiction. Democrats make democracy possible. Democracy thrives in a society in which people have and are committed to what the late Dr. Chuba Okadigbo called the democratic temperament: a critical appreciation of democracy as a shared form of government in which universal adult participation is a cardinal principle. In our own strange case, however, the supposed guardians of democracy in the executive and the legislative branches of government have morphed into dictators for whom the niceties of democratic ethos have become an irritation. So, we have democracy, a patch-patch one at that, without democrats.
Democracy sans democrats systemically crept up on us slowly but surely when the country returned to civil rule on May 29, 1999. The state governors saw themselves as military governors. It did not help that we had at the head a former military dictator. Babangida did not get the formula he was looking for but he tried to make the best use of the system the bureau fell back on – the executive presidential system lifted from the constitution of the United States of America. He introduced the party primaries. Their primary purpose here, as it is in the United States, the only country that conducts party primaries, was to expand the frontiers of participatory democracy in our country. Through them ordinary party members of a political party have a say in who their party puts forward for elective offices in the executive and the legislative branches of government.
The party primaries were the first casualties of democracy sans democrats. The party godfathers turned them into a shameful farce. Party primaries have now been rested and replaced with a new recruitment process, if that, called endorsement. It formalizes the rule of the party moguls. Under this new party policy that is strange to best practices in participatory democracy, the president and the state governors are given full and unquestionable powers to choose their successors in office. At least Enugu and Ebonyi states now know who their next governors would be.
Democracy sans democrats has obvious implications for the present and the future of democracy in our country. It narrows the democratic space because the right of state governors to choose their successors is the greatest form of political marginalization ever devised by the crooked minds of crooked politicians. It offends the principles of participatory democracy because democracy is the rule of the majority, not of the minority. It perpetuates everything that has gone wrong with our democracy: a succession of mediocre leaders with neither passion nor vision who serve themselves and their cronies more and the people much less. I fear that what Babangida described as “the dilemma” that has undermined our political culture is now given the status of party policy. Don’t tell me the general is squirming at his Hilltop home in Minna.
Democracy sans democrats has corrupted and compromised all our institutional pillars of democracy. The judiciary occasionally displays some courage, but its records since 1999 have been generally scrappy. Judges and senior lawyers conspire to compromise and undermine the only institution of democracy with the capacity to protect the weak from the strong and the poor from the rich. With a compromised judiciary, the politicians have become untouchable. Many state governors and legislators are in today in office, thanks to crooked judges and crooked senior lawyers.
The Nigerianisation of democracy is a determined assault on our most sacred body of laws – the constitution. I cite two instances. The immunity clause was intended to protect governors from frivolous cases over their actions and decisions while in office. The courts have stretched this to cover even criminal cases that disqualify a man from seeking office as governor in the first place. Theodore Orji was smuggled in from prison to be sworn in as governor of Abia State in 2007. His immunity automatically kicked in. Ayo Fayose, who was impeached as governor of Ekiti State and has a tango with the EFCC over allegations of corrupt practices in his first time in that same office, was elected governor of the same state, despite the clear criminal baggage he carries. His immunity will kick in as soon as he takes his oath of office. EFCC would be left holding the short end of the stick. Talk of anti-corruption.
Does anyone care about accountability? It does not feature in our democracy sans democrats. The Nigerianisation of democracy is not the killing of democracy. It is the cynical and systemic amputation of its limbs.
Roll back the hands of the clock. It is January 13, 1986. General Ibrahim Babangida assembled a solid cast of 17 technocrats and intellectuals into a new body he set up called a political bureau. Dr. Samuel Cookey headed it. The military president had begun his “vigorous search for a new political order.” He wanted the bureau to help him find that magic formula, “a viable political arrangement” that would give our country sustainable democracy. This was the legacy he wanted to bequeath to the country. Not a wrong-headed ambition.
Babangida was actually looking for the impossible, trouble even. Searching for a political system not found anywhere else in the world did not look like a productive venture. But the foolishness of the search must be moderated by the fact that the good book says if you search you will find. In any case, as a corrective military regime, anything was possible. Those redoubtable technocrats and intellectuals, proud products of the best universities in the world – Oxford, Yale, Cambridge, MIT, London, Harvard, Columbia, etc – went to work but despite their diligence, they did not find the unique formula.
Now, I am happy to report that the PDP has found the formula that eluded three generals – Yakubu Gown, Murtala Muhammed and Ibrahim Babangida. There must be great rejoicing in the land. The magic formula is as unique to Nigeria as the 419 scam. It is called Democracy sans Democrats. This is the authentic Nigerianisation of democracy. No, I am not being cynical though I do take some perverse delight in the fact that the bloody civilians have done what the generals could not do.
I am not sure if this was what Babangida wanted but in so far as it is a home grown political formula, my suspicion is that it comes close to his ideal. Democracy sans democrats seems like a contradiction. Democrats make democracy possible. Democracy thrives in a society in which people have and are committed to what the late Dr. Chuba Okadigbo called the democratic temperament: a critical appreciation of democracy as a shared form of government in which universal adult participation is a cardinal principle. In our own strange case, however, the supposed guardians of democracy in the executive and the legislative branches of government have morphed into dictators for whom the niceties of democratic ethos have become an irritation. So, we have democracy, a patch-patch one at that, without democrats.
Democracy sans democrats systemically crept up on us slowly but surely when the country returned to civil rule on May 29, 1999. The state governors saw themselves as military governors. It did not help that we had at the head a former military dictator. Babangida did not get the formula he was looking for but he tried to make the best use of the system the bureau fell back on – the executive presidential system lifted from the constitution of the United States of America. He introduced the party primaries. Their primary purpose here, as it is in the United States, the only country that conducts party primaries, was to expand the frontiers of participatory democracy in our country. Through them ordinary party members of a political party have a say in who their party puts forward for elective offices in the executive and the legislative branches of government.
The party primaries were the first casualties of democracy sans democrats. The party godfathers turned them into a shameful farce. Party primaries have now been rested and replaced with a new recruitment process, if that, called endorsement. It formalizes the rule of the party moguls. Under this new party policy that is strange to best practices in participatory democracy, the president and the state governors are given full and unquestionable powers to choose their successors in office. At least Enugu and Ebonyi states now know who their next governors would be.
Democracy sans democrats has obvious implications for the present and the future of democracy in our country. It narrows the democratic space because the right of state governors to choose their successors is the greatest form of political marginalization ever devised by the crooked minds of crooked politicians. It offends the principles of participatory democracy because democracy is the rule of the majority, not of the minority. It perpetuates everything that has gone wrong with our democracy: a succession of mediocre leaders with neither passion nor vision who serve themselves and their cronies more and the people much less. I fear that what Babangida described as “the dilemma” that has undermined our political culture is now given the status of party policy. Don’t tell me the general is squirming at his Hilltop home in Minna.
Democracy sans democrats has corrupted and compromised all our institutional pillars of democracy. The judiciary occasionally displays some courage, but its records since 1999 have been generally scrappy. Judges and senior lawyers conspire to compromise and undermine the only institution of democracy with the capacity to protect the weak from the strong and the poor from the rich. With a compromised judiciary, the politicians have become untouchable. Many state governors and legislators are in today in office, thanks to crooked judges and crooked senior lawyers.
The Nigerianisation of democracy is a determined assault on our most sacred body of laws – the constitution. I cite two instances. The immunity clause was intended to protect governors from frivolous cases over their actions and decisions while in office. The courts have stretched this to cover even criminal cases that disqualify a man from seeking office as governor in the first place. Theodore Orji was smuggled in from prison to be sworn in as governor of Abia State in 2007. His immunity automatically kicked in. Ayo Fayose, who was impeached as governor of Ekiti State and has a tango with the EFCC over allegations of corrupt practices in his first time in that same office, was elected governor of the same state, despite the clear criminal baggage he carries. His immunity will kick in as soon as he takes his oath of office. EFCC would be left holding the short end of the stick. Talk of anti-corruption.
Does anyone care about accountability? It does not feature in our democracy sans democrats. The Nigerianisation of democracy is not the killing of democracy. It is the cynical and systemic amputation of its limbs.
