Special to USAfrica magazine (Houston) and USAfricaonline.com, the first African-owned, US-based newspaper published on the Internet.
Amaopusenibo Bobo Sofiri Brown, editorial opinion contributor to USAfrica and USAfricaonline.com, served as pioneer Manager of PR at NAFCON Nigeria, founder of the SUNRAY multimedia group in 1992 in Port Harcourt and is currently CEO of GRAIN Consulting.
Prof. Pat Utomi’s recent article, When Democracies fumble and tumble argued that democracy is at risk, endangered or even dying in Nigeria.
In an exhaustive forage into legacy and contemporary positions by different international scholars and public intellectuals on democracy, Pat Utomi’s arguments were sufficiently armed with relevant supportive ingredients to make a blow-out intellectual dish.
And the article conveyed Pat Utomi’s characteristic depth of reasoning and eloquence.
No one can doubt it is a patriotic alarm about democracy in Nigeria.
His article made more than one reference of validation of Dr Dakuku Peterside’s article on the same subject ie the state of health of democracy in Nigeria.
Their passion as garnered from Pat Utomi’s work, cannot be faulted.
They are distingushed public intellectuals their readers.
I have not seen or read Dr. Peterside’s article, How Democracy crumbles: the Nigerian case
From Utomi’s reaction, it would seem that both articles suffer from a fundamental mistake:
in my view, they made wrong assumptions!
First, Nigeria has not built any people-centred democracy from 1999!
What passed for election from 1999 only got worse progressively. The first one was not evenly participatory, as Karl Meier complained about . ( Nigeria:This House Has Fallen) .
Many local and international witnesses have been saying the same thing but with higher concern with every election cycle. Nigeria’s democracy cannot be at stake, because it has not been established.
It is only in 2022-23 that we started to see a youth- driven and cross- sectional mobilization of citizens to participate in the electoral process. This was largely because of various aggrieved population segments such as #EndSars and Diaspora protest groups were made to believe that Votes would count in 2023 due to new electoral law and INEC’s massive investment in new voting system technology.
As a result of their involvement, we saw a huge upward spike in Voter registration in the 2022-23 season by about 11% to over 93m people as compared to 2019 number of about 84m registered voters.
It is pertinent to explore the significance of this achievement for encouraging the gestation of democracy in terms of rate of attraction of new voters to the system: at face value of figures declared by INEC, Nigeria’s 11% increase in 2022-23 voter registration was better than UK which had kept a conservative rise of about 5% between 2018 and 2020 Parliamentary elections data and even the US that clocked about 10% increase in voter registration between 2018 and 2020 in the heat of anti -Trump mobilization of Voters by various groups.
Today, it is the 2023 voter generation that is perhaps better placed to demand that their votes be made to count and also to question what kind of democracy we want to have in Nigeria.
Our Public Sector operators are not used to such questions to unveil their incompetence clothed with impunity.
A good example is the constant jump in Voter registration data between 2011 and 2023 versus the paradox of diminishing number of actual voters during the period.
With each election cycle INEC tends to raise expectations to the Sky, by reporting high registration of voters of above 5% on the average. But same INEC glibly announces a drastic drop in number of actual voters with each election cycle.
For instance despite polling booth manipulations in 2023, we are looking at the cold fact that only about 30% of registered voters actually voted in the Presidential election.
This a drop of about 10% from the number that voted in 2019.
That means INEC’s management of its process gmharvests failure for democracy in Nigeria because less people actually participate.
In a true demicracy there should be a deliberate attempt to judge INEC’s performance by the increasing percentage in voter registration and in actual voters.
There is no regulatory measure to set standards for INEC as was the case when the US Congress through the HAVA ( Help America Vote Act) initiative in 2001 also made it essential to have a body to set standards for electoral process as was reported by BusinessWeek of June 14 2004 published by McGraw Hill companies.
In Nigeria nobody sets standards for INEC, not to talk of a statutory capacity to question its usual widely reported poor performance.
Secondly, the growing number of expensive public establishments in the name of democracy in Nigeria, do not necessarily translate into institutions to nurture, advance and protect democracy.
When a frantic President Trump reportedly called the Secretary in charge of elections in Georgia State to ask for 11,700 plus votes, he got a firm rebuff as was reported.
The institution in charge of elections in the State of Georgia as in the rest of the US, knows to protect the culture of ethical and efficient conduct of elections.
Pat Utomi did not show us one establishment that works to protect electoral credibility or any other aspect of democracy in Nigeria!
There is no single institutional beacon that has grown since 1999 to give Nigerians hope as exemplary in its performance of functions to protect and promote a people- centred democracy.
And that should be no surprise.
Those who decreed the democracy project into existence in Nigeria in 1998 and the inheritors of the machinery since then , did not want a people-centred democracy to be the outcome, either.
Even worse is that we the people trusted that politicians would serve our own interest by building institutions to protect us. They did not and will not do so.
It can only happen when we dismantle the Feudal System that has made them to lord over us!
Institutions tend to grow over time out of a conscious and sustained drive by groups of stakeholders, to build a culture of service in pursuit of set goals that defend or expand the scope of a system to deliver a clear and desired vision.
Pray what has been the vision of Nigeria’s democracy project?
Who are the stakeholder groups bound together in pursuit of that vision?
None that we know of.
Rather since 1999 we have seen the incremental pursuit of protection and expansion of a Feudal System which vests public revenue and opportunities in the hands of a few citizens who become the political and business elite.
For instance a Governor can give out billions of Naira of state fund to any project of his fancy.
Nobody can stop him.
One who paid for a Flyover project in Abia State was bold enough to rebuke those who asked him to give account of the project: he asked them “is it your money? Do you own cars to drive on a Flyover “?
A Governor could say so because our politicians impose on us and ring-fence themselves as our Masters.
And we the citizens are systematically degraded into their Slaves.
This is happening at LGA, State and Federal govt levels in Nigeria.
We can only sing their praises while they are in office!
So our democracy project was hijacked at LGA, State and national levels to serve the vested interest of the emergency elite that the Feudal System creates at each election cycle.
What is happening is not because Nigerians are poor students of democracy, as Prof Pat Utomi’s paper would suggest.
No sir.
The subject of a people-centred democracy has not been in the curriculum since 1999!
Lets talk about the much trumpeted ethnicity and religious sentiments in Nigeria.
In reality they are mere cloaks, simply part of an elaborate fabric for public deception.
After all, those who have plundered Niger Delta revenue and rendered millions of dispossesed indigenes into destitutes, are our own Sons and daughters.
They are not Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo or Fulani.
It is the same across Nigeria.
Those people who have held or who hold political power today, we knew some of them in 1998 or before their elevation to a juicy political seat.
Most of them could not write a valid cheque of N2,000 before they became selected occupants of public office or one connected thereto.
Two weeks after they mount political office or secure the status of cronies of those who hold power, they become tycoons.
That is the journey to State Capture.
So what is at stake is the project to build a democracy in Nigeria.
As we can see the project has never really gone beyond spending public money in endless construction of expensive but fascinating facade of establishment facilities.
From 23 years of this project to build a democracy in Nigeria, the constructs lack a deliberate connection of citizens to an empowered Civil Society that can ask questions with statutory power, a Civil Society that government listens to.
How can we talk about a democracy project in Nigeria when we can see no credible foundations ie one-party states overwhelm local politics in nearly 95% of 36 states and where budgets at LGA and State levels do not reflect a focus to expand the competitive capacity of citizens through sustainable productivity by local economies in each LGA or State?
Our public establishments continue to consume huge public revenue without any faith that they can deliver positive substance.
As Professor Mahmood Jega stated in his reply to Chimamanda Adiche’s brilliant public letter to President Biden on Feb 25 election in Nigeria, public establishments such as INEC cannot do well in Africa.
Here was a Professor Jega who misled the nation as Chairman of INEC.
He promised to conduct free and fair elections in 2015.
He asked for a bigger budget which was given to INEC under his Chairmanship.
But he is saying in 2023 that he kbew the INEC he oresised over had no capacity to deliver on that promise !
In a democracy such as we have in the examples Prof Pat Utomi cited with erudite energy, Prof Jega would have been held accountable: seriously speaking, he should be in jail for misleading a nation at great cost to money, lives and national reputation.
A true people- centred democracy project should seek to empower every citizen with a sense of inclusion as the focus of public policy at the state or national level.
That has not happened.
Also a true people-centred democracy project should demonstrate in practice a constant resolve to protect the dignity of every Nigerian citizen in the way public establishments are managed.
Again, that has not happened.
Finally, a people- centred democracy should be responsive to public outcry for “consequence management” as it happened when INEC punished the Adamawa State REC (Resident Electoral Commissioner) for allegedly doing the wrong thing.
How many INEC officials have been sanctioned for 2023 fraudulent election data and massive voter suppression?
How can the same man who led Nigeria to a colossal loss of at least a N350b election project, still be goose- walking in designer shoes and blowing perfumed arrogance as INEC Chairman?
Democracy should mean equitable accountability.
In 1999 we forced Soldiers to hand-over government to Civilians.
That does not amount to democracy.
As a FACT, elaborate expenses have been incurred from the public treasury since 1999 to create and maintain what have turned out to be mere political artifacts.
They include periodic elections into the Presidency, National Assembly chambers, House of Assembly in each State and Local Government Councils.
Elections at every level are growing wings as manifestation of a Feudal System selection ceremony.
Political parties are also being funded to serve as vehicles for leadership recruitment and selection of candidates for elective positions.
But we know our political parties are the private property of those who have money and are favourably planted by the Feudal System for its self maintenance.
And likewise the Judiciary.
It continues to run huge expenses to perform what appears to be its foremost function in Nigeria since 1999, which is to moderate political contests.
As the exchange rate of the Naira shows ie between the rate of US dollar to Naira in 1998 and what it is in 2023, the operations of state or public sector establishments, have individually and collectively worsened the condition of the average Nigerian citizen at home and abroad.
That is why we must stand together as new stakeholder groups to pursue a NEW Nigeria.
We must seek a productivity- driven economy and a stakeholder- based public policy system that holds every establishment accountable.
Such a system must be made by the people in distinct stakeholder group communities, to focus on daily translating citizens’ potentials, aspirations and dignity into key indices for measuring a true people- centred democracy.
