Special to USAfrica magazine (Houston) and USAfricaonline.com, first Africa-owned, US-based newspaper published on the Internet.
Dr. Chidi Amuta is Executive Editor of USAfrica — since 1993
In recent weeks, we seem to have been wrestling with the very idea of democracy. After all, our political system has passed through the Westminster parliamentary system and over three decades of the Washington type presidential system. There is a prolonged assumption that we are indeed a thriving democracy and ought by now to have come to take certain issues for granted.But on a daily basis, our politicians and political elite seem more confused about the essence and meaning of democracy itself. This is clearly an illustration of the vagrant and unserious nature of our political elite.
Surprisingly, however, our political elite has this curious habit of returning to interrogate our democratic credentials ever so frequently. Last week, a major gathering of consequential political voices gathered in Abuja to nark the 60th birthday of former House Speaker, Emeka Ihedioha. It was yet another opportunity to interrogate the efficacy of our democracy and indeed the veryappropriateness of our democratic route.
Former President Mr. Olusegun Obasanjo, chairman of the occasion was his predictablecynical self, skeptical as ever. about the appropriateness of Western democracy for Africa. His contention was essentially a cultural conservative reservation about the alien roots of democracy as practised in most African countries. Bishop Kukah in the role of keynote speaker asked the question as to whether democracy has failed in Africa. Former Sokoto Governor Aminu Tambuwalwas definitive in disagreeing. For him, democracy has not quite failed in the country or indeed the continent. Peter Obi was non equivocal in asserting that democracy has failed totally in Africa. Segun Adeniyi was typically journalistic in saying that democracy has neither succeeded nor failed in Africa. He instead zeroed in on the individual foibles of the political leadership as unserious mascots of democracy in Africa. Other voices found weaknesses in the practitioners of our democracy, insisting that nothing is wrong with the various concepts of democracy as practiced in Nigeria or indeed Africa.
Pitfalls like corruption, disruptive governance, abuses of due process bypoliticians have combined to give democracy a bad name. In all of these attempts to understand the failings of democracy in our country, politicians and the elite have tended to uproot the concept of democracy from is European roots. The fact of mouthing democratic concepts and systems is unfortunaltely not likely to make us a democracy. Our society has bot paid its dues. We have not passed through the economic crucible of evolving a productive economyfirst before exploring the most apt system of government. In Europe, the
Industrial Revolution and the tyranny of kings and oligarchs preceded the rise of democracy. Similarly, economic independencand the emergence of a political consensus among the urban elite created the necessity for popular democracy as an alternative to monarchical absolutism.
It was this combination of forces that compelled Europe to behead and dethrone kings and queens and overthrow or reform the monarchy in favour of elective popular governance. Representatives of the people took over power through a system of representative democracy to ensure that the taxes paid by the productive populace were spent by representative governments to fund social programmes and services. The modern nation state was born on the foundations of elective democracy based on the popular mandate of economically empowered citizens.With democracy, subjects became citizens. Citizens acquired rights and rulers were compelled to accountability to ‘the people’.
Elsewhere especially in Asia where democracy later took roots, it was the rise of authoritarian military regimes whichsuppressed workers rights, whittled down civil rights, forced people to fight for the rights they wanted to enjoy and assiduously grew the economies to create the wealth and prosperity that empowered people to demand certain rights and privileges of freedom and representative government. Like in Europe, it was the empowerment of the people thatforced them to demand certain rights espcailly the right of citizenship and political representation.
In each of these instances, democracy was not a ‘given’ handout or arrangement. It was not an organized syndicate or arrangement agreed upon by a departing colonial order and its successor local political elite of trade unionists, traditional rulers and western educated elite as in most African countries. Democracy in either the European West orAsian dictatorships did not emerge in and of itself but as a consequence of compulsive economic and social forces.
In the Nigerian instance, our ‘democracy’ has transformed from an arrangement of colonial selection to one cultivated by self- appointed military dictatorships. Representatives of the people have been selected whether by a colonial order or by an imposed military dictatorship. The popular masses were literally ‘invited’ or coopted into the democratic wagon and taught the rituals of periodic electioneering. Consequently, our democracy has hardly had organic roots in and among the people. At best, the people have been ‘invited’ during election cycles tothe seasonal political agenda, told major issues in contention and the major personae contending for power. In the post election periods, the politicians disappeared to the centres of power from where they lord it over the masses until the next election season. In most of Africa and in Nigeria especially, there has not been a process of consciousness creation about the rudiments of democratic culture. At best, democracy has been merely a dialect of political speak.
Democracy is not however a voluntary self -generating force. It is an outcome, a momentum unleashed and driven by social and economic forces of a historical nature such as happened in Europe and Asia. The driving forces include an urgent compulsion by productive working people who demand accountability for their hard earned tax money. It is the vortex of pressure by the masses which wanted their views and perspectives heard and reflected in the way the society was governed and manifested itself. Taxation is guaranteed by representation. That is the basis of accountability in governance which confers power on the people.
Therefore, when modern constitutions and other social contract documents begin with the expression “We the People”, it is a conscious expression of the real power of the people as tax payers, citizens and voters. It is the people’s power of tax money, the power of labour power and the exertions of workers as an orgnized force that propels the economy. It is in addition the momentum of the cultural solidarity and the willful surrender of the power of independent self- defense in preference for collective security embodied in an elected sovereign. We the people hereby surrender unto you the right and power to preside over us and protect us from one another and from hostile others!
That is the foundation of the Social Contract, the intangible contract that binds the broad majority to the sovereign elected authority who wields state power on the collective behalf of the “people”. Thus is born the modern nation state as the foundation of world order.
Democracy does not give birth to itself nor does it protect and sustain itself. It has certain guardrails in the nature of institutions which it needs to operate and survice. The elected sovereign is a guided executive authority. That authority is guided and guarded along the path of law and order by a judiciary of trained honest judges and a battery of lawyers. An executive not guarded or guided by a judiciary is bound to degenerate into an unregulated anarchy, the lawless Hobbesian state of nature in which the laws of nature reign and bloody violence rules the affairs of men.
In turn, elected conclaves representing the people as a constituent whole are empanelled as parliaments and assemblies to ensure that the affairs of the state reflect the interests of the majority and diversity of the public.
The collective feedback voice of the people is wielded through the power of the media- the agencies of the mass media which function as the unofficial monitor and regulator of the conduct of state and its officials. It does not matter whether the media is the legacy print and electronic media that we have since come to know or the contemporary social media platforms in which everyman is a media owner and practitioner. The functions of the media in a democracy remain basically the same- moderation and modulation of public opinion in the service of the enlightened governance of the state.
The rest of the society whose interests and opinions matter in the progression of the society is what has come to be known as civil society, that amorphous collective of chattering voices in the market of society that is usually the first to gather at the venue of protests against bad governance. It can be organized into pressure groups and interest groups or show uo facelessly as a mob.
The guardian elite of a democracy consists of both the practicing political elite and the broad spectrum of enlightened voices-professionals and interested others with an abiding interest in the survival of the society either as a functioning state or thriving democracy. An elite cannot possibly be illiterate or ignorant. An illiterate or ignorant national elite is a danger to itself and to the perpetuation of the society it pretends to serve and represent. A national elite must share a common commitment to the wellbeing and continuity of the society. When a bunch of vagrants, casual thugs and unemployed political jobbers control the commanding heights of the political space, the result is a perennial confusion as to the meaning and plight of democracy. Mob rule could be mistaken for democracy.
When illiteracy, ignorance and lack of enlightenment dominates a political space, even the simplest challenges of routine democratic practice are presented as systemic earthquakes. The budget process is often rigged in favour of paddings by the legislators just as the executive muzzles its way through questionable bills. Legislators are not certain how to vote for simple legislations. Debates on the floor of parliament are either not held at all or are muzzled through the nefarious power of open bribery. Or legislators as licensed thugs scream their way through troublesome sessions.
The executive frequently read or deliberately misinterpret the constitution to serve their narrow political interests. Both unfortunate features have been displayed recklessly with the President’s recent declaration of a state of emergency in Rivers State.
Those who are still troubled by the present sorry state of democracy in Nigeria should look even harder at the character of ournational elite especially those who call themselves politicians. The time is approaching when we shall ask our political class to educate us on whether politics in Nigeria is a career, a vocation, a profession, a trade or part time unregulated business.
