In today’s Nigeria, the People don’t matter, the road ahead is filled boopy traps. For the apprentice autocrats in Aso Villa and the National Assembly, the majoritarian hegemony of the ruling APC means that Nigeria’s democracy can do away with the people since they no longer matter in the decisions presumably made on their behalf.
Special to USAfrica magazine (Houston) and USAfricaonline.com, the first Africa-owned, US-based newspaper published on the Internet.
Dr. Chidi Amuta is Executive Editor of USAfrica, since 1993
It was the German playwright Bertolt Brecht who first made this satanic suggestion in his satirical poem, Die Losung. He suggested that since the dictatorial regime in East Germany could not put up with the libertarian noise of the masses, it might be better to dissolve the people so that the regime could stand unchallenged. This was an off-hand, novel political theory in which democracy could exist irrespective of the people to feed the power hunger of the rulers. No voters. No civil society. No public opinion. The people would just be a mass of entities who exist but do not matter to those who came to power on the strength of their votes. The democratic state would just be the executive, the legislature, a consenting judiciary and the apparatus of state.
The untidy passage of the Electoral Amendment Bill by the National Assemblyand its microwave endorsement by President Tinubu, tempts no better conclusion than the road to a ‘democratic’ republic without the people. For the apprentice autocrats in Aso Villa and the National Assembly, the majoritarian hegemony of the ruling APC means that Nigeria’s democracy can do away with the people since they no longer matter in the decisions presumably made on their behalf. From the handling of this electoral ACT amendment issue, we are ruled by people who hardly listen to us. They hardly care about us. They make laws without listening to us. They live beyond and outside our pains. If we scream, they put on ear plugs. Our protests annoy them just as our expressed wishes irritate them.
In what is likely to go into the record booksas unprecedented in the time between a legislation and its signature into law by the executive, President Tinubu has set new records. It took less than 24 hours after the amendment’s rowdy passage by a riotous conclave of the National Assembly for the President to append his signature. The ink had hardly dried on the draft bill. It is doubtful whether the majority of legislators had even seen the printed copy of what they passed.
Let us grant all the generous concessions that democracy dictates. In a multiparty democracy, the party with an overwhelming majority in parliament has the right to enact laws as quickly as possible. In turn, the executive in that setting also retains the prerogative to sign such legislations into law for the orderly conduct of state affairs and the welfare of the general populace. But in granting these technical democratic concessions, it must be understood that laws are made for men and not the other way round. Legislations and executive powers are about people, irrespective of their partisan preferences and affiliations. Irrespective of which party is in power or controls the parliamentary majority, neither the parliament nor the executive can ride roughshod on the will of the people without whom political power is a sham. Executives and legislatures must feel the pulse of the people, listen to their voices and heartbeats in making laws for the governance of the nation.
The series of events that culminated in this microwave endorsement suggests a preconceived executive decision on the matter. The parliamentary rituals suggest a well-rehearsed theatre with a preconceived outcome.
Deliberately, the precise Senate decision on the matter was shrouded in confusing diction. The staged confusion created room for Senate President Mr. Godswill Akpabio, to quickly misinform the public that the Senate had struck down the real-time electronic transmission of election results. In Akpabio’s self- serving mischievous rationalization, nine states of the federation suffer frequent network troubles, making effective real-time electronic transmission of election results difficult.
Conflicting voices on the matter issued from the same Senate. It took a courageous collective of senators led by EnyinnayaAbaribe (Abia South) to correctly inform the public on the correct decision. But trouble was already raging in the market of public opinion. Unusual, rowdy and unhappy guests were gathering at the gate of the Assembly. The people were gathered in a popular protest.
There is no gainsaying that the Nigerianpublic has scant regard or respect for the nation’s political crowd, worse still the National Assembly. For a public that has little or no confidence in the integrity of our political class, that lazy and partisan decision was all that was required to ignite a smouldering tinder of trouble. The crowds gathered. The mobs bared their fangs. People were reminded of the serial nonsense of INEC tinkering with election results in 2023 under the guise of failure to universalize electronic transmission of results. The voting public was alerted to what they saw as the beginnings of a plan to rig the 2027 elections through tinkering with INEC’s electronic vote transmission protocol.
Something more fundamental was wrong at the National Assembly sessions. It was the reckless lack of seriousness in the Senate’s approach to a matter of severe national importance. Both the Senate and the House of Representatives each had a Committee to debate and consider the matter. Both sets of committees met a total of 27 times on the subject and eventually submitted theirreports for consideration by the respective plenary sessions. That took the whole of the last two years only for the Senate to convene for less than one rowdy plenary session to hurriedly endorse theamendment, killing real-time electronic transmission of election results.
It was just a typical ‘yes’ or ‘no’ crowd yell. Of course, “The AYES have it!!” Just a typical business-as-usual lackadaisical Nigerian approach that betrays a trademark lack of seriousness on critical national issues. But at the bottom of it all was the overriding APC determination to overrun the nation in an electoral landslide already presaged by the mass migration of governors and major political animals into the APC.
The act of striking down or casting doubts on the clause on electronic transmission of results fits into a growing national culture of legislative terrorism on many matters. An action in the public square assumes terrorist dimensions if it is designed to shock and destabilize the public into accepting a fait accompli but unpopular decision.
For the worried public, this act of legislative lawlessness and terrorism is reminiscent of the typical behaviour of the APC-dominated National Assembly and Tinubu’s administration of “Renewed Hope” sloganeering and grandstanding. This is a National Assembly that spent less than an hour to pass a proposal from the executive to revert Nigeria to a colonialist National Anthem without any editorial revisions or reflection. Thereafter, everypublic gathering of APC mobs is now preceded by an incoherent chant of either Tinubu’s trademark “On your mandate, we shall stand…” or the Lugardian“Nigeria we hail thee…” colonial national anthem. In unguarded moments, some senators have been found singing the words of the“Arise O Compatriots…” anthem while the band was playing the new-old anthem!
But this time around, the National Assembly was not as lucky. From across the country, public anger was ignited. Predictably, the fledgling political opposition led initially by Peter Obi and later joined by some other leading elements. Mr. Rotimi Amaechi, former Rivers State governor. Beyond the opportunism of opposition politicians, the anger of the voting public was raw and hard to ignore.was initially led
With each passing day, the protesting crowd kept growing at the doorstep of the National Assembly. Some came with their mats and mattresses, prepared to sleep over and lay siege at the doorway of the National Assembly until the nefarious bill was reversed. The protesters came from all backgrounds and all geographies. They were unanimous in their demand that the next elections must be free and fair and that every vote must count. The message was beyond the immediate legislative rascality. It was an expression of anger against the habitual rigging of elections through deliberate sabotage of the electronic voting procedures.
The Senate did not need any prolonged reminder that it had strayed inti the cobra’s nest. Clearly, the venom expressed in the posters, placards ands utterances went beyond the immediate travesty of sabotaging the electronic transmission of election results.
This protest was about anger in the land. It was about the ineffectuality of the APC administration from Buhari to Tinubu. It was about the regime of hardship unleashed on the people in the last three years of the Tinubu administration, especially.
Above all, it is about the habit of serial rigging of elections and of INEC returning and announcing election results that have no relationship with the will of the people as expressed in their actual votes.
In a sense then, the Electoral Bill protests that we have just seen are a dress rehearsal of the fire in the hearts of the people that could burn if the outcome of the 2027 elections do not reflect the true will of the people.
Over and above the shenanigans of the Senate and the entire National Assembly, the general matter at stake is the place of technology in solving national problems and overcoming human deficiencies in contentious situations. By their nature, political contests through elections are contentious all over the world. Every politician who contests an election sees himself as the winner unless an infallible proof exists to convince them otherwise. The deployment of electronic voting systems have been adopting by different democracies to resolve electoral disputes that should have risen if manual voting systems remained the norm. Democracies like India, the United States, the United Kingdom and Indonesia have since adopted electronic ballot systems to ensure that their elections are credible, reliable and rigging-proof. These systems from the ballot box to the counting system and on to the transmission method have become mostly electronic in order to ensure minimal human interference in election outcomes.
It remains a failure of the Nigerian election system that we inject doubts and distrust into the very technological devices and processes that we have adopted to solve credibility issues in our election system. Sometimes, our biometric identifications and recognitions are sabotaged. At other times, fictitious results are fed into vote-counting systems. At other times, transmission networks do not work. Sometimes, fictitious figures and results are fed into the system to inflate polls figures in favour of some candidates. In the end, technology is made to serve the nefarious interests of dubious politicians. In the end, technology is discredited while vested interests begin an advocacy for a return to manual systems. Yet, the way to credible and free and fair elections in Nigeria remains the technological option.
It is interesting that the same politicians who are casting doubts on the reliability of our national internet networks for transmitting election results have never doubted the reliability of technology to deliver their creature comforts. They wire huge sums of money across the length and breadth of the country to fund their nefarious activities.
These same legislators regale themselves with indulgence in all manner of state -of-the- art technology tools such as cell phones, automobiles, smart homes, private jets etc. When it comes to these gadgets, the technology works for our political overlords and there are no glitches. But when it comes to the transmission of election results, they begin to hedge, slur and stammer.
A year to the 2027 general elections, the people have been reminded that there is an intention to rig the next election. But they insist this time that their votes must be counted and must count in determining who runs this nation going forward.
President Tinubu and his APC majority may have technically put an end to the arguments and protestations over real-time electronic transmission of future election results. When an executive and its enabling legislature make laws that transgress the wishes of the people, it amounts to a coup by the government against the very people whose mandate empowers the government. Such travesty is the origin of the authoritarian state and the emergence of autocratic rulers despite the appearance of a democratic republic. A popularly elected president transforms into a power oligarch or royal majesty. A parliament becomes a conclave of infamy. The entire machinery of government degenerates into a criminal cartel or cabal. Governance becomes organized criminality and its key players hide from the people behind armored vehicles and residential barricades. Government becomes cocooned and insulated from the realities of the lives of the people.
On this contentious Electoral Act Amendment Bill, President Tinubu and the APC-dominated National Assembly have just staged a coup against the majority of Nigerians. The road ahead is full of the political boopy traps that trail a coup against the people. Somehow, dispensations and dominions come and go. The people always endure and persist.
