The Maturation of Nigerian Democracy, 1999-2019(3)

Ik Muo, P.hD; Department of Business Administration, OOU, Ago-Iwoye

Last week, we x-rayed three key features of Nigerian democracy at maturity: democracy without democrats, a cash-propelled process and a full-blown war. Today, we  identify the other features of the Nigerian democracy at maturity.  Before going further, I wish to remind us of  the two greatest Nigerian democracy quotes by (former) Comrade, Adams Oshiomhole, chairman of the ruling APC; that those who cannot withstand rigging should not go into politics and that whoever joins the APC has his or her sins cleansed.   Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaketh and these statements by the shining light of Nigerian democrat, shows the state of our democracy at maturity. In other democracies, the voters are supreme because votes are counted and the votes count. In Nigeria, we organise something that looks like an election but the final say belongs to the lawyers and judges,  the courts and tribunals. Our two-tier electoral system starts with pseudo elections and ends at the tribunals. That is why as at April 1 2019, APC has 8 seats at the National Assembly without any occupants.  The seats have been ‘won’, but the courts and tribunals are being awaited to determine the rightful occupants of those seats! It is not an APC affair because PDP also has one of such issue in the  strange and truly Nigerian scenario. As at the first week of April 2019, 736 petitions have been lodged at the various election  tribunals.  And that is why political pundits are still very cautious in the permutations and combinations regarding 2019 elections because even though voting has ended, most results are yet to be declared by the tribunals. And I ask; is there any need to waste resources and raise tempers and tensions organising elections? Why not ask the courts and tribunals, through their agents( lawyers and judges) to determine the winners ab-initio? In this scenario, two or three candidates would step forward and declare themselves as winners and the courts would rule on the matter: case finished!

We went to America and copied Presidential democracy but when we returned here, we turned it into democracy of (and for) the president. In Nigeria, democracy  is what the president says it is. In fairness to PMB, this brand of democracy was introduced by OBJ. It was in Obasanjo’s do-or-die era that 3 legislators would impeach a governor in a  25-member state assembly; where some people signed impeachment papers from EFCC cells and when an idle civilian  could kidnap a governor because he had  presidential cover. What PMB has done is to raise the bar on the theory and practice of this Nigerian invention; democracy of the president. The president, the head of one arm of our government declared the entire judiciary too dirty to do its job and totally rubbished that arm of Government. The same president spent three years doing roforofo fight with the head of the legislature. And in the past few months, the president has bluntly refused to sign all the bills presented by the legislature though I know that his executive pen is eagerly awaiting the 2019 budget. This one he will surely sign, even though he may express his reservations after appending his signature.

 In Nigerian  democracy and politics, the civil service and public institutions are fully involved with unarguable partisanship. For years, we have witnessed the partisan activities of the police, EFCC and even INEC. This year, the army came out in full force and got itself tainted. But even the civil service has become openly partisan. That is why the Head of Service, Mrs Eyo-Ita congratulated the president on his re-election. The highest however was when Grace Gekpe, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Information and allied services congratulated the Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed for destroying the Saraki Dynasty in Kwara ( after the  national elections) and assured him  of greater support in the governorship polls.

There are still other features of the matured Nigerian democracy. Godfatherism has been raised to a fine art( even though some of them were humiliated at the just concluded election); inconclusiveness is an inescapable part of our democracy; we play the politics of envy and we have a strange scenario in which the Local Government is a tier of the federation and yet they are swallowed by the imperial governors of their various states-without exception. Voter-behaviour is largely determined by ethnic and religious  biases; issues and public debates  weigh nothing in the electoral scale and local political philosophies are on the rise, like iberiberism, which according to Chido Nwakanma, promotes ofushiarism( rule by one man) instead of ohashiarism( rule by the people) and Kwakwansiya characterized more by dress codes rather than a set of codified political principles and practices. One of the core aspects of our matured democracy is rigging: if it is not rigged, then, it is not a Nigerian election! The only thing that matters  is the extent and methods of rigging: whether it is scientific, crude, raw or in your face. And then, we have the electoral victory through remote control. If you doubt it, ask President Buhari who declared that his party won the Osun Election through remote-control.

The features of a matured Nigerian democracy is  still emerging field of study and more will be unfolded in due course. Obama told American people when he won his reelection that ‘whether I earned your vote or not, I have listened to you. I have learned from you. And you’ve made me a better president. And with your stories and your struggles, I return to the White House more determined and more inspired than ever about the work there is to do and the future that lies ahead’. Those who wish to hear this kind of speech from a Nigerian President under the matured Nigerian democracy, are living in a dreamland!

Other matters: Nigerian University Education; it is finished!

We are still within the Easter season and even non-Christians will remember the final words of our Lord Jesus before He gave up his ghost on the cross. He said: It is finished! This short sentence has been subject to various interpretations, one of the most popular being that Christ, through his voluntary death, has summarily dealt with all the afflictions of the past present and future generations of believers. But that is not my concern today. I have just heard a worrisome news about our University Education; that NUC is grappling with application for licenses for 303 private universities, including the proposed PMB University being promoted by the one and only Aisha Buhari! When I heard this news, the only  thing that came to my mind was: It is finished and by finished, I meant FINISHED! I don’t want to dwell on the Buhari University, being proposed by a family that is so poor that the presidential forms( 2015 and 2019) were bought by kind-hearted do-gooders, and whom we have just been told, are poorer today than they were in 2015. My concern is how our currently poorly funded, staffed, equipped and supervised university-education can accommodate the influx of more than 303 universities. I consciously  say ‘more than 303 universities’ because several public universities are also in the ever busy pipeline. And my own applications for three university licenses (for technuzu, management sciences and restructuring studies)  are still on the way!Those who want to understand what I am saying should take a cursory look at our private schools. It started in trickles, turned into a deluge and ended up at the current stage where the various state ministries of education do not know the number of  schools they are supposed to be supervising. As an elder, and one that is okala-madu, okala-muo( half human, half spirit), I dare say that  in the next 10 years, our university education will be like  our private schools of today. And that is when we will understand that it is really finished! And by that time, it would have been too late!