Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and senators and congressmen and government officials, but the voters of this country -Franklin D. Roosevelt
This quote by one of America’s greatest Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt elaborates the theme of this year’s annual Daily Trust. 2015 ELECTIONS: HOW TO MAKE NIGERIA THE WINNER. That the issue of focus is the Elections— a process through which Democratic Governments are formed is very instructive. That it is only one form of political system — Democracy— that respects the the right of citizens to choose their rulers is remarkable. No wonder Churchill considered it the least worst alternative against all other options when he stated , “It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.”
The distinguishing feature of democratic governance explains why President Roosevelt so unequivocally subordinated all who derive legitimacy from the vote of citizens under them because while their office may be high, it is in fact from the “office of the citizen” that they acquire their “delegated authority”. This quintessential feature of Democracy is reflected in Article 21 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations in 1948 that “Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives. The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.”
Thus even before Nigeria became an independent nation in 1960, the world had already framed “genuine elections” as an indicator of any country’s adherence to the highest standard of Governance. Like all other nations therefore, Elections in Nigeria when they have been conducted are forms of choosing representatives to the Nigerian federal government and the various states and local governments as the case may be. Whether it was under a Parliamentary system of government in the 1960’s or a Presidential system of government in the 1980s until now, our elections in Nigeria have reflected our federal structure. As a Presidential system, we as citizens of Nigeria elect the President and a federal legislature with two chambers at the federal level.
At a more localised constituency level, we collectively vote for 360 members of the lower chamber known as House of Representatives. We elect 109 members of the upper house known as the Senate which has three senators representing each of our 36 states in the federation plus the single senator for the Federal Capital Territory. The residents of each of the 36 states have elections to elect governors of their states and the members of their state’s houses of assembly. The federation is divided into 774 local governments which conduct their elections to elect chairpersons and council lord under a different and separate from the electoral cycle of the 2015 Elections of our focus. Nigeria operates a multi party system and so although two strong parties now straddle the country with broad membership the 2015 elections has fourteen parties fielding candidates for the Presidential elections.
Elections are the means by which in modern representative democracy, citizens are given the opportunity to make the formal decision making process of who to choose from among those who seek to gain legitimacy to lead in public office from the rest of society. Elections are not an end in themselves but merely a means to an end. Election although a process is an activity or an event with an extremely short time span. However, the outcome it produces is the end and ideally should be democratic governance that citizens installed through the exercise of their votes. To stretch the idealism, such democracy ought to produce the kind of future that the voters conjured in their minds when they respectively made the decision of whom to choose from among those that posited themselves capable of solving their common problems collectively.
The history of democratic elections in Nigeria is tumultuous and our record less than sterling. Although the first election by the entity called Nigeria was held in 1923 through the Clifford constitution of 1922, I would rather focus history on the independence (1960) elections which held in 1959 through to the one of 1964/65 leading up to military coup of 1966 and the civil war in 1967. From 1967 up until 1970 when the war ended Nigeria was under military rule. The next democratic elections was the 1979 transition to democracy which was followed by the 1983 elections and then another military truncation that led to two successive military governments until the 1993 transition to democracy and the elections that were shockingly annulled, robbing then first time voters like yours sincerely our voting rights. Next was an interim national government that was displaced by yet another military intervention which viciously ensconced itself in power lasting until the 1999 elections. Since the 1999 transition, Nigeria has held three more elections without interruption in 2003, 2007 and 2011. For the period of fifty four years of our independence therefore, Nigeria has conducted 9 Presidential elections with varying degrees of completion of their tenures.
Cycles of democratic governance
More striking is that for the 54 years of our independence we have had three cycles of democratic governance of the 60s ( 1959-66), of the 70s ( 1979-1983) and of the 90’s (1999- date). With the first two cycles being an average of five years it was only since 1999 that the culture of Democratic elections and uninterrupted transitions are becoming entrenched as the means of determining governments in Nigeria. In many ways therefore, we can say that Nigeria which was once legendary and globally reproached for interrupting its democracy through aberrant military adventurism has in the nearly two decades since 1999 reordered its ways by subordinating the military to the constitution. Even in moments of vulnerability and uncertainty, our military has learned that the era of military adventure in the governance of our country is permanently over not just because of the standard of the rest of the world that we have signed on to through sub regional, regional and global treaties but because WE the citizens have resolutely decided that Churchill was right. However rickety democratic governance may be WE choose it above any other form of governance. And so although as a country our challenges and checkered record of the quality of our elections and governments remain major source of concern, we can at least declare that since 1999 Nigeria reasonably joined the league of other countries that have embraced the global standard of a system of governance which aspires to place the citizen at the centre of governance.
Measured singularly by this yard stick of the conduct of elections and formation of democratic governments, we can say that Nigeria has been on a winning streak since 1999. Nigeria won in 2003, 2007, in 2011. Nigeria therefore could also potentially win again in 2015!
But, what does Nigeria wining in 2015 really mean?
When credible elections are conducted in stable polities that are matured democracies; there are certain features that are generally and inherently assumed. The key among them is that there will be a clear winner and a loser and that the latter will gallantly concede defeat by congratulating the other candidate(s). The reason is often an acceptance by the losing party that the elections were genuinely, freely, fairly and transparently conducted. The international standard of “free and fair elections” refer to elections with process and participation that suffered no shenanigans that cast a doubt on the integrity of its outcomes. Therefore, it is assumed that having equally offered the voting public the options of candidates for public office who persuaded them on their respective approaches for tackling the most pressing of priorities to the electorate, the citizens would in exercising their voting right, declare their preference for the plan of the winner of the election above that of the loser.
Another feature therefore is usually that the entire country regardless of which party wins would at the emergence of a winner, prepare themselves to head into a new era of either policy continuation, redirection or complete change depending on the the promises of the winning party. However, the public and political opponents do not disengage from public discourse of the plans of the winner after elections but rather resort to using the democratic tools of formal and informal Debates to contest those ideas and to demand accountability from the winner. The winner does not appropriate the right of citizens to demand accountability by antagonising that basic feature of Democracies. The demand for accountability is integral to the principle of delegated authority after all. No one to whom society has given the privilege of serving them can arrogate supreme authority to himself or herself for such action negate the essence of President Roosevelt’s assertion that the citizens as voters are the “ultimate rulers” in a democracy.
In such societies, the loser does not destroy the rest of society because they failed to win an election; neither does the winner and his supporters prepare themselves for a zero sum game — winner-takes-all- capture-and-abuse of the resources and institutions of the state. The winner does not act churlishly as though they were the losers who in fact are themselves expected to continue to conduct themselves with sports “woman” ship.
The winner mobilises those who voted for and against his or her plan to a united society of people who though differing in the views of their common problems and solution have learnt to cherish the things that unite them above those that divide them. Hardly do we see stable polities where the existence of the country is threatened by the outcome of party elections. No. Since the turn of the millennium, it is only on our continent that we still find such destructive conducts where electoral outcomes that merely affected the political fortunes of its political elites are elevated to substantial threat to the continuing existence of their countries and citizens. It is therefore not rocket science that such ruinous electoral conducts are somehow also correlated to poorly performing economies on the global economic league table.
It strikes me that Daily Trust worries that the 2015 elections are high risk enough to pose existential threat to Nigeria. Therefore, by asking us to dialogue on how we can avert this and make Nigeria the Winner, somehow our event today can help reduce the risks of a ruinous and destructive aftermath of our 2015 elections.
I doubt that they are alone in this escalating fear of what we can expect from our crowd of political elite if the rising and hardening tone of their name calling against one another is anything to go by. The stakes are considerably high for the politicians who are in a fight to finish mode with opponents across their fences. But the stakes are patently higher for the country, Nigeria which finds itself currently brittle and weaker in the spectrum that measures stress test of capable nation states.
So, what would we work together to achieve in the next few days as uncertain signals that Nigeria has won in the 2015 elections?
They would include features like the following:
1. That the Elections of 2015 are actually conducted and concluded with results announced according to a minimum local and international standard of having been “free and fair”.
2. That there are no pre-election, election and or post election violence or acts of destabilisation that threaten the tenuous in the land. Therefore that following the elections all segment of the Nigeria remain together and despite disagreements choose the path compliance with the rule of law to seek redress of electoral conflicts and grievances.
3. That a clear winner emerges from the electoral or judicial processes that follow with a national spread of mandate sufficient enough to make them a President of the entire Nigeria.
4. That the transition process for the present administration to a new one is appropriately conducted with the swearing of the new President and elected Governors of States on May 29, 2015. That the convening of the 6th Assembly and the newly elected senators and representatives from across the country happen on schedule.
5. That the entire Nigerian populace will at the end of the electoral process choose to remain citizens of Nigeria regardless of the pull by politicians to drag the populace into their never ending squabble to “control power more than to offer service”. This means that everyone of us Citizens voting in the 2015 election must also carry our “I vote for Nigeria” placard should elite squabble arise from the electoral outcomes. I vote for Nigeria!
In effect, Nigeria wins once the 2015 election does not lead to the derailment of our fledgling but gradually consolidating practice of Democracy and/ or the destabilisation of our country. The fear of these two ominous possibilities becoming reality was always common with every past election but it is considerably more accentuated with the 2015 elections. The reason is that it is the fruit of the dark seeds of the events leading up to and following after the 2011 elections. The evidence is stark that our country is going into 2015 elections with monumental security, political, economic and social vulnerabilities so much so that pessimists predict political collapse of the entity called Nigeria. The most virulent and violent insurgency by the terrorist organisation- Boko Haram exploded over the last three years worsening an already toxic post 2011 political climate. As the hapless citizens across the country looked on- dazed at how fast our already thin social capital was eroding, the Nigerian state failed woefully to mobilise and unite the populace. Rather, Nigeria found itself in a long season of politicking since the last elections in 2011 with the space for healthy dissension constricted and narrowed. The atmosphere within which Governance operated became even more lethal and the institutions grew weaker in their capacity to respond to multiple onslaughts.
That an election squabble could sow such toxic seed of implosion into our extremely fragile cohesion was possible because of a poorly managed aftermath that was further exploited by our political elite class across all divides. What more explains the flighty nature of the selfish interest of the political elite class that heated up and polarised the polity than the fact that some of the key actors that threatened that “The North will make Nigeria ungovernable for the winner of the 2011 election” are some of the President’s loudest campaigners for the 2015 elections? Meanwhile, objective analysis of the poor handling of the terrorist attacks in the North by the Federal Government that he leads has an undercurrent of our President’s hesitance to dispassionately appraise that scourge as one against Nigeria — and not against the “North.” In statements that accuses the entire North of having resorted to self destruct simply to spite him the winner began to act not as a mobiliser and leader of ALL citizens. That is how come the poor and vulnerable who today are most traumatised by the insecurity in that Region are the innocent casualties while the political elite continue unscathed with their “political transactions.”
Politics is the basis of Governance – especially economic governance. The combined “political transactions” of our Elite class has produced a Gross Domestic Product— GDP over the last fifty four years which we must compare with that of other nations! Based on the latest rebasing of the size of the economy since over the more than two decades of last count of the cumulative progress that we had made our GDP size had increased by more than three-quarters to an estimated 80 trillion Naira ($488 billion) for 2013 according to the National Bureau of Statistics.
It “compares with the World Bank’s 2012 GDP figures of $262.6 billion for Nigeria and $384.3 billion for South Africa. The NBS recalculated the value of GDP based on production patterns in 2010, increasing the number of industries it measures to 46 from 33 and giving greater weighting to sectors such as telecommunications and financial services. While the revised figure makes Nigeria the 26th-biggest economy in the world, the country lags in income per capita, ranking 121 with $2,688 for each citizen.”
This indicator is a dismal and uninspiring performance for which everyone of us who has ever been associated with leadership of Nigeria should be ashamed.
Poor governance
I repeat a comparator data that I like to share with Nigerian audiences. Empirical evidence points to poor governance –especially corruption as the biggest obstacle to the development of Nigeria. Understanding the cancerous impact of corruption helps explain how a country with the enviable potentials that are hardly available to more than other one third nations of the world; has remained at the bottom of global socio economic ladder as a laggard. Economic growth rate and ultimate development of nations are determined by a number of factors that range from sound policies, effective and efficient public and private investments and strong institutions. Economic evidence throughout numerous researches proves that one key variable that determines how fast nations outgrow others is the speed of accumulation of human capital especially through science and technology education. No wonder for these same countries by 2011- South Korea of fifty million people has a GDP of $1.12trillion, Brazil of one hundred and ninety six million has $2.48 trillion; Malaysia of twenty eight million people has $278.6Billion; Chile of seventeen million people has $248.59Billion; Singapore of five million people has $318.7 Billion. Meanwhile with our population of 165 million people we make boasts with a GDP of $488Billion- completely way off the mark that we could have produced if we made better sets of development choices.
More dramatic is that this wide gap between these nations and Nigeria was not always the case as some relevant data at the time of our independence reveal. In 1960 the GDP per capita of all these countries were not starkly different from that of Nigeria- two were below $200, two were a little above $300 and one was slightly above $500 while that of Nigeria was just about $100. For citizens, these differentials are not mere economic data. Meanwhile by 2011, the range for all five grew exponentially with Singapore at nearly $50,000, South Korea at $22,000, Malaysia at $10,000, Brazil at $13,000 and Chile at $14,000. Our own paltry $2,688 income per capita helps drive home the point that we have been left behind many times over by every one of these other countries. How did these nations steer and stir their people to achieve such outstanding economic performance over the last five decades? There is hardly a basis for comparing the larger population of our citizens clustered within the poverty bracket with the majority citizens of Singapore fortunate to have upper middle income standard of living.
And yet, each time that in their quest for presidential powers, the power elite of Nigeria engage in protracted squabbles as had happened pre and post the 2011 elections, they deviously widen the battle beyond their political parties. The current toxicity in our country overflowed from the arena of our elite and began engulfing Nigeria and Nigerians; deceitfully pulling in innocent citizens into bitter acrimonies along religious and regional lines.
To be continued
*Ezekwesile delivered speech at the 12th Daily Trust Dialogue.
