It’s clear that Nigeria’s political system has not delivered the much-desired dividends of democracy to the people. In a bid to turn a new leaf a former Minister of Education and one-time World Bank vice-president for Africa, Dr. Obiageli Ezekwesili, is set to train 3, 000 youth on politics, policy and governance; AMEH EJEKWONYILO writes.
Away from the thuggery affairs in Nigeria’s socio-political and economic terrain, a conference was convened on Victoria Island in Lagos to ruminate on the future of the country and Africa’s political life in terms of building a new “ecosystem” of leaders that will put the country and indeed the continent at par with developed democracies across the globe.
At the Federal Palace Hotel overlooking the Atlantic Ocean and its serene ambience, venue of the two-day conference, where a welcome cocktail reception was held for participants on February 16 before the conference proper the next day, a first-time visitor to the country might mistake the vicissitude of life in Nigeria for a fairytale, especially when viewed from the prism of free-flow of vehicular and human traffic from the Murtala Mohammed International Airport to the hotel, which was unusual for a city that has earned notoriety in traffic congestion on the continent.
According to the German organisers of the conference titled, #FixPolitics, Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin, the programme was necessitated by the urgent need for a structural transformation of politics in Nigeria and the whole of Africa in order to address crushing poverty.
“Politics in Nigeria and other African countries is in dire need of a structural change. This politics must be innovated, if Africa is to take advantage of the technological revolution’s efficiencies to speed up the development ladder, tackle mass poverty and catch up with other prosperous regions of the world.
“Against this background, the #FixPolitics Initiative will propose innovative ways of empowering and centering the citizens in their countries’ politics before, during and after the electoral cycle,” the conference motivation statement read in part.
In dissecting the inherent problems in the Nigerian and African politics, Ezekwesili, who ran as a presidential candidate in Nigeria’s last general elections in 2019, drew an analogy between the country’s political system and a monopoly market economy, where the latter leaves the consumer with no benefit.
She noted that the Nigerian electorates who are the people on the demand side were faced with what she termed a “monopoly democracy,” which would never maximise utility because the monopolist does not exist to give benefit to the electorates.
According to her, “So, the monopolist has an incentive to self-perpetuate because they have that market dominance, and they are able to erect barriers to entry.”
“A monopoly democracy is more dangerous than an economic monopoly; because economic monopolies are so bad that as soon as functional societies see them emerging, they immediately find the anti-trust law or a sanction mechanism that will break them because to have a monopoly be the basis of how a system functions is to retard progress; the monopolist has no incentive to give you quality of service, it has no incentive to give you quality in terms of pricing, the monopolist has no incentive to engage in any kind of innovation to gain efficiencies that will improve the welfare of the people. A monopolist has no incentive for giving value to the people on the demand side,” she said.
In uncovering the characteristics of monopoly politicians in Nigeria and Africa, she said they have a single political culture that subjugates the general good of society for personal interests.
“It is that they have a homogeneous mindset and it is a single political culture. That single political culture is a culture that subverts the collective good of society and subordinates it to their private interests, which is exactly the way monopolies function in economic structures. The monopolist gets super profits; the people on the demand side get lesser quality, lesser value. So, you must break up the monopolist and the way to break up the monopolist when you are in the market situation is that there is a regulator that says, ‘This is endangering society, and we have to break it.’ In the political space, we also have similar regulators, the constitution is supposed to regulate, the electoral laws, the political parties and the rules that govern them should regulate, the elections ombudsman (the Independent National Electoral Commission) should regulate them, the judiciary and the role it plays, what we see of security agencies, the role of technology, campaign finance rules and all of that; they should regulate. They should be the regulatory system that destroys any monopoly democracy, but do you know how dangerous monopoly democracy is? It has merged itself with all of those institutions that would have regulated it. So, there is no place for regulation of monopoly democracy in Nigeria and on the continent. So, the citizens are stuck!”
Way forward
Ezekwesili said it was not enough to lament, but to act in a determined and decisive manner to rescue the situation, adding that, “We will do what is necessary to change the situation on our hands; it is a distortion, it’s an anomaly but it can be fixed.”
She said it is a mix of academic and experimental activities to produce a deeper understanding of the nexus between the quality of politics and the economic progress or decline of nations.
“Following my unique experience in running for office for the first time as a candidate in the 2019 presidential election, I concluded that it is urgent to innovate Nigeria, or better said Africa’s politics as a whole,” Ezekwesili had said at the commencement of her fellowship in Berlin in September 2019.
According to Ezekwesili, if drastic measures are not taken to arrest “monopoly democracy” in Nigeria and on the African continent, the ordinary citizens would continue to occupy the ignoble position of the world’s poverty capital.
“So, when you look at the way these two concepts correlate and very much resemble, then it tells you that those who think that by just hoping that election after election that Africa would then make progress or election after election, Nigeria would make progress are in a journey of wishful thinking, because the monopoly democracy is viable and it is good for those that are the beneficiaries of it, and that is Africa’s or Nigeria’s political class.”
Empowering electorates
In a bid to empower the masses to take ownership of the political system for better service delivery, the founder of Citizens Hub, a non-governmental organisation, Aisha Yesufu, urged Nigerians to shake off lethargy and take control of the electoral process by electing politicians with requisite knowledge of politics and policy.
“Nigerians must come out in their numbers and take control of the political system by electing politicians who are knowledgeable in the art of politics and policymaking. That is the only way we can change the horrible of state of affairs in our dear country.”
In his contribution, a former Minister of Information, Mr. Frank Nweke 11, noted that the followership in the country must demand accountability from the leadership, while playing their civic responsibility to the society.
And for Ezekwesili, the citizens must build themselves into a force of empowered people who would regulate the outcomes of democracy. But that is on the side of citizens and their empowered engagement.
“So, when you know that the citizens are stuck, and you have a monopoly democracy where the politicians have no incentive to change the status quo, that’s when the citizens must now build into what we call “empowered and engaged electorate”, because they now take the place of a malfunctioning regulatory framework that would have destroyed the monopoly democracy, and that means that you must have a group of citizens in Africa and in Nigeria that simply say this theoretical framework is saying to us that if we kept waiting even by the year 2100, that is about 80 years from now, we would still be struggling with development. When you understand what that means, it should move you to action; it would move you to the place where as citizens you would simple say, “monopoly democracies don’t change themselves,” the citizens must build themselves into a force of empowered people who would regulate the outcomes of democracy. But that is on the side of citizens and their empowered engagement.”
Emerging political class
There have been a lot of debates over restructuring Nigeria’s political system for efficient service delivery, but without much success. As a result, the conference organisers are determined to groom a new breed of political leaders in Nigeria and on the continent.
According to Ezekwesili, it was time everyone got to work to address the problem.
“There is the other part where even if the citizens came to the place of capacity to make better choices to destroy the monopoly structure, what is the substitute to the monopoly structure? And the research canvasses that the way that you will find the substitute is to customise the training and the production of a new political class that is customised in the knowledge of politics that is ethical, politics that is based on practice not theory alone; they have to get the concept of the theory of politics but the practice of politics.
“They have to be people that will train to know all these things because the basis of outcomes in governance on our continent being poor is that we have people whose entire focus is on politics every day. Policies don’t matter to them yet policies determine how far a country can grow, that is good, sound policies in economy, health, education, infrastructure, private sector development.
“So, we want to customise the kind of training that will give us a massive number of new minds, especially amongst the young and the women that will know politics, policy and understand governance. So, you train them in the skills of building functional governance system. So, when you have this kind of people, if I took any of you into the school of policy, politics and governance, when you come out of the training, I will vote for you, the reason that I will vote for you is that I know that you are not only going to be a politician with a different mindset from the current political culture that subverts public good and subordinates it to private interests, but that you will not just be a value-based politician, but you will be a politician that we already trained in the art of policy making, so you understand policy, you understand building governance systems at the local level, in the legislature and in the executive, and that means that we will flood the marketplace of politics in the way that the politicians think of it negatively today, they act as if they are in a marketplace of politics where it is all about transactions for their personal good, will turn it around and look for that marketplace of politics as the place to flood with a new political mindset and political culture.
“And then the third thing is we get the society to coalesce together to demand for electoral and political reforms because that will be an absolute necessity to ensure that the interaction between this empowered and engaged electorate with a new flood of mindset, not a single individual, but a flood; every community in this country should be able to have trained people in the knowledge of politics, policy and governance, who when you get them into the House of Representatives or the House of Assembly or the office of the governor, they quality of their decision is so radically different from current quality of decisions that a monopoly democracy is giving us. When you have that you are going to begin to grow at a pace that is higher and can lift more people out of poverty.”
Ezekwesili urged Nigerians to join hands with her in the task of transforming the face of politics and governance in the country.
The conference was attended by technocrats from all over the globe amongst whom were Dr. Christopher Fomunyoh, a senior associate for Africa, National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, Washington DC, and award-winning journalist and human rights activist, Betty Abah, who is a fellow at the University of York, United Kingdom.
