In 1992, Francis Fukuyama wrote The End of History and the Last Man. It was a philosophical tour de force. The book brought Fukuyama into reckoning and catapulted him to the league of such intellectual giants as his former teacher at Harvard University, Samuel P. Huntington (co-founder of Foreign Policy and author of The Clash of Civilizations and The Remaking of World Order etc).
Fukuyama’s provocative treatise celebrated the triumph of liberal democracy, following the dissolution of the defunct Soviet Union. He argued that that epoch marked what he saw as the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the arrival of liberal democracy as the final and dominant form of government.
It is instructive that Nigeria, after nearly one and a half decades of military rule, democratised seven years after the publication of this fascinating book. Nigeria’s democratization, given its size, population and strategic position inspired other African countries. It is intriguing that immediately after Nigeria democratised, there was a conscious effort to reconcile the country through the instrument of a Truth Commission, the Human Rights Violations and Investigation Commission (HRVIC) also known as the Justice Oputa panel. There was also a deliberate quest to tie the then nascent democracy project with the delivery of good governance. To give effect and verve to this endeavor, a jamboree-like Media Tour of infrastructural facilities put in place by Governors across the federation was organized by the President Olusegun Obasanjo administration. The raw reports harvested from the Media Tour provided material for a cerebral book supervised by former Information Minister, Professor Jerry Gana. It was entitled: Democracy, Goid Governance and Development I Nigeria: Documenting Progress for Prosperity. Coinciding with the book’s presentation, an award ceremony was organised on the performance of the governors based on the reports of the media tour. Thus, began a healthy rivalry for governors to excel in delivering good governance, which tone was set by the federal government.
Twenty one years after that landmark event, three unfortunate things have occurred: a short shrift has been given by successive administrations and the political class to the delivery of good governance. There has been a marked and systematic decline in voter turn out. And there has been increasing distrust of the Election Management Body (EMB) and its processes by Nigerians of all hues.
These three salient factors – even though they do not exhaust the catalogue of our woes on the political front – manifested themselves in bold relief in the recently conducted General Elections. For whereas the Election Management Body, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), has consciously sought to reform itself and to introduce technologies/innovations to add transparency and credibility to the process(from the OMR Forms, Electronic Registration through the use of Direct Data Capture Machines, the deployment of NYSC members as ad hoc staff to the Permanent Voter Card, Smart Card Reader, Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, INEC Results Viewing Portal etc), the political class, made up of the political parties, is not forthcoming.
The political class or elite is construed in the sense viewed by Gaetano Mosca and Max Weber as those “active in politics and from whom the national leadership is drawn” and “those who live for politics” and make their careers in it. The political class remains stubbornly entrenched in its dysfunctional laager, refusing to change for the better or move with the times.
There is no gain saying it that our democracy project and our elections can only improve if the pre-eminent stakeholder in the electoral process, namely, the political class, reins itself, comports itself loftily and brings something substantial to the table of democracy.
We can glean, crystal clearly, that following the failures of the BVAS and IReV in the first set of elections conducted on February 25th, the Commission quickly put its acts together. The upshot was that the two innovations worked seamlessly and like clockwork in the second tranche of elections held on March 11th. But rather than complement INEC’s responsiveness to criticisms by demonstrating commensurate good behavior, the political class simply went haywire. Deploying a devil-may-care attitude, it undermined the process by unleashing, with abandon, deaths and mayhem at the Collation Centers. The political class profiled voters, and in some cases, intimidated and suppressed them from voting. It exploited our fault lines to gain advantage for its members.
Perhaps the place to begin, in order to burnish its battered image, is for the political class to do a serious introspection. And arising from this soul searching, it should realize that there is a strong correlation between good governance and the democracy project after all. That Nigerians can only continue to robustly support the project if they benefit from it. If they do not, we may begin to witness a withdrawal via voter apathy or outright outrage, leading to an unraveling and eventual reversal- as recently witnessed in Mali and Burkinna Faso.
The political class must recognize that it is in its self-enlightened interest to deliver good governance. A situation where Governors throw their States into debt peonage to the tune of billion of dollars, with little or nothing to show for it, or workers and pensioners are not paid for months on end, is unacceptable, abominable and is guaranteed to arouse the ire of the people.
The next point to consider is to make political offices financially unattractive. Political offices should be service-driven rather than filthy lucre-driven. Politicians must show example by self -sacrifice and self-abnegation. The desperation we witnessed in our recent contestations were informed by the fact that the highest returns on investment are reaped the most in the political arena/sphere. This occasions the mad scramble for elected positions and the urge to resort to all kinds of antics, including violence to secure positions of responsibility.
Once we make political offices financially unattractive and insist that office holders are paid allowances only on the basis of sittings and muscular debates in parliament, the attraction will wane. Serious persons who are eager to make a difference and add value but who were hitherto squeamish or reserved about contesting will now enter the fray.
They will supplant their epigones and inferior counterparts who will be keen to depart the political space in droves.
We cannot decree ideology into being by fiat or diktat. But surely our politics could be and should be informed by ideas/platforms that are sublime and resonate with the people. As at now, our political parties are more of the same: They are a motley collection of ideologically vacuous contraptions. Which is why it is easy for one to defect from one to the other without scruples or twinge of conscience.
The most disciplined person is he who respects the laws/regulations he sets for himself. By the same token, the person possessed of integrity is he who does the right thing without prompting or supervision. Against this backdrop, our political parties deserve the sternest rebuke. This is because they neither defer to their Constitutions and Manifestoes nor the Electoral Act. Hundreds, if not thousands, of pre-election cases have followed the conduct of elections in the last three Election Cycles(2015-2023) on account of parties not conducting valid primaries. Apart from the fact that these brazen acts of non-compliance with due process are an indictment on the political parties, they betray an obvious, but disturbing, democratic distemper. They also underscore the fact that a person who is not governed by democratic ethos cannot parade himself as a genuine democrat.
In addition to lack of democratic conduct, one of the major shortcomings of the political parties, particularly the so-called big ones, is the tendency to pander to and be subservient to deep pockets to the detriment of its less-heeled members. By so doing, they do not only constrict the leadership recruitment space, they give the impression that their tickets are for the highest bidder. And by this fawning before the rich, they shut out other persons of ideas who may be enamoured of by the people. They also reduce our dispensation to a plutocracy. A government of the rich for the rich in a country where more than 130 million of its citizens are living in extreme poverty must be an extreme contradiction and a ludicrous situation akin to the tail wagging the dog.
Our politicians must always carry themselves and speak with civility and decency. This is because followers take their cues and examples from leaders whom they assume are custodians or exemplars of public good. The values the leadership subscribes to and espouses set the tone and direction of the country for good or ill. Coarse invectives and hate speech, which are harbingers of violence, are often imbibed and amplified by followers. This is why our leaders must refrain from indecorous pronouncements that inflame passions and spur their followers to violence.
Compounding hate speech and inflammatory discourse, the type that we witnessed during the 150-day campaign period, is the political class’s inability to defer to the majesty of the democratic process or accepting unsavory outcomes with calm and equanimity even when elections are transparent and credible. When one wins an election, he salutes the process and praises the EMB to the high heavens. If he loses, he denounces the EMB, using the most foul language at his command. We should, like Winston Churchill once urged, be generous in victory and be gallant in defeat. Victors should see the vanquished as worthy adversaries. If possible, they should be shrewd enough to appropriate some of the uplifting ideas which their opponents marketed.
To repudiate the upsurge in violence that followed the conduct of the 2023 general elections, the political class must join in ensuring that the Electoral Offenses Commission and Tribunal, first canvassed by INEC in the aftermath of the 2007 general elections and recommended by the Justice Mohammed Lawal Uwais Committee, are established before the conduct of the Kogi and Bayelsa off-cycle governorship elections scheduled for 11th November this year. This will check impunity in the electoral process and deter perpetrators of electoral violence.
No doubt, these suggestions do not exhaust the strategies we can use to bring the political class to heel. Neither can we accomplish the aforementioned in one fell swoop. But with serious and genuine soul searching by the political class, and through frequent engagements with the political class by other stakeholders in the process, we must insist that they (the political class) tread the path of rectitude and responsible behaviour. It is only when they genuinely atone and make enduring amends that we can arrive at a better place. And it is when the political class arrives at such a salutary pass that it shall be a true
kindred spirit and partner in the electoral process. It is only then that it can meaningfully complement the EMB and work in concert with other stakeholders to enhance the democracy project.
Dazang, a retired director at the INEC, writes from Abuja
