DEMOCRACY OR SECRET SOCIETY?

by Ikechukwu Ibeabuchi

Democracy has been defined as the right held universally by all citizens to have a share of political power, that is, the right to vote and participate in politics. At the less intellectual but more popular level, democracy has been defined as the government of the people by the people and for the people. Democracy may be perceived and practiced in different parts of the world in different formats, but the common universally held concept of democracy is that it is a system of government that ensures the dictatorship of the people.

However in 1999, the outgoing military regime headed by General Abdulsalam  Abubakar, fully overshadowed by the gap toothed, light complexioned Minna  general, Ibrahim  Badamosi  Babangida, packaged a constitution loaded with perverse incentives and selected an old retired  General Olusegun Obasanjo, to orchestrate this newly invented military democracy. An anachronistic system of picking a military head of state was now the new democratic way of hand picking or selecting candidates for any elective office. In other words the kind of democracy that we inherited from the military could easily be defined as the government of the cabal, by the cabal and for the cabal.

The 29^th of May had put a shocking but relieving stop to the long dreamy iffy year in which every event or pseudo-event that came drifting into view could be analyzed and reanalyzed until another event is languorously analyzed in their turn. Although intra party squabbles did exist or to say the least, even if it existed, was absolutely subdued and the parties involved reconciled. There was at least a pseudo or make shift primary and general election contests. However, what characterizes this nomination contests is the usual emergence of mystery candidates regardless of the party involved. In a nomination contest it is usually the relatively unknown candidate who perhaps may never have campaigned for once that usually emerges the party’s flag bearer or nominee for the major elections.

This is exactly what the Latinos call an “autogolpe”, a term for a civilian coup. The same way Obasanjo became President in 1999, was the way virtually all the governors became governors in Nigeria that same year irrespective of party platform. There might have been a fairer contests at the national assembly and state houses of assembly elections.

If the electoral process was so faulty in 1999, by 2003, it had deteriorated and got unimaginably worse. The political power to keep the governors and the president back in power  had nothing to do with the Nigerian people. Instead, it lay with the bizarre mutual peremptory agreement between the governors and the president to return each other back to office automatically for a second term. Furthermore, nearly half of the members of the national and state houses of assembly never really contested the general election.

In 2007, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, having been drawn  into a maze of bitterness against his former deputy, Alhaji  Atiku  Abubakar, in a tight angry voice gave a rather venomous redefinition of the democratic process as a “do or die affair.”This is no doubt a horrendous definition of our democratic process. It was at this juncture that Nigerian democrats had an idea of the difference between the Western style democracy and the Nigerian version of it.

However, this mysterious process is not only limited to a particular political party, but is common with all the political parties in the country. This is most evident in the nomination process.

Usually in a healthy and advanced democracy, in any election particularly in the primary nomination contest, it  is usually characterized by frenetic activities and unrelenting  razzmatazz. However, in this part of the world, particularly in Nigeria, the reverse is the case. Elections here are riddled with unspeakable fraud and hoax. In fact primary elections and nomination battle in recent time can best be described as a “political mach fixing.”

In the last 2007 general elections, in Abia State, the present sitting governor was barely unknown. In fact the only thing that was known about Theodore Orji, was that he was in prison for the wrong reason. By the end of the general election in 2007, he had become the bizarre winner of the elections on the platform of the PPA. Like Abia State, the only difference between the Imo and Abia States candidates was that Chief Ikedim  Ohakim was not in prison before the elections.  In the same year In Anambra and Enugu States, what transpired in both states might best be described as a “practiced  fraud”, and completely undemocratic. This is not just limited or associated with the PDP only, but suffice to say that other parties are equally guilty of this democratic immorality.

In the northern Nigeria, in the same election year, irrespective of the political party involved, the battle for party nomination and the general elections proper had become more of a mere coronation than a democratic contest, enveloped with the dictatorship of the theocratic orientation.

I was in Lagos exactly a year ago when the local government council elections were held state wide by the Action Congress AC, led government. To say the least, the elections were simply a pure charade and a mastery of fraud. Each council chairman, deputy chairman and all council members of all the 37 local councils who won their respective elections won both their nomination contests and general elections at Alausa, Ikeja. Whatever happened outside “Alausa,” was democratically invalid or not part of the electoral process, not minding whether or not it was done by other political parties.

This latest development in our already unhealthy polity is certainly not a sign of good things to come. Worried by this languid and reticent undemocratic process, even the most vilified electoral chairman in the history of this country Professor Maurice Iwu, could not help but describe the activities of our political parties particularly with regards to how candidates are being nominated as that of a “secret society.”Surely the validity of the verdict is an existential truth. However, the bizarre nature of the source of this sad truth is that it came from the most incongruous source. It appears to have made a nonsense of the fundamental principles of ethics which state that “he who goes to equity must come with clean hands.”Iwu lacks every sense of a moral spinal cord to chastise our very sick polity, even though it badly needs an emergency unit attention. This is because Professor Iwu’s antecedents in the 2007 general elections and the not too long ago Ekiti re-run gubernatorial election has shattered his moral fibre from preaching such political sermon.

Unfortunately, these antecedents have given  our  so called elected representatives, particularly our senators some of whom can hardly tell when last they visited their constituencies, if at all they know  the location of more than ten villages within their constituencies and what problems are prevalent and needed urgent attention, to ask for automatic tickets in the 2011 general elections. It only goes to expose the level of deterioration in our already nauseating polity.

To be sure, the chief reason for the sorry state of the polity is not farfetched. It is the “cabalisation of our polity and our political parties.” Cabalism in politics is not a new phenomenon; in fact it is an inevitable part of politics. Political cabalism is most prominent in Asia, particularly in places like China, Japan and India, where it has transformed their respective economies and tremendously improved the living standards of its citizens. However, in Nigeria, the reverse has been the case. Cabalism has not only thrown our polity into an unmanageable turmoil but has also turned our economy upside down. No thanks to the financial profligacy of our supposedly elected leaders. Cabalism has made life for the average Nigerian appallingly grim. The major sectors of the economy which include petroleum, electricity and political system or institutions have been reduced to a state of inertia, much to the advantage of the ruling cabal. 

The late Right Honourable Dr. Chuba Okadigbo, did say in one of his famous political nuggets that “the elder states man thinks of the nation but the politician thinks of the next election.” However, in the Nigeria of today, nobody thinks of the nation anymore rather, everyone, both the politician and elder statesmen think of the next election and how to capture state power by all means necessary. As the saying goes, the end justifies the means. Any failure at this attempt will be quickly interpreted to read a deliberate attempt to marginalize a section of ethnic extraction or geo-political zone of the country.

Nigerians, particularly the political elites must as a matter of urgency begin to re-orient their political mentality and start thinking of the nation first. They must immediately castrate their political ulterior motives for being in public or political office and calibrate their political and economic  vision for the nation and most importantly for the people they represent. Otherwise, by 2020, Nigeria would have gone 50years backward.

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