Challenges Facing Democracy In Nigeia
| Written by Muhammadu Buhari | |
| Monday, 04 July 2005 | |
No
doubt, there are challenges facing democracy in Nigeria today. They are
many and they are varied; and sometimes they may even seem
insurmountable. Certainly, this was not what we bargained for back in
1999 and
2003.
What we expected then was the arrival of
democracy and a government that would immediately set to work towards
the creation of a system that would guarantee at least these five
things:
1. the installation of a competent and accountable
administrative machinery, and the end of arbitrariness and the use of
public office for private gain;
2. the putting in place of effective Constitutional and procedural checks and balances on the exercise of state power;
3. the nurturing and respect for a free and independent judiciary;
4. the creation of an environment conducive for business and foreign investment; and
5.
the commencement of the drive for a higher standard of living for our
people, and a drastic reduction in the levels of poverty and corruption.
the
commencement of the drive for a higher standard of living for our
people, and a drastic reduction in the levels of poverty and corruption.
Reality on the Ground
Unfortunately,
this was not what we got. Instead, we have become saddled with a regime
that wasted its first term doing virtually nothing; and had since then
been struggling with questions of legitimacy arising from a rigged
election; and this was followed by a display of exemplary incompetence,
all within the context of failing checks and balances. Very soon the
contradictions became too obvious to hide and popular discontent became
palpable.
It was partly in order to avoid the possible
consequences of such discontent that the government bowed to pressure
and set up the National Political Reform Conference, NPRC, to examine
some contentious political issues and chart a way forward.
But,
because of the manner in which the membership of the NPRC was formed
and the general climate of distrust engendered by the government, many
people didn’t give it a chance. They saw it as a costly, useless and
time-wasting venture unlikely to advance the cause of sustainable
democracy.
And not unexpectedly, the conference became
deadlocked over the issues of resource control and the six-year
presidential term designed to allow the incumbent another two years.
On
the economic front the story is no less depressing. The lack of
planning and respect for the budgetary process are apparent in
virtually all that the regime has been doing in the last six years.
While
it has been beating its chest on its achievements in managing the
economy, almost all the economic indices tell a different story.
Inflation has been skyrocketing while the purchasing power of the
people has been falling. Neither of these issues is being addressed by
any agency of government.
The fight against poverty, for
instance, has been more slogan-chanting than a real poverty alleviation
effort. Launched with great fanfare and prosecuted with contrived
publicity, it ran its course without anything concrete seen on the
ground. Meanwhile the poor are getting poorer, and the rich people in
government are everyday getting richer at the expense of the poor.
The
other fight—against corruption—being fought by the government has fared
no better. It is widely seen as selective and is geared more towards
dealing with perceived enemies and satisfying some foreign quarters
than with reducing real corruption in the country.
Of
course, money may have been confiscated from a few corrupt individuals,
but corrupt behaviour has continued unabated among officers in
government. According to Transparency International, most of the
corruption in Nigeria occurs in the Presidency.
In other
words, the polity is left where this government started—perhaps in a
worse shape: democracy is not being practiced, poverty is not being
alleviated and corruption is not being tackled in any meaningful way.
And
on top of this, a dictatorship is being entrenched in the country in
the name of democracy. This emerging but incompetent dictatorship is
what patriotic elements within Nigeria have been struggling against
since the inception of this government in 1999. The struggle is now led
by the Conference of Political Parties in Nigeria, a coalition of
parties that is the only effective opposition in the country. And it
has been an uphill struggle.
But whether we like it or
not, this is the era of democracy. Since the collapse of communism and
the rise of people’s power, the trend in Africa and, indeed, all over
the world has been towards democracy. And as clearly seen during the
last elections, democracy has been accepted by the people of Nigeria;
it is only the government that does not want it.
If real
democracy were practiced the government would have been thrown out in
2003. And then their hold on the economy would have been broken In
other words, the problem is really cyclical, and it all revolves around
corruption. It is financial corruption that creates the poverty in our
societies, with government staying by hook or by crook to keep robbing
people of their resources.
Therefore, the challenge before us today is to halt and reverse this ugly trend. I believe we are up to the task.
Conclusion
Last
year, at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars in
Washington, I stated the components of the project our Administration
would pursue on coming to office, and I think it bears repeating here
today. This was partly what I said then:
Our program, on
coming to power in a credible election, therefore, presupposes the
existence of a democratic space as indispensable for its realization.
National consensus carefully negotiated with all stakeholders and
constituencies will be the indispensable underpinning of such a
project.
The project we envisage on attainment of power
will be based on the following fundamental principles, in continuous
consultation with other tiers and branches of our government, other
democratic institutions and stakeholders. They will include serious
commitment to:
1. The existence of a united, democratic,
strong, prosperous, peaceful, socially just and egalitarian Nigeria,
that is at peace with itself internally, respected and admired in
Africa and the world.
2. Recognizing as basic principles
of governance, the historic imperatives of democracy, firm but fair
rule of law, and the acceptance of human rights and civil liberties.
Committing
ourselves to genuinely and openly accountable and transparent
government, not as a matter of slogans or promises which would not be
kept.
We believe our people, who have endured corruption
and bad governance for so long, have a right to it. Democracy without
respect for the rule of law in my view will be a contradiction in
terms, and a costly indulgence.
3. Accepting the
inalienable right of every Nigerian to live peacefully and pursue his
or her legitimate means of livelihood, in any part of Nigeria, without
let or hindrance, and subject only to the provisions of the
constitution and laws, properly enacted by bodies and agencies
recognized for such, by the constitution.
4. Our
government, being a product of a genuine popular movement and a
grassroots party, shall identify with the yearnings and aspirations of
ordinary Nigerians and relate to the concerns of the masses of Nigeria.
5.
Ours will be a listening government. We intend to involve fully all
forces of civil society, especially the organized middle class and
NGOs, professionals, small and medium scale traders and businessmen,
market women, owners of small and medium enterprises, small and medium
contractors and suppliers, as well as all manner of decent people,
working to earn a living; or the self-employed, whose energies, labour,
ingenuity, common decency, integrity and initiative, provides the
potential foundation for building a more potent Nigeria.
6.
We intend to redefine the role of government in our economy and
national life, so as to determine the appropriate mix of involvement
and inter-relationships, that guarantees maximum growth with equity
(i.e. human development), and creates the optimum conditions for
foreign direct investment (FDI), and subsequent job and wealth creation
for our people.
Accordingly, we shall revamp our
national security and invest appropriately in creating and maintaining
our national infrastructure with special emphasis on water supply,
roads, electricity generation and distribution, telecommunications and
steel.
7. We intend to pursue a dynamic and modern
process of diversification of the national economy, by committing a
reasonable fraction of our earnings to the whole-hearted development
and modernization of our agriculture and solid minerals sectors. So
that these two areas of our economy are enabled to compete with oil and
gas as foreign exchange earners, always bearing in mind their enormous
job creating potentials, which have never been fully recognized and or
duly encouraged by current or recent government policy.
It
is indeed as if everything must start anew. And it has to. We have
failed so woefully that almost half a century after independence,
Nigeria’s top priority still lies in trying to secure the law and order
situation, which, in the recent past, has become extremely precarious.
We must never forget that it is our collective duty to determine our
future; it is not the preserve of some temporary government.
As
I have said a few minutes ago, the struggle against the emerging
dictatorship is led by the Conference of Political Parties in Nigeria,
a coalition that is the only effective opposition in the country. It
speaks for the people; and with their help and presence on the scene,
the country has a chance to reform.
In or out of government we will insist on and be looking forward to—good governance that creates opportunities for everyone.
This
is our pledge and undertaking to the people of Nigeria, and to this we
remain committed. And that is a taste of what to expect when, God
willing, we attain the electoral success that had been wrongfully
denied us. It was in defence of this as a principle, and not because of
any desire for power for its own sake, that we challenged the results
of the 2003 election.
And today, as we await the verdict
of the Supreme Court in Nigeria on our appeal against the judgment of
the Court of Appeal, we remain unshaken in our belief that, ultimately,
justice will be done in or out of court. For sure, Nigeria’s future is
promising under a good government.
Thank you very much for your patience and attention.
|
Challenges of democratic governance in Nigeria
The Kalu Leadership Series
Orji Uzor Kalu
Source: The Sun
— 13th August 2016Some factors account for these difficulties and that is what this piece is aimed to address.
It is a tragedy of lamentable proportion that Nigeria, despite its huge human and material resources, has merely existed on paper as the ‘Giant of Africa’. There are no visible developmental indicators, anywhere, to justify its consistent aspirations for global recognition. Even its efforts in global peace initiatives have not helped to achieve the desired fame.
It is an undisputable fact that Nigeria has been in the forefront of the struggle to win one of the available coveted permanent positions on the United Nations, without commensurate attainments to match such an ambition.
I can state with some surety that there is no nation on the permanent membership of the United Nations that has not achieved some degree of sustainability on the rudimentary and fundamental indices of development. Is it not, therefore, a mockery of our national sovereignty and an assault on our collective psyche that we aspire to be recognised as a global superpower when we rank as the 127th poorest nation, out of 147, in the world?
We languish at the bottom of the ladder with Bangladesh, Myanmar, Vietnam, etc. Our diehard rivals – South Africa and Egypt – are far ahead of us in almost every index of development: particularly in human development initiatives, poverty alleviation and health. These indices form part of a collectiveness of factors that gives democracy its beauty and elegance.
There were even fears at some point that Nigeria might not be able to meet the 2015 deadline for the implementation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). And truly it did not irrespective of all the media hype and government’s ostensible indifference in some critical areas.
Smaller countries such as Cape Verde, Burkina Faso, Mali, and Senegal have attained a reasonable measure of success in the realisation of the goals of the global initiative aimed at reducing poverty by half by the year 2015. Where has Nigeria been ever since it missed the mark that year? Instead of buckling up it has been one problem after another.
Poverty has posed a big threat to the development of Nigeria’s democracy. The poverty rate has continued to rise astronomically without any reasonable effort by government to curtail it. The involvement of some people in violence during elections, for instance, is a product of poverty. Politicians, aware of the growing poverty in the country, have continually resorted to recruiting jobless and desperate youths as thugs and bodyguards to unleash terror in the polity. It is these so-called thugs that later turn round to become miscreants – engaged in all kinds of anti-social behaviour.
The worrisome truth is that Nigeria, though a sovereign, independent nation is encumbered by a multiplicity of other problems that has slowed down her advancement over the years. Some of these problems, unfortunately, are self-inflicted and flow from a morbid, deviant inclination of our politicians to unjustly and blindly engage in self-enrichment and general corruption.
Indeed it is important to deal with specific features of Nigeria’s political development that have had far-reaching impact on the wellbeing of the people.
First is that the level of corruption in Nigeria has assumed a frightening dimension even with the draconian enactments put in place by government to deal with the situation.
The political elite have, by their profligate behaviour, worsened corruption in the country. It is no longer in doubt that they have ignominiously shared our common patrimony, leaving the people poorer and infrastructural development stagnated.
The anti-Corruption laws and the numerous fiscal policies of the government have not helped much in the fight to exterminate it. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC) are two bodies established by the government to fight the embarrassing menace. In truth, these commissions have, instead of fighting corruption, have ended up as the actual victims of the fight. The greed and avarice of the political class have added up to continually frustrate the efforts by the two bodies to stamp out corruption from our body politic.
I have decided perfunctorily to dwell on corruption at this juncture (even though I can’t change the status quo) because it is at the centre of why all other features of our democracy have remained comatose. The impact of the other features such as ethnicity, violence, insecurity, poverty, maladministration, profligacy, etc are all child’s play compared to the ravaging effects of corruption on our overall democratic development. This position can be justified when these factors are juxtaposed with the mountainous damage corruption has inflicted on the soul of this nation. The gravity of the situation can better be understood when we take a cognisable look into the accruable revenue to the nation since oil was discovered in Oloibiri in today’s Bayelsa State in 1958. If the revenue from oil (which is 80% of our overall exports and 90% government receivable revenue) had been judiciously invested in infrastructural development since then, Nigeria would have reached the apogee of development and be competing favourably with its contemporaries in global politics and economy.
Statistics released by the Human Rights Watch (a civil organization) some time ago to prove that the anticorruption war in Nigeria has been ineffectual shows that Nigeria lost between $4billion and $8billion (i.e. up to $64billion) to corruption annually over an 8-year period – from 1999 to 2007. Curiously, EFCC was in existence during 5 of the 8 years, having been established in 2002. Another report, this time from the World Bank, shows that US$40billion is stolen every year from Nigeria and other third world countries by their leaders. Out of this staggering amount, according to the bank, only US$5billion has been recovered. It attributes the inability to recover the stolen money to some factors that include complex nature of international corruption cases and generating admissible evidence; lack of modalities to track the proceeds of corruption (which are usually disguised and mingled with legitimate funds); legal barriers in prosecuting offenders and recovering the stolen funds, especially from those that have died, enjoy immunity from prosecution and or were fugitives; and the issue of navigating through varied legal systems of inter-nation jurisdiction.
The former Chairman of EFCC, Mrs. Farida Waziri, lamented at one point what she called the deliberate ploys by accused persons and their defence counsels to circumvent the cause of justice through unnecessary applications for injunctions and adjournments. Section 308 of the Amended Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended) is another obstacle to the fight against corruption. Though Section 308 is not within the purview of this piece, it is important to stress that unless the section is expeditiously expunged all efforts to fight official corruption will amount to a waste of precious time and resources.
Undoubtedly, the annual loss of a princely sum of 40billion US dollars by developing countries to corruption is one of the key factors stunting the growth of such nations. Imagine how far such an amount will go in the provision of social infrastructure in those countries.
Is anybody still confused in any way why Nigeria occupies a place of notoriety on the global corruption map? Okay, if you are not satisfied with the statistics adduced above, now look at this: The outflow of resources from the national kitty into the funding of corrupt practices is mind-boggling. Because of this fact Nigeria has consistently been ranked low on the Corruption Perception Index (CPI). The outlook in the rating of CPI is becoming gloomier as the days go by. It was 2.7 out of 10 in 2008, sliding further to 2.4 in 2010. The rating has steadily risen.
Wastefulness (popularly known in the local parlance as squandermania) is another major feature of Nigeria’s democracy. It is generally believed that the cost of running government in Nigeria is one of the highest in the world. Those without access to government spending patterns may not understand the gravity of the situation. Overheads, including personal emoluments of elected and appointed government functionaries are outrageous and scandalous. For instance, a reasonable percentage of the earnings from oil annually may not be enough to pay the salaries and allowances of politicians and public sector workers plus their endless travels within and outside the country, tea and coffee, etc. How much is then left for the provision of infrastructure for the uplift of the downtrodden masses? To underscore the mindlessness and recklessness of spending by public officials, it is true that it is only in Nigeria that the cost of general administration ranges between 50 and 70 per cent of the annual budget. What is obtainable in other countries, particularly China and India (with the largest bureaucracies globally) is between 10 and 12 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
The contrast between Nigeria and the rest of the developed economies is that while our cost of general administration is inexplicably very high, with nothing to show for it, other countries with lesser costs have advanced impressively – lifting their people out of depressing poverty and degradation.
What of the cost of maintaining our legislators – state and federal? Let us use the national assembly as a case study. Facts gleaned from the National Assembly website show that the 469 members of the federal legislature and their support staff spent a total of N150 billion (as contained in the 2011 Appropriation Act) for their upkeep that year alone.
Current efforts to reduce the figure have not achieved anything tangible. Even the willingness of the legislators to reduce their annual accruements has waned in recent times, despite public outcries.
The ongoing controversy over the padding of the 2016 Appropriation Bill shows how mindless some of our politicians could be. The nation has been visibly scandalized by the facts coming out of the House of Representatives. This has set many asking: Was that the reason they were elected in the first place?
Do not forget we have just computed the cost of maintaining our legislators. Do we need to go into details about the cost of running the other arms of government – judiciary and executive? It amounts to a whopping N94.9billion per year as at 2012. If we replicate this simple exercise in every sector of our national economy some people may develop shock. But that is the reality of our present nationhood.
The simple truth is this: we cannot build a strong and progressive nation without first reordering our priorities and imbibing the tenets of responsible and responsive leadership. I wonder if the present crop of leaders can take Nigeria to its God-given destiny.
If I continue to list the consequences of corruption and wastefulness on our national life we may not be able to do justice to the other factors of democracy that affect, in marked degrees, the lives of the people. But the truth that must be told is that corruption has affected adversely every facet of our lives. And this is why there is an urgent need to mobilize the citizenry to fight it.
The release of the report of the Alhaji Ibrahim Bunu Committee on Project award and implementation a few years ago revealed worrisome facts about high-level corrupt practices that had taken place. The kernel of the committee’s report is that prioritisation of contract awards is influenced primarily by the personal interests of those charged with the responsibility for the award and evaluation of contracts. According to the committee the nation lost over N328 billion in contract inflation, overvalued pricing and manipulative variations. If one adds the money lost to padding of budgets in the past then the figure can be maddening.
What it means is that the plant cannot take off until the pipes are duly replaced. Who then picks the bill for the replacement as the case may be? The fear then is that Nigeria would be heading for the precipice if the present trend is not reversed promptly.
Those familiar with the political development of Nigeria will attest to the fact that ethnicity is one of the greatest albatrosses to the growth of its democracy. The creation of northern and southern protectorates by the British instead of advancing development has been antithetical to peace and tranquility. It has succeeded not only in polarising the nation but aggravated the ethnic hegemony and loyalty that afflicted Nigeria. This is why the fight against corruption has not yielded sufficient dividends.
Indeed ethnicity has found its way into every sphere of our national life and now draws us back in many ways. The sharing of political and national cake has been reduced to a mere ethnic activity. What this means is that qualification and experience, and such other salient factors as patriotism and zeal, play little or no role in who gets what. Probably, this is why we have square pegs in round holes in crucial and critical national offices. The results of this sad development are low productivity and inefficiency in service delivery.
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