Engagements with Chidi Amuta
The saving grace of the democratic state is the prospect of positive change through periodic elections. For those who live in a democracy, the classical belief is that the next election offers the populace a chance to change their lot for the better by trooping out to queue at polling boots. Change for the better is the central hunger that drives the popular appeal of democracy and its accompanying periodic rituals. We are at the cusp of what should be a democratic change for a better life. But what looms large in the political horizon is a pseudo one party autocracy about to re-anoint itself into power.
Inbuilt in the anticipation of positive change in democracy is a series of optimistic expectations: one, that the elections would be free and fair. Two, that electoral agencies would be honest, reliable and accurate. Three, the will and wishes of the people will be reflected in the outcome of the election ritual. Four, that all parties would be given a fair chance to take a fair shot at power and leadership. But often, especially in Africa and Nigeria in particular, change never comes because these optimistic projections crash on the altar of political bad manners. Old habits do not change and the old order stubbornly persists. Dreams turn into nightmares and messiahs graduate into ogres and mindless tyrants rise from the ashes of collective desires.
In Nigeria, democratic elections end up as referendums on the incumbent. It is hardly ever about changing the cast. It is an arranged plebiscite on whether the incumbent should continue or exit. More often, they persist and succeed themselves in more frightening guise. Such outcomes often run counter to the expectations and hopes of the people. Parties that have literally ruined the nation arrange their comeback. Useless leaders renew their mandates and coin new phrases and slogans to market their ambition.
The electoral umpire announces outcomes that perpetuate the rule of the miscreants that appointed them. The agony of the masses is prolonged. Season after election season, the same parties perpetuate themselves in power and increase their stranglehold on power and their burden on the backs of the stranded people. Democracy becomes a prison house in which the people are locked up and the keys thrown into the sea of autocratic ambition.
Democracy becomes an end in itself, a mere catch phrase whose benefits are repeated endlessly often by illiterate and ignorant power buffoons. Desperate masses grope for an exit from a bondage in the name of democracy. In search of salvation people become advocates of endless protests, senseless coups or relapse into the national pool of superstition. God will change the bad rulers and save his people from bondage!
As we approach the transition year of 2027, the optimism that the transition year will usher in what the incumbent calls ‘renewed hope’ is dimming by the day. The ruling party has tightened its vice grip on the levers of state power. A party that supervised the cannibalization of the Nigerian state under the infamous Buhari betrayal has now increased its hold by commandeering the unquestioning loyalty of no less than 30 of the 36 states and still counting. Is it fear of opposing an autocratic leviathan? Is it the uncertainty of falling off the lush gravy train? Or just political laziness and fear of risk taking? Why would the majority of state governors who supposedly stood and won elections on their own buckle under the pressure of an incumbent party that has failed the nation? Nigeria’s embrace with democracy is indeed weighed down by these many questions and puzzles.
The prospect that the lapses of the ruling APC would naturally breed an opposition platforms to articulate alternative possibilities has been literally decimated by the crude machinations of the ruling party and its power nabobs and numerous minions. The political model that governs the business of the APC is straight from the antiquity of political methods. It is the politics of winner take all. It is the ancient creed of the ruling party that stands alone after demolishing other parties contending for power. This footprint is evident in the serial demolition of opposition parties and platforms by paid agents of the all-conquering APC.
Opposition parties have either been infiltrated by bribed agents of the ruling party or disorganized by judicial blackmail and transactional judgments. Hardly in any other democracy on earth has the judiciary transformed so readily and quickly into an unregistered political party which however superintends the registration of other legitimate political parties. In only a few places in the world has the judiciary been given such free rein to demolish the political process and its supporting structures. The architecture of democracy is hinged on the existence of vibrant and constitutionally protected political parties. To use the judiciary, an arm of government, to devastate parties is to use the political weight of the incumbent state to destabilize the very foundations of democracy. Thereafter, what is left is democracy is a mere manner of speaking and a hoax devoid of life and content.
The political opposition has failed to graduate from a conclave of chatter boxes and noise makers into a credible political force. Our opposition political collective have not defined their ideological or policy divergence from the rudderless APC. They have neither defined what they are opposed to nor what they are positing as the opposition agenda. All we hear are sporadic shots at bits and pieces of missteps by the ruling party. It seems that all our oppositions politicians do is wait for Tinubu and. His rabble to step on a banana peel and then take them on. Thereafter, they go back to sleep until the next fall.
It remains embarrassing that the opposition collective itself has hardly displayed any seriousness of intention or purpose. When Chief Obafemi Awolowo made a career of opposition politics, he used to float an opposition policy framework, an opposition annual budget, an opposition sectoral template on virtually every social isse-education, infrastructure, health etc. But, these days, all it requires to don the tag ‘opposition’ is to disagree with Tinubu without saying why.
Our current opposition is led by elements who are merely defined by the tag of presidential ambition. The have all placed their personal ambition to be president over and above the national interest, if they even understand what that interest is. In the process, opposition leaders have reflexively fled or decamped to inconsequential parties for as long as they are guaranteed the presidential ticket. The naïve assumption is that any opposition leader or collection of leaders that manage to corner the ticket of any inconsequential party is automatically going to replace Tinubu in Aso Rock.
As a result, the public has virtually no opposition platform to hoist its frustration on. People are left to hang their frustration on futility or relapse to the Nigeria’s natural superstition that somehow, the nation’s problems would be solved by divine intervention. “This too shall pass”!
On their part, the people are in disarray. Somehow, the current reign of adversity has split the loyalty of the people and their expectation of what democracy should deliver in 2027. The majority of the hungry and deprived are hoping that 2027 would alleviate their suffering with an improved economy that can at least guarantee one meal a day. People living in areas overwhelmed by insecurity and the prospect of imminent death from violent terrorists and bandits are hoping that some government will happen that can guarantee safety of life even if that life is devoid of material and economic security. Those of us who are more high- minded are anxious that democracy restores the unity and integrity of the Nigerian state so that people can live in freedom devoid of fear.
Ironically, these expectations hardly appeal to the politicians who are now hustling to run and be elected. For the present breed of APC type politicians, democracy is an empty notion of entitlement. The feel that the people owe them the votes. They either get it willingly or they buy the votes in public bazaars at the polling station. The concomitant responsibility to deliver good governance and ensure a country that works for all Nigerians becomes tangential. Politics becomes a lucrative occupation, an industry that delivers material and financial benefits.
The current mood of the ruling APC, the open desire to marginalize other parties and drown opposing voices flies in the face of genuine democracy. Genuine multi partyism and a diversity of voices is the minimum irreducible requirement of a democracy.
The ongoing APC-inspired scheme is suspicious. A rampaging ruling party is in the process of confronting the nation with a foregone outcome. A presidential election in which the ruling party and its disastrous candidate emerges tops with 85% of votes cast and the remaining inconsequential parties share the rest of the votes among themselves is an outcome that now stares us in the face. It has happened elsewhere in Africa. Cameroun. Rwanda. Equatorial Guinea and more.