Nigeria will be disqualified if a rigorous definition of democracy were applied, that is extending the definition beyond mere holding of regular elections. Nigerian democracy is not democratic in character and style; it is a military skin with civilian mask. Today, anger is prevalent in Nigeria because the style of our democracy does not bode well for the nation in the long term. Citizens no longer see salvation in politics; they see salvation in God, magic and occult compensation. Politics has disappointed those who have no godfathers. The economy has grown one-sided with a few elite and their connivers feasting on the top of economic pinnacle while the majority are languishing and starving and warring at the fringe of the economic reeds.
In Ebonyi as elsewhere, democracy under People’s Democratic Party (PDP) is degenerating into aristocracy as those not heir to monarchic privileges are being increasingly fenced out. An overwhelming number of common masses lacks space in our style of politics as imposition becomes most characteristic of a party that has no regard to internal democratic principles. Talented technocrats and promising young brains willing to do public services are not given space in politics as power pirates full of empty sloganeering, personal aggrandizement, and political violence take the centre stage. Across the state, seniority, hierarchy and power club have held sway and the hapless citizens with no political connection are left disillusioned, disgustingly standing and loitering in vain outside the political corridor.
In Ebonyi state, PDP has recently conducted primaries for the forthcoming ward councillorship and chairmanship elections in the state. The result of that exercise is disappointing but not surprising. Those of us who never believe in our style of doing things cannot close our eyes before a stark falsehood staring us in the face. A political charade has been packaged as expression of people’s sacred right to elect their leaders. The process which characterized the primaries was fundamentally flawed. The candidates purported to have emerged victoriously know in their hearts that they have imposed themselves on the people.
At elections, level play grounds ought to be provided for contestants to test their popularity. The period of campaigns is a time for the contestants to sell their candidacy to the public who formed the chunk of the prospective voters. The purpose of manifesto is to clearly declare one’s intention and articulated programmes and policies, should he be voted into office. In developed democracies, people queue up to listen to electoral contestants marshal out their plans for their people. The intention is to enable people make a balanced judgment as to whom the cap fits best. These are the ideals.
Unfortunately, we are far from the ideals. We are still at the toddling stage of political process. Our claim to run democratic government can only be gratuitously proved. We have proved after many years of experimentation that we love democracy as an ideology but we can’t be trusted to behave democratically where and when our interests are at stake.
The last PDP primaries were greeted with public enthusiasm. People who had harboured some hope in the PDP project had innocently picked councillorship and chairmanship forms which were of course sold at exorbitant prices. They were expectant that time had come to test their popularity at the grass root. Some sections that had been marginalized in their local zoning formula were full of hopes that their people would seize the opportunity to change the status quo and readdress years of marginalization. But these were never to be.
Sad enough, the primaries were in-house affairs. Politicians at Washington DC drew timetable for soldiers at the mountainous Afghanistan and arid desert of Iraq. The whole exercise was a fanfare. The power clubs lobbied and retained their own men and women, thereby endorsing the status quo. People who relied on people’s votes were sent out sweating and fuming with anger.
Our salvation cannot come from the crop of leaders who will emerge at the end of the selection called election. Nobody can expect good governance from individuals who are laden with guilty conscience or peace from people who are not at rest with themselves. At the round off of his African tour recently, President Barrack Obama said that democracy can only endure when it is bigger than vested interests of power brokers. No leaders should declare themselves greater than the people. Leaders, who get drunk so easily with power and, in their state of stupor, can only blame themselves when they get caught in their own web.
Ebonyi opposition parties are very much to blame for the current sadness prevailing in the state. For every force there is a counter force. A force dominates if a counter force is weak or non-existent. PDP can only conduct their type of political selection only where opposition is weak, fragmented, hungry, prone to endless squabble over leadership and susceptible to be co-opted. That is why elections in Ebonyi are always mere formalities because we have never had an opposition.
Leaders are not trusted to behave responsibly when they are not challenged. The PDP in Ebonyi has no rivals. If there were oppositions, their work would have been to criticize virtually every policy and programme of the ruling party, and put those elected on that platform on their toes. In so doing a focused and efficient opposition indirectly helps their opponents to achieve greater efficiency for the good of all. The formation of Ebonyi opposition is entirely wrong. They are not ideologically driven. It is formed by those who fail to win elections or gain political position within a particular administration and people who beg bread. The implication is that external pressure on Ebonyi PDP to reform has evaporated.
All hope is not lost. A new generation of angry Ebonyians is emerging; a generation fed up with dysfunctionality, abysmal failure, rampant imposition and party dictatorship. This is a generation that understands what accountability, rule of law, democracy is all about. Young, university-educated, agile and tech savvy, they will push aside the sclerotic party hippopotamuses that have cobwebs already dangling from their ears. They will drain the ponds of the ‘hippos’ and take back Ebonyi, one ward at a time.
As Mohamed Bouazizi, a 27-year-old unemployed Tunisian university graduate ignited Arab Spring, so will it begin. Of course, this is not going to be a quick fix. True revolutions are more than crowds chanting slogans in a packed square. But an inscription on ‘Keke Tricycle’ in Abakaliki capital territory sums it up: ‘No Condition is permanent’.
