Parliamentarism can offer Nigeria an escape from bad governance and weak institutions (2)

A fortnight ago, I began the argument about the conduciveness of parliamentarism to institution building and had to interrupt the flow to answer to a rejoinder. I had made the point – drawing largely from empirical research employing a global data set– that parliamentary system, in addition, is also positively correlated with good governance and superior performance. On the economic front, “presidential regimes consistently are associated with less favourable outcomes than parliamentary regimes: slower output growth, higher and more volatile inflation and greater income inequality.”

Most of the misgivings about parliamentary democracy, especially in Africa, are about the level of bickering, debates and deliberations involved in parliamentary democracies. Frustrated Africans easily dismiss such practices as “rudderless, confused and chaotic chattering”. Most even point to the bickering and confusion over the Brexit deal happening in the UK currently as one of the reasons parliamentary democracy won’t work in Nigeria.

But again, as research has shown, despite a fusion of the executive and the legislature in parliamentary democracy, the checks and balances in the system is far superior to that in the presidential system. All programmes of the executive are subjected to relentless scrutiny and it is much unlikely deleterious policies would pass in a parliamentary system than in a presidential system. Although the bickering, endless debates and deliberations in a parliamentary system may seem offensive to Africans, who prefer to have philosopher-kings as leaders, the checks and balances in a parliamentary system, empirical research has shown, leads to better economic performance in the long run.

Truth is, our constitution created a dictator president that would be difficult to handle were he to go rogue. But a parliamentary system not only provides for a system to hold the executive firmly accountable, its emphasis on political parties leads to the development of a strong party system

In Nigeria’s presidential system, for example, although the constitution provides for a strict separation of structures and personnel and independence of the three arms of government, in reality however, the president can, and often, do work to ensure the almost total subjugation of or control of the other arms of government. Last year, the speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, invited the Service Chiefs to brief the House on the spate of insecurity in the country. The Service Chiefs ignored him and refused to appear before the house. The only response a thoroughly embarrassed Speaker could give to that affront on constitutional authority was that he was going to report them to the president. Of course, nothing came out of that report nor has he summoned the courage to invite them to the House again.

The Senate President was quoted on more than one occasion as saying the Senate will do whatever the president wants. However, alarmed by the insecurity in the country, it made passionate representations to the president to sack the service chiefs over the floundering war with the Boko Haram insurgency. The President flatly refused and has continued to retain the services of the failed service chiefs, who have exceeded their statutory years of service leading to low morale, grumblings and dissatisfactions in the armed forces.

Read Also: Parliamentarism can offer Nigeria an escape from bad governance and weak institutions 

So bad has the situation gotten that, in July, the Senate passed a motion calling on the service chiefs to resign following the incessant killings of soldiers fighting insurgency and banditry in the Northeast and Northwest of the country. Of course, the service chiefs ignored the Senate and Mr Buhari curtly reminded them that the prerogative of appointing and sacking security chiefs remains his and he won’t abdicate it to the National Assembly. Case closed!

We supposedly have a third arm of government – the judiciary, which is theoretically independent from the executive and adjudicates on dispute between the other arms of government and protects individual liberties from government overreach. But the very head of the judiciary was illegally booted out of office, justices of the Supreme Court harassed and intimidated into silence and the courts have become more or less the mouthpiece of the executive such that no one is left in doubt as to where the courts stand these days. We could all see how the judges disposed off the electoral cases against the election of the president. Both the judges at the court of appeal and the Supreme Court were not just content with dismissing the cases for lack of proof, but they actively turned defendants of the president in the case on perjury.

Truth is, our constitution created a dictator president that would be difficult to handle were he to go rogue. But a parliamentary system not only provides for a system to hold the executive firmly accountable, its emphasis on political parties leads to the development of a strong party system that can constrain the behaviour of its members. In South Africa, the ANC’s ability to peacefully and seamlessly ease out an obstinate and thoroughly corrupted Jacob Zuma out of office and immediately get its party leader, Cyril Ramaphosa, elected as president by parliament showed the pre-eminence of the party and its ability to discipline all party members regardless of rank or position.

Re: Pay attention to the science

Martin Ihembe has continued with his implausible argument about the failure of parliamentary democracy in Nigeria and West Africa. And what evidence does he cite? A book written in the first few years of independence and published in January 1965 – to support his thesis. But even a fresh student in politics will immediately observe Authur Lewis was dealing with the wrong variables – and hindsight should have rendered most of the thesis of the book totally irrelevant. Besides, Ihembe seems to have real difficulty differentiating empirical/scientific work from mere philosophical/prescriptive work.

There is absolutely nothing empirical or scientific about the book. It’s an angry denunciation of the single party state in Africa and a normative prescription on how to organise politics that recommends the replacement of “rogues” with “good men” for politics to work in Africa – a laughable thesis at best. If Ihembe blames parliamentary democracy for the collapse of Nigeria’s first republic and most of the democracies in West Africa, what will he blame for the collapse of Nigeria’s second republic presidential system in 1983 – just after four years? I wonder if he has ever heard of military coup d’état and the theory of contagion effect of military takeovers! Besides, institution building is a process and takes time.