Trust Nigerians; some will scoff at any comparison between Britain’s democracy and what Nigeria calls democracy. They will say Nigeria is exceptional and should not be compared with any other country. Indeed, Nigeria is utterly self-referential and does its own thing without regard for global standards. But if democracy is, as Abraham Lincoln famously defined it, “government of the people, by the people, for the people,” then Nigeria cannot avoid being held to universal standards; it cannot change the true meaning of democracy.
The critical rule is that the direct electoral link between those governing and those being governed must not be severed and that democracy must not become ineptocracy, a system run by inept people. In any representative democracy, the irreducible core is the will and consent of the people, freely expressed in credible elections. For that reason, the recent UK general election offers some lessons.
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What happened in Britain was a demonstration of people power, and nothing, absolutely nothing, was done to thwart it. The critical starting point in any election is its logistics, to ensure that no eligible voter is directly or indirectly disenfranchised. But in virtually every election in Nigeria since 1999, millions of Nigerians have been disenfranchised. First, because of the incompetence of INEC, the electoral body, which often failed to ensure that everyone got a voter card, which often failed to ensure that voting started early, and which often failed to ensure that the technologies worked smoothly without avoidable “technical glitches.” Several elections were postponed for logistical reasons, and yet they still failed. Then, second, there is electoral violence, vote-buying, ballot-box stuffing, ballot-box snatching, and myriad other irregularities that cumulatively frustrate the will and free consent of the people.
None of those happened in the UK general election in the UK. The voting time was between 7am and 10pm, and those starting and closing times were sacrosanct, unaffected by the absence of election materials and/or officials. Like many people, I went to work and left my office in central London around 7 p.m., got to the polling station at 9 p.m., and voted with absolute ease. By midnight, the first constituency result was announced, and by 5 a.m., it was obvious who had won the general election. There were recounts where the results were close, and everyone accepted the outcome. Party thugs did not snatch ballot boxes, and electoral officers did not collude with any party or any candidate to alter the results. Twelve members of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s cabinet lost their seats; Liz Truss, a former prime minister, also lost her seat. They all accepted the results because the election was free, fair, and transparent.
“In any representative democracy, the irreducible core is the will and consent of the people, freely expressed in credible elections.”
Some would say the above elides the “fact” that Nigeria is a developing country. But that stretches credulity given that Nigerians are running international institutions, such as the World Trade Organisation, and are making their mark globally in all spheres of life. Professor Mahmood Yakubu, the chairman of INEC, is a product of both Oxford University and Cambridge University, obtaining a doctorate from the former. In principle, he could run a global institution. So, why has he failed as INEC chairman? The answer is simple: Nigeria lacks strong and independent institutions, and those running the institutions lack the values and courage to do what’s right. In other words, Nigeria’s democracy lacks guardrails—both institutions and individuals—that can protect and safeguard it against destructive forces.
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But the critical issue is the will of the people and the consent of the governed. In his book Enemies of Society, Paul Johnson argues that the true essence of democracy is “the ability to remove a government without violence, to punish political failure by votes.” Surely, where that ability is taken away through the incompetence of the electoral body, through vote-buying, rigging, and other forms of electoral malpractice, there is no democracy. That’s why I have repeatedly said in this column that Nigeria is not a democracy. For, let’s face it, there are too many people in power who got there through electoral fraud, helped by INEC officials.
That didn’t happen in the UK general election. The electorate were angry, and they showed it without hindrance. They were fed up with fourteen years of Conservative governments, during which there were five prime ministers in eight years, and they wanted change. The same thing happened in South Africa, where the voters punished the African National Congress, ANC, and cost the party its majority, reducing it to 40 percent of the vote for the first time in 30 years. Last week, the French electorate penalised President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist alliance, Ensemble, pushing it into second place after the second round of the National Assembly elections. That’s true democracy in action. It’s people power!
But tell me, if Prime Minister Sunak, President Macron, and President Cyril Ramaphosa could manipulate their country’s electoral system to favour themselves and their parties, would they? I think not. Why? First, their moral consciences and values as true Democrats would not allow them to do so. Second, and more importantly, the British, French, and South African electoral institutions and those running them are so robust and independent that they would not allow any incumbent leader, indeed any politician, to distort the electoral system. But not so in Nigeria. The truth is, a typical Nigerian president will exploit his incumbency to manipulate elections to his or his party’s advantage, and the institutions are too weak and absolutely lack independence to constrain him. After all, the president controls all state institutions, whose leaders he appoints and who are loyal to him.
Last year, President Buhari said that he changed the Petroleum Industry Act to postpone the withdrawal of the fuel subsidy so as “to allow Tinubu to win the election,” saying Tinubu would have lost if he had removed the subsidy before the election. As he put it, “polls after polls showed that the party would have been thrown out of office if the decision as envisaged by the new Petroleum Industry Act was made.” So, if Buhari deliberately changed a law to allow Tinubu to win the presidential election, what else did he do? Did he lean on INEC to tilt the balance in Tinubu’s favour? Probably!
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Democracy is the ability to punish political failure with votes. Thus, given Buhari’s disastrous eight-year presidency, during which he ruined Nigeria’s economy, and given the unpopularity of Tinubu, who selfishly foisted Buhari on Nigeria, their party, APC, should not have won the presidency last year. And, if you ask me, APC did not win the election, or, at least, did not have a popular mandate. According to INEC, Tinubu got 8.8 million, or 37 percent, of the 24 million votes cast. Thus, he was rejected by a whopping 15 million voters, or 63 percent of the electorate.
Well, that’s where Britain and Nigeria have something in common: the perverse first-past-the-post electoral system. In the general election, the Labour Party got only 34 percent of the vote nationally yet secured a landslide majority in parliament: 412, or 63 percent of the 650 seats. The Conservative Party won 24 percent of the vote but only got 121, or 18 percent, of the parliamentary seats. Thus, the parties’ seats in parliament did not reflect their votes nationally. Britain is the only country in Europe, apart from Belarus, using the first-past-the-post system. Little wonder there’s growing pressure in Britain to change the system; there should be in Nigeria too.
But leaving aside the unfairness of the first-past-the-post system, elections must be competently run and devoid of manipulations. On those elements, Britain’s democracy puts Nigeria’s in the shade. It is ineptocracy!
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