A Nigerian Democracy - 5 by Tunde Akande

We hold that successful nations are moving into a combination of selection and election to get credible and brilliant people into government.

We are proposing a peculiarly Nigerian democracy. This is our fifth instalment. We took off from the observation of Socrates that democracy has a seed of self destruction in it. That it will destroy itself by helping bad people rule over good people and will ultimately promote poverty. We conclude that the failure of leadership recruitment and governace in Nigeria is a fulfillment of this prophecy.

It is incumbent on Nigerians to tinker with the westernstyle democracy to blend with our traditional government systems. We think that a system that helps us infuse good men and women into our government will do us good. We hold that successful nations are moving into a combination of selection and election to get credible and brilliant people into government. In part 4 we developed what we call the concept of godfather and godson which we called the major plank of the proposal. There are other things necessary for this plank to succeed. It is major but it cannot stand alone. As we have noticed it is not completely flawless. It has to be helped by a suitable environment. As we said, the control has to rest on the political parties that are virtually left free of any encumbrance as being done now. Power must rest with the central authority of the political parties that will be allowed to be set up by men who subscribe to the ideology chosen by the party. The reason for this is that political parties in Nigeria do not subscribe to any ideology but are mere special purpose vehicles, SPVs, to capture power, allowing each team or person to get power to do whatever their fancy is. It is the principal reason why Nigeria is not yet a nation and why it will never be except this system is jettisoned. A good example is the PDP of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo's presidency. Obasanjo was drafted to contest the presidency in the 1999 presidential elections. According to him, in his book MY WATCH, he got to a particular location in the North where the rural people are farmers who spoke only the Hausa language. He didn't speak fluent Hausa and did not know what to tell them, in other words he was unprepared. He knew the Hausa word for fertilizer and so he promised them that and the farmers laughed. That is an example of how unprepared our leaders are for their jobs. No prior research and no ideology, everybody does whatever he feels necessary. One leader gets to power and engage the vehicle in the first gear, thereafter another one put the vehicle on reverse. No nation can develop by this lack of focus. That was exactly what happened between former president Olusegun Obasanjo and his successor, Umaru Musa Yar’adua. Within two years after he succeeded Obasanjo, after which he died, Umaru Yar’adua did nothing but reverse everything Obasanjo did, causing the nation to lose momentum in vital areas. This tendency must be reversed. In the first and second republics we had seasoned politicians who gave good thought to what the nation needed and had clearly stated manifestos that determines what each elected leader in the executive and legislatures did. Chief Obafemi Awolowo gave others a run for their money. He challenged them to hard work and focus being a very studious and hard-working leader. The electorates knew what to expect. We moved away from that because bad men and unprepared persons populate our politics. The intervention of the military who came in to halt our political growth for purely selfish reasons produced military politicians who after the design of their military lords care nothing for the orderly growth of the nation. Politics became the easiest means of getting rich without doing anything. Politics took the place of business. The richest men and women in Nigeria today are politicians. This must be reversed. No politician will be allowed to do what he or she fancies but what the political parties have fashioned out and have sold to the electorates and have been bought by the electorates through their votes. No group will be registered as a political party if they have no manifesto and an elected executive or legislator will be sanctioned if he or she does not toe party line. It will be made extremely difficult for any person to crosscarpet. To change parties, a legislator must resign and wait till another election cycle. What we have now are freewheeling legislators who change suitors at the drop of a hat. A member of a political party who wants to resign from the party must be able to do so but must wait till another election cycle to get into the party of his choice. This is to sanitize the parties and impose discipline. Politicians must belong to parties because they believe in the ideology of the party and not just as a vehicle to capture power.

It bears repeating here again that it must not be the business of either the electoral body or the court to meddle in the internal affairs and organization of the party. A party rises or falls according to its abilities. Good and ready parties will stay afloat while bad ones will fall. This will at all times prune the number of political parties. We recommend a multiparty system but each party must have a national spread. We recommend also six regions and each party must be in all the regions. This is to build national acceptability and unity which is greatly needed. No one section will be able to boast as being done now to the consternation of others that leadership cannot be except with its support. Every region and every tribe will be important. Former president Olusegun Obasanjo again: According to him in his book MY WATCH he was not in PDP when the party wrote its manifesto and after he got elected he constituted a committee headed by his military colleague, retired Lt General Danjuma to produce the direction the government should tread. Let's remember that Danjuma was not elected by Nigerians. Danjuma did not campaign but he was to determine what direction the nation will go. This is military mentality and no wonder Obasanjo held the nation captive as a malevolent dictator for eight sad years. He said the Danjuma committee did an excellent job but he left his readers without any indication that he followed the recommendations of the committee. In others words, Obasanjo did whatever he wanted and not what had been carefully planned. It was this sloppy tendency to the governance of the nation that Peter Obi, candidate of the Labour Party for the presidency in 2023 referred to when he said he was not going to allow a professor or anybody write Labour Party manifesto. He was the presidential candidate and he was going to write the manifesto himself. This is clear indication that Nigeria’s political parties are not yet ready for governance, they just want to get to power to do whatever seems necessary. The nation will never grow if that attitude is not reversed. A developing nation like Nigeria with myriad of challenges need committed and dedicated leaders who will give adequate attention to the problems of the country and provide solution to the myriads of problems confronting us. Ahmadu Bello, Nnamdi Azikiwe and Obafemi Awolowo were absolutely dedicated and worked hard. Awolowo was especially very hard working and surrounded himself with fellow hard workers and hard thinkers. Awolowo lived austere, lived in his bungalow house as premier, drove his own car, earned a pittance for a salary. He said only one minister in his cabinet did not need bank overdraft every month to meet up with his finances. And that is JF Odunjo a well-known author who collected royalties for his books. Wealth acquisition was not on the agenda of those politicians. Politics affects lives of millions of people and unborn generations and cannot be approached by a lackadaisical attitude. The attitude of when we get to the river we cross it is an attitude of laziness. Politicians must be very serious with their jobs. When Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore saw the lackadaisical attitude of leaders of Ghana and Nigeria as he met with them at Commonwealth meetings with their jets and flowing agbada he took notice that they would not go too far because they were not serious. As he predicted, the two nations fell to military coups few years later and are still undeveloped till today. Politicians must be made to work harder than the average citizen. Those who would not must be allowed to fall by the wayside. It is not that Nigeria is lacking such leaders, we have many of them but they will not come into politics because it is considered as the engagement for thieves and the unserious and liars. What we are proposing will encourage serious-minded good Nigerians to run for offices. They will be selected and presented to the peope for election.

POLITICAL PARTIES AGAIN

Control will be located in the political parties. They will organize to select or elect candidates by whatever method they want. The method recommended here is the method of godfather and godson but it will not be compulsory. The godfathers will be experienced people known for their intelligence, patriotism and preparedness as well love for Nigeria. They will be located at the control tower of the party. They will choose all officers of the party and forward the list to INEC not later than the date fixed by INEC. All current cutthroat control by INEC and courts will be pulled out of the laws. Once a political party does not meet INEC set deadline it means it does not want to contest the coming election. INEC is not going to wait for any party. It is likely that with this very strict procedure the nation will have few parties not like now when we can have fifty parties on the ballot.

The parties will recall any candidate who in the view of its board is either not performing to standard or representing the values and manifesto of the party. The lifestyle of all members of political will be expected to reflect the ideology of the parties. Once the party as represented by its top organ inform the INEC that the elected officer has fallen out of line, be it president, governor, senator, house of representative member, mayor or elected representative at the mayoral level, INEC will pull that person out and call for an election to replace him or her. All registered parties will participate. This will impose responsibility on the party to make good selection of its candidates. It will impose dedication and patriotism on the candidates. What time the parties hold there convention or how it selects its candidates will be no business of INEC or the courts. With this parties will grow acceptable conventions over time.

THUGGERY

If we want good men and women to participate in politics, Nigerian politics must be cleansed of thuggery. Current practitioners have wrecked havoc on the nation by the employment of thugs. In many instances some thugs have become billionaires. Thugs have been used to scare away voters from voting centres. In Lagos the use of thugs is the reason for tension between Yoruba and Igbo. We need to have free, fair and credible elections to allow the electorates to freely choose their leaders. Thuggery is a very bad ailment in Nigeria and a bad ailment also demand tough medication. Our recommendation is that thuggery, to wipe the evil practice out, must be punished by death upon conviction by a competent court. Not only the thugs but also those who send them as long as the court can be persuaded by credible evidence. Both the thug and whoever send him or her will be liable to the death penalty on conviction. In order to dispense justice quickly and fairly, a special court will be set up to try electoral offences. Thuggery has been wiped out in Singapore. It was wiped out when late Lee Kuan Yew, the nation's pioneer prime minister arrested 22 thugs who were thugs of his own party and tried and convicted them. The whole nation knew he was serious when he would not spare his own people. Such as we have recommended here will quickly stop thuggery in Nigeria. As bad as the situation is in Nigeria, as bad as morality has become in Nigeria, Nigerians still know good people and if they will be allowed to freely express their choice will chose good men and women. Parties who present bad men under free and fair atmosphere will be sure to be rejected while parties who constantly present good men and women will win election always.

ELECTORAL UMPIRE

There is almost nothing in the books Nigeria has not done to get her elections free and fair but seems everything is being made to fail because of the greed of Nigerians. The latest of such move is the use of university professors brought in by former INEC Chairman, Attahiru Jega, eminent professor of political science. The move was seen to be very strategic and excellent. Values are supposed to reside in the university professors who are dedicated and disciplined academics but it failed when some professors began to aid rigging. At least about two professors have been convicted for aiding rigging at the time of writing. Therefore electoral offences either by the INEC staff or its adhoc staff must be punished just like the thugs and their sponsors are punished. Electoral offences must be punished by death. This will serve as a sure deterrent. We are sure it won't be done more than once when everybody will line up.

INEC must employ the digital technology to the fullest. No excuse must be accepted for not going the wholehog like in the 2023 elections that almost threw the nation into chaos. The INEC Chairman or whoever is in charge who will not go the full length will be considered to have committed an offence, tried and if found guilty convicted to a jail term of five years. It must take this pattern or whatever is better: As a person votes his vote registers on an electronic board located at the local government nearest to him or her. Any tampering with the digital system either by hackers or by staff of the electoral umpire will be punishable by death. Nigeria must be fully ready to stamp out deliberate electoral fraud. This system will avoid the situation where electoral officers travel very long distance either by road or on river to get to counting centres, a practice that encourages fraud. Breaches or infractions by security agents will be treated just as the thugs are treated.

VOTE BUYING

Various measures have been recommended in early works to discourage vote buying. We must go further. Anybody who takes bribe either physically at the voting centres or in some hideout or by electronic transfer will be tried and jailed on conviction for a term not less than five years. Agents who pay such bribes when arrested will be similarly treated. Security agents must scrutinize those who receive bank transfer some days before and after election and those who are suspected to have been responsible for votebuying must be tried. There must be outright ban of money as an instrument of procuring vote. It is now being done openly. The use of plain clothes security personnel to arrest those who will do it in hiden places must be done. Any candidate for whom agents pay bribe when evidence is secured must be banned from that election and five subsequent elections and also go to jail for five years on conviction.

ELECTION RESULT

With fully digitalized voting, election results must be announced the same day from the regional headquarters and for the national election from the national capital the same day of the election. All these will prevent the current practice of long court cases, whereby it is the court that decides who wins and not the electorate. It will help sanitize the courts. We have a practice where some judges eagerly wait to be appointed to the Election Petition Tribunals because they make humongous amount of money there. It is an open secret that justice is procured with money. I was very sad recently when a prominent politician in Ibadan, Oyo state told me the practice of what in local parlance is called 'jankara,' whereby judgment is entered without hearing from the second party or by causing hired men to stand as the accused and plead guilty, has invaded our high courts now. It used to be a well-known practice at the magistrate courts. Judges who do that must be sacked and their certificates nullified forever and be committed to jail for a minimum term of five years. I was told that even the appeal court is not free from this judicial fraud.

We will continue in part six when we look into federalism and desired components, fiscal federalism, restructuring, religion and corruption.

To be continued in part 6

First Published in METRO

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Tunde Akande is both a journalist and pastor. He earned a Master's degree in Mass Communication from the University of Lagos.