One thing common to all democracies is that from time to time, the electorate is invited to choose their leaders in the process described as elections. For the purpose of these elections groups of people come together to form parties which contest the elections and offer a choice to the electorate who, on the strength of the respective manifestoes presented to them cast the votes with which their government is chosen to direct the affairs of state for a given period of time. The government thus chosen will be in control of government until the next round of elections when the cycle of democratic contestation comes round again.
For the last twenty-three years, the Nigerian electorate has been called out every four years to choose their President, governors and other governing officials in order to satisfy that aspect of democracy which calls for the people to elect their leaders and in doing so, fulfil the demands of the Constitution. This is inspire of the fact that there are a great number of people who believe that the document which governs our democracy is flawed, fatally flawed and therefore irredeemable. On the other hand, there is a sigmificant minority which is ready to swear by a Constitution which guarantees their continued relevance to government from which they derive their sustenance in every sense of that word.
In obedience to the Constitution there are three tiers of government at federal, state and local levels and the leadership positions at those levels are filled at four year intervals during which the winners of respective elections hold all the powers that are prescribed by the Constitution leaving those who were not chosen out in the cold, helpless, powerless and disgruntled thereby causing perceptible tension throughout the polity. This is because in the current dispensation, the winners take all and since, to be brutally honest, those who take part in this circus are there for what they can extract as perquisites of their office, they are prepared to do anything to ensure that power remains in their hands or is wrested from those who are already in power in the shortest time possible. Because intentions are guided by narrow self interest, it does not really matter how the winning party wields the enamours powers at their disposal. They behave like lions which gorge on their food whenever they manage to catch and kill the prey which satisfy their all important but severely limited desire to keep hunger at bay until the next round of gorging is made possible by the availability of food. The need to satisfy their hunger is governed by the availability of the other animals which for the purposes of this discourse can be described as their electorate, at least as far as Nigerian democracy is concerned. This is why the question of power acquisition is fundamental to politics and is, to quote a once powerful Nigerian, is a do or die affair. It is one which cannot move us along on the path of development.
Political parties are of fundamental importance to political contestation at every level including that of the formulation of the principles with which the electorate is to be persuaded to use their votes to identify the preferred party to be trusted with power. In Nigeria however, the question is trust between the voters and those that are voted for is tantamount to wishing for that mythical pie in the sky for the simple reason that here, the only decision before the electorate is who is to be given the keys to the national treasury to do what they wish with whatever funds are available. No government is ever held accountable for whatever they do in government, not even when their misdeeds are so foul that they cry to high heavens and cover the earth with their stench. Those who are kept out of power after every round of elections do nothing but scheme to get their own turn at misgovernment. They will do anything within the scope of their not inconsiderable dark powers to get back to power in the manner of a lion looking for the next unfortunate prey with which to satisfy his elemental desire for food. Just as you cannot reason with a ravenous lion, you cannot argue with a full blooded Nigerian politician on the hunt for power, especially since it is power without responsibility which is the epitome of uselessness. And so, the country lurches from one political cycle to another, regressing all the time and sinking ever deeper into the morass of despair, getting darker all the time.
It is clear, or at least it should be clear to anyone operating at even the lowest level of discernment that Nigeria has failed every examination of its usefulness to the people of this country. Our economy has tanked, our educational system is in shambles, our healthcare delivery system is in a state of irreversible collapse, our unity is now so fragile that dangerous fault lines have become impossible to ignore and are widening everyday, our civil services are being roasted on the hotbed of irresponsibility by their management cadre and our youths are wandering the world, rudderless and hopeless. And yet, it does not appear that anyone is asking how our situation can be ameliorated let alone improved. All we are concerned with is who will be handed the tattered remains of available power next year when we are asked to choose the next gatekeeper of what remains of our national power. It is no coincidence that all those whose hats are now in the ring are supposedly self made multibillionaires in the poverty capital of the world. What empathy, let alone sympathy can any of them have for all those people, the vast and unfortunate majority of Nigerians who are struggling to get by on one solitary American dollar everyday that God sends them? And perhaps, more appropriately, what do they wish to do with even more money which is guaranteed to come to them and the army of sycophants milling around them at the end of the next round of sham competition labelled elections?
There are two main parties in Nigeria so right there we have a serious shortage of choice as it is either tweedledee or tweedledum which is no choice at all, just a weird dance of musical chairs. Both parties are quite prepared to fight to the death over which of them would control our destiny over the next four years. Objective evidence however strongly suggests that neither of those parties is well up for the choice. There can be no shelter under the umbrella nor can we expect our Aegean stables to be swept clean by the broom however vigorously it is being wielded. Putting power in the hands of either of them is like doing the same thing over and over and consistently expecting a different result each time. It is not going to happen, now or any other time in the future and it is now time to get creative before we are forever ruined.
It is now time to devise how power can be effectively shared in this country rather than continue to insist that the winner continues to rake in all the chips on the table in the way of inveterate gamblers in a rigged game of poker. In many countries, especially in Europe, power is shared proportionately among all the parties that participate in an election, each party getting a share in the number of seats on offer in proportion to the votes gathered by each party in the election. In this way, all the parties are involved in government.
Perhaps the greatest failure of Nigerian democracy is the absence of any discernible opposition at every level of government from the federal to the local. All state legislative bodies are dominated to the exclusion of any opposition from the party that lost out at the last governorship election. The same goes for the local government level with all the local area chairmen are members of the same party. The party in opposition is effectively locked away from all available power and can only look on helplessly as the people in power gorge on all the food available to the victors. Given this situation it is unlikely that Nigeria will survive the next round of elections under the current dispensation.
The next government must be made up of all the parties which garner enough votes to secure the right to be represented in the next government if only because this will stop the next government from having unfettered access to the government treasury. People will immediately point out that there is is no provision in the Constitution for this arrangement and they will be right. But, given the catalogue of woes with which we now have to contend, it is obvious that we are in a state of emergency and to tackle it with any degree of eventual success, we need to think out of the box, as people are fond of saying these days. In any case, should we have a group of foolhardy military officers who think that they have a cure for all our ills, they will simply decapitate whatever government is in power and do away with our precious Constitution by fiat as they have done in the painful past.