Tag: 2015

Professor Larry Diamond, director at the Centre on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, Stanford University, United States of America, is concerned about the survival of Nigeria’s democracy. Diamond, who delivered the inaugural Freedom House Democracy Lecture series in Lagos on Monday, believes that the forthcoming elections represent a historically crucial test of the electoral process in Nigeria, reports Deputy Political Editor RAYMOND MORDI.    

With several political parties successfully coming together to form the All Progressives Congress (APC), the 2015 general elections promises to be the most competitive so far in Nigeria.  This was the submission of Professor Larry Diamond, director, Centre on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, Stanford University, United States. Diamond spoke on Monday in Lagos, as guest speaker at the inaugural Freedom House democracy lecture series, which took place under the theme, “Nigeria’s Governance Predicament: Poverty, Terrorism and Democracy”.

The Guest Lecturer, who was a Fulbright scholar at the Bayero University in Kano in the 1970s and early 1980s, has written extensively on democracy in Nigeria, . He said the forthcoming elections represent a historically crucial test of the electoral process in Nigeria and that it is vitally important to political stability in the country. For that reason, he pointed out that it is imperative for the 2015 election to be credible, free and fair.

Diamond faulted the process that led to the June 21 governorship election in Ekiti State, saying it does not inspire confidence about the seriousness of the Independent Electoral Commission (INEC) to organise free and fair elections in 2015. His words: “You cannot have the police and the military blocking the supporters (not to mention fellow governors) of one party from moving about a state and campaigning, and call that a fully free and fair election.”

Diamond’s logic is that democratic elections require a level playing field and that every step in the electoral process must be monitored to ensure transparency.  He is worried about the future of constitutional government in the country, like most Nigerians. The political scientist should know; he has written extensively on democracy in Nigeria. He is the author of the book, Class, Ethnicity and Democracy in Nigeria: The Failure of the First Republic (Syracuse University Press, 1988), as well as Nigeria in Search of Democracy (1984). His latest book is titled, The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies throughout the World (Times Books, 2008).  It explores the sources of global democratic progress and stresses the prospects for future democratic expansion.

To the scholar, Nigeria’s problems are products of deficient institutions and a culture that has grown up around them.  He added however that hope is not lost for Nigeria because it is people that make institutions and can still change them. His words: “There is a chronic tendency in Nigeria and abroad to see the country’s prospect as nearly hopeless. But Nigeria is not condemned to suffer endemic corruption, waste, ineptitude, and insecurity. Think of how different Nigeria’s modern history would have been if it could simply have held free and fair elections. Compare Nigeria for a moment with another former British colony that is also a complex agglomeration of peoples, cultures, and languages: India.

“India has a huge number of problems, and it has seen a disturbing acceleration of corruption over the last decade.  There is no question that corruption and inefficiency have retarded economic growth and human development in India.  But India has a serious state, and it has constructed a formidably honest and efficient apparatus for administering elections.”

Diamond said at this time of growing disaffection with the performance of Nigeria’s Fourth Republic, it is important for all Nigerians—even young Nigerians who have no memory of those days of dread and depravity—to appreciate the lesson of their own history, and that of other countries. He said however troubled the national situation may become, however scandalous or inept may be the performance of elected government, civilian rule remains the best option for the country.

He added that the core problem of Nigeria today is the chronic deficit of honest and effective governance.  “We have learned in Nigeria, and in Pakistan, and in Thailand, and in so many other countries around the world:  There is no military shortcut to governance reform.  The challenge lies with the civilian institutions and actors of democracy:  parties, politicians, legislators, judges, civil servants, and civil society,” he stressed.

The scholar noted that though he had been asked to speak about the challenge posed to democracy by poverty and terrorism in Nigeria, the core problem in the country is not one of poverty.  “Neither is it one of terrorism. These are manifestations of a deeper and more diffuse malignancy: bad governance.  Governance that is not addressing the central policy challenges of the country,” he added.

Nigeria’s huge oil reserves, he noted, has largely been a curse, because it distorted the structure of production and discouraged agriculture.  “Corruption booms, because the money is there for the taking— unimaginable amounts of it — and it is not really anyone’s money anyway, it is just spewing up from the ground,” he added.  It is a different ballgame, he said, when compared to countries like India, which relied primarily on taxes.

Diamond also compared Nigeria and Ghana in a number of areas and concluded that Nigeria faces a challenge of leadership. For instance, he looked at the mortality rates for children under five years in both countries. His words: “Ghana has reduced this grim statistic since 1980 by 57 per cent; Nigeria by only 42 per cent.  Today about 7.2 per cent of Ghanaian children under age five die each year—a horrible statistic, but much better than the Nigerian rate, which is 12.4 per cent.  Nigeria has the ninth worst child death rate in the world, of the 196 countries for which UNICEF presents data.”   The difference between Nigeria and Ghana in that regard, he noted, is the difference between one out of 14 kids dying a year versus one of out eight.

Diamond suggested reforms in six key areas, beginning with electoral reforms.  He said the two crucial requirements for clean elections are effective and neutral administration, and comprehensive transparency.  He said some progress has been made on the first, but that there are still serious concerns about whether the country’s electoral administration is up to the coming challenge in 2015. Borrowing from the experience of India, he said the key thing here is making INEC truly independent, by ensuring that the chairman of the commission is not nominated by the President, but by an independent body, as recommended by the Justice Mohammed  Uwais Commission.

The second is for Nigeria to adhere to international standards for monitoring elections. “Neutral monitors in civil society must have the freedom and resources to conduct parallel vote tabulation (PVT),” he said adding that the technology for this is well established, and that Nigerian civil society organizations do not have to reinvent the wheel.

He continues: “Third, there is a need to advance internal democracy within Nigerian political parties… Fourth is the need to reform and modernize the state security apparatus.  The military, police, and intelligence must be trained and equipped to wage the security response with the proper tools and strategy, and to target the use of force carefully and effectively. They must also be instructed and monitored to avoid needless civilian casualties, and they must be held accountable for violations of law and procedure.”  He said recent confrontations between Nigerian security forces and Boko Haram suggest that the former have often been significantly outgunned and outmanoeuvred.

“Fifth, the laws on paper against bribery, corruption, and conflict of interest are reasonably good in principle, but they have huge weaknesses in enforcement that must be repaired.  Corruption is like water seeping into the ground; it will find any crack or crevice and make use of it.  The only way to fight it is with a system of horizontal accountability that is vigorous, comprehensive, independent, and interlocking,” he observed.

Finally, he appealed the United States, Europe and Nigerian leaders themselves to take steps to bring back whatever amount of money —probably well over $100 billion— that successive generations of Nigerian politicians have looted and stashed away outside Nigeria in identifiable liquid and fixed assets:  bank accounts, stocks, property, and other investments and luxury wealth. He added that this can only be done when the time is right; “when Nigeria has a government that is serious about controlling corruption”. The scholar said Western governments can work with Nigerian government officials and civil society groups to help build the systems of accountability to minimize such hemorrhage of public resources in the future.

In his opening remarks, former Governor of Lagos State and National Leader of the APC, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu expressed the hope to see the Freedom House democratic lecture series become a permanent feature of Nigeria’s democratic landscape. He said Nigerians do not understand enough about democratic governance and practice. “What we practice often is not democracy. How this nation is governed is a hybrid process where democracy is often the junior partner and minority attribute. As such the system of governance we practice has not yielded the desired results – the dividends of democracy have been painfully elusive,” he noted.

Tinubu lamented the fact that the Federal Government has arbitrarily reduced the revenues flowing to states in the opposition party, in order to punish them. “In effect, the Federal Government has imposed economic sanctions simply because some political leaders have the temerity to belong to another party. What an abuse of power,” he added.

The debate became more animated when a panel of discussants joined in the discourse. Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, Governor of Rivers State, initially said he was tired of talking and that he had nothing to add to the lecture Prof. Diamond had just delivered. He went ahead however to chide Nigerians for being too accommodating of their leaders, saying the followership is as guilty as the leadership.

Governor Amaechi said if Nigerians are waiting for people in public office to fight corruption, it would never happen. “I wonder why Nigerians are not on the streets. Nothing would change until you take your power back, by trooping to the streets,” he observed.

He said Nigeria is today ruled by a diarchy because the central government is tending towards a civilian-military dictatorship. The governor said when he was recently prevented from travelling to Ekiti on the last day of the electioneering campaign, it a military officer, rather than the officials of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), that informed him that the airport was closed, and that it was an order from above.

In his contribution, Minority Leader, House of Representatives, Mr. Femi Gbajabiamila, said the title of the lecture should have been, “Education, Poverty, Terrorism and Democracy”. The reason why I added education, he said, “is because often times education has a correlation with poverty, which in turn has a correlation with terrorism.” He added that both the Koran and the Bible made several references about the importance of education.

Gbajabiamila said what “we need to do now is to start thinking outside the box”. He said this occurred to him when he read a newspaper report that INEC chairman, Professor Attahiru Jega, went to visit the President at the Aso Rock Villa. He added: “It is innocuous when you look at it on face value, but when you look at it deeply, you will begin to wonder why the INEC chairman, an umpire in an election, would go and see somebody who is one of the parties to the election alone.”

He said lawmakers should begin to make regulations to curtail the conduct of the INEC chairman. He said if there is need for the INEC chairman to visit the Presidential Villa, he must go along with the chairmen of all the political parties.

In furtherance of Prof. Diamond’s statement that Nigerian leaders are liable in the death of millions of Nigerian children who die under the age of five, Gbajabiamila said perhaps a case of manslaughter should be instituted against them for their role in the death of those children.

On Prof. Diamond’s recommendation that Nigeria’s political parties should embrace internal democracy; the Minority Leader wondered whether Nigeria is ready for internal democracy. He said in a country where moneybags often dominate nominations for elective positions that it might be difficult for serious aspirants with good ideas to emerge. He said Nigeria’s peculiar circumstances may have made it practically untenable.

However, when the Catholic Archbishop of Sokoto, Reverend Matthew Hassan Kukah mounted the podium, he disagreed with the gloomy picture painted by Prof. Diamond that the situation in Nigeria could be compared to that in countries like Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). He also took exceptions to Nigeria being compared to Ghana, saying the contexts differ.

“It depends on how we measure. I agree we could have done better, but I don’t agree that we are living in the most rotten part of God’s forsaken earth,”’ he added. He said the frustration is because Nigerians are impatient,” he said. The outspoken Reverend said there is a difference between leadership and office. He said one can be in office and not be in power. “We are confusing those in public office as having powers of being leaders; you can hold a public office without being a leader. That is why when you see some of our governors, ministers and presidents when they leave power, you may not recognize them,” he argued.

Reverend Hassan Kukah said Nigerians should not have the notion that one day they would have a leader that would come and solve all their problems. “Leaders have to lead based on certain beliefs and principles. It is difficult to lead Nigeria because the followership is far more educated, better equipped than those who are holding public offices.

He said a few Americans like Dr. Diamond understand Nigeria’s problems, far more than Nigerians themselves. “Ask yourself, when last did you read a book by a Nigerian political scientist, which is not just a collection of proceedings of conferences,” he asked.  Reverend Hassan Kukah said the answer to the problem is not replacing the PDP with APC, but that politicians must face the challenge of making politics noble. He added that the benefits of democracy are largely intangible.

The inaugural lecture was chaired by Lieutenant General Abdulrahman Dambazau (retired), former chief of army staff. Dambazau said the theme of the lecture is very apt, considering the situation the country currently finds itself.