On 20 November, 2023, at a high-level consultation on “Rethinking Western Liberal Democracy in Africa”, held at the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library, Abeokuta, Ogun State, former President Olusegun Obasanjo delivered what may be referred to as his ‘State of Democracy Address’. In the widely reported speech, he made the following claims: (1) that Western liberal democracy is a “government of a few people over all the people or population … in which the majority of the people are wittingly or unwittingly kept out”; and, rather contradictorily, that “for those who define it as the rule of the majority, should the minority be ignored, neglected, and excluded?”; (2) that Western liberal democracy “is not working for us”; and (3) that “we should have ‘Afro-democracy’” in its place.
Understandably, in reaction to the speech, many Nigerians have expressed righteous indignation, believing that the former President was insulting the citizens’ intelligence. As captured in Yoruba wit, in relation to the challenges of democracy in Africa, a crying person, Ajala, was asked, “Àjàlá, tàn nà ó?” Ó ní, “Èyin náà kóun.” (‘Ajala, “Who beat you?” He replied, “Who else but you?”’) This raises the following questions: (1) Do Chief Olusegun Obasanjo’s political experience and skills qualify him to make the democratic postulations in question? (2) Does he have the democratic temperament to justify his democratic preachments? (3) Is his pessimism about Western liberal democracy consistent with contemporary political realities?
Regarding the first question, one of the unassailable credentials of iconic politicians is that they have demonstrated skills and verifiable experience in creating and nurturing political parties. Examples of such epochal politicians in Nigeria include Obafemi Awolowo, Ahmadu Bello, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Aminu Kano, Waziri Ibrahim, Moshood Kashimawo Abiola, Alex Ekwueme, Bola Ige, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Muhammadu Buhari and Odumegwu Ojukwu. In the case of Obafemi Awolowo, he has set his experience, ideas and vision out in a series of books which continue to be reference points on politics, democracy and governance. It would be difficult to number Olusegun Obasanjo among that distinguished list.
As it concerns the ongoing Fourth Republic, Obasanjo was in prison in 1998 when the political parties were being formed. He was released from prison on 15 June, 1998 and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was formed on 28 July, 1998. One of the resolutions reached at the founding of the party was “To work together under the umbrella of the party for the speedy restoration of democracy, the achievement of national reconciliation, economic and social reconstruction and respect for human rights and the rule of law.”
Given his incarceration, General Olusegun Obasanjo (rtd.) could not have been a major player in the hard, emotionally-tasking and highly risky preliminary work that went into the formation of the party under the General Sanni Abacha autocracy. That Chief Obasanjo was chosen as the presidential candidate of the party at the first PDP presidential primary in Jos on 15 February, 1999 was therefore something like what, in his 1985 studio album, Fela Anikulapo Kuti called “Army Arrangement”.
That was probably why Obasanjo seemed not to have made much emotional investment into the party and why he had not been able to sustainably nurture the PDP that gifted him the presidential seat. This may have been the reason why he seemed to have had no qualms about ordering his PDP membership card to be torn to pieces cavalierly on 16 February, 2015. As our people say, Eni tí ò fé k’óyún ó sé kò lè fé kómo ó kú. (‘One who did not wish a pregnancy aborted would not want the baby to die.’) However, the person who did not know what it took to conceive, may not be capable of exercising the emotional restraint required to keep the baby alive.
Even in the Second Republic, when he was the incumbent Head of State midwifing the return to civil rule in 1979, he was essentially an onlooker with respect to party formation, organisation and sustenance. Moreover, in 1992, the country had what could be called ‘bureaucratic parties’ – the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and the National Republican Convention (NRC) – which were set up and largely financed by the Ibrahim Babangida military administration. That political milieu could therefore not have provided Obasanjo with the opportunity to acquire or hone significant political or democratic skills.
Obasanjo’s lack of requisite skills or experience in forming or nurturing political parties may have doomed even his attempts to prop up new-breed or Third Force political parties as options to the major parties like the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the PDP. One of such parties associated with him and which failed to mount an effective challenge to the major parties is the African Democratic Congress (ADC). Considering this fact and the related points made above, Obasanjo could not by any stretch of the imagination be classified as a path-charting politician who could make unassailable claims about Western liberal democracy, as he did in his Abeokuta speech.
Let us now look at the second question pertaining to Obasanjo’s Abeokuta delivery. Does he have the democratic temperament and antecedents that could confer respectability and credibility on his public declarations on democracy? Key features of the democratic temperament include, among others, non-abrogation of the freedom to choose, staying within clearly defined limits within political relations, and respecting the rule of law.
Obasanjo does not have a shining record with respect to these manifestations of the democratic temperament. As an incumbent President in 2007, he declared that that year’s elections were going to be a “do-or-die” affair for him and his party; and many people were reported to have died from the violence unleashed in those elections. He ordered President Muhammadu Buhari not to seek a second term in office in 2019. In his open letter of 27 February, 2023, Obasanjo went beyond his remit as a voter to ordering the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to terminate the collation of the results of the presidential election of 25 February, 2023, and unilaterally fixed 4 March, 2023 for a rerun of “all the elections that do not pass the credibility and transparency test”. He further ordered that officials in charge of the BVAS and Server should be changed. In addition, in aluta fashion, he declared, “no BVAS, no result to be acceptable; and no uploading through Server, no result to be acceptable.” He made these declarations in disregard of what the relevant laws said about the acceptability of results.
It appeared as if, on 27 February, 2023, Obasanjo was exasperated by the impending victory of his political nightmare, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, a man with the political Midas torch; and on 20 November, 2023, he was dazed by the fact that, against heavy odds, the President Tinubu administration was steadily finding its foot locally and internationally and was on the way to establishing itself as a truly transformational government.
Now, let us look at the third question raised above in relation to Obasanjo’s democratic prognostications. Is Western liberal democracy working in Africa? Yes, it is. That was why he was rejected, at the polls, by his Yoruba kin in 1999 when he contested the presidential election, in exercise of their freedom to choose. That was why the Southwestern states fraudulently declared as won by his PDP in 2003 were returned to the Alliance for Democracy (AD) which the electorate in those states really voted in. That was why the purported impeachment of then-Governor Rashidi Ladoja of Oyo State was reversed by the court. That was why the third term agenda, Obasanjo’s attempt to elongate his tenure beyond the constitutionally prescribed two-term limit, was voted down by the Senate in 2006. That was why President Muhammadu Buhari ignored him, contested for a second term in 2019, and won. That was why open presidential primaries were conducted by APC from 6 to 7 June, 2022 in preference to the handpicking of the party’s candidate.
Ironically, Obasanjo’s 20 November, 2023 claim that Western liberal democracy was not working came a few days after incumbent President George Weah conceded victory to opposition candidate Joseph Boakai in Liberia on 17 November, 2023. The Liberian democratic success came after incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan conceded victory to opposition candidate Muhammadu Buhari in Nigeria on 31 March, 2015. It also came after John Mahama, the incumbent President of Ghana, conceded victory to opposition candidate Nana Akufo-Addo on 9 December, 2016, even before the electoral commission announced the result. These, along with shining examples as in Botswana, show that Western liberal democracy is working in Africa.
Yet, in its place, Obasanjo proposed ‘Afro-democracy’. But he did not define it. This leaves room for conjecture. Within ‘Afro-democracy’, given the huge emotional investment that Obasanjo had made into the aspiration of Peter Obi and given Obasanjo’s penchant for battering democracy, the Labour Party (LP) candidate would probably not have needed to win at the ballot to be declared President-Elect. And Prof. Mahmood Yakubu would probably have been successfully arm-twisted to terminate the result collation and rerun the election. Within ‘Afro-democracy’, Tinubu, who has consistently been Obasanjo’s nemesis, would then probably have been schemed out of his almost certain victory. Would ‘Afro-democracy’ not therefore cast the nation and the continent anew into the throes of democratic intemperance and electoral malfeasance?
All said, Yoruba wisdom counsels that, Eni t’ó bá ma d’áso fún ni, t’orùn rè làá kó wò. (‘If a person promises you clothes, first look at the one they’re wearing to see whether they can truly fulfill the promise, and to see what you would look like in their kind of clothes.’) Obasanjo is not capable of giving Nigerians democratic apparel, because he is not wearing one. But if we must stretch charity enough to grant that he has some democratic clothes on, they are not the kind you would want to wear.
Some have enjoined Obasanjo’s critics to focus on the message and not the messenger. But, could the seemingly good message not be weaponised by a bad messenger? Could the message not be a mere booby trap? The Collins Dictionary defines a booby trap as “something such as a bomb which is hidden or disguised and which causes death or injury when it is touched.” This implies that the harmless-looking message could, in fact, be worse than the messenger. Meanwhile, remember that booby traps are military devices, and Obasanjo is a retired General. Remember also the saying, “Once a soldier always a soldier.”
In an earlier intervention in the Obasanjo democracy controversy, I asked that he be advised to speak less. I then remembered the observation that talking is therapeutic for the elderly. And former President Olusegun Obasanjo has a lot to tell the nation. But he should steer clear of pontifications on democracy.
