In the weeks preceding the 2007 general elections, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) held a three-day seminar in Abuja where stakeholders from different fields were invited to lend their perspectives to the efforts to have clean elections in Nigeria. Then in my capacity as THISDAY editor, I was also invited to speak on the role of the media in a democracy.
In the weeks preceding the 2007 general elections, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) held a three-day seminar in Abuja where stakeholders from different fields were invited to lend their perspectives to the efforts to have clean elections in Nigeria. Then in my capacity as THISDAY editor, I was also invited to speak on the role of the media in a democracy.
After stating what I considered the critical responsibility of journalists in the electioneering process, I ended my paper with an anecdote of what transpired in 1993 when, as a senior staff writer with African Concord magazine, I was a member of the team that covered the Social Democratic Party (SDP) presidential primaries in Jos where our chairman, the late Bashorun M.K. O. Abiola, was a contender.
Before we left Lagos for Jos, I recalled, we had an editorial meeting where we decided to undertake what would not be a big deal today but a serious gamble back then: the result of the SDP national convention that would hold on a Saturday and probably extend till late on Sunday would be our cover story for the week beginning Monday.
Given the level of technology at that time, the bromide for the cover page must be at the press latest by Thursday morning otherwise, the edition would be late for Monday and here we were contemplating putting on cover an event that would only happen at the weekend. I did not have to wait for long before my editor, Mr Soji Omotunde, revealed the game plan: the bromide of the cover would be printed ahead with only the photograph of our chairman and the caption “How Abiola won”.
While I understood the sentiment behind the headline already cast by the editor since we could not possibly be neutral in a contest in which our boss was involved, I nonetheless felt that we were taking a big risk. I therefore suggested that to play safe, we should put the photographs of Abiola and that of Ambassador Babagana Kingibe (who at that period enjoyed the support of no fewer than 12 of the 14 SDP governors) with the caption, “How the battle was lost and won”.
Since an editor’s indecision is final, as we say in the newsroom, Mr Omotunde had his way. But after everybody had left, I stayed back in his office to explain my misgivings. I said putting Abiola on the cover was not the problem but projecting him as winner was going too far because, given my insight into the internal politics of SDP, the race was too close to call between our chairman and Kingibe. Mr. Omotunde said no matter what happened in Jos, Abiola was the only photograph he would put on the cover. What if he loses? I asked. Without missing a beat, he replied: “I will simply change the headline to ‘How Abiola was rigged out’!”
I could not but remember that episode about three weeks ago when Ambassador John Campbell came to Harvard University to speak on the topic, “Nigeria’s Progress toward Democracy since 1999”. As to be expected from the former United States Ambassador to Nigeria who doesn’t pull his punches, he predicted that given the size and complexity of our country, “there will be sufficient irregularities for the losers in the April poll to call foul”. What that means in effect is that given the violence and desperation of the last couple of weeks, there are already enough justifications—and there will be many more in the coming days—for defeated politicians (including the unserious ones) to allege being “rigged out”. Unfortunately, that will fit perfectly into the narrative of those who consistently hold that democracy and good governance are frail plants that cannot survive the Nigerian climate and that should be a cause for worry.
I am not saying that only bad losers will complain of malpractices at the end of the current election season or that we may not end up with another fiasco as we had in the past. I cannot possibly say that given the insight I have into how elections are prosecuted almost like war in Nigeria. It is even more difficult for me to make that kind of value judgment considering all the knowledge I have acquired in the last one year of my research into the institutional features of elections in Sub-Saharan Africa, where incumbency (rather than performance in office) remains the single most important factor that shapes electoral outcome. I am not naïve enough to believe that it is an accident that incumbents have retained power in 93 percent of the elections that they contested in the last two decades on the continent or to believe that the outcomes always reflected the genuine wishes of the electorate.
The point that I am trying to underscore is that in Nigeria, politics has never been accepted as a game where for every winner there must be some losers. I cannot remember any election where the defeated politician willingly conceded defeat and openly accepted that the process was fair. This is a challenge we have to confront if we must sustain and deepen our democracy.
Never at any point in our history has there been as much interest in any elections as there have been in the current exercise but I worry about the expectations which can easily be classified into two: One, there are those who harbour hope that these elections be free, fair and transparent and be seen to be so not only by Nigerians but by the international community regardless of who the winners are at both the federal and state level. National pride is involved here and all Nigerians, whether at home or abroad, subscribe to this ideal even though many also have their caveats.
The second group comprises those who want “regime change” (a defeat of the incumbent) either at the federal or state level and don’t really care about the process that leads to such outcome so long as the end justifies the means. In this group are idealists who believe that given our attendant failings as a nation, transparent elections must necessarily lead to transfer of power among office holders at different levels and any outcome that does not satisfy such expectation must necessarily be a product of fraud. This thinking, however, presupposes that the choice of the average Nigerian voter would be conditioned by economic circumstances without factoring in sentiments like religion, ethnicity etc or even how the candidates are perceived.
Managing these diverse expectations in the coming weeks is the responsibility of the media and civil society which must be able to distinguish facts from fiction and should be fair and dispassionate enough to hold all politicians (regardless of their party affiliations) to the same standard of probity and accountability whether they win or lose.
The fact that must not be ignored is that elections, no matter how transparent such exercises are, do not necessarily approximate to democracy which, contrary to what most Nigerian politicians often glibly say when rationalizing electoral malpractices, is more than just a game of number: it is a process of inquiry by which consensus is formed for the advancement of society. That exactly is the message political office holders and those seeking to displace them have yet to imbibe which then explains why I am more interested in what happens after the polls than the outcome of the current rituals.
In his paper at Harvard I earlier alluded to, Ambassador Campbell had said of our country: “In too many ways, patronage/clientage networks continue to run Nigeria with little or no reference to the needs or aspirations of its citizens. It is true that the big men now run the country through civilian rather than military institutions. That is progress of a sort. But democratic sensibility still plays little role in governance. There continues to be little accountability of government at all levels to anybody. Very few Nigerians pay direct taxes of any sort. Instead of a government that taxpayers hold accountable, the president and the governors continue to distribute largess—based on oil and gas—to a favoured few.”
This exactly is the critical lesson embedded in the statement of withdrawal from the presidential race this week by Professor Pat Utomi wherein he said he would henceforth be committing himself to constitutional reforms and to building a new Nigeria. “Our country is not working and yet we can’t replace those who are failing the country.” He recommended that “we use what (General Yakubu) Gowon did in 1966, bringing Nigeria’s best into one serious government. This will provide us a foundation to finding lasting democracy’’.
Two recent happenings bear clear testimony to Utomi’s prognosis and the efficacy of his recommendation. One, President Goodluck Jonathan has just signed into law a minimum wage of N18,000 which ordinarily should have earned him some applause. But the president had to assent in secret to protect the states where many are currently spending about 80 percent of their statutory allocations from the federation account on wage bills. The implication is that even if some of them devote their entire allocation to workers’ salary, they will still be unable to pay the approved minimum wage. And we are talking about only $120 per month for a Nigerian worker.
Yet in the same country, as a Special Adviser, my official take home pay per month was about N1.2 million ($8,000) which in itself was a small fraction of what a member of the National Assembly earns. The bigger scandal is that the total national wage bill for political office holders at the federal, state and local governments (according to a figure from the Revenue Mobilization Allocation and Fiscal Commission I once saw) is N1.3 trillion per annum, a sum more than twice the federal government’s capital vote for any given year. When you consider the fact that it is out of that small capital vote that you have corruption and associated leakages, then it is easy to understand the gravity of the problem we face as a nation.
The second issue is the current controversy between the National Assembly and the executive over the recently passed 2011 appropriation bill which the Finance Minister, Mr. Olusegun Aganga, says is not implementable. The National Assembly (as usual) is raising its own budget from N111.23bn to N232.73bn (about 110 percent increase) but the critical issue is that even the proposed executive budget of N4.22tn we are talking about (a substantial part of which is expected to be borrowed to service recurrent expenditure) is just about $28 billion for a nation of over 150 million people!
The point being illustrated here is that even before we factor in corruption which remains a challenge in all strata of our society, we are a very poor nation notwithstanding our enormous potentials which cannot be located in oil but rather in the latent capacity of our people. What this then translates into is that the current campaign should have been woven around the issue of productivity yet there has been no real debate or any form of serious contestation of ideas about where we are going as a nation and how to get there.
While we cannot advance to the future using the template of the past, our politicians have been promising the same things we keep hearing at every election season: free education, health care services; affordable housing; job creation, etc without telling us where the money to execute those lofty ideas will come from. Since campaign promises must necessarily be tempered by available resources, it is evident that those who aspire to lead us have consistently refused to sit down to reflect on our problems with a view to proffering practical solutions that would make demand not only of them as leaders but also of us as citizens.
All said, however, it is very important that the 2011 elections which begin today be transparent, free and fair. But much more important still, it is my hope that whoever is elected president next week will bring on board the best and the brightest of our people both at home and in the Diaspora to trigger the much-needed transformation of our country as so eloquently suggested by Professor Utomi.
* Adeniyi is a Fellow at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University and author of a forthcoming book on the Umaru Musa Yar’Adua Presidency
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