Ayo Adeseun, the former chairman of the Committee on Appropriations in the House of Representatives, very recently reminded those who are quick to malign the nation’s selfless public servants as thieves that “democracy is very expensive.” Just how expensive we are currently being reminded anew by the unfolding scandal of billions embezzled, misappropriated, mismanaged, misapplied (where is Rear-Admiral Augustus Aikhomu to avail us of his rich vocabulary for theft of public funds?) by the ex-speaker of the self-same house, Dimeji Bankole.
Ayo Adeseun, the former chairman of the Committee on Appropriations in the House of Representatives, very recently reminded those who are quick to malign the nation’s selfless public servants as thieves that “democracy is very expensive.” Just how expensive we are currently being reminded anew by the unfolding scandal of billions embezzled, misappropriated, mismanaged, misapplied (where is Rear-Admiral Augustus Aikhomu to avail us of his rich vocabulary for theft of public funds?) by the ex-speaker of the self-same house, Dimeji Bankole.
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And the Right(eous) and Honourable Adeseun is right: the cost of “democracy” in Nigeria can be computed only in billions or multiples of millions. So, for instance, ex-speaker Bankole now faces a sixteen-count charge of corrupt enrichment to the tune of N894 million. Note, however, that there is the separate and far more odious matter of a N10 billion “personal loan” that the Right (eous) and Honourable ex-speaker took from the United Bank for Africa. Using — and here’s where the greater odiousness comes in — the treasury of the House as collateral security!
A personal loan! Whatever home improvement scheme, school fees or sundry private needs of democracy requiring such a colossal sum by the ex-speaker were will be disclosed in due course. Yes, democracy is not cheap, says the Rt. Hon. Adeseun. And not surprisingly, he was responding to the annoying belief by the overwhelming majority of his fellow countrymen (who, by the way, live below the poverty line), that Nigeria’s legislators earn criminally bloated salaries. Well, the people of Oyo who re-elected Adeseun, this time to represent them in the Senate, must know something about the cost of democracy — in naira and in “sorrow, tears and blood,” to fetch a phrase from Fela. After all, isn’t that the state where one Lamidi Adedibu had a direct charge on the treasury? And when a governor dared to put a stop to the daylight robbery, the “strongman” made strong by the arms and loyalty he could buy with stolen money, unleashed mayhem, thereby ensuring that the state paid him what in effect became “protection money?”
Yes, like unto mafia dons we give all we have and even borrow to be allowed to live on the land. The trouble with the Rt. Hon. Adeseun’s attempt to mask this sordid truth is that Adedibu, his “godfather” in the organised crime business called the legislatures and governments (local and state as well) of Nigeria, would make no such pretences. So for “cost of democracy” he would call the thing its proper name: “amala politics,” even if his brand of amala tended to cost more per ounce than gold-dust! Consequently, even though it has been pointed out over and over again to the likes of Adeseun and Bankole, we must nevertheless repeat it ad nauseam. That by their reckoning, democracy in Britain (home of the parliamentary system) and the United States (which enriched the concept through the notions of separation of powers and freedom of speech) would be forbiddingly expensive. And that being far richer than Nigeria, the longevity and complexity of their systems aside, their legislators and top functionaries, and not Nigeria’s, would be the highest paid in the world. But apparently, legislators in those two countries do little or nothing; certainly not the kind of “quality work” or “oversight” functions too intricate and costly to be recorded that Nigerian representatives and senators slave over daily. Or, perhaps, Britain and the United States simply do not know what democracy is. And if they do, are just not “willing to pay for it,” the penny-pinching lovers of tyranny that they are!
According to the Rt. Hon. Adeseun, then, the arraignment of the Rt. Hon. Bankole (honour to whom honour is due) would be one more instance of that malevolent streak in us to make a “whipping-boy” of yet another honest servant of the public good. But he needn’t worry. The trial will be open and with millions and billions, even a whipping-boy should be able to retain the kind of lawyers that can convince a judge — never mind the public — of the cost of democracy. For example: N100 million for 100 bags of rice at the cost of N1 million each; N500 million for 50,000 yards of aso ebi at N100, 000 per yard; N150 million for 30,000 exercise books at N50,000 per copy, etc., etc. Easy to see how quickly a billion goes by doing just constituency work alone! And who can deny that the genuine “product of the expense” is the “dividends of democracy,” a term that the Rt. Hon. Adeseun, rather sadly, forgot to use? And that it is this great good, rather than the small matter of astronomical salaries and allowances — which, truth be told, amount to underpaying the right honourables — that we “should focus on?”
As I followed the cat-and-mouse game that the Rt. Hon. Bankole waged with the EFCC before finally “allowing” himself to be arrested, I realised why I was unable to summon any passion for the just concluded elections. Despite the many forebodings of an unprecedented electoral Armageddon, something in me knew that we would do no worse than 2007. As a country, we have perfected the art of living on the precipice. Whenever the political equivalent of an earthquake or storm threatens to tip the country over and into the abyss, we would recoil just enough to maintain our dangerous perch. So it was when the fledgling nation threatened to split into two halves if the date of independence was to be “now” rather than “as soon as practicable” because one half wasn’t ready for self-governance. So it was that when the massive denials and repressions that eventually led to independence a few years later bubbled to the surface and civil war broke out, we retreated in just enough time from the abyss. There have been lesser quakes and storms than those of 1956 and 1967-70, perhaps the most worrisome being the threat of excision of the far northern states by Major Gideon Orkar and his co-putschists of 1990; the annulment by General Babangida of the 12 June 1993 election of M.K.O. Abiola, including the awful events that led to his death in prison; the judicial murder in 1995 of Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni 8 leading to armed insurrection in the Niger Delta together with its implications for the booty of oil revenue that underwrites the Rt. Hons. Adeseun and Bankole’s expensive democracy; and the ironic sense of marginalisation openly expressed by the north after the 2011 election, in sympathy with the radical and separatist Islamic ideology of Boko Haram.
It seemed clear to me that we would once again stir and shift just enough to avoid tumbling into the abyss. In any case, so dire was the situation that the ruling clique which profits most from the maddening status quo had little choice. Moreover, an anxious “international community” was ready to endorse the results if the perfidy this time showed an “improvement” on 2007. And once we had again avoided the plunge, we could resume our treacherous perch to await the next quake or storm. As for getting away altogether from the brink of disaster and the punitive, pauperising cost of democracy — say by way of a sovereign or any other sincere national conference through which we can salvage the nation by restructuring the polity and drawing up articles of association true to the spirit and letter of fiscal federalism? Who needs that when we have an expensive democracy to run!
*Ifowodo teaches poetry and literature at Texas State University in the United States.
© Ogaga Ifowodo
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