Tick, tock, tick, tock. It is the sound of the grand father clock hanging on the wall in the family living room. Its daily purpose is to remind us that each tick and each tock draws people and nations to their dates with destiny. It may be a job interview or a school admission interview or an election. The day of choice represents a water shed in the life of the individual.
As I listened to the clock this morning, my heart went to the 73 men who have a date with their political destiny twelve days as of this writing – February 16. On that day, 84 million Nigerians will troop to hundreds of polling booths throughout the country to decide who, among them, they prefer to occupy Aso Rock Villa as the leader of the most populous black nation in the world. On that day, they will put their fate and the fate of the country in the hands of just one man out of the 73 men. On that day the political ambition of the other 72 men will be put out to dry in the sun of failure or rejection or a combination of the two. It is the way the democratic cookies crumble.
As I listened to the clock, my heart also went to the nuances of democracy. They fascinate me. Democracy is the only form of government that recognises the people as the repository of power. The NPN slogan in the second republic captured it as: power to the people. The constitution gives them that power. It is also right to see it as power from the people. Democracy empowers the low and the lowly to decide how far men and women can climb the totem pole of political power. I can think of nothing more fascinating than the lowly market women roasting yams or corns by the road side in our towns and cities; the truck pushers, existing on the edge of life; the reckless okada riders who value life not at all; the peasant farmers doing what their fathers and forefathers did to feed the nation; the fishermen in the near inhospitable creeks of the Niger Delta and, of course, the night soil men who are empowered by the letter and spirit of a constitutional government to decide the political fate of the rich and the powerful men and women among us.
It is both strange and funny that the men and women who have no power are the same people empowered by democracy to give power to the rich and the powerful. In which other form of government would you find the powerless giving power to the powerful?
No prize for the right answer. Think of it. President Muhammadu Buhari is one of the most powerful men on earth. Millions of us hang on his every word because whatever he says and whatever he does would make for a better life or worse life for some of the people for either some of the time or all of the time. Our fate and the fate of our dear country is in his hands. He can make the poor rich and the rich poor.
Yet see what this man must contend with to retain his power. This powerful man can only secure his legitimate right to continue to occupy the villa that is every body’s envy, only on the consent of the aforesaid market women, the truck pushers, the okada riders, the peasant farmers, the fishermen and the night soil men. He has to beg them; he has to plead with them; he has to cajole them and he has to dangle before them tonnes of promises of ending their lives of hard scrabble and handcuffs for treasury looters. Is the humbling of the powerful? No. It is the peculiar nature of democracy to locate power in the unlikely bosom of the powerless.
Democracy also survives on some grand illusions. It assumes that through the instrumentality of an election, the people make free, fair and rational choices. In other words, that the people are sufficiently and properly informed about what is at stake for the country and its people each election season and, therefore, have the capacity to reason and choose the best among the good men and women who seek to offer their services to the people. It always seems to me that this is one of the weaknesses of democracy. Rational choices are made by educated and informed people. The rabble can make choices that hardly qualify as rational. Far be it from me to be rude, but I wonder if you too wonder about on what the poor and the illiterate would base their choice of a better candidate from, in this case, 73 presidential candidates?
In the theoretical world of politics, the people are free to freely make their choices among the contestants. But in the practical world of politics, no such free choices exist. The emphasis on free and fair elections is to suggest that the process owes its success to how fairly and freely the people are allowed to perform their civic duty of casting their votes. But in truth every choice is a product of a number of variables and influences – money, reach, ethnicity and religion. The wind is always at the back of the people. Choices not truly free. They are coloured by the said variables.
We are made to believe that in a democracy, the people put in power are their servants, not their masters. They are there to serve the people; not the people to serve them. Given that they live in fortified mansions and drive us off the road each time they drive by, it is difficult to picture leaders as servants. Former governor of Niger State, Dr Babangida Aliyu, tried to give a refreshing take on this by choosing not to be called a governor but the chief servant of the people. But I suppose it did not occur to him that by giving himself the top position in the hierarchy of servants he forfeited the right to be thought of as someone attending to the wishes of the people in a lowly servant position. His excellency trumps his servitude, I think.
As I listen to the clock, I think I can also hear the anxieties of the 73 men in their heart beats. My heart goes to them. I know that sleep has progressively deserted them. Each of these men has spent a fortune. The richer each man is, the more he has spent in the urgent task of persuading the people. In my Agila culture, the money a man spends to be elected chief is refundable from those who deny him their vote. But in democratic elections, there are no refunds. What is spent is spent. The posters and bill boards artists and printers have been laughing to the banks. They and the news media will count their unbelievable blessings when all these are over. As the late American ace news caster, Walter Cronkite would say, that is the way it is.
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