Elections As Albatross Of Nigeria Politics (1)

ELECTION or the act of voting by the electorate to chose those to occupy positions of authority in a political entity is the major pillar on which participatory democracy stands, not only because it affirms the supremacy of the choice of the majority, but also for being the only process that the people, the strongest point in the democratic chain, actively participate in order to amplify the very essence of modern governance.

   It is during the period of elections, in a functional democracy, that the social contract between the government and the governed, are either renewed or reversed to create way for the collective aspirations of the population through the provision of choice and ability to express same in an atmosphere that is free, fair and devoid of intimidation or manipulation.

   In the advanced democracies of the world, the periodic opportunities for the electorate to participate directly by pronouncing their preference through the ballot, is always a time to further entrench the sovereignty of the people and strengthen the resolve of the country to forge ahead in the task of providing acceptable socio-economic direction for the population in a secured environment.

   But rather than being the force to bind the country together in one collective aspiration to charge elected leaders to live up to people’s expectations, elections in Nigeria have oftentimes exposed the weaknesses in the polity and the selfish determination of the political class to swim against the tide of popular wish to the detriment of all the advantages that democracy could offer.

   During election periods in Nigeria, especially lately, when the stakes have risen much higher with the high level of corruption and too much pecuniary attractions to political offices, the wheel of governance always grind to a halt and all the energies of state are directed towards rewarding the few to the detriment of many. 

   Ordinarily the power of incumbency is a double-edged sword that can be used to showcase competency and commitment or be a destructive factor for a non-performing government. But in Nigeria, incumbency is referred to as the ability of the sitting administration at all levels of governance to manipulate the process by spending state resources and using state machineries, including the cohesive powers to bulldoze their ways and cow the opposition and the population to submission, thereby destroying the credibility of the democratic process.

   Therefore, instead of providing opportunities for progress, elections in Nigeria, right from the period of political independence when the foundation of nationhood was being laid, have become a nightmare, an albatross of sort on the neck of participatory governance that always draw the hands of the clock backwards.

   In Nigeria’s journey towards nationhood, election periods have almost always become periods of apprehension when the very fabric that bind the country together are stretched to the limits, as if the nation was going to fall over from the edge of the precipice on which it precariously hung.

   Although the faltering steps that were characteristics of the early years of independence showed the teething problems of a people from diverse cultural backgrounds learning how to live together as a free nation, the general elections of 1964 triggered a chain of reactions that led to the truncation of democracy in 1966 and eventually to a debilitating 30-month civil war that actually cracked the very foundation of the country, such that even today, 45 years after the end of hostilities, its echoes still reverberate within the polity. 

   That 1964 elections exposed the wrong side of Nigerian politicians in their quest for unbridled powers through the subversion of the wish of the majority of the people and this culminated in the rebellion of the West, during which attempts by the central government to clamp down on opposition and manipulate the system further exasperated a people that had enjoyed a level of regional autonomy in a federal system, thereby plunging the entire country into a crisis that the politicians could no longer manage.

   The first 13 years of military rule, a direct result of the bungled elections of 1964, completely destroyed the country’s federal arrangement and reduced a democracy that should by that time be at the stage of vibrancy, to one of pyramidal military structure where the very essence of representative democracy was substituted for dictatorship of a few jackboots shouting orders over a submissive people.

   By the time the country went back to civil rule in 1979 and changed the system of governance from the British Parliamentary to the American type of executive presidency in order to strengthen government, the crisis of elections, like a genie, reared its ugly head again and in the 1983 exercise, the fiasco of 1964 was repeated especially in the South-West, which incidentally was the major theatre of the earlier unrest, resulting in another round of military incursion in politics.

   The tortuous journey embarked upon by the military in the deceitful attempt to hand over power culminated in the 1993 crisis which was caused by the annulment, without a just cause, of the June 12 presidential poll adjudged by many as the freest and fairest of all electoral contests conducted in the country at the time, also showed how mismanagement of elections have become the major bane of Nigeria’s march towards nationhood.

   Like a cat with nine lives however, the country managed to retrace its steps from the precipice and by 1999, another round of democracy was introduced, which the nation is currently trying to bring into perfection, but in the 16 years of this dispensation, the dark ghosts of election mismanagement still haunts the land with the threat of destroying whatever gains may have been recorded in the efforts at entrenching democratic rule.

   In the country’s odyssey through the election years, one factor that stood clear is that the possibility of crisis are always higher when an incumbent administration is organising a transition poll in which the sitting head is a contestant thereby calling the integrity of the organisers to question.

   All the relatively-peaceful exercises, the 1979, 1993 and 1999 polls that were conducted by the military, are considered less stressful than the ones conducted in 1963, 1964, 2003 and 2007 when partisan incumbent administrations took charge of election administrations, attesting to the fact that personal interests and intentions of manipulations are potent factors responsible for the country’s political crisis.

   For instance, all the successful political engineering and electoral experiments of 1993 and the commitment of the average Nigerian voter to show deep commitment to the unity of the country by not voting along religious, ethnic or regional lines and the giant strides to achieve a democratic polity, were thwarted by the manipulations of a few. 

   More than three decades later, Nigerians are back to the level where base sentiments are being used to divide them in a most vicious way that shows that politicians in their quest for power, using the instrumentality of electioneering, are employing the weak links in the country’s unity to oil their own selfish agenda. 

   Characteristic of the Nigerian political space where there are more politicians who think about the next election than statesmen who should think about the next generation, individual selfish agenda are replacing national interests and corruption in high places, both moral and financial, are dictating the pace of the process.

   The ensuing decay has permeated all the layers of the society such that the beauty of choice in a democracy is being destroyed with victimisation through political hooliganism and financial inducements and where these are not possible or productive, outright manipulation of the system to produce unpopular winners to defeat the objective of representation are being embarked upon.

   It is in the light of these factors that many view the current attempt by the major stakeholders to, depending on which side of the fence the analyst is, either force the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to conduct an election it is not fully prepared for or instigate a postponement to buy time for some alleged rigging scripts.

   There is too much of desperation in the public space and the implication is that Nigeria is threatened.

   It is however obvious that the average Nigerian politician has not imbibed the spirit of democracy of which respect for the wish of the majority is most paramount and he is yet to exhibit commitment to national growth. This is the 2015 electoral stage and it is a painful reminder of the decades past, of which nothing was learned.