Jinadu: To Consolidate Democracy Our Politicians Must Learn To Manage Diversities

Adele Jinadu, professor of Political Science told GBENGA SALAU, that democracy is not growing because of the rentier cultural context of parties and politicians. 

Why is it so difficult for Nigeria to manage elections without controversies?

 THE explanation lies partly in the combination of the material and cultural context of party and electoral politics in our country. The material context is the rentier character of the Nigerian state, as the site for “booty” capitalism and for the application of force not only in political competition but also in appropriating surplus. The cultural context, arising out of the structural context, is the cultural and psychological environment, which encourages, even demands a zero-sum or do-or-die attitude, which drives electoral politics. 

  It is an environment, which has tended to engender the unwholesome combination of an anti-democratic political and legal culture. It is a context, which has historically served more or less to distort and undermine the normative requirements of ethics, accountability and transparency and the separation of politics from administration in public political life in liberal democratic theory, constitutional government and the rule of law. 

  Applied to competitive political and electoral politics in our country, the context partly explains why election reform measures, since 1976, have fallen short of guaranteeing the ‘ex ante indeterminacy’ of elections, namely the expectation that procedural certainty will ensure the substantive uncertainty of electoral outcomes. It is instructive in this respect that in its submission to the Election Reform Committee in 2007, the Nigerian Bar Association attributed the continuing crisis of electoral system in Nigeria to a cultural and legal framework that encourages and rewards impunity. It is because of the negative effect of the context that the Election Reform Committee Report attributed the sad history of electoral governance and elections in the country to such factors as the existence of weak democratic institutions and processes, negative political culture, weak constitutional and legal framework, and the general deficit of democratic culture among the electorate in the country. 

 Is it about the election Management Body?  

  It is partly about the administrative and financial independence of the electoral body in the country. In other words, it is also about the need to design and strengthen the independence of the country’s electoral bodies from our public authorities and from our political class. In this respect, we have made considerable progress since 2010, under the present INEC. Unfortunately, the embeddedness of INEC in the political thicket, characterized by a cut-throat, zero-sum attitude to electoral politics and shifting alliances without regard to ideological and programmatic considerations, together with the central role of INEC in umpiring the electoral contest for political succession, and the severe structural problem of underdevelopment in our country pose serious challenges for the independence of INEC. These are challenges, which require a multi-stakeholder approach and cooperation not always readily available to INEC, to lighten its burden and insulate it from efforts by the political class to frustrate its work. 

 How do the politicians, who are usually desperate contribute to this situation? 

  Two features of our party system readily come to mind, regarding this question. The first is the dispute within the political parties over internal democracy, particularly oligarchic tendencies within them, and zoning of elective public political positions along ethno-regional and sometimes religious lines. It underscores a lingering mutual distrust of domination among the ethnic and religious fractions of the political leadership of our political parties.     The second feature arises from the first one. This is that the salience of politicized ethnicity not only tends to create tension within and among the political parties but also constitutes a potential trigger of political and electoral violence, through reliance on ethno-regional vote banks by the major parties, and through contested ethno-regional zoning for party offices and elective public political offices. The sum total of these two factors is that the country’s party system, contrary to the expectations of the party reform of 1975-79 and 1987-89, has failed to provide the country with a mirror image of democratic politics and of what it takes to manage diversity, through credible elections, in a manner to consolidate democratic governance in the country. Instead of being a force for political stability, our political parties tend to be triggers of violent political conflict, diverting elections from being mechanisms for conflict and diversity management into being major precipitants of violence.

The election process cannot be complete without the electorate; do you think Nigerians have helped the election management body in conducting a free and fair?

  Nigeria’s experience with democratic elections since independence has been rather mixed. Although the country has managed to transit from one administration to another, hardly any election conducted in the country has been completely free of charges of irregularities, electoral malpractices, violence and various degrees of disruptions. The factors responsible for this state of affairs include, among others, the character of the Nigerian State as the arena for electoral contests; the existence of weak democratic institutions and processes; negative political culture; weak legal/constitutional framework; and lack of independence and capacity of the Election Management Bodies. 

  However, I think the answer to this question is Yes and No. There has been an awareness among the electorate since May 1999 that their votes count and we have seen here and there a groundswell of movement to protect the electoral mandate. But the other side is that much of this has tended to be episodic and confined to specific localities; with the result that much needs to be done to turn it into a coordinate national movement to protect the electoral process and ensure its sanctity. Too much room has been left to the political parties, all of whom have a vested interest in subverting the ex-ante indeterminacy of the electoral process; and all of whom mobilize their partisans to secure that end. There tends to be a sense of paralysis among the electorate generally that there is little they can do and effectively too to protect their vote. The current controversy over the PVCs, in my view, is to be understood primarily in terms of the prospects they offer for making the vote count and protecting electoral mandate.           

Which other stakeholders in the electoral process do you think are not playing their role well and why do you think so?

  The problem is not so much that other stakeholders are not playing their role well as that they should intensify their watchdog role in the governance process, insist on and demand from INEC and the political parties and public authorities an accountable and transparent electoral governance process. Election-related civil society organizations, such as the Alliance for Credible Elections and the Transition Monitoring Group must strengthen their advocacy and dissemination role, particularly in respect of voter education. Community and religious leaders can play similar role as well as professional bodies. Politics, electoral politics, in particular, must become everybody’s business as an investment in the future of democratic politics and development in the country. It must not be left in the hands of the political class, who have a conflict of interest in behaving otherwise than they currently are behaving.

What is the way forward?

   It is the civic duty of the electorate to stand up, insist on, and protect the integrity of electoral governance and of credible elections in the country. As a short-term measure, there must be popular demand for electoral reform along the lines charted by the Election Reform Committee—-there is so much outstanding from the recommendations of the Committee and the White Paper on the Report. In the medium to long term, I think we need to design and adopt a Neighborhood Watch Approach to electoral politics and elections in the country. If communities organize themselves to protect their property from thieves, there is no reason why, at the community level, where voting actually takes place at the ward level, the electorate cannot organize themselves to protect their vote from being stolen. This will be the supreme patriotic effort to assert the sovereignty of the people, and demand accountability from our public authorities, as provided for under Chapter 11 of our Constitution.