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Thursday, April 28, 2011

Slouching Toward Democracy: The Elections in Nigeria

Slouching Toward Democracy:  The Elections in Nigeria
 
By Paul Beckett
 
The Perils of Democracy
 
To title (and set) his 1958 novel Things Fall Apart, Nigeria’s great novelist, Chinua Achebe, drew on lines from the poem by William Butler Yeats which begins:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world . . .
And ends:    
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? 
​(“The Second Coming,” William Butler Yeats, 1920)
Nigeria is among the world’s most dangerous countries.  Nigeria has the seventh-largest population in the world (nearly 160 million), and that population is a potentially explosive mixture of peoples, regions, and religions – a mixture of almost infinite complexity.  The center’s holding (to paraphrase Yeats) has indeed been challenged throughout Nigeria’s 51 years of independence. At various times, Olusegun Obasanjo, Nigeria’s longest-serving head of state (sometimes military, sometimes elected) has compared his country’s potential for violence to cases like Bosnia, Rwanda or Burundi – but on a much larger scale.  
Nigeria came to independence two years after Achebe’s book was published with a British-style parliamentary electoral democracy in place.  Unsurprisingly, the country’s experience with democracy since has been rocky.  “Mere anarchy” (Yeats uses “mere” in the obsolete meaning of “pure” or “unmixed”) has frequently seemed close by.  
As Nigeria celebrated the 50th anniversary of its independence from Britain last year, the country had had elected governments for only about 20 years.  The other thirty were accounted for by a succession of military governments, each a bit more dictatorial (and corrupt) than the one before.  In its democratic interludes, it took Nigeria only about 40 years to get into its “Fourth Republic” (the present one); reputedly volatile France required about a century and a half to achieve the same.
Nigeria has spent enormous sums of money trying to create fair and transparent electoral systems.  Yet rare is the election that has not been condemned as false by the loser (often, by everyone except the winner!).  Over the 20-some years of democracy, vote-buying, thuggery, bribery, and ballot box-stuffing have been developed into high art forms.  Sometimes the ballot boxes are simply stolen.  Or, perhaps, stolen and stuffed.  Voter registration, a vast process usually commenced too late, has often verged on chaos (if not “mere anarchy”).  Polling station administration has usually seemed imperfect and sometimes much worse than that. Nigeria’s last round of general elections, in 2007, was condemned universally by observers as almost hopelessly flawed by violence, rigging and mismanagement.  (For one of the reports, go here.)
 
As we recommend democracy for all countries, we should be conscious that democracy can be dangerous in a country like Nigeria:  very dangerous.  Democracy has been a significant factor in Nigeria’s horrific communal clashes (stretching from the pogroms against the Igbos in the middle 1960s to the bloody clashes in the Jos area that are on-going now).  Scores and sometimes hundreds have been killed in violence in each national election.  
 
By its nature, then, Nigeria does not seem a natural case for Western-style competitive electoral democracy.  When I lived in Nigeria in the early 1970s, the number of separate ethnic groups was put at 250; the figure used now is 389.  (Imagine for a moment the French, German, British or American democracies functioning with 389 different national traditions and identities in play.)
 
Overlaying the ethnic mosaic are traditions of regional hostility (both great and small).  Since the 1980s, religion (Muslim or Christian) has become vastly more important as a basis for often violent conflict.  Access to education, and therefore literacy, varies widely through the country.  Finally, poverty, the national oil wealth not withstanding, is endemic, and wealth differentials are, well, worse than in the U.S.
 
Just as a reminder, Western-style democracy has generally flourished in – you guessed it! –Western countries characterized by a large middle class, high literacy, and a much higher degree of national integration.
 
In a sense, the puzzle is that Nigeria has tried so hard and persisted so long in the effort to make democracy work.  
 
 
The Effort to Create Democracy
 
But try they certainly have, in a creative, participatory, and deeply serious way which will surprise those who know Nigeria mainly for corruption and “419” email scams.
 
In the latter 1970s, after a failed First Republic and a decade of military rule, Nigerian military leaders and civil society intellectuals (academics, administrators, doctors, lawyers, journalists) put their heads together to try to figure out how Nigeria could be a democracy.  A kind of “great debate” occurred in a constitutional convention and through the media (it reminded yours truly of the Federalist Papers episode in our own history).  A constitution was designed in which electoral success went to the leaders and the parties who best reached across the old divides of region and ethnicity, while punishing those who waged ethnic or regional political warfare.  A principle of “federal character,”  which essentially means fair representation of Nigeria’s constituent regions and peoples, ran through the constitution.  (In some applications, it resembles American affirmative action practices.)
Thus, to illustrate with the presidential election (the one Nigerians care most about), to win a candidate must win by a majority of votes cast (so run-offs are likely), but also must receive at least 25% of the votes cast in two-thirds (24) of the 36 states in the Nigerian federation.  
Other features were requirements placed on the political parties to be truly national in scope, a powerful independent, non-partisan electoral commission to prepare and run the elections, and judicial review of challenges.
What is interesting is that, while Nigeria has had three constitutional revisions since the totally disastrous First Republic, the basic elements have carried through each one.  
As a distant and somewhat desultory observer, I have felt for some time, and feel more certain all the time, that Nigeria has been subject to a kind of creeping constitutionalism and a growing habit of democracy over more than three decades.  
 
The 2011 General Elections
 
This month Nigeria has completed a mammoth round of elections:  for the federal bicameral legislature (April 9), the federal presidency (April 16), and governors of the 36 states (April 26).  The scale of the exercise was enormous in every way (very much including cost which has been estimated at more than half a billion dollars).  Some 325,000 poll workers manned many thousands of polling stations scattered throughout a vast country where communications and transportation infrastructure remain limited.  Sixty-three political parties were registered; at the presidential level, 21 had fielded candidates.  (For more detail, go here.)
 
How did it go?  
 
The ominous precursors were there.  The elections, originally scheduled for December 2010, had to be pushed back twice.  As usual, registration was a last-minute achievement.  There were many problems with ballots, both their preparation and printing (they were complicated with many minor parties that had to be correctly listed) and ballot security.  There were many efforts to rig or otherwise falsify or even to derail the elections completely.  Just before the presidential election a vehicle traveling north was found to contain 100,000 ballots marked “tendered ballot papers.” Serious bombings occurred before and during the elections.  
 
Also very ominous was a spike in violence (or arbitrary arrest) directed against reporters.  This was reported by the international organization Reporters Sans Frontieres, which noted :
 
“Nigeria has one of the poorest media freedom ratings in Africa and is 145th out of 178 countries in the 2010 Reporters Without Borders worldwide Press Freedom Index.”
 
 
One could go on and on with such ominous reports.  But:  surprise!  
 
The Economist (London) almost gushed:  “Nigeria’s Successful Elections:  Democracy 1, vote-rigging, 0.”  They went on, “Gambling on the world’s most expensive voting system has paid off.”  
 
The leader of an international team of observers, Robin Carnahan of the (U.S.) National Democratic Institute, said the vote was “largely free and fair.”  
“There were a number of people in our delegation that observed the elections in 2007,” Carnahan said, “and they said they felt like there was a marked difference this year. That there was a determination on the part of the Independent National Electoral Commission to run a real election, [and] a free and fair election. There was determination on the part of the Nigerian people to participate in an election that really reflected their voice.”
European Union and Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) teams’ reports were similar, as was the verdict of the U.S. State Department.  
Sweet music!
But then the music ended.
Serious rioting broke out in most of the far northern states, with hundreds killed.  There were renewed bombings on the eve of the last set of elections for governor on April 26 (and they could not be held on schedule in at least two of the states).  Meanwhile, the major opposition candidate for President (Muhammadu Buhari of the Congress for Progressive Change party) and many others are charging (what else?) “massive rigging” that falsified the election.
 
The Balance Sheet
As the dust clears (and, as the bodies are buried), we see that the damage has been great:  more than 500 killed, many more wounded, much property loss, much personal displacement, much loss of personal sense of security.  The election and its aftermath have further exacerbated the dangerous combination of anger and fear at the Muslim/Christian interface, especially in the northern states.  
If the presidential election of Goodluck Jonathan of the People’s Democratic Party was generally peaceful and fair, as observers tell us, the results may still prove dangerous for the future.  Jonathan (Christian, from a southeast minority ethnic group) represented the dominant party (PDP) and his victory was expected by most.  He handily met the constitutional requirements for election taking nearly 60% of the popular vote, and winning 24 states outright.  Meanwhile, his principal opponent, Muhammadu Buhari (Muslim, Hausa-Fulani, from Katsina) swept the 12 most northern states, but failed to carry any states outside that group (including those that in past elections have tended to associate with the “far north”).
Thus, while Jonathan’s election complied easily with the constitutional requirements for national reach, paradoxically this presidential election seemed to result in a situation of stark regional, ethnic, and religious separation that we have not seen before.
 
Slouching Towards Democracy?
There were a number of special circumstances in the candidacy of Goodluck Jonathan and the opposition led by Muhammadu Buhari that are too complex to deal with here.  Yet, even with allowance being made for these, the 2011 elections are likely to be seen as a watershed in Nigerian politics.
Viewed in national political terms, the far north finds itself (temporarily, at least) in unprecedented isolation.  Over most of the previous half century, the Muslim (in ethnic terms, mainly Hausa-Fulani and Kanuri) far north (it was sometimes referred to as the Holy North in the old days) has generally provided the core political leadership for the rest of the huge area of the original Northern Region. During the first political decade, their dominance was absolute.  
And throughout the independence period the influence of the far north has been disproportionate at the national level, too.  Of the thirteen men who have headed the Nigerian government (military or civilian) since 1960 (see list here), eight have been northern Muslims (one other was a northern Christian).  Six of the northern Muslims have been from the core Hausa-Fulani or Kanuri states of the far north.  All four of the southern Christian leaders owed their original accession to accidental factors (Jonathan, the latest, became President unexpectedly in May last year after Umaru Yar’Adua (Hausa-Fulani, Katsina) developed a serious illness and finally died in office).  
Thus, the landslide election of Jonathan may mark a watershed event in the evolution of Nigerian politics.  The historic pattern of at least mild hegemony exerted from the far north may have largely run its course.
This assumes that Nigeria continues its “slouching” progress (borrowing again from Yeats) toward institutionalizing electoral democracy.  
Which in turn returns us to the question:  Why does Nigeria work so hard and so persistently to create a functioning, stable, permanent democracy?
The costs and dangers, after all, are great.  With the country’s complex ethnic makeup, and the now bitter relations between many Christian and Muslim communities, Nigerians know that they live over a political sea of magma that could, at almost any time, erupt.
Yet Nigeria persists in the effort, and, I believe, will continue to persist.  At the time that Nigerians were emerging from more than a decade of military rule in the latter 1970s, intellectuals advanced many ideas for a constitutional system that would work for Nigeria, not as one might want Nigeria to be, but as it is.  A number advocated indirect, or “guided democracy,” or a benign single-party system.  Ultimately, such compromises were rejected in favor of straight, unadulterated winner-take-all electoral democracy with competitive parties.  The preponderance of opinion was that Nigeria was too complex a country to function as a single party system, and their experience with military rule had convinced them that benign dictatorship never remains benign.  
One could say that Nigeria needs to be a democracy not in spite of its staggering complexity, but because of it.
 
Paul Beckett taught political science at Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria, Nigeria, from 1969 to 1976.  He is co-author of Education and Power in Nigeria and co-editor of Dilemmas of Democracy in Nigeria.
 

8 comments:

AMINA ADO said...

Very interesting article that will require time to digest. We indeed in unchartered territory. I sincerely hope and pray Jonathan has what it takes to govern Nigeria with all its complexities.

Muhammad Gombe said...

Absolutely nothing new, same yada-yada. Methinks the author should have gone ahead to profer solutions to the various issues he raised. And additionally were the elections won fair and square?

bala gidado said...

an exellent piece and vintage Becket.it aptly describe the political situation in Nigeria today.thank you Dr Tilde for availing us the opportunity to read this piece.

bala gidado said...

an exellent piece that is vintage Becket.it aptly describe the political situation of today's Nigeria.thank you Dr. Tilde for bringing this to our mailboxes

Michael Afolayan said...

I don't think Paul Beckett's crusade was to say something new, but to broaden the dialectic. If anyone should truly make a statement about democracy in Nigeria, Paul should, and perhaps if anyone's perspective should count or be taken seriously on this matter, Paul's should. I did not make this statement lightly; I meant every letter in it. I know Paul very well. I am familiar with his scholarship on, and domicile in, Nigeria. But even more so, I know the genuineness of his heart towards Nigeria. If Paul writes to say there is something to write home about the metaphoric "slouching Progress" of Nigeria styled democracy, maybe it is true. My only question is what, for God sake, would it take for this slouching democracy to stand straight and face the reality of the 21st century with confidence and unabated seriousness of purpose? It baffles any curious mind!

MISBAHU KATSINA said...

A FAIR ASSESSMENT. SHOULD HAVE PROFFERED HINTS OF WHAT NEEDS TINKERING IN NIGERIA'S DEMOCRATIC FUTURE, SUCH AS: Winner should not Take All, Ad-Hoc administration to organize elections, Ban Use Of State Resources In Campaigns, Use Of Physically Secured (Metal?) ballot boxes, Colour coded Ballots, Real Time Electronic Results Collation, Polling UnitTeams Of Security To Cordon/ensure ORDER, ETC

Nuhu Ibrahim said...

A very interesting and worrying article. The recent election has furthe brought about the division between the two major religions in Nigeria. i have the fear however there is a calculated design to edge out the muslims in Nigeria, which may not be outside the global post 9/11 global phobia of muslims. Comments on the net from both sides does not help matters, the gang star poltics of the biggest party in Africa PDP, has worsen the situation. Well, Nigeria is country of prayers, we keep praying the vulcnoe does not erupt.

GODSWILL IYOKE said...

The same talk couched in refreshing terms.Contrary to common notion Nigeria multi-ethnic and religious colors pose no problem at all. Our problem is our inability leadership to define leadership in the context of its purpoose: the provision of enabling environment for citizens to realise their individual wellbeing. This is achievable when the leadership pursues policies that meet needs that are common to all- creation of conducive economic and social environment for the empowerment of citizens. As long as our governance is centered on State control and distribution of resources fears and distrust will continue unabated. Not amongst Nigerians inter se, but amongst the elites who promote and exaggerate trivial issues like religion. South West Nigeria which comes easily as the most developed part of the Nigerian nation is so despite its oposition status in most part of nigeria's political history. It is a political region with visible religios divides, yet the issue of religion remains inconsequencial in leadership debates in consideration in that region. Neither the press or the people promote the sentiments of Faith when assessing leadership. It therefore amuses one when seeminly educated minds muse about any conspiracy to edge out a particular religion. What Nigerians need is the guarantee of a good market environment where they feel secure enough to eek a living for themselves. The market place is where we all live and desire to be; not in the Parliament or the Govt Houses.