In the current campaigns by Nigeria’s activist advocates of “free, fair and credible” election in 2011, and beyond, there is one underlying assumption: that the enthronement of a government which represents the true choice of the people, through their votes, will begin the process of halting the decline to state failure, begin the return of the country to the path of democracy and democratic development, and begin the delivery of “democracy dividends” to the masses of the people. This proposition, which many people indeed take as axiomatic, requires an explanatory note: I use the notion “begin” in order to strengthen this proposition – for there are many politicians of both the Right, the Left, and the Centre, who swear that three transformations here listed as objectives of “free, fair and credible elections” will immediately and automatically follow such elections. The present article, and subsequent ones, will look a little more closely at this proposition.

I hope readers will appreciate the reasons for my starting this piece with the following caveat: I am a staunch believer in democracy and “free, fair and credible” elections – both philosophically for their own sake, and politically and ideologically as a means of empowering the working and toiling peoples, the “wretched of the earth.” And I am using the word “empower” in its strongest political and economic sense. The question for me is: How will “free, fair and credible” elections, together with their inexhaustible possibilities and potentials, lead to concrete and substantive improvement of the painful and frustrating human condition in Nigeria? In other worlds, what is the link between “free, fair and credible” election and popular empowerment – in the strongest sense of the term?

One strand of the answer is that there is a potential link but that this link will only be established if the “free, fair and credible” elections are genuinely so: in particular, if the elections are conceived and conducted in the context of our peculiar historical and existential circumstances. In other words, again, there is no “free, fair and credible” election in general. What is conceived and generally accepted as “free, fair and credible” election in a certain historical setting may fail to qualify as such in Nigeria. Just an illustration: However “free, fair and credible” the elections of 2011 may be, whoever may be appointed the election umpire, whatever the character and content of the Electoral Law and the revised Constitution, the class of Nigerians from which the victorious President will emerge has already been decided, and is known. One can in fact, proceed to list the personages from whose ranks the President will emerge: they are heavily “loaded” Nigerians with money – I mean real money and power; they are multi-billionaires (not just millionaires). And the multi-billions are counted in Dollars and other “Hard” currencies (not just in Naira).

I began with what was intended to be a caveat – to ward off a possible, though ridiculous, preliminary objection that “he is not a democrat.” I am, indeed, a democrat. But the caveat has now turned out to be a proposition that is hanging in the air. I intended to leave it like that – for now.
In what follows, and in succeeding articles in this column, I shall be making close references to the following heuristic publications which recently appeared in the Nigerian print media: Senators seek 100 per cent raise in quarterly allowance (ThisDay, Monday June 14, 2010); This can’t be right (Reuben Abati: The Guardian, Friday, June 18, 2010); Why corruption persists in Nigeria (Luke Onyekakeyah; The Guardian, Tuesday, June 15, 2010); Greedy federal lawmakers: How they milk the nation (TheNews weekly news magazine, Monday, June 21, 2010): Bankole: The embattled speaker of the house (Dapo Fafowora:The Nation, Thursday, June 24, 2010); and Jonathan and the specter of ethnic politics (Idowu Akinlotan: The Nation, Sunday, June 27, 2010).

Some concrete questions sprang to my mind after reading the ThisDay report and the opinion essays that I have listed: Can, and how would, “free, fair and credible” elections in 2011 resolve, or begin to resolve, the national (or ethnic) question in Nigeria – I mean this problem as articulated, not by “extremists”, “leftists” and “militants”, but by mainstream and establishment politicians themselves? Can, and how would, “free, fair and credible” elections in 2011 produce a Federal Government that could begin to attack the problem of corruption seriously, that is, from the roots – as proposed, through idealistically, by Luke Onyekakeyah? Can, and how would, “free, fair and credible” elections in 2011 begin to tackle, from the roots, what Reuben Abati in his lamentation called “capitalist greed” and which Dapo Fafowora and TheNews magazine illustrated, queried and denounced?

Furthermore: Can, and how would, “free, fair and credible” elections in 2011 begin to tackle the problem of mass poverty and unemployment with the resources that we actually have in this country and which, by the way, are actually owned or produced by the masses of our hungry compatriots? Can, and how would, “free, fair and credible” elections in 2011 enthrone, or begin the process of realising, what the elder statesman, Chief Anthony Enahoro, has called equitocracy (in combination which democracy) and which I believe Idowu Akinlotan was tangentially talking about?

I shall be looking at these questions, one by one, in subsequent articles, but for now, as background, let us take a glance at Nigeria of today. According to current estimates, Nigeria has a population of about 152 million, roughly divided equally between males and females. Seventy per cent of this, according to United Nations’ estimates, lives on less than one American dollar ($1), or one hundred and fifty naira (N150), per day per person. There are, of course, other social and economic statistics, but the two indices I have isolated – the population and the poverty level – are relatively verifiable by non-state actors who have the means, and can commit them to such a project.

The country is divided politically and administratively into 36 states and a Federal Capital Territory, each of which has a government with full-blown executive, legislative and judicial arms. The executive itself can be separated into the political institutions and the bureaucracy. Each state is further divided into Local Government Areas (LGAs). There are altogether about 774 of these LGAs, and each has a government whose executive – legislative arm is constituted by councilors who, except the Chair and the Deputy Chair, represents a council ward. Each of the councils is also heavily “governed” and bureaucratised.

Resting on top of the state and local government structures is a huge central administration called the Federal Government. The government has the traditional three “arms” – Legislature, Executive and Judiciary. At the centre of the Executive is the almighty President who is assisted by a large number of delegates called Ministers. Each of the President and his delegates, including the Vice President, has huge personalised bureaucracies – not the Ministers, Departments and Agencies (MDGs) – made up of Assistants and Advisers (special and ordinary, senior and junior). The President’s bureaucracy is called the Presidency. The Central Legislature, called the National Assembly, is, on the face of it, small in size: just 109 Senators and 360 members of the House of Representatives. But they, together with their counterparts at state and local council levels, consume – directly and indirectly, as salaries and as allowances, legally and illegally-more than what about 100 million Nigerians who live below the poverty level consume.
My question is: Which of our would-be Presidents, and what type of National Assembly, will be prepared to radically, indeed surgically, deal with this monstrosity and obscenity and begin the massive redeployment and redistribution of our national wealth and resources? This country needs more than “free fair and credible” elections.

Courtesy: The Guardian