Making the elections issue-based
Electoral politics is the kernel of democracy but periodic elections do not constitute the essence and most important thing about representative democracy. In Athenian democracy the electorate was severely restricted
Electoral politics is the kernel of democracy but periodic elections do not constitute the essence and most important thing about representative democracy. In Athenian democracy the electorate was severely restricted to male citizens and did not extend to minors, women, slaves, the poor and the infirm who could be influenced. It was strictly a matter for active citizens and because there was no standing army, the citizens must be ready to defend the city if it was attacked. In Sparta, another important Greek city state, citizenship was based on citizens’ army. It was an armed citizenry that marked the difference between Athenian democracy and the city of Sparta.
The typology presented by these two Greek states has influenced the development of democracy up to the present time. Historians wrongly compared imperial Germany (Kaiserlichen Deutschland) with Sparta while alluding to Great Britain as modern Athens. The comparison is overdrawn. It is true that the German state of Prussia because of its location developed the tradition of armed state in order to secure itself in a potentially insecure environment surrounded by Slavic people like poles and Russians, but Prussia is and was not Germany although there is the general feeling of Germany was prussianised in the sense of the founding king being compared to a drill sergeant. The process of German unification in the 19th century was through a policy of “blood and iron” as described by its founding chancellor, Otto Von Bismarck. On the other hand, Britain’s democratic system went through a gradual process of election reform beginning in the 19th century by the passing of the “Great Reform bill” of 1832 which enfranchised property owners but not the vast majority of the people.
In other words, British democracy was the rule by the middle class until the end of the First World War when universal suffrage was extended to the working class and women on the grounds that their war efforts deserve to be recognised. In other words, universal suffrage is new and not automatic as citizens in Africa and Asia have come to believe.
The concept of armed citizenry was first developed in revolutionary France in 1789 where as a result of siege of the country by the rest of Europe trying to put out the embers of revolution, French people were given the chance to defend their country against monarchical Europe. Since then, the idea of the citizen army took roots in France and spread to other parts of the world that citizens must earn their citizenship by being prepared to defend it in times of danger. This concept of citizen army has been used to inculcate patriotism in countries previously divided along racial, class and ethnic or tribal lines. This idea has been an instrument of citizenship in countries like the USA and the former Soviet Union and new countries in Africa and Asia. Its limitation has been due to educational backwardness and the economy in third world countries but the concept has been well adopted and largely forms the basis of national service schemes in many developing countries where young graduates of different and varying academic backgrounds are made to serve their countries in the educational and agricultural development after basic military training.
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We have inherited in the developing countries programs that have taken a long period of gestation in many countries and we can only make or mar them in our implementation. One of these programs is electoral process. The challenge of elections in Africa is that the issues before the electorate are usually time dependent. When we were fighting to extricate our countries from British or French imperialism, the message was straightforward. It was sometimes through the ballot. But it was not always so. In territories affected by settlerism particularly in Southern and Maghebian Africa, it was through the bullets of armed revolutionary cadres because the settlers did not want to concede democratic rights of representation to the vast majorities of Africans. Victory was always achieved by the larger majority who were fighting for a just cause but it was never easy. It required independent African countries contributing huge amount of money which they could hardly afford to the efforts of those fighting to be free but it was always worth it.
This writer saw the legacy of the confrontation between the forces of indigenous Africans and white settlers in Namibia and Angola in the bones and skeletal remains of humanity in the grassland of Quito Cana Valle. Elections were not the rule after victories on the battlefield but after independence, elections have been held and the issues were mainly that of sharing the wealth of the countries which were still lopsidedly in the hands of those settlers who remained. The issues centred around socialism and redistribution and capitalism and property rights in a world dominated by great capitalist countries in Europe and America which were ready to protect their kith and kin in independent Africa. The issues were complex and complicated by the greed of indigenous leaders who walked into the shoes of wanting to become native capitalists. These kind of issues are not limited to post-independence Africa alone; they dominate to a certain extent, politics in South Asia and South East Asia but complicated by race, caste, religion, class and ideology which in many cases are more deep rooted than in Africa.
To round up this peroration, it is useful to concentrate on electoral politics in Nigeria and find how different or similar they are to politics in other climes. We always think things are vastly different in other lands but they are not. Politics is about power and the struggle for power is the same everywhere. Politicians would use anything that is advantageous to them to corner and win power. In Nigeria, politicians play up the ethnic and religious and language divide with much exaggeration. We are lucky in Nigeria we don’t have the issue of settlers until nowadays when the Fulani group are being seen as extraneous to the environment after many of them have been here for centuries and have intermarried so much that except in rare cases are undistinguishable from the other indigenes. But religion has become too difficult to overcome. It is even dividing sects of the same religion, for example, Shiites and Sunnis, Catholics from Protestants and Pentecostals. There was a time in Igboland where Catholics would not vote for a Protestant and candidates for elections were chosen with this distinction in mind. In Yorubaland where Muslims and Christians of different hues jostle for electoral victories, somehow religion does not seem to play a role but how long will this unexplainable liberalism last? In the Middle Belt of Nigeria, religion plays a big role in public perception of who is acceptable and who is not. Religious sectarianism among Muslims of different tariqa is not generally played up but in a time of fierce competition anything goes so to say especially since politics is about sharing the spoils of war in a country which is very poor. What one should expect to dominate our politics are the issues of insecurity, infrastructural development, availability of water and electricity, provision of educational and health facilities and employment. Unfortunately all these are subsumed under tribal affiliation and coalitions. The issue of economy and financial stability which should occupy the centre are not given the primary position they should occupy.
One hopes this coming election, both national and state, would be elevated to the level of the candidates’ performance history and who would be best for Nigeria and the states and local governments they are bidding to represent.
From its performance, the Tinubu government has discharged its mission of rescuing the economy and stabilising the national currency. Its performance on road infrastructure is exemplary. If it manages to finish the arterial roads it is constructing from Lagos to Calabar and from Sokoto to Badagry, it would be difficult to dismiss it as not performing. Its fight of insecurity is not worse than previous governments and this can be improved upon during its second term. Its educational policy of establishing again more tertiary educational institutions needs to be interrogated. I do not support establishment of universities and polytechnics as democracy dividends and I have been writing against it since Jonathan on the basis that our financial situation cannot sustain the policy. Tinubu’s policy on decentralisation of policing, regionalisation, location of training institutions for the military and police and in funding of local governments deserves commendation and encouragement. If Nigeria was made up of one ethnic group, there would have been no competition in 2027 but since politics in Nigeria is seen from the prism of tribe, we have become blinkered by forces which have made it impossible for us to recognise what is in our national interest.
The task of building a nation from this plurality of ethnic groups in 19th Europe of Italy and Germany led to adoption of a policy of blood and iron in Germany and il Risorgimento in Italy to develop a mass movement to drive a national movement to force the masses of the people to realise what was in their own interest. The problem here is that there are too many vested interests interested in perpetuating the forces of division in our country.
