Nigeria:The Key Problem with our Democracy by  Engr. Beks Dagogo-Jack

Let me begin with a postulate :

“Any brand of democratic politics run on ethnic, religious sentiments & not built on known ideological differences in the political parties’ approach to unified national development will remain primitive and is not sustainable ”

Democracy as a social development phenomenon is well known and has its classical definition as government by the people , of the people & for the people.

Beyond this broad definition, in its truest form, democracy is actually supposed to be a government built on a constitution , which is a document drawn up through a series of conferences in which duly chosen representatives , through tortuous painstaking processes of very wide consultations , arrive at a consensus on the set of guiding principles, laws and statutes which shall legitimize and guide the conduct of politics , governance, development, equity , law & order and also provide protection for the fundamental rights of all persons subscribing to the document.

It can be easily deduced from the above , that the most critical foundational component of democracy is the series of extensive and intensive consultations with the people leading to the emergence of representatives being chosen & sent to the constitutional conferences from which the binding constitution of each democracy is derived and enacted. This is because the rest of the democratic institutions , the supporting public service institutions,  the tenets, practice & culture of democracy  & the efficiency of each particular democratic model in delivering the level of comprehensive development necessary for sustainable public peace , security and prosperity of the people , take their root from the nature of the constitution arrived at & by its very nature a constitution once duly adopted can become extremely difficult & cumbersome to fiddle with.

Accordingly, it is my humble assertion that this most sensitive , critical foundational building block of every democracy i.e the public debates and conferences leading up to the final constitution making conference cannot be treated lightly , rushed , stage managed , manipulated or mishandled without serious downstream consequences.

A major flaw in the progressing of our democracy in Nigeria since the return to civil rule in 1999 lies in the fact that the processes of the constitution making conferences leading to the making of the operating constitution fail to meet the minimum requirements in terms of depth and coverage for laying the correct foundation for the building of a sustainable democracy.

I say this for the following key reasons:

1. The preparations for the eventual convocation of the constitutional conferences, all of which took place under de facto military dispensations were inadequate, ill-conceived &  very snappy leaving very little space for quality free public debate , engagement, negotiating, mini referendums where necessary,  for the natural emergence of the broad tendencies of the different schools of thought and ideological lines on nation building , which ought to be evident  even before going into the actual constitution making. The absence of this level of detailed, adequate preparation , left the constitution making process & space  fully at the mercy of ethnic , sectional and religious forces & entrenched political merchants to take charge and  determine the outcomes in order to control the politics that would follow
2. More often than not, the key prime moving participants at these conferences are hand picked and chosen more for their procured media visibility as ethnic champions & their malleable nature than other more constructive qualifications , such as level of education, experience, vision, integrity, patriotism, etc .
3. There is above average suspicion that the military always teleguided & remote controlled the conference proceedings using the prime movers /principal actors at the conferences whom they hand picked and fielded.

I consider as concrete evidence of avoidable , unforced failure on the part of the architects of our current democratic template , that almost twenty years after the return to civil democracy, our politics is still driven by ethnic , religious, sectional and parochial instincts, with no hope in sight for eventual transition to a more progressive brand of politics driven by unifying development issues & ideologies.

If we had had the setting of the constitution making foundation right, by now we should be hearing less about protests of injustice on the sharing of revenue and patronage , the campaign for power rotation , the cries of injustice & marginalization in revenue distribution, the need for the devolution of power and even the ubiquitous calls for  restructuring & secession.

By now we ought to begin to see and feel the dominant  voices of between 2/4 ideological tendencies across the Nation, defining our political culture along different , yet fully defended publicly known positions on critical nation building issues including,  not limited to say :

1) Accelerated rural development/integration.

2) Universal access to health & social welfare.

3) Public sector limits in the market place.

4) Transparency , law & order

5) Anti Corruption.

6) Taxation & Revenue Mobilisation.

7) Agriculture

8) Industrialisation

I  dream of the day when our political field shall be made up of between 2/4 major political parties differentiated not on the basis of North, South, Christian , Moslem, Hausa-Fulani, Igbo, Yoruba, Ijaw, Tiv, Jukun, etc; but differentiated on the basis of the philosophy and principles of each political party, with distinguishing emphasis on how to deliver on key national development issues, such as the eight examples I enumerated above.

This will lead to a paradigm shift for the better as citizens would begin to vote more on issues  than along tribal, religious lines & citizens who voted on those issues will be better empowered to hold the elected to account, to the overall benefit of our Nation.

I firmly believe that the current political parties & the governments they produce at the three tiers,  all of which emerged from the aforesaid dysfunctional constitution making process are too severely handicapped to chart the right course for the evolution of a unified , sustainable, progressive national democratic culture . We can all choose to live in denial but the truth is known by all who choose to be honest.

I conclude by holding the position that the current practice of democracy in Nigeria  driven mainly by narrow, ethnic & primordial instincts,  rather than by a set of unifying national development issues & ideologies will continue to waste much of the Nation’s time and resources trying to overcome unending backslashes of one primordial centrifugal force after the other , in the process getting too severely weakened to develop the economy and deliver the quality of life to the people commensurate with the very high profile of natural & human resources.

Time to reset the foundation of our democracy !!

 

Engr. Beks Dagogo-Jack OFR, FNSE, FNIM