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After civil rule crested in 1999, there was so much optimism among Nigerians about the future of democracy, having experienced two relapses to military dictatorship. Sadly, few years later, the ills of the past, namely, legislative gridlock, executive arrogation of power and the culture of impunity, corruption, profligacy etc., started manifesting. For those who have lived long enough, this was déjà vu. By 2003 and 2007, our politicians’ veracious appetite for violence in their quest for political power surpassed what happened in 1960s and 1980s. For this reason, Attahuri Jega classified them as “militicians” – a special breed of politicians – within our democratic space who believe that political power has to be secured by any means possible. Nigerians were presented with this episode by the APC in its ward congresses.
Over the weekend, Nigerians watched the militicians on rampage during the ruling party’s ward congresses which took place across the federation, and the party’s primary election in Ekiti state. Supposedly, this was the party Nigerians massively voted into office to steer it away from the “politics anxiety” which had stalled political and economic development to a state of political and democratic maturity in order to attain meaningful social progress. The violence unleashed by the APC militicians is now public knowledge. With what looks like an apocalypse before us, it will amount to sheer foolishness to be upbeat about 2019 general elections. While I was deeply disturbed about the political future of this country on account of the renewed political violence, I asked myself: must Nigeria go through this brutality again? I mean, I thought we have made incremental progress between 2011 and 2015, even though those elections were not entirely democratic!
While I asked myself that question, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt’s new book – How Democracies Die came to my mind. According to them, democracy does not endure because of a well drafted constitutional design because, this could be abused by the militicians who are good at circumventing institutional designs targeted at ordering and advancing the course of liberal political order. Therefore,what is written in the constitution is not good enough to guarantee democratic survival. Bastions of democracy like America and other established ones in the West have witnessed constitutional failures as a result of violent and intolerant behaviour on the part of political actors (originally called: militicians). In their analysis, democracies work better and endure when they are “reinforced by unwritten democratic norms”, namely: “mutual tolerance and “forbearance”.
In their view which I found rather persuasive, mutual tolerance is a situation where competing parties or candidates in an electoral competition see themselves as legitimate rivals, not foes. That is to say, regardless of howopposing candidates disagree with each other, they should recognize publicly that they are law abiding citizens who love the country equally; and they have the same constitutional right to compete for office. Secondly, institutional forbearance is the notion that political actors holding public office should soft paddle in exercising their institutional prerogatives. In other words, forbearance is the under-utilization of power by a president, governor, parliament and the like, by not using the letter of constitution as provided by law in ways that threaten democracy, and embracing the spirit of the constitution. That Nigeria’s electoral and governance spaces are constantly engrossed in crisis is because the militicians in these spaces have willingly refused to embrace the norms of tolerance and forbearance which serve as the “guardrails of democracy”. Both the APC as we have seen over the weekend, and the PDP in its previous activities and last convention are culpable. Haven’t these militicians learnt enough lesson? Will electoral reform save Nigeria from this brutality in every election circle?
Truth is, no matter the amount of time our policy makers invest in electoral reform and its implementation, it cannot deliver the desired result because of the total lack of tolerance and forbearance among the political class. Institutions do not drive themselves. Human beings drive institutions. And when they drive them to advance selfish interest(s) against public good, democracy will definitely be imperiled. That is the Nigerian experience since 1999.
Martin Ihembe
Ihembe is a Political Scientist with research interest in political development. He can be reached via 08023688848
