My writings usually take some time to mature. I just boil the water and continue to add the ingredients until the dish is ready. The period to maturity depends on circumstances. The article on the options for Nigeria took a year; that on Achebe is now more than a year and it is still on the burner; the treatise I am planning on Sanusi has been on fire since God knows when and I only stoked the fire when he was suspended and added more ingredients when they ‘quarantined’ him in the Emirs palace. This article has been cooking since the Adamawa imbroglio and I was already about to serve the dish when, last week, Col. Umar spoke of Legislative Despotism. He spoke a part of my mind except that he limited it to Nasarrawa State. Legislative Tyranny is the political ebola ravaging the Nigerian political culture and process today: it has no cure and once it starts, it spreads like wild fire. We shall come to that shortly
In the last three years, I have fallen in love with the Economist’s annual publication previewing the year to come. That was where I read about the annual wife-carrying championship in which men race with their wives on their shoulders and the winner’s prize is his wife’s weight in beer! In the World in 2014, Phillip Cogan warns that democracy is under threat and that there is an urgent need to reform it( Revolting Voters, p25). He recalls that this is a big year for democracy with elections in India (800m voters) Brazil, Indonesia, USA(mid-term) and EU(parliamentary) but that the dwindling voter turnout( from 70% in 1970 to 70% in 2011) will continue. This is because voters are becoming more disillusioned with politicians, whom they voted for to bring prosperity but they are rather offering diets of austerity, high unemployment and haircuts on social benefits. This is irrespective of which party is in power because the voters have moved from political right to the center and from the center to the left.
Other reasons why people are disillusioned with politicians include the tendency for politicians to outsource power to technocrats like unelected central bank governors whose words move global markets and who are(or who think they are) more important than elected presidents (I don’t know whether he had Sanusi in mind!); subservience of national laws to European Union laws and making Brussels a clearing house for almost everything; and the tendency for global organizations like IMF and WTO to overrule national governments. You recall our recent brush with FIFA! Just last week, Segun Odegbami was wondering aloud whether laws of a private international organization to which a country belongs should be superior to the laws of the country itself( Nigerian Football Crises, Guardian, 9/8/14, p62).Voters thus feel that their votes now count for little in affecting policy directions. Furthermore, some problems are global in nature (like climate change and tax evasion) and it is thus difficult to reconcile local decisions and preferences. The war on terror has also short circuited certain fundamental futures of liberal democracy like freedom of speech, movement and association, and fair trial.
After looking at these reasons why people in the developed climes are losing faith in democracy, I laughed. They are like those who complain bitterly that they have no shoes because they have not seen those who have no legs! What would they do or say in an environment when politics is absolutely monetized (raw cash and carry affair), where the voters and citizens are alienated from the process and treated as servants by those they elected, where the constitutional provision of immunity has encouraged impunity, where the electoral system and institution is weak and open to abuse, where there is poor or non-governance at various layers of government, and where there is an ever-widening gap between the leader and the led and where very often, the votes are not counted and they do not count?
These are some of the challenges of the political process in Nigeria and people have actually lost faith in politics, politicians and democracy. But the greatest scourge facing the political system in Nigeria is the tyranny of the legislature. Democracy is based on three arms of government so as to ensure checks and balances. But in the Nigerian type of democracy, there are cheques,(so as to generate the Ghana-must-go bags of cash) but there are no checks and balances. The legislature is the lord and master and is able to tyrannise the executive, the judiciary, their members and the citizens! How can tyranny coexist with democracy? Who will save us from legislative tyranny?(Continues)
Ik Muo
