A harvest of paradoxes

In a few days from now, Nigeria is scheduled to have General elections. The uncertainty accompanying it long caused many investors to hold back. And the misery in the land is palpable. Not long before, DRC (The Congo), had the first truly contested even if dispute elections since Patrice Lumumba was killed nearly 55 years ago.

Between Nigeria and DRC, if we believe the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation study of 2018, the residence will be located for 40 percent of the world’s poorest people, in not too long from now.
If this all be true, it seems fair to ask the question Is Democracy Making Life Better in Nigeria?
It is logical to expect that Government of the people for the people, by the people will produce policies and implement them with such passion that the best outcomes for the people will result. Yet the result from Africa’s turning to Democratic ways have not been flattering. Why is Democracy not enabling the “Great Escape” from misery and the inequality that defines life in a country with a fast-growing Private Jet market, but which has overtaken India as the biggest domicile for poor people on earth, Nigeria just having overtaken India on that unpleasant statistics frame, as the Brooking Institution announced in 2018.

My thinking on the growing poverty was provoked by a remark over heard at a recent wedding, that some of the poorest students on the University of Benin Campus in the 1980s captured the politics of Delta State in 1999. It was supposed to be an explanation of why things have not been done so well there. The poor exposure of the would-be leaders affecting their judgement in public life.
You would expect that the poor in power would act to eliminate poverty. So, why has a democracy that brought some of the excluded to limelight caused the marginalization of many more?

In some ways, it should not be such a surprise. The evidence was always there. Early 19th century French Think Claude Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850) argued in “The Law” in 1850 that politicians do not typically represent the public interest but a coalition of rent-seeking interest groups. What’s more, those who gain power use Laws to legitimize their desire for plunder. So the Law, instead of a shield, becomes a sword. He insisted that most men, when they can, wish to live and prosper at the expense of other men and will resort to plunder, the acquisition of gain without pain. Sounds like he anticipated Nigeria’s National Assembly and most holders of public office in Nigeria.

For Bastiat, as men will resort to plunder, whenever it is easier than work, and those who capture power tend to make the Laws, the Law instead of being an instrument of justice becomes the weapon of injustice. Legal plunder.

When the oppressed enter into power they either try to end lawful plunder or to share in it. Bastiat says “woe to the Nation when this latter purpose (sharing in legal plunder) prevails among the mass victims of lawful plunder”.

Sadly, the Nigerian story is of this desire to share in legal plunder. As the newcomers did not experience much of the higher sense of service and decency of the Nationalists who became the fathers of independence, their combination with the rump of the 1966 “soldiers of fortune” who became the champions of state capture made plunder scorched earth and left the experience with Democracy a race to the bottom and despair.
Even more unsalutory is the invasion of politics in Nigeria by cultists, conmen and the inadequately educated. In a way it brings alive Thomas Jefferson’s worry that “the two enemies of the people are criminals and Government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of constitution, so the second will not become the legalized version of the first”.

Unfortunately, constitutions in Nigeria have been far less successful than that of the United States of America. The result of unchecked legal plunder has slowed development and the advance of the Common Good.

The 2019 CVL Annual Lecture is to explore this complex but important phenomenon.
I have often said that I can never understand how politicians can see so much poverty and misery and comfortably “share the Gala and share the booze”. But I have recently come to the conclusion that the real reason legal plunder through politics persist in Nigeria and preserver’s in impoverishing the country and preventing it from claiming the promise of the dream of its founding Fathers are the educated middle-class people who see politics as the arena of low lives and joke about the goings-on thereon. Twitter, treating it as a low-grade spectator’s sport; the journalist who takes his “reward” from the politician and fails to speak truth to power; the academic who is locked away in the “Ivory Tower” of his anger, inflicting that animosity on poor students and the generally unconcerned citizen. The Complicit Middle is the problem. I try to analyze this in my latest book: Why Not – Citizenship, State Capture, Creeping Fascism and the Criminal Hijack of Politics in Nigeria.

These trends can be escalated from Nigeria to most of Africa. South Africa, where State Capture has now become the subject of a commission of inquiry is a good example of this trouble with Democracy in Africa. As Winston Churchill said long ago, it is the worst form of Government, except for the rest. The objective of the 2019 CVL Annual Lecture on the subject Is Democracy making Life Better in Africa. Serious food for Thought.
A scan of the political environment throws up a glaring absence of the usual excitement that accompanies electioneering in our polity. The fanfare and usual razzmatazz missing this time around raises the question about the electorate has probably lost interest and by extension disillusioned that politics can truly midwife the most needed growth and development aspirations of Nigerians. The story is similar across the continent because of failed promises from political leaders who are unable to change the foggy future of their people.

At home, the first attempt at democracy came with independence from the British government in 1960. That experiment was short-lived when the military swept politicians away from office and dealt a deafening blow to democratic practice. Excuse for military intervention was traced to intolerance of opposing opinions, massive corruption, etc that were pushing the ship of State towards the precipice. That military adventure lasted for thirteen years. The second experiment at democracy which lasted only four years was replaced by another fifteen years on military dictatorship.

Liberal democracy espoused by Western economies over the years pinned Nigeria and indeed African lack of development to absence of democracy and therefore applied tremendous pressure on the military to vacate the governance platform. It is twenty years now that the military returned to the barracks but Africa including Nigeria still find illusive the development vision that has refused to materialize. Across Africa, with a few exceptions such as Mauritius, Botswana, Ruanda and South Africa, the economies of countries in the continent lay prostrate with abject poverty ravaging the people.
The long and short of this situation is that development has defied the return of democratic governance in the continent not minding series of reforms introduced to infuse some measure of development in the economies of countries in the continent.

Arising from this missed hope, Nigeria and indeed Africa is at a crossroad and must quickly find alternatives that will drive development required to lift the more than 1.2billion people in the continent out of poverty.

If Africa is to embrace development, it must enjoy a lengthy period of political stability that is garnished with integration into the global economy. This opportunity can come if the continent subscribed to liberal democracy I all its ramification.
CVL !6th Annual Lecture is structured to proffer innovative options at governance if western democracy cannot deliver expected dividend. Trending in this direction is that an amalgam of traditional governance system and liberal democracy may provide the elixir needed to arrest unnecessary tension and fraud that characterize democratic elections in Africa.

Three basic instruments are features of democracy governance. These are free, fair and peaceful election of leaders who have specific tenure of service but could renew respective mandates under terms specified in the constitution. It is very obvious that African leaders have failed in respect of this principles. What obtains and what we experience in the continent are leaders determined to take power through the manipulation of the electoral system. The sit tight syndrome exhibited by African leaders also negates the principle of democratic choice by the people through free, fair and peaceful elections.

The Search Continues
This lecture will consider options open to Africa to solve her challenges with regard to governance similar to home grown economic reforms of the 1980s. The new search may include return to less costly West Minister type of parliamentary system; restructuring of the American costly and winner takes all presidential system that is dysfunctional to traditional system which has no provision for opposition and no tenure. Opposition is buried once the traditional ruler emerges ad continuity is sustained until the demise of the elected ruler.

It will be interesting to sound out the Panel of Discussants on the trending narrative that there is no nexus between democracy and development. Conversation at this lecture will be incomplete without a look outside Africa, particularly at economies that have made quantum leap in development and growth without adoption of liberal democracies. In this regard, China comes to mind. This lecture should also conclude with identification of ingredients of development beyond democratic governance as well as recommendations that shift the focus of Africa in that direction.

CVL appreciates General Yakubu Gowon for accepting to chair its 16th Annual Lecture and International Leadership Symposium. Immeasurable appreciation also go to His Excellency, Mr. George Oppong Weah and Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah for accepting the role Keynote Speakers. The eminent Panel of Discussants including Dr Muiz Banire, Femi Falana, Toyosi Akerele, and Prof. Ebere Onwudiwe we believe will do justice to the theme with insightful analyses and forward-looking recommendations.
Prof. Pat Utomi
Founder/CEO CVL