OUR SHRINKING DEMOCRACY.

“I show you doubt, to prove that faith exists”

Robert Browning, 1812 – 89.

Last week two events took place which make loud statements about the nature of our democratic dispensation. The first was the National Convention of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) which told the members of the Party and the Nigerian public the persons who will lead the party after weeks of engaging in every trick in the book known to democracy, except open elections. The second was the celebration of the life and achievement of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, the undisputed leader of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), and a man who represents the only visible source of opposition to the PDP, but does so only on his ability to play the ethnic card. Nigerians who had hoped that our democratic system would have grown and developed beyond the charade which was the PDP selection of its leaders; or the celebration of the person, and not the vital component of the democratic process (the political party) will be sorely disappointed. Worse, our sense of foreboding over what all this means for 2015 has been deepened.

The PDP has always been the big man’s party. Small people (citizens, voters, its members, opposition) have their values for the party, but each plays a strictly choreographed role. Citizens of Nigeria are useful to the party because the constitution says they own sovereignty. The PDP routinely goes through the rituals prescribed for relieving the people of this sovereignty through elections that have progressively been worse than the other since 1999. They are informed who will be their leaders, and every once in a while, they rise in protest over results, but the electoral process and the party has become adept at ignoring or surviving them. The Nigerian voters are mobilized with money, primordial loyalties or fear to line up on election days and serve a very important role of casting ballots. These, however, are not necessarily the votes that will count, as the experts and fixers who have gained competence and confidence in rigging elections move in even before voting is concluded to procure results. Members of the party have a major role to play, and do so by being paid to select delegates, who in turn are paid to attend congresses and conventions to hear who has been decided to emerge candidates or leaders on their behalf. Stubborn members who insist on running against a small cabal which exists at every stage are dealt with in a number of established manners, the most popular being compensation with money, lucrative appointments or contracts, threats or humiliation of the type that will be remembered by grandchildren. The opposition is useful for the PDP to preserve the mirage of a democratic system; to provide targets for routine defeat, to provide candidates which can be poached or turned around; and to ridicule as ineffective and weak, unlike the largest party in Africa.

The manner the new leaders of the PDP have just emerged shows clearly that PDP is the biggest threat to the Nigerian democratic process. Its affairs will be run by a small clique which has emerged as a result of decisions of not more than 20 people from a party which claims to have a membership running into millions. PDP’s ‘consensus’ is pre-eminently the subversion of the popular will and elite dominance in its most destructive form. It represents the most odious contempt for the basic democratic principle of the exercise of choice, the distribution and exercise of power from the most humble card-carrying member to the President, and the desperate need to improve intra-party democracy as the pillar for improving the Nigerian democratic and electoral process. In its 12 years of existence, the PDP has used the conspiracy of the powerful which it called consensus to wreck thousands of genuine political ambitions; to foist the influence of money, incumbency and professional fixers, and to shrink the political space to a most dangerous level.

The last conclave which produced a chairman rejected by his primary constituency, and a whole list of other officials who all owe their positions to a powerful person in the PDP, is no different from past conclaves. But it does raise a number of legitimate concerns. It will be impossible not to see the ambitions of President Goodluck Jonathan for another shot at the Presidency in 2015 in the manner the current leadership of the PDP has been cobbled together. In the event that the constitution bars him from being sworn-in three times as President, and the discredited zoning formula of the PDP is dusted up to serve his interest, he will still use the leadership of the party to play off the East against the North in the selection of a Presidential candidate. He, along with President Obasanjo and a few Governors will therefore retain the power to chose who the PDP fields, and may choose another weak and ineffective leader. The millions of people the PDP claims to have as members will have no say in this, as, indeed, they had none in its entire life. INEC cannot force the PDP to observe even a modicum of respect for intra-party democracy. If the PDP does produce the next President in 2015, he will be even less of a popular choice of members of the party, and less so for Nigerians.

In spite of the huge drums rolled out to celebrate Tinubu’s achievements during his 60^th birthday, it is difficult to see how this event differs substantially from the dismal record and recent outing of the PDP. In spite of the spin and elaborate PR around the celebrations for Tinubu, there are really only two things that can be said about him. One is that he has succeeded  in chasing Obasanjo out of the South-West, to a point where he is virtually irrelevant in Yoruba politics, and can only find space and clout inside the PDP, a party he re-designed to serve the interests of the powerful.

If Obasanjo’s role in the manner our democracy is being shrunk is hurting the rest of the nation, then Tinubu could claim to have saved Yoruba people from its impact. But he has only done this by consolidating his power around Yoruba politics. Today, the southwest bears a close resemblance to a monolithic tribal enclave (give or take one or two pockets of resistance) working feverishly to build an economic and political framework for autonomy, or substantial autonomy from Nigeria. Many of his admirers will say he has done this in reaction both to the desperate battles to wrest the Southwest from the PDP and Obasanjo, and the manner the political dynamics since 2010 have made ethnicity as the most decisive factor in the struggle for power. In any case, here you have Tinubu, the most powerful politican in the southwest, but absolutely powerless outside it. On the other had, you have Obasanjo, a Yoruba man who won’t get the time of day in Yorubaland, but who has powers to decide, along with a few others, who will rule Nigeria.

Tinubu’s admirers will mention how much he tried to build electoral alliances with the CPC, and how much he got his fingers burnt. They will say he and his party represent the only credible political opposition to the behemoth which the PDP has become. They may acknowledge that Tinubu realizes that the ACN, as presently structured and run, runs the risk of becoming an extremely successful tribal party, with limited influence over the manner the Nigerian state is run. The ACN and the PDP are choking the democratic process in Nigeria: one by elevating the limiting value of tribe and region to the highest value at a time they should be subsumed under a national democratic culture; the other by negating all the basic principles of a democratic system which recognizes participation, inclusiveness and respect for rules and laws. The Tinubu legacy should not be limited to a tribal enclave. He must reach beyond Yorubaland, and established real alliances with other parties and regions to provide real opposition and challenge to the PDP. This way, perhaps those few members of the PDP who say they are ashamed of the manner the party they love conducts itself and runs the nation, may be challenged to rise and reform this cabal which masquerades as a political party.