Democracy and elections

“Have you ever seen a candidate talk to a rich person on television?” Art Buchwald.

The way our President, Governors of the PDP, major opposition parties, eminent, perennial actors and fixers in the political system are running around in pursuit of 2015, you would think our democratic process is all about elections. And you will be right. Since 1999, elections have defined the character of our democracy, and every election since then had merely reinforced the centrality of elections in our political system. From now until 2015, all attention will be focused and devoted to elections. The real point of elections, which is to put people in charge of governance that should make real difference in lives of voters and citizens for the entire period between elections will be lost. Attention will be diverted from performance of elected officials. Huge public resources will be plundered in pursuit of elective offices. Costly deals and gambles will be made. Worse of all, the electoral process itself will come under heavy pressure in a manner guaranteed to compromise it. The period intended for governance between elections will merely serve the next elections, not the people.

Elections are vital to the growth and development of any democratic process, but they are only one among many elements that help that development. To use a rather imperfect analogy, to equate elections with the democratic process is like equating the entire essence of being a woman with giving birth. There is a lot more to being a woman than producing children, although this is a most critical function and the foundation of the growth of mankind and civilization. The woman needs to be healthy, willing and able to deliver children, and, ideally, the children should be healthy. She has to nurse them through many delicate stages in childhood, and be part of their adult lives until death. But a woman is also a daughter, sibling, relation, wife, colleague and many other things.

Democracy grows with elections which are generally free and fair. But rigged elections and stolen mandates harm the democratic process, and if the electoral process cannot successively deliver better quality of elections, voters and citizens are alienated from it. They begin to look for options, or at best become indifferent to the fortunes of the democratic process. Democracy becomes hostage to a clique, a cult of the powerful and the rich who know how to tweak the system. All policies, programmes and activities of this cult are centered around retaining and expanding power, which they do through subversion of the electoral process. In the end, democracy comes to mean nothing to the vast majority of the people, and leaders who corner power and the resources of the public live increasingly further and further away from citizens.

It is not just the security of the Nigerian state that is crumbling bit by bit. Its democratic process never had a chance to grow, and is now showing all the signs of a fatal atrophy. From 1999 to 2007, our democracy was distinguished by the struggle to build power around a leader, not around institutions of the state that should improve economic welfare of citizens, fight corruption and institutionalize credible elections. Thereafter, the cult of the leader grew. The concerns are about clans or powerful leaders handpicking successors, and ensuring that the electoral process endorses them. Leaders who came to power as a result of a clan’s efforts now create their own clans to survive. Survival means successfully dismantling the clan that engineered your acquisition of power and building your own, very often on the skeletons of former fixers and godfathers. Then you take firm control of the electoral process to ensure that election result are returned in your favour, or in favour of those best guaranteed to give you political cover for massive violations while in office.

The nation now bleeds and goes up in flames when insurgents and security forces clash, or when communities tire of state inaction and indifference over grievances, and take up arms against each other. It bleeds when large numbers of criminals take over villages and kill and maim because the state’s capacity to protect citizens is exhausted. The nation bleeds from massive audacious scams that appear to draw inspiration from the spectacular failure of the regulatory mechanisms of the state to limit or arrest them. Poverty compounded by a damaging perception that relief for it will come from nowhere pushes millions of particularly young people to desperation, crimes and drugs.

Yet Nigeria’s leaders today fight over the 2015 elections. The President is locked in a deadly battle over 2015 with governors, that special breed which has built massive powers with public funds. The governors are fighting for second terms, or cover after second terms or protection against prosecution or humiliation after 2015, or for the position of the President itself in 2015. The President is fighting to whittle their powers to decide whether his fight for another ticket in 2015 costs him a lot more than it should, or it can be achieved by striking deals which will be paid for by compromising the integrity of the electoral process and critical institutions of the state even further. The opposition is working to merge, principally to replace the PDP as the dominant party. It will be desperately hoping that the electoral process will not be subverted, so that in the event that Nigerians prefer the APC to PDP, the results will say so. Little is being said about the survival of the merger after 2015, its chances of surviving turbulence from marriages of convenience forced upon it by the PDP, or how the PDP will behave in the event that it loses power. Or, which is equally likely, if the opposition does not to unseat the PDP in 2015.

The attention on the 2015 elections is hurting the nation very badly. A President whose record is not exactly a great source of pride will now abandon matters of state for the engaging venture of seeking for re-election. PDP Governors will wield their awesome powers once again, against the President, within their party, during congresses and conventions, and all of this will be done with public resources they all claim are inadequate to promote real development. Non-PDP governors will also dig deep into public resources to fund the merger activities and the merged party, and will justify this in the name of improving democracy. Politicians will mobilize now, miles from the starting point, and will splash massive resources in pursuit of personal ambitions. Tensions will rise around faith and region, and will feed an already dangerously-exposed political system.

Our democratic system has been reduced to elections by our politicians, who have equated their election fortunes with the nation’s fortunes. The electoral process which will shoulder all this weight still needs much improvement between now and 2015. No one appears interested in this for now. The danger here is akin to a woman who is pregnant with very high expectations riding on it, but no one remembers to feed her, or look after her health or the pregnancy.

PDP ticket: shine your eyes

“Opportunity makes a thief.” Francis Bacon.

Once again, the nation is being tricked into focusing its attention on a time-tested diversion by the PDP. Nigerians’ attention is being diverted from massive, unresolved scams around the power sector, fuel subsidy and pensions as well as failures to implement budgets or tackle crippling insecurity in much of the nation. The nation is being fleeced by crude theft, grounded by a public service that does not serve any useful purpose, and challenged by serial and basic failures by an administration that shows no capacity to improve. Yet people are being dragged into a needless and diversionary ploy over the ambition of a President with a long way to go before elections.

The arguments over whether President Jonathan can or should run in 2015 are damaging to the nation’s political health. First, there is literally only a handful of Nigerians who will have a say in this matter. They are President Jonathan himself, and those closest to him whose future and fortunes depend largely on his running again. Card-carrying members of the PDP will have no say. Other Nigerians will have even less. If Jonathan wants to run again in 2015, or his handlers insist he must run, he will run.

The idea that there is a mounting northern PDP resistance against Jonathan which should be supported by northerners is an insult to the intelligence of northerners. PDP aspirants forget too easily, but majority of northerners do not. Simple folk will remember the hype involved in the PDP consensus candidate misadventure, the result of which was the creation of the damaging impression that the political fortunes of the north laid with the selection of a northern PDP candidate in 2010. If all the big guns who rallied behind Vice President Atiku Abubakar, having failed against President Jonathan, northern governors and other northern PDP big wigs could not deliver the ticket to Atiku, what reasons are there to assume that the resurrection of a northern bogey this time can stop him? Most northerners remember that the security and economy of the north nosedived as a result of the dangerous pandering to ethnic and religious sentiments which was used to drum up support and votes for President Jonathan. The north is still paying the price for its seeming hostility to a Jonathan presidency, in the wide gulf between Christians and Muslims, in the administration’s attitude and strategy towards an insurgency that claims to be rooted in the Islamic faith, its decaying infrastructure, rising numbers of the desperately poor, and absence of a united leadership. Northerners remember the roles of PDP governors and other PDP elders in handing the North over to Jonathan. They live with the scars of the 2011 fiasco: insecurity, shrinking economies and a President who seems set to make deeper forays into its limited assets to build up his arsenal towards 2015.

Now attempts are being made to tap into northern sentiments to stop President Jonathan from staying in power until 2019. PDP governors and other politicians are attempting to involve ordinary folk in arguments about promises made, even though everyone knows that the people involved have never had any respect for promises, rules or laws governing their relations with each other, or with the Nigerian people. Most Nigerians know that PDP’s zoning formula has been dead and buried since 2011. The trick in zoning of offices has no efficacy any longer. No Nigerian political party, or even a village association will assign offices without due regard for spread and equity. It is even worse for the PDP because it has zoning and rotation enshrined in its constitution, yet the 2011 election exposed how little it means to its leaders.

Now the “right” of the north and questionable legal issues are being raised to make a case for northern support. It wont work. The PDP is only one party out of many that are available to northerners to choose from. Where its presidential candidate comes from is unlikely to make much of difference to northerners, so long as he will govern in the tradition of the PDP. There is nothing intrincally better in a northern leadership, compared to leadership from the south. Northern PDP governors and many of its leaders helped Jonathan become President. Now they want northerners to help them stop him from running again in 2015.

The fight among the small circle of PDP leaders is just that: a vicious scramble for largess among people who will do exactly what the other will do. The front-runners have all held offices on platforms of PDP. How many of them have performed even marginally better than President Jonathan? The dummy being sold to northerners is that the presidency must move to the north under the PDP. The first fallacy here is that the rehabilitation and reconstruction of the North can only be achieved under a northern PDP presidency. Other northerners who are not members of PDP can do this, but not because they are northern but because they are the best made available to Nigerians as candidates in a free and fair election. The second fallacy is embedded in the insidious perception that only PDP can win presidential elections, and if the north fields the presidential candidate, it is virtually “guaranteed” a northern Presidency.

There is a long way to go before President Jonathan plays his final hand towards 2015. At this stage, it is safe to assume that he will run again, because not doing so is entirely a worse option for him and his small circle. Ambitious northern governors, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and a few PDP elders will whip up a lot of sentiments in vain. The governors are likely to be whipped into line or acquiesce in the old manner PDP enforced the will of the leader. Vice President Atitku will give Jonathan a run for his money, and between them, there is likely to be a lot of money to run after. But it is likely to be a whole new ball game this time.

The merger of major opposition parties will substantially checkmate the PDP. It will give northern voters and other Nigerians an option to the PDP, and the latter’s record will be a major liability for electoral purposes. The PDP is likely to suffer some damage as a result of the skirmishes around the law, rotation and zoning, but these could all be papered over before the primaries. There is likely to be less sympathy for a northern candidate unless he is able to build bridges within the north, and between the north and south before the elections.

The ploy to focus all eyes on the PDP will distract attention from a major shift in the political structure, which is the merger of the opposition parties. It will create the false impression that 2015 is all about President Jonathan or another northern PDP candidate. It will aid the campaign to rally voters around Jonathan owing to “northern” opposition; and it will assist those who wish to weaken the north even more substantially by the cynical exploitation of faith and ethnicity. Above all, it will reinforce the damaging fallout of the PDP’s zoning and rotation policy, which is the creation of a President that serves only parts of the country that “elect” him. Nigerians should ignore attempts to railroad them into a battle in which the same winners will win and the people will lose again.

General Muhammadu Buhari GCFR

“A wrongdoer is often a man who has left something undone, not always one who has done something.”

Marcus Aurelius AD 1281 – 80

Penultimate Sunday, General Muhammadu Buhari made a two and half hour live appearance on DITV and Alheri Radio Kaduna. The unusual and marathon audience he granted to the public in an interactive programme during which all manner of questions and opinions were thrown at him was revealing. It is quite possible that even the General may have been taken aback by the patterns of comments that came from his supporters, and it is safe to assume that his strategists must be pouring over the comments, nuances and the appeals that came through during 2½ hours.

Since the resumption of the aborted 2010 alliance between the ACN and CPC, the most significant development from the opposition had been the composition of negotiating teams, and the signing of a document signifying the intention of the CPC, ACN, ANPP and APGA to merge. Given the very public and intense liaison between General Buhari and Chief Bola Tinubu before the merger talks actually commenced, the public would have been forgiven for believing that only the two parties would merge. Many were surprised, therefore, when ANPP and APGA joined the negotiations. General Buhari told his audience that the talks involved parties that have elected representatives and office holders. In that case only the Labour Party was left out, among parties with any significant elected members.

Not surprisingly, a large number of callers during the programme took up the General over the inclusion of particularly the ANPP in the planned merger. Many callers reminded the General that the ANPP leadership cannot and shouldn’t be trusted; that most of it is PDP covered in a different color; and its inclusion will guarantee the subversion of the party. It was obvious that these plaintive appeals for caution and expressions of deep concern touched the General who must have been warned by some of the more senior members of his party of widespread discomfort at the level of the rank and file.

It was a sign of the depth of commitment of General Buhari to the merger issue that he painstaking responded to every cynical and disturbed caller with an appeal to be patient, and to recognize that only a merger of all parties can defeat the PDP in 2015. On fifth columnists and former betrayers, he advised people to be vigilant and respect the rules of the new party which will emerge. Those rules will specify how its leaders and flagbearers will emerge, how intra-party matters should be handled, and how party discipline will need to be enforced.

The most revealing element of the marathon media exposure was the depth of the General’s faith that the merger will succeed, and that this will dramatically improve the possibility that Nigerians will be rid of the PDP. He believes that with the current levels of hardwork and commitment being shown by all parties (even making allowances for some disarray at the level of the leadership of APGA), it will be possible to register a new party well before the 2015. He believes that the new party can hold together in spite of the co-existence of people who had inflicted massive injuries on each other in the past, resist rigging and defeat the PDP. He cautioned that old stereotypes should be discarded, old enemies accommodated  but a watched, and that the CPC fire and spirit can survive in a merged, bigger party.

The most persistent question from many callers, however, had to do with whether General Buhari will run again in 2015 or not. Or, to be more exact, their demands that he must run, merger or no merger. It was obvious that the General was nursing a serious personal difficulty. He had said after the 2011 elections that he will not run for the presidency or go to court to challenge the results, although his party was free to challenge them. Then, after months of silence, he informed the nation that if his party insists that he must run, and as a loyal partyman, he could not decline. Now that his party is involved in a merger, a development that is likely to put everything on the table, his supporters want to know if he would run, or could be prevented from running as a result of the merger. He pleaded that it was too early in the talks to speak of candidates. It did not work. He said the talks were best conducted without preconditions. It did not work. He then said if the new party asks him to run, he will not decline.

For majority of his supporters, this is the issue. A merged party without Buhari as its flagbearer means nothing to them. They got a tiny bite at the cherry: he not only says he will remain in politics till death, but he will also accept a ticket from the new party if offered. The more discerning members of his party who see his candidature as the only tangible hope in 2015 and for Nigerian democracy will be involved in some critical scrutiny. Once the CPC merges with others into one party, it ceases to be CPC and will, at best, be an interest bloc. What will it leverage to have the new party field General Buhari as its presidential bearer? His phenomenal following in many parts of the North is intact, but it has failed the most critical test in 2011: being converted into electoral success. Whether it was rigged out or it bungled its fortunes away is a mute point now. What is important is that what the CPC will bring to the table is General Buhari's followership, and a party with massive problems. The CPC will meet, at the same table, an ACN with awesome organization but restricted followership; an ANPP fighting desperately to erase a questionable past and involvement in a suspected, illicit romance with the PDP. APGA is already a questionable participant in the merger, and it will do the new party much damage to have bits and pieces of factions of a party which has some clout in the south east. The ACN will attempt to block out the Labour Party permanently out of the merger, and the PDP will utilize its access into the merged party to cause massive problems.

In strategic terms the playing down of General Buhari’s candidature in 2015 as the irreducible minimum for the CPC will pay a lot of dividends. In a merged, larger party, there are likely to be a lot of smaller fish in a larger pond; but there will still be sharks among them. General Buhari may not have an automatic ticket, no thanks to a surfeit of young turks who will be encouraged by interests in the party and be put forward as more sellable candidates. It will be a mistake to give the impression that the CPC is only interested in the merger so that General Buhari will have a larger, better-spread platform. There will be powerful interests even in the new party being formed that will be hostile to his candidature, and it is by no means certain that the CPC bloc will play its politics in a manner designed to dilute this hostility. More important, it amounts to an injury to the values which are identified with General Buhari to continue to equate his person with democracy or to insist on the position that he alone can improve integrity and accountability in government.

The followers of General Buhari who had opportunities to speak with him a few days ago did two things. They reminded him that they still hold him in the highest esteem as their redeemer. Then they informed him that they have a say in what becomes of the CPC. The media outing must have reminded the General of the perception that he is the CPC, and the CPC is him. How he leads his party through some of the delicate turns and twists involved in the merger will be watched very closely. He would do well to accord some credit to those who suspect that he and his party could face a last-minute gang-up to prevent him from flying the new party’s flag. He should also respect sensitivities of supporters who think he is being unduly trusting of some of the elements in the merger talks.

The greatest legacy General Muhammadu Buhari can leave is to lead his large following to share some of his vlues. This will include the fact that the democratic system is improved by good and competent leaders; but it is at all times greater than even the most accomplished politicians and leaders. As he leads his party to work with others in a genuine merger, he will also need to remind his followers that politics involves a lot of give and take, and that other parties in the merger have their own interests and members as well. If he does succeed in putting together, along with other leaders, a strong opposition that will survive internal schisms, external subversion and unbridled ambition, the nation may see a genuine change at all leadership levels in 2015.

No ordinary servant

“… these not having the law, are a law unto themselves”. Romans 2:14

The charade around the conduct and fate of an Assistant Director in the Federal Civil Service who exercises responsibility as Chairman of the Pension Reform Task Team, Abdurrasheed Maina appears set to continue. The President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, no less, has publicly directed the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Alhaji Isa Sali, to initiate disciplinary action against the officer for being absent without leave. The President’s directive followed a resolution of the Senate last week asking the President to choose between the civil servant and its wrath. The Senate had issued a warrant of arrest against the officer over his continued refusal to appear before it and answer questions over alleged mismanagement of N664m in pension funds. The President has also received a report from the Inspector-General of Police, informing him that the Assistant Director has evaded detection and arrest by the entire Nigeria Police. The IGP also did a little bit of the work of the Head of Service: he informed Mr President that the officer had breached section 030402, which lists breaches considered as gross misconduct. In Maina’s case, the IGP said he was absent without leave. Apparently acting on the advise of the IGP, President Jonathan directed the Head of the Civil Service to discipline Maina. The latter, in turn, informed the Nigerian public that he had informed the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry in which Maina served as Assistant Director that the officer under him had absconded, and should be disciplined under provisions of PSR 030301 to 030304.

On the very day the nation was being treated to a melodrama that should insult its intelligence, an Abuja Federal High Court refused to grant an ex-parte application to stop the police from executing the arrest warrant against the civil servant. Maina in addition is asking the court to rule that the Senate committees on Establishment and Public Service as well as State and Local Government Administration lack legal powers to decide on his fate or sanction him. He wants the court to compel the Senate to pay him N1.5b in damages, and order the committees to appear before the court to show what wrongs he had committed.

The Maina saga, particularly the last debates about and around the civil servant showed a rare unanimity by the legislative arm of government which will even divert attention from the fact that the statutory 30 days for coming into effect of the budget has been exceed. Before the ultimatum and threats by the Senate, Mr Maina had stood up committees, called press conferences in Abuja to say he is not hiding, hired a SAN and gone to court, and had even been abandoned to the judgment of God by exasperated and helpless Senators.

The involvement of the President in directly ordering the Head of the Civil Service to discipline an Assistant Director should mark a new low in this pathetic charade. At this stage, a lone civil servant appears to have become a massive source of embarrassment. First, President Jonathan could not, or should not have failed to know of the saga which for months had dragged his administration in the gutter. In virtually all public comments made by legislators about Mr Maina, they had pointed out that the civil servant who will not answer their summons travels out on Mr President’s entourage, receives him at Airports and has unhindered access to the Presidential Villa. They have all alluded to the existence of some powerful forces in the presidency which are involved in protecting Mr Maina. The height of this indignity is being compelled, as President, to do something about a lone civil servant by an angry Senate, and then acting as if the matter was just being brought to his attention.  

The gentleman in question, only one out of hundreds of Assistant Directors under the direct responsibility of the Head of the Civil Service has also rubbished the integrity and authority of the highest office in the public service. The public directives of the President to the Head of Service to discipline the officer is an avoidable rebuke, although in fairness to the Head of service, he may have been hamstrung in his efforts by the same forces which had made Mr Maina untouchable. An Assistant Director who is assigned responsibility as chairman of Pension Reform Task Force is perfectly within the powers of the HOS to discipline. He had to have given him the responsibility in the first place, and could have reassigned it to someone else, or punished him for established transgressions without the President ever hearing about it. He could have conducted his own investigation and taken disciplinary action against the officer the moment facts warranting it were brought to his attention.

The public service rules are detailed and exhaustive enough for matters of this nature to be handled; and they even make provisions for prosecution and dismissal for fraud, embezzlement and other criminal offences. A report from a committee of the legislature alone is sufficient to compel the Head of Service to investigate civil servants, although he has to do this within the rules of the service, and be satisfied that officer(s) reported by the legislature have committed transgressions. The Head of Service should brief the President on matters of this nature owing to the need to police legislative/executive boundries. That it had taken this long, and required such a messy exposure of the limitations of the presidency and the civil service is a sad commentary on the state of the public service today.

There are others who should how feel uncomfortable over this saga. The Nigeria police, whose pension funds are reported to be part of the billions missing says it cannot find a man who used to go everywhere with a retinue of policemen. Interpol is now being asked to ensure that he does not flee the country. There are also people who may have given him comfort and assurances that the cover of the presidency will be impenetrable and permanent. They will, if they can feel shame, rue their attempts to defy the legislature, the laws of the land, public opinion, the federal civil service, and every standard of decency and accountability.

The real story behind Mr Maina’s bravado may not have been heard yet. But the legislature has made a crack, although critics will not fail to note that it moved more decisively only when some Senators fumed that Mr Maina had alleged that some of them had demanded a N3b bribe from him. Mr President’s involvement in the conduct of a civil servant in such a public manner is a severe indictment of the administration and the public service. Now that the senate appears to have succeeded in forcing some action out of the presidency, Nigerians will wait to see what happens. Will his protectors continue to hide Mr Maina? Can he be arrested, fully investigated, and be prosecuted if he has broken the law? How far will the Maina trail go? How much damage has this sage done to the federal civil service, an institution which has already been severely compromised by a political level that now routinely encroaches upon its hallowed values in pursuit of patronage?

The Maina saga will not go away, any more than the fuel subsidy scam or the sharp practices in the power sector will disappear. The man himself is quite likely to be a front for some deeply-entrenched interests. They or him may want to sacrifice each other. Either way, the nation will want to know what happned to billions of pension funds, and how the law will deal with those who may have stolen them.