Democracy at 20: Strength as weakness
captivity. Over a month ago after a 21-day ultimatum, electricity workers in Nigeria went on a one day legitimate strike (on December 11), to press home demand for unpaid severance allowances, salaries and pensions owed 50,000 former employees of the defunct Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) before the country privatized its power sector in 2013. That is the strength of democracy. Compared this to what Amartya Sen calls “unfreedom”. To organize for alternative views was criminalized by the military. In 1989 the late senior Advocate Gani Fahemihm together with some activities stormed Micheal Imoudu Hall of NLC labour House at Yaba Lagos to offer alternative policies to the notorious SAP (Structural Adjusment Policy).
The reaction of the military dictatorship was predictable brutal: armed policemen sealed up NLC Secretariat and the Hall of discourse. Many newspapers notably the Guardian and Punch newspapers were arbitrarily shut down under the military regimes. The point cannot therefore be overstated that 20 years of democracy has promoted freedom. We must keep the memory alive not just for the young but not- so-young -to -forget that: Never again should any group trample under feet constitutionalism and rule Nigerians without their democratic mandate. It’s not just that military rule is not fashionable (as apologists of dictatorship want us to believe!) but precisely because it’s undesirable because it denies freedom, the basic success factor for sustainable and participatory development.
The critical question however is what we make of democracy. Freedom (democracy) must be means to development as much as an end. The immediate past National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Chief John Odigie- Oyegun, at the Dialogue put it even better. He said there was no doubt that democracy has come to stay but at “... the risk of being misinterpreted, ... there is hardly a single administration in those 20 years that has not left office unpopular and unheralded,”. “We have never asked ourselves the question why are our people getting increasingly unhappy with their governors within those 20 years. Why are they getting poorer, why are they losing hope, those are the questions I think pose a threat to our democracy because today we are beginning to hear rumblings that we didn’t hear before”.
The strength of democracy is proving to be its weakness! Democracy must go with the responsibility to deliver good governance. People are angry not so much because of harsh policies but the insensitivity with which they are imposed on the people. Policies should be by the people for the people not at the people by governors and presidents notwithstanding the good intensions. Nigerian governments at all levels must adopt consensual participatory gradualist approach to policy reforms instead of the current shock therapy approach creates more problems and even policy doubts.
The recent controversies that trailed the attempt by Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) to increase end-user tariffs for electricity, application of Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) in the Universities, proposed reintroduction of toll gates by Ministry of works and the insistence of Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) that candidates for the forthcoming 2020 must acquire National Identification Number (NIN) or forfeit their chance of sitting for the examination, are examples of shock therapy approaches to reforms. I hail the decision of the Registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Prof. Ishaq Oloyede on Saturday, to suspend the use of the National Identity Number (NIN), for the 2020 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME). Other agencies should demonstrate similar sensitivity to the plight of stakeholders in policy formulation and policy implementation.
The lesson from JAMB/ NIN saga is that Nigeria must sequence reforms with time lines for stakeholders to appreciate rationale for policies and even make their inputs known. Public Policies should be for Stakeholders by Stakeholders with genuine partnership at all levels as envisaged by Sustainable Development Goals of 2030. The recent controversies following the ‘Operation Amotekun’ by south west states underscores the need for participatory democracy. Why should bills and laws not precede establishment of any security outfit that have far reaching implications in a diverse Republic?