Democracy 21 years on
Abiola, but said it is worried that none of the critical issues it raised about the system of governance during its press conference in 2019 when Buhari recognised Abiola had been addressed even though they “remain critical and fundamental towards resolving the incessant political instability, economic misery, national mutual mistrust, lack of cohesion and unacceptable level of national insecurity.”
The group said as Nigeria begins to mark Democracy Day today, June 12, 2020, the seeming total disregard of this administration and its party, APC, to fulfill the major electoral promises and manifesto to restore the country to federal constitutional governance constitutes a betrayal of public trust upon which it secured its mandate in 2015.
NADECO added that it is painfully clear now that the president and the APC made false promises that they did not intend to keep, noting, “The ( Malam Nasir) el- Rufai Committee set up ( an afterthought) therefore remains a ruse, a gimmick to hoodwink the public to believe that the government was doing something. President Buhari’s so- called three pillars – to secure Nigeria, to revamp the economy and to fight corruption - have clearly recorded very low achievements because the current centralist and unitarist governance structure remains unsuitable, unsustainable and counterproductive in an heterogeneous geographical and political space where the different ethnic nationalities or groups of them must be free to govern themselves as they deem fit, given the divergent languages, religions, traditions, cultures, artifacts and folklores of the people.”
The coalition also critcised the present state of Nigeria’s economy, which it said has not really witnessed any significant and qualitative improvement as a result of the centralist and unitary governance.
It noted the fact that fiscal federalism has been abandoned since the advent of the military governance and had decreed appropriation to the central government of the major sources from which the regions were raising resources to fund their developmental programmes, the atomized/ component states since then do very little for Internally Generated Revenue ( IGR), since all they do is wait for the monthly allocations from the Federation Account, except for very few states that can pay their bills without the “Manna from Abuja”.
Other observations by the coalition include the failure of President Buhari and his government to trim government bureaucracy in order to reduce the cost of governance, the escalating rate of unemployment and bad state of insecurity across the country. It also decried the painful reality of the Buhari government with respect to persistent herdsmen/ bandits clashes with farmers.
One of the closest associates of Abiola, Chief Jide Sawyer, described the present democracy as being even worse and deficient more than military rule. He said the country appears to have learnt nothing, neither could it boast to have gained much from June 12, 1993 presidential election, apart from the fact that former military rulers dropped their military uniforms and assembled some politicians to form a civilian administration.
According to him, “There is nothing different despite the fact that the present administration recognised June 12 as Democracy Day last year. Those in government today who pushed for the agenda only paid lip service to whole idea for their selfish political interest. I describe them as people who didn’t participate in what they are currently benefiting from. This democracy is even worse than military rule.
“For instance, we have a selective mode of election where individuals, who claim to be godfathers, decide and or select who represents the people and not through free, fair democratic process, and in effect such public officers are directly responsible to their masters and not to the electorate.”
Sawyer added: “As much as it was good that the incumbent government recognised
Babangida
June 12 as Democracy Day over a year ago, tell me what has been different in the system of governance and democracy that we have had since 1999? Democracy is about honesty, determination and focus to deliver good governance to the people. The reason I said we are worse than when we were under the military regime is that critics of government are viciously attacked these days by government- sponsored agents, which has almost stopped very reasonable people from talking or faulting government’s policies.”
On the agitation to restructure the country, Sawyer said, “One unique thing about Abiola’s aborted presidency and the 1993 democratic process was the ‘ hope and confidence’ it gave to Nigerians irrespective of their ethnic differences. ‘ Hope 93’ made SDP very popular and acceptable before the military struck by annulling the result. Today, can we even discuss restructuring without giving the people hope first? There is the need to allay the fears of Nigerians. To get this done, good governance is key. This is when we can start talking about restructuring.”
Reacting on what the country had gained and lost on the June 12 struggle in the last 27 years, a former governor of Ogun State,
Segun Osoba, said the greatest gain of Abiola’s sacrifice for democracy is the stability it brought into the transition programme. He said before the late business mogul paid the supreme price, which brought about the present democracy, “Nigeria had always found it difficult, if not impossible, to transit from a civilian administration to another without the military intervening. For instance, during the First Republic, the military seized government giving excuse of the uncertain and chaotic atmosphere that enveloped the political terrain then. This led to the January 1966 coup.
“When Nigeria eventually returned to democratic rule in 1979, another military coup took place four years after the 1983 elections. But since MKO Abiola paid the supreme price in 1998 and Nigeria wriggled to return to civil rule in 1999, the military had remained in the barracks while we have had about five uninterrupted civilian- to- civilian transitions from 1999 to 2020. Indeed, Abiola was a political and historical factor.”
On the losses, Osoba said many people have been doing a symbolic celebration of Abiola and June 12 yearly without necessarily showing enough love and commitment to the late philanthropist and his family.”
Disgusted that it took Nigeria 21 years from the re- inception of democracy to establish the fact that June 12 is the marker for the struggle to free Nigeria from the wicked stranglehold of military dictatorship, Executive Secretary, Nigeria National Summit Group ( NNSG), Mr. Tony Uranta, said Buhari deserves to be commended for recognising that the Fourth Republic is built on the sacrifices of MKO Abiola, his wife, Kudirat and other political martyrs who lost their lives in the nationwide struggle to right the wrongs that the military foisted on Nigeria from 1984 especially.
According to Uranta, “Having said that, one must state that the end of military rule only ushered in civilian governance, and not democratic rule. Nigeria is still governed by nondemocratic systems and personalities, who have entrenched a corrupt electoral process that has only produced a political elite still owing their existence to military and not at all dependent on the electorate.”
He said until there is internal democracy in the political parties, “we cannot say Nigeria is a republic, whose leadership respects democracy. Until we have elections not premised on fake population census and the threats of a violent few, Nigeria cannot claim to have embraced democracy. Until only the eligible vote for candidates who emerge through transparent elections at all levels of the democratic system counts, we cannot truthfully be said to be a democracy.
“Until the country is so reconfigured to clearly aspire to the highest standards economically and politically; that is, until Nigeria is restructured along the lines that our founding fathers agreed to, Nigeria cannot be seen as the united, stable democracy we like to fool ourselves that it is already.”