Coalition Beyond Party Interest: Charting a New Trajectory for Saving Our Nascent Democracy in Nigeria
By BENEDICT AGBO
A. Preamble
The greatest malady in Nigerian democracy, as it currently stands, is that most party members are like people who have taken a party poison—a poison that never allows them to see or hear the truth anymore; a poison that never allows them to assess a poorly performing government even when that government has clearly failed, when the economy has cascaded into crippling fuel costs and inflation that have affected everything, from the macro to the micro economy.
Sometimes, one cannot but wonder whether there is another market where members of the ruling party buy their goods. Yet, during campaigns, they have the braggadocio to talk bullshit. When a government has neither constructed roads nor provided basic amenities like water and electricity, one cannot but feel nauseated seeing members of the ruling party making noise here and there.
The doctrine of party supremacy in Nigeria is trying to suppress clear thinking and freedom of speech. All we have witnessed is the gross degeneration of the quality of our democracy and the weaponization of poverty.
B. Degeneration of the Democratic System
We have gradually witnessed a degeneration of our democratic institutions. The Nigerian brand of democracy is beginning to resemble a plutocracy—the leadership of the cabal of the ruling party. But it is degenerating even further, not merely into the leadership of a cabal but into the rulership of one man. Let me call it “autocratic democracy”—a system of government in which the president controls the whole country by controlling the majority of the governors. The 32 governors, for example, who sing the president’s mandate, rule their respective states by dictating what happens through the local government chairmen, who are themselves under executive capture.
C. Recipe for Massive Election Rigging in Nigeria
When these local government chairmen are bent on delivering their master’s bidding, they can do everything necessary to win elections, beginning with ensuring that all local government INEC ad hoc staff are loyal members of the ruling party.
During elections, you will see these chairmen move around with a combination of thugs, military personnel and police officers, committing all forms of atrocities at polling units, while nobody can challenge them. The resultant effect is that we now have a government of the rulers, by the rulers, and for the rulers—not a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.
Where has this left us? A colossal state of insecurity, exacerbated by terrible corruption, where even the Presidency now sponsors fake agencies that receive fake budgetary allocations. Someone has forecast that there will likely be a third-term bid by the present government. All they need to do after the election is to pass a bill extending the tenure to six years, beginning with themselves.
D. Way Forward
The only way forward is a coalition of the opposition—not merely to vote for one single candidate, but a coalition for good governance; a coalition to insist on free and fair elections in every polling unit. It should be a coalition against voter apathy because the greatest tool the ruling party uses in rigging elections is the people’s apathy. We therefore need a coalition for voter registration and another coalition to put pressure on INEC to issue voter cards promptly and stop disenfranchising citizens, especially young voters. Such a coalition will transcend party interests because it will be a coalition to save Nigerian democracy.
It should also be a coalition that keeps all eyes on INEC, warning every INEC official in the strongest possible terms to do the right thing. It should be a coalition for electoral revolution, where religious leaders begin mobilizing their congregations—both Christians and Muslims—for an “Operation Rig and Die” campaign, using the hashtag as a rallying call against electoral manipulation.
*Rev. Fr. Agbo is a Catholic priest of the Diocese of Nsukka, a political activist, and an associate professor and head of the Department of Music, University of Nigeria, Nsukka.
