Pat UtomiThe United States government spends millions of taxpayer dollars promoting and supporting the practice of Democracy in many parts of the world, including Africa. This must mean that Democracy matters. But election after election in Africa the impression is often left that the Western World’s most powerful democracies seem to favour order, rather than Democracy in the classic Abraham Lincoln view of a government of the people by the people, for the people.
The recently concluded, disputed, and contested elections in Nigeria, the World’s third most populous democracy and Africa’s biggest economy, again draw attention to the question: Does democracy really matter?
If democracy matters, how should countries that pour significant public monies and civil society resources into promoting the vote, respond to elections in emerging democracies? Even more importantly, does the disposition in favour of order, at the expense of democracy, achieve the goal of preventing violent conflict?
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Perspectives abound that suggest the bullying by Western diplomats of opposition politicians in Africa to accept rigged elections, and evident voter suppression, brings quiet, not peace, and beyond the peace of the graveyard, may encourage the bullies down the path of incipient fascism that ultimately results in more violent revolt.
In the run-up to the Nigerian elections, I accompanied one of the presidential candidates, Peter Obi, to a visit with the US Assistant Secretary of State for Africa, Molly Phee. At the meeting, I raised these concerns which come from cumulative evidence from 1999 when I asked former US President Jimmy Carter what he thought of the elections the night of the Vote that marked the end of military rule in Nigeria. President Carter had in his company, on the Observer Mission General Collin Powell and others. To my question, the saintly statesman was tongue-tied, until help came from an old friend of mine, former US Ambassador to Nigeria Princeton Lyman who pulled me aside and regaled me with their witness to history.
In 2007 when I was a candidate for President, I found former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was not so restrained in her upset at the conduct of the elections. At an interaction with her delegation and that of former Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin the woman who was the first of her gender to serve as Secretary of State did not hide her disgust with manipulation of the elections.
Ms Phee offered assurances that President Biden was interested in free and fair elections and had encouraged more diligent effort.
Weeks later, in the face of egregious abuse in which the electoral umpire, INEC, failed to keep its own promise of electronic transmission of results, which had given a boost to voter confidence, the true test was on exhibition.
Traditional relegation of free and fair democratic elections and stampede towards order and quiet by Western embassies was underway until a second round of voting saw abuses that moved Nigeria close to the Gates of Hotel Rwanda, with ethnic profiling and voter suppression caused both the US and British Diplomatic missions to release critical statements.
Are those statements adequate to assuage those who think Washington and London do not act as if Democracy matters when it is in Africa?
Many doubt that.
Among the anxieties that fan doubts about sincere commitment to Democracy by some Western powers is the widespread evidence the stance of these governments take on election outcome unwittingly encourage the will to completely dominate others by some powerful local politicians who are usually not people of character and service. Waning interest in Democracy by the citizens was quickly on display, and persistent crises of legitimacy for governments that emerged from disputed elections which made economic growth and human progress problematic shaped the climate.
Like many critics of the policies from the US on election outcomes, I had pointed to these troubling events in a book I wrote four years ago which had the long title Why Not – Citizenship, State Capture, Creeping Fascism and the Criminal Hijack of Politics in Nigeria.
The consequences of not having a functional democracy in extant Nigerian reality include today’s season of terrorist attacks and general insecurity, weakening economic performance, and emigration of some of the most talented from Nigeria
The prolonged fragile state status, which comes from bullies getting away with frustrating democracy invariably increases poverty, human misery, and distrust of the West.
Even if the United States has limited interest in being engaged in Africa beyond containing China’s growing influence, it needs to be guided by what led it to the current spending on election support on the continent of Africa.
Superpower proxy wars in Africa during the Cold War years, and resource conflicts had given the continent political leaders of the type Robert Klitgaard, then Harvard Economist and Development adviser referred to as “tropical gangsters’ came to dominate politics on the continent generating a huge disconnect between the narcissistic powerful and powerless poor.
The stewardship of these politicians lacking in a sense of service to citizens resulted in resource and ethnic conflicts, which came to be known as the age of Afro-pessimism. To rescue what some leading Magazines in Europe and the US had labelled the ‘Hopeless Continent’ the Breton Woods Institutions had to prescribe solutions.
Democracy and the ‘Washington Consensus’ Structural Adjustment Programs were recommended panaceas to save the continent.
The youth of that young continent, where the median age in Nigeria is just over 18 years and who have been exposed by global media and social media to how the rest of the world makes progress then began to seek change to catch up with their formerly poorer Asian counterparts. But they find a minority old guard using undemocratic means to hold them down. Often evoking ethnicity and religion as easy to exploit emotions they deepen cleavages and block the path of emergent consensus favoring a developmental state over state capture of the old guard with the transactions that facilitate economic rent and corruption opportunities.
In the last elections in Nigeria, that new generation found a candidate they embraced as their way forward. That candidate, Peter Obi, favoured a view of the public sphere that Jurgen Habermas would welcome as the abode of democracy and modernity, rational public conversation. Focusing on issues and not the usual cult of personality with the trading of insults that elections were known for, the Labour Party set a new track for campaigning. Even Labour stalwarts found the reception surprising. All had underestimated how fed people were of the old order.
The old guard at first dismissed it as a social media distraction, as the establishment did in similar situations in Kenya, Malawi, and elsewhere in Africa where the new thrust for change is birthing surprise Presidents.
Tracking the polls that favoured the trend in Africa the old guard panicked and rolled out the old tricks that pushed the emotions.
Reducing citizens to tribesmen and people who think only of self, idiots, in the old Greek ranking of men, by playing on fears, stereotypes and cleavages of religious and Xenophobic nature, and stoking ethnic hatred against market-dominant minorities.
They deeply injured a country that a few weeks before seemed so united around the Labour Party mantra: to unite and secure Nigeria.
The Nigerian Diaspora is understandably disconcerted by these developments in Nigeria. This Diaspora which supplies 70 percent of the black Doctors in the US and is perhaps the most highly educated migrant nationality group in North America should be the link to a more purposeful engagement by the United States that can show democracy really matters.
As the poster child of Democracy on our planet in desperate search for role models, the United States needs to signal with urgency that democracy matters in Africa and that getting Nigeria right is where to start.
The ultimate truth is that Democracy matters and that sustainable peace and progress can only come from the sunlight of democracy and quality leaders. It is the truth that democracy matters particularly because it makes for accountability to stakeholders. And truth as Winston Churchill says is incontrovertible: malice may attack it, ignorance deride but in the end, there it is.
It is fitting that US policy stands for the truth.
Patrick Utomi is Professor at the Lagos Business School and a leader of the Labour Party in Nigeria gave this talk in Washington DC
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