Yes indeed, the state of the Nigerian State is serious. The State is crumbling before our eyes and it is clear that a rescue mission is necessary. The community of political science has a duty at this time to work on a cure for the sickness of the State before we are all consumed by its breakdown, which Thomas Hobbes had assured us will make or life “nasty, brutish and short”. That rescue must take the form of a new approach based on good governance in which there is effective, transparent and accountable use of public resources to provide public goods for citizens.
In his closing remarks at this year’s annual Billy Dudley Lecture,
the Chairman of the occasion, Professor Ibrahim Gambari summarised the
mood in the discipline with the following words: “Yes we must celebrate
the survival of democracy since 1999 but we must also know that it
happened not because of the community of political scientists but in
spite of it.” The Billy Dudley lecture, which took place last Thursday,
is the flagship programme of the Nigerian Political Science Association.
Dudley was the association’s founding president and the motive force
behind the establishment of the professional group in 1973. Although
Dudley died in 1980 as a vibrant 49 year-old academic leader of the
discipline, he is remembered as one who has had a profound impact on
political science. His classic work, Parties and Politics in Northern Nigeria
remains one of the best studies ever carried out on democracy and
political parties on the continent. As Professor Adele Jinadu once
argued, he is important to our discipline because he pioneered the
tradition of “speaking truth to power”. His inaugural lecture at the
University of Ibadan on scepticism as a political virtue remains a
standard handbook for all those who are keen to retain the science in
the study of politics.
This year’s lecturer, Professor Sam Oyovbaire was my teacher in
Ahmadu Bello University and it was a pleasure to see him still looking
healthy and agile after nearly five decades in politics, both as a
scholar and a practitioner. In his lecture, he recalled Dudley’s last
seminar while visiting our department. Dudley had castigated the lack of
sufficient knowledge of political scientists of their communities and
called for proper grounding in social anthropology. To return to
Gambari’s statement, the survival of democracy in Nigeria owes much more
to the civil society, trade unions, the mass media and the rise of a
consciousness of citizenship within ordinary Nigerians. Similarly, those
who have subverted democracy and elections over the decades in Nigeria
are not the technicians of political science but certain widely known
individuals who have perfected the knowledge and social anthropology of
rigging and perfected techniques of electoral fraud.
Although there were 680 petitions arising from the 2015 elections and the courts decreed 81 re-runs, the outcomes of the elections were significant enough for these to be considered the turning point in Nigeria’s long march towards democracy, to borrow the title of Ahmadu Kurfi’s latest book on elections.
The First and Second Republics foundered in the first elections
organised by ruling parties determined to abuse their powers of
incumbency to remain in power, whether or not voters gave them their
mandates. That was the story of the 1964 and 1983 general elections. The
levels of electoral fraud were so high that regime collapse became the
inevitable outcome of rigging, or so many thought. The level of
electoral fraud in 2003 was just as high as in 1964 and 1983, but at
that time Nigerians had acquired the knowledge that military
intervention was not the solution and persisted in seeking legal and
democratic avenues to save democracy. It became clear to democratic
forces that anti-democratic forces had acquired vast knowledge of the
social anthropology of rigging with high capacity for stealing the
people’s mandate. It was in that context that pro-democracy forces and
organisations started acquiring the techniques of mandate protection to
counter them, and the first operational theatre was the 2003 Lagos
gubernatorial election, which the then ruling PDP government under
General turned President Obasanjo was determined to confiscate. Thanks
to the foresight of Bola Tinubu, the peoples mandate was protected. The
other battles fought were in Kano and Bauchi States and by then the
techniques had been studied and turned into manuals by the Centre for
Democracy and Development. Muhammadu Buhari played a huge role in the
process by persisting in his quest for the presidency and never giving
up in spite of huge challenges at all levels starting from his own party
the ANPP, the judiciary, security agencies and the Independent National
Electoral Commission. His victory in 2015 was the result of a long
struggle by pro-democracy Nigerians to reclaim the electoral terrain for
citizens.
The 2015 elections were not excellent operations by any stretch of
the imagination. Indeed as everyone knows, except maybe the judiciary,
in many States, there were no elections at all and results were
manufactured and subsequently ratified by INEC and later by the courts.
What was important about 2015 was that there had been sufficient
knowledge of and commitment to the employment of mandate protection
techniques for the shift from mandate looters to mandate protectors to
occur, leading to the emergence of the new Administration. Although
there were 680 petitions arising from the 2015 elections and the courts
decreed 81 re-runs, the outcomes of the elections were significant
enough for these to be considered the turning point in Nigeria’s long
march towards democracy, to borrow the title of Ahmadu Kurfi’s latest
book on elections.
The recent revival of the Nigerian Political Science Association is a good omen, as it is happening at a time in which significant effort is required to rebuild the State that has been diminished by over six decades of mis-rule.
The recent revival of the Nigerian Political Science Association is a
good omen, as it is happening at a time in which significant effort is
required to rebuild the State that has been diminished by over six
decades of mis-rule. There is glaring evidence that for a long time,
Nigeria had not been governed and the traditional task of running the
State had not been a priority concern for successive governing classes
whose principal work had been engagement in mega looting. We know that
Section 15(5) of our Constitution stipulates that: “the State shall
abolish all corrupt practices and abuse of power.” What does this mean
in a context in which those who have been in control of state power had
been the ones who used State power to organise corruption.
Yes indeed, the state of the Nigerian State is serious. The State is
crumbling before our eyes and it is clear that a rescue mission is
necessary. The community of political science has a duty at this time to
work on a cure for the sickness of the State before we are all consumed
by its breakdown, which Thomas Hobbes had assured us will make or life
“nasty, brutish and short”. That rescue must take the form of a new
approach based on good governance in which there is effective,
transparent and accountable use of public resources to provide public
goods for citizens. If those who exercise State power cannot use it to
improve the lives and livelihoods of citizens, then they would have to
be replaced. This has finally happened and the most corrupt regime in
our history has been replaced by another one with commitment to fighting
corruption, providing jobs and rebuilding the nation. This however is
no easy time for any government and President Buhari and his team need
all the help they can get to transform their promises to the Nigerian
people into reality.