Nigeria’s elections won’t produce the dynamic leader the country needs, but that doesn’t mean its democracy is hopeless.
Greece’s January election that ushered in the opposition party Syrzia on its promise to undo austerity terms imposed by the country’s bailout was the latest in a trend. From Italy to India to Indonesia, the outcomes of recent elections in key democracies across the world have swelled the ranks of men and women determined to lead their fellow citizens out of crisis by representing boldness and purpose in their home countries.
Then there is Nigeria: Africa’s most populous nation, it’s largest democracy, and its biggest economy, where no one of corresponding boldness will be president after the elections rescheduled for the end of March. Neither President Goodluck Jonathan, the underwhelming incumbent, nor former General Muhammadu Buhari, his uninspiring opponent, appear set to bring vigor to governance at home or charisma to the global or continental stage.
Nigeria is in crisis. Government revenues have swooned with the precipitous drop in the oil price over the last six months. Boko Haram spreads daily terror across our North East. Not unconnected to the latter, ten million children are not in school. For those in school, the education provided is hardly worth the name as our institutions churn out unemployable graduates to augment already unsustainably high unemployment rates.
It is not clear what answers either candidate has for these and other issues confronting the country as their respective campaigns focus on more pressing matters such as questioning the veracity of educational certificates or maligning records. Elements in the ruling PDP party claim that former Buhari is ineligible to run because he cannot produce evidence of a secondary school education. The opposition APC claims that President Jonathan’s only accomplishment is perfecting corruption.
Decision making by voters seems just as incoherent. The same men faced each other in 2011. Jonathan emerged victorious, but now a considerable number of voters who supported him four years ago are ready to throw their support to Buhari simply because he is ‘not Jonathan’.
Whoever leads Nigeria after May 29th, it is imperative that the next administration design and execute important reforms necessary to ignite key sectors of the economy and society. We need clear direction on anti-trust legislation. We need an accompanying competition policy to open up the economy. We need measures to address the pernicious causes and effects of economic inequality – an issue forced to the global stage by Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century but rarely discussed in Nigeria, one of the word’s most unequal societies. Most importantly, in my view, we need to address access to, and the quality of education with a total review and overhaul of what education means in Nigeria.
Ironically the more robust and entrenched a democracy, the more dissatisfied its citizens are with their particular manifestation. Citizens in some of the worlds “model” democracies, Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom consider their specific form of democracy uniquely and irredeemably dysfunctional. The same is true in Nigeria where one sometimes hears a nostalgic appreciation for the “certainties” of military rule. Nigeria’s democracy is clearly a work in progress but it is maturing much more than first meets the eye. To label the opposition as a hastily assembled outfit of disparate personalities and organizations united only to unseat the PDP (with many of them former members of that party), is maybe to quibble a bit. At least there is an opposition. It may even hold after the elections for longer than the UK’s current governing Tory/Lib Dem coalition—regardless of which party wins.
But an inherent contradiction about democracies is that constituent parties field candidates who they believe can win, not those who they believe will best govern. The more sophisticated the electorate, the more likely these two criteria will converge. Where the electorate is not sufficiently educated, they can diverge wildly. Despite the important implications of Nigeria’s upcoming elections on future governance, the selection of flag bearers took little stock of their merits in this respect. Therein lies the rub. Nigeria’s democracy continues to evolve but in my view it missed an opportunity to drastically reorient itself. The PDP was of course constrained by having to field the incumbent Jonathan (an attempt to force primaries foundered). But in the APC, the most suitable person to lead the country combining experience in government and affiliation with the party was never in the running. Babatunde Raji Fashola, the outgoing governor of Lagos. He was not considered for the top post, and was passed over as a vice-presidential candidate, because he was Muslim (as is General Buhari), or because he was not adequately championed by former Senator Bola Tinubu, his political mentor, or because he may have been helpless in the face of a party consensus that this is a ‘Northern’ turn at power.
It is not all dim. A new administration under Jonathan would have the chance to appoint more fitting ministers to join the handful of performers in his administration. And while few even of his supporters believe that as president, General Buhari would be any more adept at interviews or at making meaningful decisions than President Jonathan, he will have tried and true hands to lean on, notably, Governor Fashola, Kayode Fayemi (an academic and former governor of Ekiti State), Nasir El Rufai, and Rivers State governor Rotimi Amaechi. That said, the general opinion is that General Buhari would rule by –or be controlled through –proxies and the success of his administration (and the country) would depend on which blocs or individuals win the inevitable jostling for his ear and pen. The success of some of these potential jostlers would undoubtedly benefit of the country, others not as much.
Many would offer that the cold calculus of politics of Nigeria could not have effected an outcome other than to present these two contenders to its voters. But the Nigerian presidency holds too much power for it to be a contest between a rock and a hard place. Furthermore, as the wider world shows, the times in which we live require vastly different choices for and outcomes from elections. Voters across the world are increasingly more selective. Globalization sought a more integrated and interdependent world but also united voters in opposition to some of its more pernicious effects. The global financial crisis in 2008 and the economic uncertainty since, has made voters across the world even more discerning.
In Nigeria and Africa we need more robust choices that offer a real chance at meaningful and effective leadership, not simply a smash and grab approach to control of the state apparatus through political machinations. Nigeria’s democracy is not there yet but there are feeble signs that the calculus deciding the choice of candidates may one day match the criteria the country needs for selecting bold and progressive leaders.
By Tajudeen Salimonu
Tajudeen is an entrepreneur and occasional social commentator. He lives in Nigeria and in the United Kingdom.
