Lately, the concept of democracy has come under intensive scrutiny in many places largely because the noble idea of self-determination through the people’s participation in their governance has been corrupted by state-capturing buccaneer-like politicians who have managed to turn the constitutional governing system into a perverted Orwellian mechanism for unbridled corruption and self-aggrandizements to the detriment of the populace in whose name they routinely perpetrate their kleptocracy and shameless nepotism.
Today, people have lost faith in their governments to the extent that they frustratingly wish for some arcane alternatives even though they cannot fathom how worse such may turn out to be. In effect, democracy as an idea suggesting pro-people responsible and accountable governance is in a state of flux with its doubters everywhere while government is daily reinforcing its own negative perception through faulty actions and omissions that can only breed contempt and widespread derision to the institution of government in a supposed democratic system.
When citizens see their erstwhile arrogant “excellencies” speedily swapping their executive mansions with jail houses and, in some cases, into hostile mob attacks and threats of possible gallows treatment, it then becomes questionable how a system that could bring forth a person as the popularly “elected” yesterday would at the end make him an inmate in penal jail houses for various governance transgressions; such a system must have a recruitment preference for the dregs of society. That certainly could not have been the intention of those who invented democracy which has indeed benefited many nations who knew its nature and values and accordingly deploy their operational mechanisms and related values with good faith and patriotism into it.
Edun
When for example, the late President Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana told his fellow compatriots to seek “first the political Kingdom” and all else shall be added unto them, paraphrasing the biblical entry (Matthew 6:33) where Jesus was reported to have told his disciples who were puzzled about their goals in life that they should rather “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you”.
Nkrumah’s envisioned “Political Kingdom” was the eventual arrival of self-rule in Ghana within the context of a constitutional democracy – self-determination. Well, independence did come but for a very long time, the people were not quite sure what else, other than chaos and misery, that was added onto their already wretched lives.
Instead of the promised bliss and tranquility comparable to Heaven, what democracy brought to Ghana and many African nations unfortunately turned out to be political evils like corruption, ethnicity, incompetence and general degeneration of society in spite of the abundance of all that were necessary to positively turn these countries around.
Nkrumah was not quite forthright in that his proclamation as he failed to attach the very important proviso similar to that which Jesus offered his disciples as they dreamt of the kingdom of God. He clearly told them that they should seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. He did not promise a paved thoroughfare to the kingdom. Instead, he frankly told them that righteousness was a major component of the requirements, a sort of visa, required to enter that beautiful city of God.
Just as it is in the kingdom of God, democracy is also predicated on certain critical requirements of righteousness and sacrifices such as lawfulness, diligence, electoral decency and patriotic service to the people.
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What is our democracy really worth? This question has become very apt to us in view of the frenzy and unbearable tension that often grip the land over elections as if there is actually any hope that after all the din and hullabaloo that Nigerians would then be ushered into a blissful new era where all the present ills besetting the nation such as unemployment, corruption, incompetence, declining quality of life and general immiseration of the populace would disappear.
The public space has been unduly choked with endless and pedantic discussions and outrightly contrived lamentations aplenty. Families and friends from ages past are rapidly falling apart simply because they no longer see “eye to eye” on who to vote for depending on the political party and political leader they own their allegiance to. If that is democracy, then there is a lot to worry about.
We have previously argued here that properly practiced, and strictly analysed within the framework of accountability and checks and balances, democracy could indeed be the most acceptable mode of managing the affairs of modern complex societies. A universally acceptable summary of democracy is that by Abraham Lincoln at the 1863 Gettysburg address where he declared that democracy is “a government of the people, for the people and by the people”. In this Lincolnian postulation, the People are at the heart democracy which is further encapsulated in the popular slogan: “People’s Power.”
In the same way, elections could regularly be conducted in a country all in the name of democracy but the leadership that emerge therefrom do not function in the interest of the society but of themselves. In other words, democracy may not always be the much-needed avenue for good governance if the processes are carried out in ways and manners that are corrupt and improper while the key practitioners are themselves incorrigible deviants.
For example, even though it is not being openly discussed, one of the main reasons why the Tax Reform Bills are running into serious troubles with a large segment of the polity and her geopolitics is the strong suspicion that whilst the idea of tax reform in Nigeria is indeed a welcome one, this particular effort is suspect because it seems as if the government is trying to extraordinarily enrich some “Tinubu Boys” by extravagantly doling out the whopping sum of six billion Naira (N6,000,000,000) just to undertake an intellectual and professional exercise that could easily be executed perfectly with figures that are far less than one billion Naira!
Speaking as an academic and a researcher cum consultant at both national and international levels for many years, I am inclined to think that that amount cannot be prudently explained outside of willful fiscal wastage and abuse of assignment awarding powers. Lucky boys, one might say!
I do no doubt the high competences of most members of the Committee but it is certainly incongruous to officially allocate such a humongous amount of money for what a few experts with robust and in-depth consultation and analytical doctrines could have accomplished with a far less amount, but when people in government only see opportunities to shortchange the system, then, democracy is being unwittingly put on trial.
The Committee greedily denied itself of the abundant intellectual, technical and professional resources available in several disciplines across this country and beyond that are critical to the assignment which they were given and that probably explains why certain obvious constitutional and political economy issues were not considered. It is not enough to brilliantly articulate on how to raise more tax money for the government. It is also of paramount importance that you consider how to productively empower the potential taxpayers so as to make their tax payment a natural civic obligation as happy citizens. Such a multidisciplinary capacity cannot be sourced solely within the faculties of Tax and Taxation, no matter their peculiar specialties.
In the last few weeks when we discussed the vexed question “Why Nations Fail,” we highlighted the obvious fact that in most failing states, government businesses are usually structured on the “Extractive Model” in which every opportunity is converted into an exclusionary process for cornering national resources into private pockets through seemingly altruistic national projects. In a nutshell, these are the reasons why democracy has degenerated from being a government of the people to one of anti-people.
