On Saturday, May 29, 2021, the rebirth of the country’s democracy marked its 22nd anniversary. On May 29, 1999, when President Olusegun Obasanjo was inaugurated as civilian president after about 16 years of military interregnum, positive excitements swept through the country from urban centres to rural areas; from Lagos to Maiduguri. However, 22 years after, every hope conceived in 1999 has been aborted, and the Motherland is now in a very critical condition, facing the danger of fragmentation.
Nigeria’s predicament was foretold, therefore, avoidable. For instance, the then British Foreign Office Minister, Mr Tony Lloyd, in an opinion published in Nigerian newspapers on July 17, 1999, said: “The government should work for all sections of the population and all parts of the country. Nigeria has experienced high hopes before, all of which were dashed. This time we want things to be different. Ultimately, the only people who can build lasting peace, prosperity and democracy in Nigeria are Nigerian people themselves. But the UK will be with them every step of the way.” As feared by Mr Lloyd, all the hopes raised in 1999, just like other previous times, were dashed to pieces, leaving Nigerians in nostalgia of the wreck of the past.
Poor leadership, corruption, inequality and discrimination; violence and impunity. These and more have ruined Nigeria beyond expression and explanation. The economy has nosedived, with production in various sectors being non-existent or at abysmally below capacity. As against all the pledges made by successive governments since 1999, the country remains a net importer of consumer goods, and a dumping ground, a junkyard of Chinese and other Asian countries’ substandard products. Inflation is scandalously so high that the cost of living is unaffordable with an unrealistic minimum wage of about N30,000, less than $62 per month. Brazen and unbridled corruption has defied strategies and mechanisms because of the half-heartedness of regulatory agencies and security operatives. Worst of all, the spate of insecurity has not only endangered the lives of Nigerians, it has polarized the country along ethnic, religious and regional lines, where mutual suspicions have bred senseless killings and other animalistic behaviours unbecoming of a country that claims to operate on the wheels of the Rule of Law.
The Buhari administration, ushered in in 2015, with fanfare and elaborate relief, to deal with incessant corruption, Boko Haram terrorism, and unemployment, has performed more poorly than most of his predecessors. It has lost the unprecedented goodwill with which it rode to power, and become a byword for lost opportunities and ultimate disappointment. Apart from the strange heights attained in corruption, the administration’s lacklustre approach to the fight against bandits and kidnappers has made the country ungovernable from North to South, and produced heroes out of advocates of secession. There is no symmetry between the federal government and state governments on how to tackle the spate of violence and killings, and as a measure of how they have lost confidence in the federal security architecture, state governors are advocating for state police and the procurement of weapons for untrained local vigilantes.
At the state level, democracy has failed and has been of no benefit to the people. State Houses of Assembly have been emasculated, as they are populated with stooges of state governors. The judiciary is not independent, as judges read the lips of governors before making judicial pronouncements. Journalists in states who fail to parrot the hypocrisy and lies of governors, but rather attempt to hold them accountable to the people, face the danger of assault or death in the hands of security operatives or non-state actors, like thugs and masquerades. Press freedom, a cardinal ingredient of democracy, is non-existent at the state level. Most pathetic is the lack of transparency and accountability by elected government officials at the state level. Governors engage in impunity, waste resources on their vanities, while civil servants are unpaid, underpaid, or sacked without due process, in the name of right-sizing the system. Most infrastructure projects are embarked upon to provide avenues for siphoning funds from the treasury.
For 22 years, the only sign of democracy in Nigeria is the seamless transmission of power from one government to another. This is not enough. We encourage the Buhari administration to use the next two years to ameliorate some of the current sufferings. Nigerians deserve a better atmosphere in a democratic system of government.
