THE REAL THREATS TO OUR DEMOCRACY

Nigeria has never enjoyed an unbroken decade of civilian government, since our political independence, as she presently enjoys. Perhaps “unbroken decade of democratic government” would have been more apt but for weighty reasoning in the court of public opinion that we are still some distance from the practice of true democracy. In an environment where the quality of every election since 1999 has been worse than preceding ones, you can hardly fault this school of thought.

I was at the 50th Golden Jubilee Independence Anniversary Service held at the National Christian Center, barely two days after the twin bomb blasts that rocked Abuja on Nigeria’s 50th Birthday. While addressing the congregation, the President, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, described the masterminds of the Independence Day terrorism as the enemies of the Nigerian people. Some other government officials described the perpetrators as threats to Nigerian democracy. I can no less agree because the chief responsibility of any government is to provide security in an ambience of law and order.

Unfortunately, beyond physical security, Nigeria is beset with other forms of insecurity which unfortunately do not seem to attract the desired response from our leaders. Apart from the prevailing insecurity of lives and properties, Nigeria is gravely buffeted by a rash of socio-economic disequilibrium which is not only mind boggling but also capable of truncating our current democratic experiment.

Leading the pack is the high illiteracy rate in our country coupled with the alarming falling standards in our education system. Just recently, the results of the WASSCE examinations were released and about eighty percent of the candidates could not make credits in English Language and Mathematics; two pre-requisite subjects for admission into higher institutions. Another way to describe this; massive failure! In 2005, only 27.53% made the pre-requisite number of credits, students’ performance took a turn for the worst in 2006 as only 15.56% passed, 2007 was marginally better at 25.54%, the slide resurfaced in 2008 when success rate dipped to 23.54, it was 21.96 in 2009 and just last year the rot in our education sector was exemplified by a 20.04% performance.

Yet, just days after the release of the horrendous 2010 senior school results, the Federal Government announced the closure of both primary and secondary schools all over the country to allow INEC conduct voter registration across Nigeria. To many Nigerians, that decision amounted to brazen disregard of the mood of Nigerians over the poor state of our education sector. It also reinforced the argument that the deliberate destruction of our education sector is another front of the class war initially unleashed on the Nigerian nation by the military class and currently sustained by their civilian next in kin. You can hardly fault this line of argument when the children of our elites only attend foreign schools, or in very exceptional cases the very best private schools in Nigeria.

Our cliques of ruling elites have not only destroyed our education system, they have also turned around to discredit products from Nigerian public schools as useless and unemployable. The plot does not need an Einstein to decipher; it is a war to perpetuate a dynasty of corruption and oppression where the children of some affluent Nigerians are labeled “special” because they were foreign “brewed”, ostensibly with funds stolen from our common patrimony, to gain an undue advantage over their home “brewed” peers. Are you still surprised why political and economic leadership succession is increasingly becoming hereditary in Nigeria? These are Nigerians whose wealth can only be traced to opportunistic access to the corridors of power rather than inheritance, innovation or industry. Their fathers had whipped Nigeria with a scourge of “koboko” perhaps it is now the turn of their children to improvise with a scourge of scorpions.

The implications of a largely uneducated or poorly educated citizenry are too frightening for a country like Nigeria with such intimidating population and high rate of poverty. Talk about poverty in Nigeria, it is both endemic and pervasive. This is a country where more than 80% of the populace live below $1 a day, and yet, our legislators at the National Assembly enjoy the unenviable status as the highest paid lawmakers in the world. Their jumbo perks are higher than what their counterparts in USA and other G7 countries earn. You even get sadder when you juxtapose their productivity with that of legislators from those other places. More than any other incentive, the outrageous pampering of our public office holders is the reason politics has become the most lucrative business in town. It equally fuels the current desperation by Nigerian politicians to gain access to power by all means. This rat race has increasingly subjected our unbundling democracy to very severe stress.

More than 75% of Nigerian youths who are willing and capable of employment are wallowing in the unemployment market. This gloomy state of affairs has unleashed severe collateral damage on the psyche of both Nigerian youths and their parents. There is hardly any motivation for our youths to take their studies serious since leaving school means direct entry to the formidable army of jobless Nigerians. For some parents, it is beginning to make more sense sending their wards to acquire one form of artesian skills or another rather than sending them to school. At least, that way, they would be assured of a faster return on their investment. A recent British Council commissioned Report on Nigeria has warned that Nigeria faces a demographic disaster if she fails to provide jobs for her mass of unemployed youths, estimated to soar by tens of millions by 2030.

Well, it is so easy to agree with the conclusions of that report just that the reality suggests that the demographic failure will not happen in 2030; it is here with us. According to a recent police report on crime, more that 90% of crimes committed in Nigeria are perpetrated by young Nigerians. From advance fee fraud, illicit drug trade, ethno-religious unrest, armed robbery, kidnapping, terrorism and assassinations, Nigerian youths, inspired by the frustrations in our system, are daily being sucked into a whirlpool of violence. Well, some of the former militant youths in Niger Delta have been settled but how do we plan to contain the rage of millions of other youths who have now been forced to believe that our system only rewards those who take up arms against the state? To add salt to our injury, those using the youths as cannon fodders to perpetrate crimes hide under immunity offered by the “short” arms of our legal system and chronic dearth of political will by government to bring these highly placed Nigerians to book.

Most fundamentally, if this democracy must survive, we need to re-appraise the nature and structure of our federalism. While our constitution prescribes a federal system of government, the practice is another kettle of fish altogether. It does not just make sense that virtually every state in Nigeria survives only on allocations from the center. There is something fundamentally wrong with that. Political federalism without economic federalism is another word for national misadventure. It is ironical that while many state governors are complaining of increasing difficulties in meeting their wages and developmental obligations, the clamor for the creation of additional states is gaining current by the day. That is quite instructive. If we continue to assign 80% of our national budgets to overheads at the detriment of developmental capital projects, the center may give way and the biggest casualty would be our nascent democratic experience. Selah!


Comrade Echezona Asuzu