Agitations for secession from the country are now sounding to the heavens.Says Femi Mimiko
A former Vice Chancellor of Adekunle Ajasin University, Ondo State, Professor Femi Mimiko, is a Political Science teacher at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife.
By yesterday, it was 22 years of unbroken civil administration, the longest in the country’s chequered history. What’s your reading of the journey so far?
It is good enough that we have stayed course on the democratic path, now for more than two decades. For sure, it isn’t that democracy is infallible, as many pundits – including Woodrow Wilson – had averred over the years, but its preeminent place in the pantheon of governance systems consists in the platform it affords for inclusivity, ordered process of power acquisition, and oversight over exercise of same.
That said, it will be correct to aver that the democratic system in Nigeria has not acquainted itself creditably enough. With the transition in 1999 came wide expectation that the new path was going to be more responsive to the aspirations of the people, in terms of provision of welfare, including economic wellbeing and security, much more than we had under the military. This has not turned out to be so. Otherwise, you won’t have 94 million Nigerians living in extreme poverty, and 13.2 million of our kids on the streets rather than in school. Our maternal mortality rate, at about 800 per 100,000, is virtually the worst in the world; and now we have added the unusual distinction of being the third most terrorised country in the world, after Afghanistan and Iraq.
The opportunity afforded by democracy for the management of diversity has not been taken advantage of, expected. Thus, you have a very high level of estrangement from the system on the part of many citizens and constituencies. And of course, it would be correct to say that the country is more divided now than at any time since the end of the civil war. Agitations for secession from the country are now sounding to the heavens. All of these are not good enough.
In relation to the democratic process itself, I doubt if Nigerians have been more empowered. Elections continue to be regarded with serious doubt, as to their degrees of fairness. Election finance remains a sore thumb, which you would have expected the different regimes that ran the show since 1999, to take headlong, as it constitutes a most potent basis for public sector corruption in our country. Female representation is something that should also have been addressed, but has not. Above all, the type of thoroughgoing review of the 1999 Constitution rammed down our throat by the military, remains the same to all intents and purposes. Thus, this veritable avenue to greater inclusiveness and more beneficial engagement of government with the people, has not been taken. And so, in spite of democracy, a good percentage of Nigerians continue to hurt. But then, this is not to say any authoritarian system is to be preferred to democracy. At least, we have a semblance of participation in the governance process. We don’t just get announced to, who our next governor will be. In spite of everything, the courts have been able to extend the hands of justice to some aggrieved Nigerians; and above all, there is hope that some day, the country may have the type of imaginary and visionary government that would begin to turn things around and move us in the proper direction. It is thus better to remain on this democratic path, continue to muddle through, make incremental progress, rather than revert to authoritarian jackboots again.
Is 22 years enough to deepen democratic culture in the country, in your own view?
I refer to democratic consolidation, as democratic irreversibility. While this is a function of longevity, it should not be assumed that the longer a democratic system stays in place, the greater the degree of consolidation. That is to say that while no one would have expected that two decades were enough to fully entrench democracy, the truth is that Nigeria has not done enough to deepen democratic practice. And so, to all intents and purposes, as the title of one of my books have it, what we still are dealing with is a “democradura” – a limited, or indeed, an illiberal democracy. The signposts are there for all to see. The payoff, in terms of welfare and security for the people, has not improved, even if you do not want to admit that it has gone worse. The electoral system that is the very bedrock of representative democracy remains warped, and has almost lost legitimacy completely. Just a little above 30 percent of registered voters participated in the last presidential election. Key constitutional changes that would have promoted inclusivity, the very essence of democracy, are still crying to be made. The leaders neither respect nor are accountable to the people. They go home with humongous remunerations while their constituents continue to hurt, and wallow in sickening poverty. We have not also been able to have a handle of power generation, without which no credible degree of industrialisation is possible. Where I have my house in Ondo, one agency by the name, BDEC, had taken electricity for the past 14, yes, 14 months, and there is no one to get the company, which is effectively a monopoly, to do a rethink. Overall, I am persuaded that a lot has to do with the overall quality of the guys that have had the opportunity to superintend the democratic process since 1999. Our country could admit of a higher level of capacity. This is one reason that has now made me to become an advocate of parliamentary system of government. Apart from the fact that you have to be top grade within your party to get to the position of leadership, and possibly the country’s premier, you also have to, statutorily, engage with the people weekly, on the platform of the Prime Minister’s Question Time in parliament. And so, as a leader, you cannot afford not to be on top of your game at all times. If you weren’t in that mould, the system would have weeded you off before you’ll had an opportunity of leading the nation – in the wrong direction, of course.
What would you recommend as the pathway to follow for the country to get out of zone of the underdeveloped?
You see, developmental policies have context. So, you can talk of sociality of public policies. There is none of these policies – economic development, fight against corruption, etc. – that that can be conceptualised or taken outside of the social context in which they are made. It, therefore, would mean, for instance, that if the structure for delivering public policies and services is itself convoluted, nothing good would derive from such. That is why we have been moving around like a barber’s chair on the same issues for so long; because there is no strong incentive to do better. If you have no advantage of either affective or instrumental support, for instance, you, as government, would work in isolation of the people; and that is a problem. That is why there is so much of public trust deficit. So, the first step is to put in place a more functional and responsive governance structure, with which the people would be able to relate, as a first critical step to get your programmes to be meaningful. I like the incumbent government’s social investment programmes, for instance, as they constitute a veritable tool for pulling people off poverty. But the question is, are the prevailing structures of over-centralised governance allowing this to be effectively implemented. My guess is, no!
