Across the globe, democracy has become the most popular system of government because under it, persons in power are elected by the people to represent them in government thus establishing that the people own the government and that power belongs to the people. No matter how benevolent a dictator may be, it is unreasonable for anyone to impose himself on a people as their ruler – a point clearly against military rule in Nigeria.

But over the years, many people have been misled into believing that democracy is the same as civilian rule. In reality however, the two concepts are not coterminous because many persons under a civilian government do behave like military rulers who hardly subscribe to the democratic tenets of freedom, equality, due process and the rule of law.

Today in Nigeria, not every citizen shares the enthusiasm of the political class that the worst form of democracy is better than the best form of dictatorship. Many people are indeed unhappy with our current democracy in which actors work against the due process of law. In the last couple of days, many events clearly confirm this assertion. A good example is the unending defection of elected office holders from one political party to the other. To start with, it is untidy to see a trend towards a one-party state where lawmakers elected under the platform of an opposition party decamp to the ruling party at federal and state levels.  Yet, the law deprecates the act and requires that those affected should lose their seats – a rule no one obeys.

In a democracy, defectors would not be seen using legal technicalities, to get judicial backing with an argument such as that their parties had been broken into ‘irreconcilable’ factions, hence they needed to seek more viable platforms. Whereas the argument helps political jobbers to get off the hook, the trend does not strengthen democracy because there is no political party in Nigeria without rancour. A dispute among members of a party only calls for resolution, not defection as the voters never endorsed the new parties which such erstwhile representatives now desire. This is better appreciated when it is remembered that Nigerian law says it is parties that win votes.

How rational is it that a person wins an election on the platform of party X and for personal reasons moves the mandate to party Y?  Indeed, how does one explain the fact whereby some federal legislators defected from the so-called factitious Labour Party at the federal level while some other opposition lawmakers defected to the same Labour Party in Abia state only because the party controls the majority in the state House of Assembly? The truth therefore is that Nigerian politicians have no strong political principles that can keep them in their original parties; they are consistently involved in mercantile political carpet crossing thereby whittling down democracy. The trend is certainly a threat to true democracy and good governance in Nigeria.

As far back as 2018, Professor Attahiru Jega, former electoral commission boss had revealed that the political class is more responsible for the inability of Nigeria’s democracy to grow. This is easy to see in what is playing out at the Lagos State House of Assembly. It is true that legislators are empowered by law to elect or remove a speaker for the House but why did the Lagos state legislators choose to timidly remove speaker Mudashiru Obasa while the House was officially on recess? Was the official procedure for reconvening the House duly followed? The clerk of the House, Olalekan Onafeko known to be a strong loyalist of Obasa was also summarily removed. Being a public servant who is subject to rules of discipline that are different from those of politicians, why was he removed along with Obasa?

 As we argued two weeks ago, by electing a new speaker from the same zone as the current governor, the legislators tilted power to one direction of the state thereby ignoring the need to ensure the balance of political offices across the state.  If Obasa was involved in misappropriation of funds is his removal the prescribed punishment for such a criminal offence? When will Obasa who has been so accused be prosecuted or given a chance to defend himself? It is shocking that some people expected Obasa not to fight back. He has since done so by mobilizing the instrument of coercion to reinstate himself against the wishes of his legislator colleagues. Those who are unable to comprehend Obasa’s ‘intransigence’ have only failed to realize that Obasa is able to act as he wishes because our democracy is yet to be institutionalized.

Last week, members of the All-Progressives Congress APC in Osun state invaded the local government secretariats in the state and expelled the Peoples Democratic Party councillors and chairmen from office. According to the APC, their action was informed by their own interpretation of a court ruling in their favour against their opponents. Before the invasion, Governor Ademola Adeleke abandoned dancing briefly to raise an alarm about the coming disaster. It is either he was ignored, or no one heard his alarm to prevent the unfortunate tragedy. Painfully, the invasion led to the death of some Osun citizens with casualty figures that have more than one version. But must Nigerians die so that some of their fellow citizens can assume office in a self-acclaimed democratic country where some leaders say their political ambition is not worth anyone’s blood?

While still counting the dead, the same Osun state was busy with another major political event – local government elections in the state. Rather than tarry a while and honour the dead, an Ilesha High court gave the state ‘independent’ electoral commission under the leadership of Barrister Hashim Abioye the nod some 24 hours earlier to continue with the elections. The two main challenges raised by Chairman Abioye concerning the elections were: first, that the commission’s office in Osogbo was sealed off by personnel of the Nigeria Police and second that due to the harassment and arrests of his officials by police personnel his commission was unable to conduct polls in some polling units. These challenges notwithstanding, the ruling PDP as expected ‘won’ the elections in all the 30 local government areas and 332 wards in the state.

The election could never have gone otherwise because local government elections in Nigeria are usually ‘swept’ by the ruling party. No matter the ruling party in any state, the results would have taken the same pattern because although our electoral bodies are supposed to be neutral umpires, they are usually made up of friends, families and political associates of the ruling party who often ignore rules and the due process of law. This visibly played out in Benue state the other week when Governor Hyacinth Alia and his House of Assembly members served as accusers, prosecutors and judges in a case in which the two arms of government wanted to remove the state’s Chief Judge (CJ), Justice Maurice Ikpambase.   

The governor reportedly wrote a petition against the CJ to the State House of Assembly which was immediately approved by a majority of legislators without following due process. It is strange that despite several precedents in states such as Kwara, Abia, Rivers, Plateau and Ekiti states, Benue politicians did not know that without the concurrence of the National Judicial Council NJC, no one is allowed to remove a CJ or indeed, any judge from office. It would appear that the political class in Benue relied essentially on a political solution rather than established rules and guidelines. They didn’t stop there. They also suspended 13 of their colleagues who dissociated themselves from the plot to remove the state’s Chief Judge.

Interestingly, almost every year our legislators find cause to suspend one or more of their members without remembering that each of such suspensions has always been quashed by the courts. The stand of the Judiciary makes sense because considering that a legislature consists of representatives from all areas, should anyone be empowered to undermine some areas by suspending their representatives? Besides, since the majority had their way why couldn’t the minority have their say? Instead of answering the question, it appears easier to plead with our political class to desist from actions that stultify our democracy. As the famous social scientist, Professor McKenzie once warned, “if the rules limiting the struggle for power are not observed more or less faithfully, the game will disappear amid the wreckage of the whole system.”