By Obiadiah Mailafia

BRITISH war-time Prime Minister Winston Churchill described democracy as “the worst system of government – except for the others.” Euro-Americans like to trace the origins of democracy back to the ancient Greeks. Among Athenian aristocrats, it was not a polite word. It derives from the Greek word “demos”, which means rule by mobs. The philosopher Plato despised it, preferring rule by philosopher-kings.

Freedom’s apprenticeship took centuries of struggle. Magna Carta was first drafted in 1215 by the Archbishop of Canterbury to settle the dispute between an unpopular king and rebelling barons. It delineated the boundaries between monarchy and parliament. Lord Denning described it as “the greatest constitutional document of all times – the foundation of the freedom of the individual against the arbitrary authority of the despot”. Then we had the Glorious Revolution 1668-1689 which ousted King James II; establishing the supremacy of parliament. The ensuing Bill of Rights affirmed the rights and liberties of the English people against arbitrary monarchical power.

The 1776 American revolutionary war of independence threw off the manacles of British colonialism while establishing the United States a free Republic. The ensuing Declaration of Independence is one of the most important documents in the annals of human government: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.”

Then as now, American democracy has not been perfect. Several of the signatories of the Declaration of Independence, from Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Franklin and George Washington, were slave-owners. It took centuries of civil-rights struggles for black people in America to secure the right to vote. The French Revolution of 1789 was to sweep away what the British Marxist political philosopher Perry Anderson termed “the lineages of the absolutist state”. Its battle cry was, “liberté, egalité et fraternité”. But the ensuing terror was to consume some of the sons of the revolution. Napoleon Bonaparte eventually took over, creating an imperial government with expansionist ambitions that rattled European powers for more than a decade. Before long, the ancien regimes of feudal Europe all came crashing down. Even then, democracy and the right to exercise the electoral franchise was restricted to men of property. Women and the lower orders were excluded. It was not until 1918 that the right to vote was extended to all citizens in Britain. And it was not until February 1971 that women were granted universal suffrage in Switzerland.

Today, we could say that democracy has established a stronghold in Europe, more so with collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the disintegration of the Soviet Empire.

The other milestone of democracy began as far back as August 1947, when India threw off its yoke of its colonial bondage from Britain. What Prime Minister Harold Macmillan termed “the wind of change” was to sweep through Asia, Latin America, Africa, the Caribbean and the far-flung Pacific islands. The UN proclaimed 1960 as “the year of Africa”, when most of the countries of our glorious continent got their independence. It took another decade, following bitter anti-colonial liberation wars, for the Portuguese colonies to be set free.

The ship of democracy has never sailed smoothly in our turbulent waters. There has been violence and bitter strife, military coups and murderous tyrannies, a lot of them fomented by world powers during the Cold War era.

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The year 1990 was another important milestone. Nelson Mandela took his long walk to freedom. The evil Apartheid regime eventually collapsed in South Africa, ushering in a new vista of hope. The New Partnership for Africa’s Development, NEPAD, was launched in the year 2,000. African countries committed themselves to democracy, the rule of law, peaceful resolution of conflict and responsible government.

British philosopher and political theorist Michael Oakeshott famously described democracy as a part of “the great conversation of mankind”. Democracy is never an end-state. It is a quest and an adventure on how a free people can flourish in peace, justice and liberty. It can be likened to a woman in travail of birth. The seeds of freedom have first to be planted. They will then germinate and grow. There will always be birth pangs. Freedom never comes without sacrifice and struggle. Liberty is never given. It must be taken. And it must always be staunchly defended – nurtured with care, passion and effort.

The Saturday, February 23, elections exposed once again the fragility of our democracy. The legitimacy of the process itself must be questioned from day one. I respect Mahmood Yakubu, an old schoolmate whom I regard as a friend.

He is a first-rate historian and a capable technocrat. But he should not have been appointed INEC Chairman in the first place. As a matter of constitutional convention, the electoral umpire is always appointed from a zone other than the president’s. This is to ensure transparent objectivity. Not only was this convention violated, there was even pressure to appoint Amina Zakari, who is alleged to be a kinswoman to the president, as chief collation officer.

There is also anecdotal evidence that most people in the Northern States were registered and duly had their PVCs as against the rest of us. It was alleged that the registration was carried as far as people’s homes. There is anecdotal evidence that millions of foreigners who infiltrated our porous borders were registered to vote. By contrast, millions in the Middle Belt and the South were technically dis-enfranchised. Even INEC acknowledges that more than seven million people did not collect their PVCs. There is a lot of bitterness because millions were robbed of their right to vote.

When it came to the voting process itself, all restraint was thrown to the dogs. It was thump-printing galore, with no reference to any authentication. Vote-buying, use of military force and intimidation was the norm. One governor deliberately orchestrated inter-ethnic violence to create chaos and ensure that voting will not take place in areas where he was guaranteed to lose. In Lagos, Yoruba youths descended upon defenceless Ndigbo, beating and terrorising them. International Observers were warned that they would go back “in body bags” if they interfered in our “internal affairs”.

To demonstrate the egregious anomalies of the last elections, as presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress, ADC, the electoral umpire registered zero votes for me in my own stronghold of Southern Kaduna. I was placed in fourth place in the overall presidential elections, which some believe to be a great achievement. If my votes had not been stolen, I would have done far better.

Something did take place on February 23. But it was a selection rather than an election.  One is by no means suggesting that only one side was guilty. It is largely a systemic problem. But government must take the lion share of the responsibility.  It is clear that they promoted and abetted gross electoral violations. It is a moral law of the universe that such gratuitous evil will always boomerang!