By Douglas Anele

Dear reader, yes, yesterday, the first of the three-part elections this month was concluded.  According to the election time-table released by the partially-dependent Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), elections into the two chambers of the National Assembly were slated for  yesterday, Saturday April 2, to be followed by the presidential election this Saturday,  April 9.

The final set of elections will hold on Saturday, April 16. As  previous elections that had been conducted in the past 41 years, the current one offers our people once again the opportunity to select compatriots that would rule the country from now till 2015.

But, of course, we know things are much more complicated than that. As a result of grossly underdeveloped political traditions and institutions, coupled with severe crisis of values in the Nigerian society, particularly among members of the ruling elite and political class, the outcome of elections in our country hardly reflect the genuine choices of Nigerian people, nor does the process end after actual voting had been concluded.

A significant percentage of Nigerians firmly believe that elections in the country, except perhaps the June 12, 1993 presidential polls, are nothing but arrangee selections characterised by violence, rigging and other anomalies that compromise the credibility of the so-called democratic process.

Therefore, we shall commence a critical reflection on the on-going elections to see whether there is any reasonable hope that this time round we have turned the corner in our endless game of musical chairs called “nascent democracy.”

Without pre-empting the conclusion of our discourse, it must be acknowledged that there are certain things happening now which suggest that our politicians are pachydermatous to the lessons of history. Surely, those who forget the lessons of history are condemned to repeat its mistakes.

The invention of democracy is usually credited to the ancient Greeks. But scholars in Igbo history know that that Ndigbo have been practising democracy for thousands of years before Pericles presided over the city-state of Athens in antiquity.

Therefore, it is wrong to think, as many people still do, that representative governance which is the essence of democratic systems all over the world was wholly alien to indigenous Nigerian communities before the advent of Europeans, and that is why we are not getting it right.

But then, what is representative government? What is democracy? Despite its diverse manifestations in different countries, Abraham Lincoln’s definition of ‘democracy’ remains the best. Democracy, he says, is “government of the people, by the people and for the people.”

This means that, no matter the form it might take in different societies all over the world, the core of democracy is that people freely choose those who would preside over their affairs and secure their well-being within a state or nation. In Nigeria, particularly since 1999, there is no clear evidence that the country is making steady progress in the evolution of traditions, institutions and culture that would support a genuine democratic system.

This is fundamental for understanding the enormity of the problem confronting Nigerians as they go to the polls once more to select those that will lead them for the next four years. Before we beam our critical searchlight on the major actors in the political soap opera that is playing itself out at the moment, let us quickly address the issue of whether the primary requirement for bringing about and sustaining a viable democratic government is strong men and women or strong institutions.

Pat Utomi, a social critic and expert in entrepreneurship studies, believes that the fundamental problem with Nigeria’s democratic evolution is the absence of strong institutions. In his view, the abuses in the Nigerian system are principally due to weak institutions. In my view, Utomi and others who give primacy to strong institutions over strong personalities – visionary, enlightened, and disciplined individuals – are mistaken. In any activity involving human groups, the fundamental resource or factor is people. Human beings are the creators and sustainers of traditions and institutions.

Of course, institutions are extremely important in any organised human social activity because they provide relatively stable structures for harnessing human productive powers for the actualisation of stated objectives. They also partly determine who we are and the kind of society that we create. But the question is: what are institutions without the men and women that created and manage them to ensure that they survive and grow? Absolutely nothing.

Therefore, while we acknowledge the critical importance of institutions in the evolution of human civilisation in its diverse ramifications, it is clear that the human factor is primary, without which institutions cannot even exist in the first place. Nigeria sorely needs genuinely patriotic and committed heroes and heroines to step up and take on the daunting challenge of creating new institutions or reforming existing ones to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

As we said before, there is growing evidence that Nigerian politicians have not learnt any useful lessons from our political history. They are not merely repeating the mistakes of the past, they are actually exacerbating them. Aside from politically-motivated destruction of lives and property close to election, politicians now use bombing and kidnapping as instruments of intimidation against political rivals.

Some governors prevent politicians who belong to rival parties from using public facilities to campaign in their states. In addition, notwithstanding electronic systems now in place to improve the electoral process and minimise irregularities, there are several reported cases of attempts to sabotage the system, either in the form of unauthorised persons being in possession of important election materials and machines or numerous cases of double registration.

To be continued.