AMONG other perspectives, society is said to be a construct of conflicting interests and influences. The combination of such divergent energies invariably powers the locomotive that takes society in the direction and destination, which its leaders and inhabitants and even ‘well-wishers’ are willing and prepared to steer it.

A dominant set of such influences, to a large degree, forms tapestries of identities recognisable in all spheres of a people’s socio-political upbringing and value system. The bottom line, taken as a whole, is to actualise a way of life that promotes the common good.

Take democracy – where it is the elected system of government – for instance, it passes as one of such frameworks for the furtherance of ideologies and influences, and it is worthy to admit that a people’s conscious sustenance of this system, or any other, is a full function of the texture of politics that plays out in that society. Nigeria is an example. Without equivocations, politics is not a system of government even though the Nigerian example makes one take a second look at that fact; it merely serves as the arteries through which creative leadership is pumped into the heart of a chosen system of government. It is no wonder therefore that despite the universality of Abraham Lincoln’s acclaimed definition, democracy is localised to fit into the peculiarities of a people.

In other words, the multiple and sometimes complex interpretations of democracy are permissible as long as such diverse orientations do not tarnish the beauty and inherent essence of democratic practice because, regardless of the dynamics of its application, a nation and its people are, beyond any realms of contestation, the sole beneficiaries of both the high- and the low-hanging fruit of that system of government.

It would help, even if for its nostalgic value, to take another look at this timeless definition of democracy, which, it is possible to assume, is fortified with the pulse of poetry in order to aid recitation thereby preserving it as a creed in the hearts and minds of man.

Though the definition has seen several quarters of a century, is it likely that the treachery of time has obliterated “Government of the people, by the people, for the people” from the memory of those who should know? Who did not tick the right answer when faced with that question in any test situation? Over time, the definition was no longer a challenge; it became a bonus and a relief, especially if the preceding questions had ruffled a candidate’s confidence.

It has to be said that the rhythmic recurrence of ‘the people’, in the definition, is far from fortuitous; if anything, it is reassuring and gravely emphatic of the fundamental focus of democracy – the spirit inherent in its theory and practice. Read it backward, the emphasis is retained; it is the same: the people.

Given the foregoing, the adaptation of democratic principles and practice to different climes validates the actualisation of what is dubbed ‘home-grown’ democracy in Nigeria. In many important ways, however, our ‘home-grown’ paradigm has been so travestied that its celebration invites, more often than not, blanket distrust and suspicion instead of pride and fulfillment in our ability to evolve a tailor-made democratic model. From the reinvigorated phase of 1999 elections, for example, we have produced what would pass as a strange contraption, quite incongruous with the native ideals of this system of government. The years 1999-2015 are well within living memory but a section of Nigerians still spurns discourses that bring that stretch of time to mind. The current party in power had to orchestrate political symphonies from the sequence of horrifying profligacy of those years to convince the electorate for votes. The swing of public interest was in their favour and they clinched power at the federal level in 2015.

Let us go down memory lane and Nigerians, both at home and in the Diaspora, would approve that our politics has killed our democracy. Take a minute and reflect on the mindboggling ironies and falsities that flank and litter the routes we have travelled in the past seventeen years. What we have seen is politics that has wrecked the political class, violated our sensibilities and jeopardised our political orientation.

From fake certificates, failed leadership, badly managed forgeries, pathological squandering of our resources down to dozens of other atrocities and intrigues qualify us as a nation that is attracted to misbegotten democratic imagination.  Through the years, the Nigerian people have been made scavengers, who rummage the heap of their political wastes for anything of interest. There has not been much luck with that; rather, we have continued like a people searching for the black box of an ill-fated democratic journey.

What is worse, every election year, successive political leaders mount the podium to demand our votes with the familiar rhetoric and conviction that they have worked out a new way forward and would, given the mandate, invent all the solutions that had eluded the nation.

In the process, and in the end, we realize that the narrative has hardly changed. We have always looked back and discovered that our political learning curve is warped and retarded. Here is a country where out-going governors and other holders of ‘big’ offices shop for their own successors and campaign vigorously for victory.

The motivation for this stratagem is open to robust (mis)-interpretations. Not to mention ex-Governors who have long found an eternal resting space between the State House and the National Assembly. The harrowing story that brought us where we are today lives after these politicians but they have perfected means and ways of waylaying our judiciary for ‘wait and take’ injunctions and other judicial instruments to maintain their innocence and then graduate, as the years go by, into the hallowed club of elder statesmanship. We wake up to new terms like god-fatherism, stomach infrastructure, victory for democracy, constituency project, budget padding, behind closed doors, governors’ forum, dividends of democracy etc which have all added more disheartening chapters to our political lessons and failures.

The National Assembly has just resumed after months of well-deserved rest. As expected, the headlines already jetting out of the two chambers are, like many others before now, prejudicial to our optimism. The fight against corruption, which the ruling party has whipped up into the intensity of evangelism, continues in the chambers and the arguments have been convincing depending on where you stand or whom you believe. As it stands,

Nigerians are insistent that the National Assembly should be marked ‘For Sale’ but that is more figurative than literal. We cannot easily locate the truth of what goes on in there, not to mention the cost of keeping the house as an integral part of our democratic component. Generally, Nigerians stand convinced that legislative activities have become largely diversionary and self-serving. The true picture of their importance remains blurred.

Given these troubling pictures of their intrigues and failures in actualizing the original ideals of democracy – ‘for the people’ – this writer often wonders: What would memoirs and autobiographies of today’s politicians read like tomorrow, years from now? Would these politicians, with grave remorse, finally reveal the shocking reasons why our failures always outnumbered our successes as a nation and the role each of them had played in guiding us into our notorious blind alleys?

Would they give the real reasons elections were often violent, manipulated and inconclusive? Would they divulge why payment of workers’ salaries suddenly became an achievement worthy of a state banquet? What would the memoir of an ex-president, governor, legislator, minister, INEC official, party ‘chieftain’ etc read like? Would such memoirs and autobiographies become critical reference materials for the upcoming generation of leaders? How would the politics of today enrich the prospects of tomorrow?

The answers are not here. We stand at a crossroads of untruths, half-truths and counter-truths so much so that every political statement is often allowed a lifespan of twenty-four hours before being placed on ‘probation’ and finally admitted into truth. But none ever gets there. This democracy, it is sad to note, has suffered a devastating setback in the hands of our political class since 1999.

Instead of serving as a means to an end, it has been run aground and appropriated as an end in itself. Our democratic system bears an exorbitant price tag, which explains why the same players are stuck in the system because our politics is lucrative and the political environment lacks the willpower to crash the high price of our democratic transactions.

Politics has become the biggest profession in the land, which, technically speaking has engendered a curious kind of brain drain, as our best are lost in the whirlpool of politics. Think of brilliant Nigerians whom politics has partially damaged their personality. This calls for a change. A political ablution is required so that only those who have a vocation to be politicians would serve, less for self than for the people.

After all, democracy ought to be service to fatherland, to ‘the people’, and not an unscrupulous pursuit of self-aggrandizement. If the History classes of the future are to ever have a civilizing influence on the younger minds, our political class must revise this repulsive trend and grant our politics a chance to revive and nourish our democracy.

‘Dumebi Onwordi-Okonji,a public affairs commentator, wrote from Lagos.