By Hope O’rukevbe Eghagha
ONE of the benefits of democracy in its best form is an institutionalized mechanism of and need to constantly engaging with the people on issues which affect them and how they should be handled. In other words, the people ought to have a say on how they are governed, government projects, policy framework and budgeting. One of the institutionalized channels of communicating the needs of the people is the peoples’ representatives in parliament. This is the ideal. The slogan ‘power to the people’, is the most definitive assertion of the role of the people in democracy.
Little wonder Abraham Lincoln asserted that democracy as ‘government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. Amartya Sen affirms that ‘democracy is not just about voting. It is about public discussion and the ability to have a voice’. We therefore ask: do the people of Nigeria have a voice in our democracy at the local government level, at the state level, and at the national level?
But in our country, the government determines what it thinks the people need and how to deliver them. Often, selfish interests of parliamentary representatives becloud their sense of reasoning. Projects are often designed to feed the elephant size of the pockets of representatives. It is true that some of our legislators carry out constituency projects running into millions of naira. But more often than not, there is a disconnect between the legislators and the people they claim/pretend to represent.
Engaging with the people comes through elections, that is, the capacity to vote and be voted for, observe elections, and join political parties of their choice. Engagement also comes through town hall meetings as a feedback mechanism, where voters can ask questions about policy, budgets, and challenges of the community or town or voters, and security. Sad that these days, most elected officials are scared of vising the people who ostensibly voted them in because of insecurity. We are told that some National Assembly members from the north have permanently relocated to the Federal Capital Territory! If politicians cannot live with their people, how can they represent their wishes and aspirations?
It is on record that after leaving office even former President Muhammadu Buhari planned to retire to his GRA home Daura Katsina State. But reports indicate that he relocated to London instead, citing escalating banditry and kidnapping in the North-west! Security concerns! For a former Head of State to avoid his hometown because of security concerns speaks volumes. His aide Garba Shehu explained that it was because there was a throng of visitors daily making it impossible for the old man to take a rest. But we could read between the lines!
While El Rufai served as governor of Kaduna State, he was reportedly in Abuja holding political meetings even when terrorists had overrun his state. Former Governors Simon Lalong of Plateau State, Mai Mala Buni of Yobe, and incumbent Hope Uzodinma were often in Abuja while blood flowed in their States!
Engaging the people matters because democracy works when the people feel that their voices count. This is the vary basis of legitimacy of governance. Without mass participation, decisions lack public trust as we have seen in Nigeria, both at the state and national levels. The average Nigerian politician does not care about the social contract between the people and their elected leaders. This is because the average citizen does not have a say over who emerges as party candidates, or who gets the final votes in a general election. Powers-that-be in the political corridors can overturn the wishes of the people in a most caviarlike manner. Nigerians are yet to come to terms with how Senator Hope Uzodinma of Imo State emerged in his first tenure as governor.
Engagement also matters because it affects the quality of decisions taken. Policies improve when they reflect lived experiences of the citizens, not those of the elite. An example is the coastal highway from Lagos to the fringes of the South-south states. It was and is a good policy. But this was done without consultation. If due consultations had taken place, an EIA would have been done. There also would been competition in bidding. Awarding a multi-trillion-naira contract without due process is the height of disrespect for democratic and ethical norms and the rules of engagement between the people and their leaders.
An engaged polity ensures that the elected officials are accountable. An unaccountable leadership is military in orientation. Chinua Achebe captures this with an anecdote in the novel Anthills of the Savanah when a soldier tells a citizen that ‘if I kill you, I kill dog! In other words, if I kill you, if I dispossess you of your life, nothing will come of it. This can only happen when laws of the jungle are operative. An equivalent in spirit of this attitude is when one politician says to another: go to court if you are not satisfied. Ordinarily, the courts as bastion of justice ought to give solace to the people. But within our context, the courts have been bought over. Wealthy and powerful people tend to but verdicts. There have been cases where a judge wrote two separate judgments in preparation for favourable judgment for the higher bidder! Preposterous!
The whole essence of engaging with the people, is to ask what issues affect them directly which they want the government to address. Constant engagement will show to the citizens that the government cares for them, cares about their needs. But in asociety where trust is broken, this can never be achieved. The godfathers in Abuja determine who gets nominated in party politics and who gets elected in general elections.
There is a sense in which though the leaders in the land claim to have been elected, the ballot box does not confer legitimacy on such leaders. This happens when the people know or suspect or believe that victory was stolen from the actual winner. The expression ‘A Stolen Mandate’ has become a recurring decimal in the national equation. Which is sad and tragic. For such persons, they have no real mandate from the people. as this trend continues to rise, there is voter apathy. The number of registered voters dwindle. The example of what happened in the Okota area of Lagos, where the powers-that-be destroyed ballot boxes because it was feared that the largely Igbo population in the area would not vote for APC was indeed a travesty of democracy. One would have thought that the incumbent government in Lagos would meet with the citizens in that part of town and convince them to vote APC by carrying projects that would satisfy them. Instead, the government resorted to acts of intimidation. This is unacceptable in the politics of engaging the people.
The people also have a responsibility too. They must hold the government to account through the ballot box. By not agreeing to be bought on election day. And so, Desmond Tutu says: ‘Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.
Finally, engaging with the people is a sign of respect for the people because whoever does so, believes that the people really count in the scheme of things. But the men and women in Abuja do not really believe that the people count. Can we successfully entrench democracy if the expected beneficiaries have no faith in the system?
heghagha@yahoo.com
