Dr. Eme Ekekwe is the Acting Head, Political and Administrative Studies, University of Port Harcourt, where he teaches and research in political theory and political economy.  He told KELVIN EBIRI that though the country has not relapsed into the military style authoritarianism in the last fourteen years, the country is not yet on the path of democratisation.

What is your assessment of democratic governance in Nigeria in the last 14 years?

I think there are two sides to this story. We can say we have done well in terms of how long we have gone without relapse into some obvious and depressing dictatorship or authoritarianism in fourteen years. While it is something to rejoice about because of our specific history, but in terms of national development, that is really like a very small drop in an ocean of history. We have a reason to say, yes thank goodness we have done fourteen years without a relapse, but we must also be realistic to say that fourteen years is a very short period of time relatively speaking. It only seems long because of our checkered past.

In my opinion, we have not made any progress in those fourteen years from the military era. There is absolutely nothing, which the political parties have done, which the military could not have done. In particular, one would have expected to see a deepening of democracy, some tangible steps towards democratization, some redefinition of federal/state relations, a better appreciation of the federal structure of Nigeria. In my opinion, those things have not happened. We have formed governments, we have replaced governments, as we will say, successfully without any coup d’état but that is really not an achievement. What we should be looking to do is, if we say we are practicing democracy, are we democratising? My opinion is that we are not. We are wearied down by the military culture of commandism. And that military culture permeates both the structure of the political parties and the way they run government. Everybody says in this country that there is no internal democracy in the parties and there is none. For people who are interested in democracy, we have not developed a culture of debate, the culture of discussion. Each time one political group disagrees with another, it is seen as though we are entering into a boxing tournament, or war, as opposed to an exchange of ideas that will help to improve the general living conditions of the people. In those fourteen years, the only people whose living conditions have increased are members of the political parties, especially the ruling political parties. If you are outside that structure in this country and you are outside the favoured channels by which you can reach people in those structures, you are a loser.

It means you are not happy with the operators of the political system?

I am not.  I don’t think they understand what democracy is. They know what government is, but democracy, I don’t think they understand what it is and that includes those in the political parties and in the government. That is why I say there is nothing in my opinion that they have achieved which the military could not have achieved. Is it roads? Olusegun Obasanjo as a military man built better and more roads than he did as a civilian president. Is it industries? Everything has collapsed. There is nothing being done to democratise them. There is no greater tolerance. The president, whether it was Obasanjo, Umar Yar’Adua, or Goodluck Jonathan brook little opposition. There is no question about the federal structure of Nigeria, yet most people in this country will tell you that there is a problem with our federal system. We have made effort to review the constitution under Obasanjo and it got derailed due to private agenda. We have started again, instead of dealing with the fundamental issues; we are dealing with the surface. What is wrong in calling Nigerians together, to discuss whom we are and how we are going to associate? What is wrong with the political parties, the National Assembly, the presidency getting together with Nigerians to level with one another other? We know where the problems are but you and I cannot discuss them as freely without being accused of being against a president, whether it was Obasanjo, Yar’Adua and even Jonathan. We are in the same circle, going round and round. What is different and it is to be welcomed is that I can be called names for opposing the government, but we have not gotten to the stage where you are called names and then clamped in detention the next day. That was what was happening under the military. But there was no debate under the military and there is no debate now. I have not come to see the APC, ACN, and CPC with a coherent comprehensive agenda for political, economic and social development of the country. Everybody is looking for how to gain power; nobody is asking how do we use that power to reach the needs of the common people in this country. How do we use that power to provide the necessary infrastructure to get our economy growing? How do we use that power to grow the economy so that we reduce the high unemployment? How do we use that power to fight corruption, which everybody agrees is killing this country? When it comes to those issues there is really no debate and for me those are the fundamental issues. We didn’t debate them under the military, we are not debating them now and as a result, we are not deepening the culture of democracy, which will assure for us even longer than fourteen years of civil rule.

What were your expectations in 1999 when the military relinquished power?

I was one of those who were very optimistic when the military was leaving, but I think my own optimism was really misplaced. I think the reason for disappointment as an individual observer of the Nigerian political scene, is like I have said we have not made any progress that I can identify, in democratisation, in restructuring our country for greater stability and growth in the direction of giving a sense of hope and vision for the young people who are coming behind. Those are the things that make a country great. The Almighty Father has given this country everything that it needs to be the greatest power in Africa, but we are frittering it away with our petty quarrels and lack of vision on the part of the leadership.

My hope was that, Obasanjo, given his antecedent, given his standing on the world stage would have been a greater leader than he turned out to be. The person who surprised me in that line was Yar’Adua, because he began to make some of the kind of changes that would have allowed us greater degree of democratisation. I think Yar’Adua, more than Obasanjo was inclined to paying more than lip service to the rule of law and that is what I don’t see even Jonathan doing. I see an avoidance posture. A problem is coming; we try to pretend it is not there until it overwhelms us. That is what happened to the Boko Haram case and suddenly we have to declare a state of emergency. It is the same way that corruption was crippling in, everybody recognised it, but Obasanjo, rather than tackling it head on, gave the impression that he was doing so, but when it suited him he turned a blind eye. When it did not suit him, he went at it in full steam. Those are the kind of issues that led to my disappointment. I had hoped that under the Jonathan presidency, because he comes from a part of the country that had been most deprived, that had all the wealth of this country, but gets little of it, I would have thought that he will use this opportunity to galvanize enough forces in this country. If the president was to make the move, there are willing Nigerians who will say we are with you on restructuring of this country. I don’t see that kind of move, so we are back to where the military left us.

What is the consequence of ignoring this agitation?

If we don’t restructure we will continue to labour under avoidable stress and any engine that is stressed cannot give a good performance. We need to do something to unleash the potential power in this country and there is a lot of it. We need to do something to excite people about the Nigerian project. There is no excitement now. There is despondency, a lot of cynicism and disappointment. But if we were to restructure in such a way that; one, we will review the political power as they exist between the federal, the state and the local government and find a way to make the local government really autonomous; we need to remove the local governments from the clutches of state governments.

We need to water down the attraction of Abuja and the presidency. The presidency can be strong and powerful without being the American president, who is very powerful, but whose power does not detract from the power of state governors.

In the case of Nigeria, we live under the fear that power of the state governor is a subtraction from the power of the presidency, which in a federal system that should not be the case. We need to give the governors a sense of responsibility. Right now, there is no sense of responsibility except the responsibility to go for sharing of federal revenue and to argue for more revenue to be given to them. We have no structure for holding them to account for the resources given to their states.

Under the military, civil societies were a lot more active then they are now. Labour was a lot more active than it is now. You hear very little of civil society groups, except when one issue comes up. There is not clear objective agenda that they are fighting as they did under Abacha and Babaginda.

Labour from all intents and purposes has gone to sleep, by assuming we are in a democracy. I think that euphoria is what has put everybody to sleep. But we forget as a people that democracies of the world, such as the United States, Britain, Switzerland, and France were won through a series of struggles. Those who have power will never yield the power without struggle. It seems to be a natural phenomenon.

Are you worried that despite 14 years of civil rule, Nigeria didn’t make the US list of democratic states?

I am worried as a Nigerian living in Nigeria. I don’t think my country is making progress towards democratisation, not because America did not list us. It is for me incidental that America didn’t list us and that should not surprise me. But I don’t put too much emphasis on America; even for me their understanding of democracy is flawed. As far as America is concerned and that is what they have been pushing in Third World countries, multi party election is tantamount to democracy, so long as those elections can be adjudged “fair and free”. There is no consideration for the number of people who turn out to participate in those elections. So both in America and Nigeria, the political parties are more or less empty shells, they have become vehicles for projecting people into office as opposed to vehicles to mobilise popular forces to make input into how they are governed. We teach students here that political parties are about interest aggregation and interest articulation. The interest political parties are articulating or aggregating, whether in America or Nigeria are the interests of a tiny elite. The vast mass of the people is, more or less left on their own. The issue in America is what do we do to make capital strong. It is not what do we do to make labour dignified. Those are for me two different issues, such that policy tends to favour a particular interest group and disfavor the others because they are not organised and mobilised through the channels of the political parties and because they are quiescent. It appears they accept what is going on, whereas they don’t.  They are the ones who bear the brunt of economic slowdown or lack of economic growth as in the case of Nigeria. For America, once you can do periodical elections and you change from one civilian government to another you are democratic. And they do those things sometimes based on their own interests. That is why I don’t put much value to what they do. But I am worried as a Nigerian who lives in Nigeria that we are not democratising and moving in the right direction and being in a position to compile our own list of democracies.

How can Nigerians democratise the political system?

First of all, it is by speaking up, being aware and critical of what is going on. Sometimes, it is the ordinary Nigerian who gives the leadership the impression that it does not matter because they adore them unnecessarily. We give them prestige and when they come to our churches we don’t question them. We have freedom of speech and association but we are not utilising those. Though there is no society where that happens without organisation, which is very critical. The elite in this country is very organised through the political parties, chambers of commerce and so on. The masses are not organised. Labour that could help to galvanise these people is asleep. After the petrol subsidy issue, have you heard of any protest by labour? The students’ union that used to galvanise opinion is dead. When you hear National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) you don’t know which faction of NANS and who is paying them. Even in the universities, when students hold elections, they are just practicing what the elite is doing outside.  The civil society organisations that should help us are not as active as they used to be.

My worry is that the Nigerian ruling class does not even know what is in its best interest. It is too focused on parochial interests of the various factions that make it up and so does not have time to think of how to manage the Nigerian project very well, because it is the greatest beneficiary of that project. But they are running it as if it does not matter and yet every time it crashes they are also the ones who are worst hit. When Buhari and Idiagbon put a lot of them in jail they were all crying because they did not rise up to speak when their colleagues were running the country aground and when the country hit the ground, all of them were hit.

We need to develop the vision of Nigeria of our dream. We may not achieve it in one lifetime but each generation moves one step forward and the next generations move it even more forward and that is how you make progress.

Can Nigeria continue to sustain this democracy going by the stupendous allowances paid to government officials?

The kind of figures I hear that legislators are taking home boggles the mind. Somehow, I want to hope and believe that it is not true. But if it is true, we cannot survive. What is happening is like they are saying to themselves, ‘let me take my own share now, I don’t care what happens tomorrow. If the democracy crashes tomorrow, I will buy my own aircraft to fly out of the country.’

It is not sustainable. The Governor of Central Bank has made this very clear. This is a case of those who you sent to guard the bank robbing the bank by legal means. They are the ones who criticised the executive over budgets, but I am yet to hear the National Assembly members say our salaries and allowances are too high so that government can render services to the people we serve. What they do, which is palliative, is that they have also become Ministry of Works. Each of them is given money to do constituency project but that is not what obtains in countries we want to emulate. Here it is very convenient.