The metamorphosis of our current democratic attempt, By Uddin Ifeanyi

One of the few redeeming features of the domestic echo chamber is the ludicrous ease with which it flits from the bathetic to the pathetic. This supports the sense, amongst most observers, of its unreliability as a bellwether of domestic trends. But at least, on one fact, it currently appears in consensus: since 1999, our current essay at democratic governance has struggled. Examples of this drudge abound. But none personifies the crises more than the succession of policy flip-flops that the incumbent Federal Government has been through since it assumed office. In a sense, this policy yo-yo works as metaphor for the precipice at the edge of which the domestic economy is perched. For the burden of our current attempt at running a democracy has had two natures.

A quarter of a decade after, our “government of the people, by the people, and for the people” continues to scruffle with perceptions of how truly representative of the popular will our electoral outcomes are. This, despite countless reform efforts designed to ensure that every legitimate vote is counted, and that in turn, every vote cast counts. A non-participant observer could, thus, be pardoned for supposing that this aspect of our democratic deficit will endure until the other half of the burden it continues to bear is worked out.

This is what the other half of the burden looks like. Emotionally, if not philosophically, our democracy looks like having run the full gamut of experiences that is available to it. Given its military antecedents, it was little surprise that the Obasanjo years leaned on the myth of the strongman. The country had just escaped descent into chaos by fleeing the clutches of a homicidal dictator. Chaos still threatened. And the imperative of reining in fissiparous tendencies required a steady hand on the tiller. Inevitably, at the government’s sidelines, non-commissioned “garrison commanders”, as well as unelected godfathers ran their subplots — of course, to the detriment of the collective will. Rumours of the Obasanjo administration’s attempts at succeeding itself were, thus, par for the course. In the end, the discombobulation of the self-succession shenanigan has been the bane of the Leninist recourse to the idea of the National Front as a route to dynastic rule — it never quite succeeds.

Small astonishment, then, that compulsively turned in on its omphalos towards its last days in office, the Obasanjo administration eventually yielded to a risible (although potentially lethal to the body polity) effort by a kitchen cabinet to assume the task of managing the state in the name of a severely incapacitated president. In the Jonathan government, the electorate appeared to plump for the underdog, either as: the most prominent victim of the cabal that earlier sought to undermine the institutions of the state; or simply as reflection of the moral and material circumstances of most of the voting population — that the would-be president was unshod as a child was but icing on this cake.

Against the backdrop of the strongman narrative that propped up the Obasanjo administration, recourse to retired General Muhammadu Buhari as Goodluck Jonathan’s successor would appear odd at first blush. But the example of a President Jonathan who seemed to stand for few things, and appeared persuaded by just about every argument was tonic enough. Besides, as the China-led “commodity supercycle” ebbed, and the economy was beginning to tank, what better choice than to have a decisive helmsman at the tiller.

After the insipid, namby-pamby, mealymouthed approach of the Buhari administration to the task of governing, it was not exactly out of place that the people voted for “their own” government. Instructively, the Yorùbá “ọmọ wa ni; ẹ jẹ ó se” phrase that lends philosophic grounding to this new governance “ism”, has all the resonance of the Sicilian “Cosa nostra” (incidentally, this phrase also means “Our thing”): all boneheaded loyalty, and nary a worry about knowhow. The leading lights of the new government had manned barricades against one of the more roguish administrations the country has ever had, their mannerisms were familiar to the bus conductors in most motor parks. How could the government not do well by us? This is the question that the electorate will have to find answers to come the end of this electoral cycle.

In its painful metamorphosis, however, a final stage remains for our democracy. Having savoured government-by-the-intimate (and we are struggling with it), we could do no worse than vote along the lines of merit at the end of this electoral cycle. The alternatives are unpleasant.

Uddin Ifeanyi, journalist manqué and retired civil servant, can be reached @IfeanyiUddin.