Renowned historian, John Locke says democracy is the quickest way to achieve accelerated growth, inclusive governance, and an egalitarian society. He also emphasized that a state can’t claim to be a democratic society if there is no glaring evidence of equity, justice, and strict adherence to the rule of law.
But Caseley Hayford, a prolific author and veteran journalist, in his conceptualization of another interesting branch of democracy with a clear distinction from John Locke’s brand of liberal democracy classified his concept of democracy as kleptocracy or corruptocracy. He posits that these class of people manipulate their ways to political authority and use their positions to emasculate the fundamental rights of the people and also privatize the resources of the state through kickbacks from the government contracts, overinflated government contracts, award of phantom contracts, and all kinds of financial malfeasance, including running a glamorous and expensive bureaucracy.
In a clinical review of these postulations, one can assert unequivocally that Nigeria is practising kleptocracy in disguise and not democracy.
I am not an apologist of the military, but the military we accused of lack of transparency and accountability as a fundamental factor in public governance, is by far better than these crops of pretenders who are the beneficiaries of the hard-won democracy that great men and women in Nigeria sacrificed their lives for, some 31 years ago. Painfully, I think Bashorun MKO Abiola and others may be weeping in their graves, looking back to see that their brand of democracy meant to banish hunger and all human deprivation, including ensuring equity, justice, and the rule of law, has been criminally calibrated by the kleptocrats as the version of democracy espoused by Casely Hayford.
There is no controversy about the fact that democracy will thrive when public institutions are insulated from political manipulation by political authority and public institutions conduct their activities in line with democratic ethics, including transparency and accountability. We sing our newly orchestrated national anthem under excruciating economic circumstances in human history, thinking that this would invoke patriotism and galvanize unity of purpose amongst the citizens. This utopia thought may remain a dream as long as Nigerian leaders don’t show empathy for their citizens because of avaricious tendencies and the kind of kleptocratic leaders we have in the political space who take delight and joy in running this country kleptocratically, despite horrendous food inflation at over 40.5% engineered by punitive economic policies of petrol subsidy removal and others..
Still reflecting on our brand of democracy, it’s glaringly obvious that Nigeria is not truly celebrating democracy but kleptocracy or, better still, corruptocracy, as propagated by Casely Hayford, especially with the kinds of people we have at the corridor of powers today, whose ultimate motive is to confiscate the wealth of the country for themselves and their cronies while leaving the larger percentage of citizens in perpetual penury.
In his words recently, at the platform forum, I watched Babatunde Raji Fashola with disbelief, exposing the rots that characterized the so-called privatization of some public assets, including the power sector, which he described as a charade, corroborating the position of the former president, Goodluck Jonathan, who at various times described the entire process a sham! How else would you describe a situation where those who looted some banks and ran them aground in Nigeria, who should be in jail, regrettably became the beneficiaries of the power privatization scheme? This is the absurdity in almost all facets of human endeavours in Nigeria. In some situations, our laws are being castrated with impunity by these bunch of pretenders in concert with their cohorts in public offices who most times serve as their mouthpiece
In the US, Europe, Japan, China, South Africa, we acknowledge that not all great nations around the world adopt liberal democracy as their form of government. But without hesitation, it is succinct and fundamental to say that in these great nations, whether liberal democracy or oligarchy, the interest of the general public is seen as the minimum template of good governance. The process of how leaders evolve from the various political parties in Nigeria is fundamental to the success of any democracy. There is no way we can have true democracy or committed leaders to serve their people if we don’t allow internal democracy to thrive in our political parties. If these trends of fingers of the devil persist in our democratic circumstances, we may continue to produce accidental and kleptocratic leaders who always serve their interests rather than the public interest.
These circumstances we have at hand are almost beyond human comprehension in the sense that Nigeria runs the most expensive government in the whole of Africa if not the whole world, despite the parlous state of our economic situation. How do we rationalize the situation where the majority of Nigerians are being ravaged daily by acute hunger and deprivation while the administration’s entire architecture is calibrated in opulence? So sad that members of the national assembly, ministers, heads of agencies, parastatals, and with the largest bureaucracy in our social and political history have SUVs in their convoys as a minimum template of good governance. Nigerians are so angry with this open display of kleptocracy amid abject poverty. This is morally absurd, provocative and unacceptable. Why should good governance be determined by N160m worth of SUVs each to our legislators when these funds can be deployed into farming to address our food insecurity? Why should Nigeria be funding religious tourism to the tune of N90 billion when there is so much hunger in the land?
It would, therefore, be succinctly justified to describe our type of democracy as kleptocratic or corruptocracy because 90% of the wealth of the nation is in the hands of an insignificant number of people over the years, while a larger percentage of Nigerians go to bed daily with empty stomachs. The kleptocrats rather than come up with policies that should boost farming and eradicate hunger, banishing poverty as espoused in hope ’93 by Bashorun MKO Abiola, mobilizing our youths into entrepreneurship with training, and soft loan to expand production as the case in developed economies. Building public health centres, roads, and schools and providing electricity at affordable costs prevent an increase in the costs of manufactured goods. The kleptocrats are busy running a caravan of SUVs’ economy as evidence of good governance. This is the height of impunity and contradictions you find in our country. Why are we running a poor country like ours on the caravan of SUVs as a minimum template of good governance in Nigeria?
.Otunba Sola Olatunji, Chairman Ikale Heritage Development Association, writes from Lagos
