By Idowu Akinlotan
When the federal government rolled out armoured personnel carriers and hundreds of soldiers and policemen to quash Shiites protesting both the incarceration of their leaders and extra-judicial killing of their members, most Nigerians shrugged their shoulders, arguing that sect members were too fanatical and combative anyway. Since 2015, hundreds of them have been killed. When the ‘Revolution Now’ group also protested what they described as the misrule of Nigeria and rising insecurity, the government instinctively deployed soldiers and policemen to quash it, regardless of constitutional provisions guaranteeing the protesters’ rights. And when presidential spokesmen, both of them senior journalists, consistently defend tyranny and cynically and sarcastically deride protests and the anguished cries of the oppressed, it is impossible for patriots not to recall, no matter how faintly, the horrors of tyrannical governments.
Many Nigerians are genuinely worried about the fate of democracy in Nigeria. Their worries are not assuaged by the seeming legitimisation of kitchen cabinets acting more like a camorra than philosophers, and their more denigrated cousin, the cabal. Theoretically, a kitchen cabinet should exert healthy influence on a leader and expand his vista. But that presupposes that the leader is clear about what he wants, which direction he wants to go, and possesses enough depth to weigh his ideas and gauge their impact on those he governs. To present a mental and ideological tabula rasa to his kitchen cabinet is to lend himself to motley opportunistic ideas that tragically skew public policy in the direction of special ethnic and religious interests. Given the offhanded manner Mamman Daura and the late Ismaila Isa Funtua spoke about the president’s kitchen cabinet, for which they became the fulcrum, few Nigerians believe that the cabal and the presidency sufficiently dispelled suspicion of its unhealthy influence over the government. The attribution of miscarried and tyrannical public policies to the kitchen cabinet got so bad that some Nigerians secretly derived morbid relief in the passing of two key members of the cabal.
It will take some time to measure the extent of influence wielded by the president’s kitchen cabinet, or find out exactly what role they played in the increasing dysfunction of the country. But it should take far less time in determining overall what impact this government has had on democracy, society, economy and politics. The presidency should set the country’s democratic pace. It has been unable to do that, and has in addition shown little interest in lauding and fostering the concept as the cardinal principle of government. In Nigeria today, democracy is in fact besieged, with the government serving as the battering ram. Lifting the siege will depend on how involved the people are, and to what extent they can put their shoulders to the wheel and stay focused under pressure. They know the judiciary is limping on one leg, the other leg having been amputated by the government, and the National Assembly is displaying gentle but episodic activism, particularly the House of Representatives. They also know that in this dispensation, democracy will remain an outcast, and not only at the federal level but also more pertinently and worrisomely at the state level.
The situation is bleak, and it will take a lot of effort to ensure that election, the only surviving indicator of democracy in Nigeria, does not pitch the country over the cliff in the struggle for power. Indeed, managing the powder kegs of political restructuring and Election 2023 will be the main preoccupation of Nigerians, as they try to steer their country away from disaster in the months ahead. Their task is not helped by the atrocious kite flying of Mamman Daura, the rampant violence and insecurity in the country, especially in the North, the Boko Haram war bedevilled by mismanagement and insincerity, the massive ignorance that plagues the country and beclouds their judgement and obfuscates their choices, and the remorseless manner the presidency chases ethnic and religious chimeras. Nigerians are deeply religious and set great store by miracles. Now, they need those miracles to save their democracy and see the country through 2023.
