By Chidi Amuta

Nigerian politicians have once again carried out another successful coup against the people. They have fired up a nationwide frenzy about the 2027 general elections just as the democratic space in which those elections will take place is dying.

Those yearning for paradise had better hang their hopes up in the air. Paradise is hereby postponed till after the elections.

There is no point complaining about hunger in the land when abundant food is promised as a reward for the forthcoming elections. No point weeping over the cost of electricity, basic drugs, transport fares or even mundane things like house rents and school fees.

Let us just focus on the forthcoming election.

After the elections, we will arrive at a place to find paradise waiting. It does not matter what promises were made by the ruling party on 2o22/23. Those ones have expired.

Even more pointedly, the entire rhetoric about the 2027 elections has been narrowed even further. It is now mostly about the political plight of President Tinubu.  Specifically, it is all about whether Mr. Tinubu will be returned to power for a second term.

The plight of democracy and the future of Nigeria’s democracy has now been made synonymous with the fate of Tinubu’s troubled mandate. Along with this second term narrative matter is the continued hegemony of the ruling APC.  The ruling party has metamorphosed into a political behemoth. It is poised to impose a partisan monolith on the nation.  It is now a political sin to challenge or criticize the excesses of the APC in its hardly hidden aspiration to go into the 2027 elections as a virtual one-party contestant.

The APC has gobbled literally all the state governors and their retinue of political attachees. It has stationed hatchet men in virtually all the other parties to ensure they remain in endless crisis while creating a façade of a multi -party democracy. In the interim, there seems to be a concerted operation to continuously weaken the other parties to a point where they can at best only put up a weak appearance during the election. Yet, a cardinal tenet of democracy is the existence of viable credible parties. A landscape in which rival parties are deliberately weakened by the party in power is an affront on democracy.

On their part, the opposition platforms are in a desperate struggle for survival. Easily the most credible group, the ADC, has been struck a lethal blow with its registration literally held in abeyance by an unholy alliance of the judiciary and the almighty INEC. Before it can behave like an opposition party, the ADC has now to return to court to fight for its very legal existence. You cannot oppose a ruling party politically when your party leadership is of questionable pedigree.

In all the raging brickbat about the 2027 elections, neither the government nor those politically opposed to it have spared a thought about the plight of democracy itself. The critical question, to my mind, is this: Can you have credible, reliable elections when the major markers of democracy are in deficit? Yes and no.

The ideal of liberal democracy presupposes the existence of a society in which the ideals of a safe society, existence of authentic parties, freedom of expression through a free media, equitable judiciary, a credible electoral umpire and a definable civil society are present to a reasonable extent.

In recent years, a strange definition of democracy has emerged as authoritarian leaders hustle to be accommodated in the bandwagon of democracy. Something called “illiberal democracy” has emerged in places like Hungary, Russia and Turkey to an extent. In illiberal democracies, elections can be held as a seasonal ritual of democratic appearance. No need worrying about media freedom, partisan competition, citizens rights or the credibility of the electoral process and the agency that referees elections.  All that is important is the fact of a scheduled election and the reality of a pre-determined outcome usually in favour of an authoritarian incumbent.

We are looking at Russian elections under the endless reign of Vladimir Putin. Opposition parties exist only in name. Opposition figures are hounded down, arrested, jailed and eliminated in prison. Vocal opponents are chased away or hounded into exile where state sponsored goons go after them with vials of poisonous substances.

Vocal and influential journalists and opinion leaders are gunned down in broad daylight in public spaces to further traumatize and frighten the public.

On result day, everybody already knows the outcome of the “election”! Democracy is alive. To every nation its own form of democracy-“appropriate democracy”. African has in recent times displayed its versions of this Russian template perhaps with less bloody sophistication.Uganda, Cameroun, Congo Brazaville …

In today’s Nigeria, there is a creeping rehearsal of the curtailment of democracy as a concept and a culture. We may be hurtling towards an untidy African variant of illiberal democracy. Citizens freedom of movement throughout the length and breadth of the federation has been severely curtailed by a crippling insecurity.

Major highways in the top half of the country are under the control of bandit squads, terrorist gangs and all manner of gun-wielding alternate power contestants. As we write this, the unrelenting insurgency of Boko Haram and its affiliates has struck again, claiming the lives of many armed forces personnel including a general.

In some parts of the country, even elected government officials at state level are openly denying fellow Nigerians freedom of access to and movement in their states for reasons of partisan political differences.

Freedom of expression and the very existence of an independent media is constantly under threat as officials at different levels of government. Federal Capital Territory Minister, Nyesom Wike, has openly threatened to shoot a television journalist if he could.

The Governor of Niger State, Umar Bago, has found a hobby in routinely harassing media houses, ordering the arrest and indefinite detention of journalists in his state.  Between 2024 and 2026, he is on record to have shut down Badeggi FM, a private radio station, and openly threatened heavy reprisals against journalists who report facts about insecurity in parts of the state. In parts of the country, open media criticism of government officials has become an offence punishable with unwarranted indiscriminate police arrests and detentions.

A democracy with a doubtful electoral umpire is a joke. The reputation of INEC as an electoral umpire remains in tatters. The public hardly believes that INEC could ever be credible or independent. In fact, there is a street side belief that those who go out to vote are merely fulfilling a seasonal ritual because INEC would end up announcing whatever results its paymasters want.

As we write, INEC is embroiled in needless controversy over the registration of the ADC, the umbrella platform of credible opposition politicians. INEC has been accused of relying on a suit filed by a party official who had long resigned to discredit the leadership of the APC and therefore deny the party registration.

As things stand, the ADC cannot proceed with its congresses leading to a convention because its registration is now subject to an unwarranted litigation. Depending on the outcome of the judicial process, the fate of the ADC remains up in the air even as the ruling APC soars into uncontested dominance as the virtual single party for the 2027 contest. What is in the making is more like democracy by exclusion.

 Most ordinary Nigerians hardly spare a thought about the judiciary. The common conception is that our judiciary is an instrument in the hands of the political class. More often than not, judgments on political cases are often determined in favour of incumbent powers in return for tenure, cash or material favours.

While the judiciary is meant to maintain a certain independence, judges depend on the executive for their appointments, promotions and general welfare budget. In recent times, the executive has resorted to material blackmail of judges to keep their allegiance. Luxury quarters, expensive SUVs and lavish vacations are provided for judges without questioning.

In the end, cases brought against incumbent executives tend to be predetermined in the courts of a badly compromised judiciary at federal and state levels. The widespread understanding in Nigeria is that whoever pays the judge owns the judgment.

Above all requirements, the existence of a democracy largely depends on the popularity of the sovereign’s mandate. The leader of a democracy derives his mandate from the populace. Therefore, the best democracies are those in which the leader is immersed among the people.

In a republican sense, the leader is seen as one with the people. He actively and positively identifies with the lowest common denominator of the populace. He is seen to identify with the people in their moments of grief and elation. A sovereign that sees himself as above the people belongs more to an authoritarian realm than a democracy.

An alienated and distant sovereign is one sign that a democracy is dying. Barely a fortnight ago, there was an orgy of killings in Jos, Plateau state. Over fifty lives were lost in an assault by bandits in an eruption that is a mere repeat of what has become a regular feature of the mid -section of the country. President Tinubu was naturally expected to visit Jos to empathize with the bereaved and the injured.

Reportedly, the President travelled to Jos but arrived just in time for the airport to be closed for lack of runway lighting. He therefore took the most curious decision of a leader. He ordered that representatives of the affected community should meet and greet him at the airport lounge! What ensued was a show of shame.

Yet presidential spokespersons paid with public funds have stepped forward to justify and rationalize this affront on public sensibility. Leadership devoid of genuine compassion is an insult to the democratic ethos.  On a number of previous occasions, Tinubu has had to be reminded during some of his numerous junkets abroad that he should at least respect the dead and the injured by either rushing back home or visiting on his return. These appeals have often fallen on deaf ears in utter disregard and disrespect for lives lost, injuries sustained or livelihoods erased by our all too frequent and uncontrolled violent eruptions of insecurity.

The usual knee jerk executive response has often been a presidential directive for the relevant service chiefs to relocate to the theatre of current tragedy. No one knows the efficacy of these reflex orders as the mayhem and killings repeat ever so often in the same places where service chiefs and commanders have been known to be ordered to relocate to! Both the insurgents and the victim public hardly take these presidential directives seriously. Nor does the larger public take threats to bring trouble makers to book.

Soon after the threats, the killers and insurgents return with even greater ferocity and unleash more mayhem and spill more blood. So much for rituals of ineffectual power and presidential insensitivity backed by braggadocio.  

What has emerged in Nigeria’s recent encounter with democracy is a curious situation. The rituals of electioneering have proceeded for years without attention to the evolution of a democratic society or its underlying culture. In that sense, Tinubu is merely continuing and deepening an inherited tradition. An election will be held in 2027. But the outcome will be a disservice to democracy properly understood.