Welcome, Guest: Register On Nairaland / LOGIN! / Trending / Recent / NewStats: 3,162,736 members, 7,851,532 topics. Date: Wednesday, 05 June 2024 at 09:41 PM |
Nairaland Forum / Nairaland / General / Politics / Nigeria’s Democratic Revolution (273 Views)
PEPC Judgement: The Perverse Ruling Endangers Nigeria’s Democratic Future / Obaseki: Election In Edo State Would Change Nigeria Democratic Values / NBA Condems Kogi Election, Calls It A Dent To Nigeria's Democratic Process (2) (3) (4)
(1) (Reply)
Nigeria’s Democratic Revolution by danieljoel759: 3:48am On May 29, 2018 |
I n a move that is likely to surprise a lot of
people in the West, Nigeria has elected for the
presidency a man who truncated a democratic
government three decades ago.
Former General Muhammadu Buhari won on
Tuesday a keenly contested election, by a very
slim margin, to become the first man in my
country’s fifty-five years as a postcolonial state to
unseat an incumbent government via the ballot
box. This is a change.
Nigeria returned to democratic rule in 1999, after
thirty-three years of primarily military rule. For
four years, between 1979 and 1983, democracy
surfaced briefly, until Buhari led a military coup to
end it. He proceeded to run one of the most brutal
regimes that Nigeria has ever seen. His Decrees 2
and 4 were aimed directly at press freedom and
the right to free assembly, and a lot of people
were imprisoned and killed under those laws.
But Buhari says he is a “changed” man. Since
1999, the People’s Democratic Party has governed
the country. Buhari has competed against PDP
opponents in three previous elections, and lost
each time. His first two losses, in 2003 and 2007,
were marred with controversy because of
irregularities, vote rigging, ballot box snatching
and voter intimidation. Following the fiasco of the
2007 elections, reforms forced greater
transparency. And the 2015 vote has to many
Nigerians been a welcome indicator that we do
know how to organize elections. Buhari says his
role in that development—as the three-time losing
candidate who continued to marshal votes rather
than guns—is proof of his commitment to
democracy.
Still, why did Nigerians opt for a former dictator,
with such a brutal past?
One reason is security. Just before he became
dictator, in 1983, Buhari put down the Maisatsine
insurgency. Maisatsine was the forbear of today’s
Boko Haram movement and many Nigerians long
for that kind of decisive action now.
But another reason is impatience with the
“transformation” that was the mantra of outgoing
President Goodluck Jonathan’s government. In the
last half a decade, Nigerians really have witnessed
a transformation of the country. But the truth is
that for the vast majority of my people, this
transformation has not been for the better. Our
lives have gotten a lot worse.
Yes, there was growth. In 2014, Nigeria became
Africa’s largest economy. But that growth, which
made our economy larger than South Africa’s,
was in reality a statistical change that did nothing
to improve the quality of life of the Nigerian.
There is an example that I use to illustrate the
difference. My son turned 1 year old last month,
and I like to tell people that he’s been growing
since he was born. My wife and I have tried to
provide for him as best as we can, so he can
grow. However, if in the past year we had fed him
on just bread and water, he would still have grown
—but he would not have developed .
This is Nigeria’s story over the past odd decade of
Jonathan’s leadership. Nigeria has grown, there is
no doubt about it. But what the statistics never
say is this: Our growth has come because every
other African country with similar indices has
grown as well. In 2001, it took fifteen African
banks to put together a deal worth $50 million.
Now, to get a deal worth $1 billion, you do not
need more than four banks on this continent.
Development, on the other hand, should be an
effect of growth, if managed properly. The
Jonathan government did not manage our growth
into development that benefits all Nigerians, and
nowhere is this more evident than in the power
sector.
Nigeria’s power grid is notoriously inefficient, and
has become worse in the last decade, despite
billions of dollars spent in nominally fixing the
problem. Almost all Nigerian families have a
power generating set. Some have more than one,
and the more affluent Nigerians have power
inverters, a battery bank which stores power and
is less noisy. The need for all of these generators
and inventers pushes up the cost of living, and the
cost of doing business in Nigeria.
I spend, on average, 2,000 naira—or, roughly $10
—each day buying gas to power my generating
set. That’s $300 per month, in a country where
the national minimum wage is about $90 per
month. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qUkFKBq19g With realities like these, people have simply stopped believing in the president’s “transformation” agenda. Heck, the fact that our national budget includes millions of naira for servicing the generators at our Presidential Villa tells us that no development is taking place in the power sector, despite the touted claims to the contrary. Most Nigerians believe the money that was to be spent on infrastructure projects to fix the power problem was simply pocketed by friends of the government—and what is worse, that nothing happened to those people who were caught stealing. In 2013, the governor of the central bank, also a man with a reputation for doing things right, blew the whistle on $20 billion of missing government funds. He got fired. His successor, who is a friend of a friend of the government, has presided over the collapse of Nigeria’s currency, and a higher rate of inflation. I recently found out that a police inspector earns N52,000 ($260) a month as his basic salary, and this is a person charged with our security. How would such a person cope in Nigeria? Has there been “growth” in the salaries of public workers? Yes, but has there been development? Thoughts such as these drove the thinking of so many Nigerians as we went to the ballot box last Saturday. It is true that the outgoing president got a lot of votes from his region of origin. But, and this is important, the voter turnout in those regions was very poor as compared to the rest of the country. As a friend who lives in Awka, the capital of the southeastern Anambra state, told me, “We can’t vote for Buhari because we do not like Northerners, but Jonathan has not performed, so we will rather stay away from the elections.” Nigeria’s southeastern region has a historical animosity with the North, where the president- elect comes from, because of our civil war, in which Buhari participated five decades ago. The hatred has not dissipated. Despite that, a fair number of people from the Southeast are willing to give the aged statesman a shot. This is simply because the decisions of the outgoing government hit them where it hurts the most: in their pockets. cc; lalasticlala, mynd44 |
(1) (Reply)
Happy Democracy Day / We Will Continually Stand By You - Buhari To Sierra Leone President / CORRUPTION: NBA Ikeja Chairman, Adesina Ogunlana, 2 Others Accused Of Fraud
(Go Up)
Sections: politics (1) business autos (1) jobs (1) career education (1) romance computers phones travel sports fashion health religion celebs tv-movies music-radio literature webmasters programming techmarket Links: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) Nairaland - Copyright © 2005 - 2024 Oluwaseun Osewa. All rights reserved. See How To Advertise. 18 |