LIKE many words that are confronted with the challenge of unified process, democracy as a concept of human governance is an invention of the ancient Athenian philosophers in Greece. According to the principle upon which the term is built, it is meant to provide the basics of life for the greater number of people upon the mandate given by a greater majority of people. Democracy, is expected to be sustained on the bedrock of “the rule of the people for the people and by the people” where power is wholly invested in the people and directly dictated by them.
However, it is important to note that originally, the concept of democracy postulated by the Athenians was “elite exclusive” whereby the democratic citizenship does not include slaves and women but only for the elite class of freemen.
“After the world wars, which were western wars anyway, as it is now between Russia and Ukraine except that development has stopped the West and America from coining it their ways and coming to conscript Africans as foot soldiers, Africa had fantastic development and civilization envied by the other worlds and which they came here to steal and adopt. Those developments were not products of the contemporary democracy but indigenous innovations.”
In a lecture; “What is democracy,” Diamond, hinged the concept on citizen participation, rule of law, protection of human rights and free and fair election. Popper, on his part, ascribed democracy to the availability of opportunities on the part of the people to control their leaders directly without recourse to violence or revolution. Not minding the fact that there has evolved several variants of democracy today, it is to be noted that whatever variant of democracy that is adopted anywhere in the world, the main object of any such variant must be the provision of the necessities of life and as dynamic as the people would demand and desire.
The universality of the concept in the contemporary time is based on the 1948 UN Declaration of Human Rights which contained the provision that “…everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives… The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage.” This is what ‘America’ and the UN has propagated vigorously across the world today.
Nevertheless, can democracy as postulated presently by the West and America, be said to have the elements of success across the world, and that it suits every culture and differences among men. Can it be said, that, because it seems to be working or so across Europe and America means it has universal applicability?
The above questions are being interrogated with regard to politics and governance in Africa and Africans in politics as a people and a continent. Pre-colonial Africa, we are told, were centres of civilisation before the West came and turned them to slaves for centuries, destroying and stealing all their civilisations. At that time, Africans had empires and emperors including kings that ruled and conquered human endeavours.
After the world wars, which were western wars anyway, as it is now between Russia and Ukraine except that development has stopped the West and America from coining it their ways and coming to conscript Africans as foot soldiers, Africa had fantastic development and civilization envied by the other worlds and which they came here to steal and adopt. Those developments were not products of the contemporary democracy but indigenous innovations.
These Western invasions interrupted the phases of African development as they eventually succeeded in imposing their ways of life and civilisation especially on the black Africans including governance and societal management. Whatever suits them, they support and impose on the continent. Post-war Africa produced Kwame Nkruma, Nwalimu Julius Nyerere, Kenneth Kaunda, Haile Sallesi, Ali Bouguiba, Patrice Lumumba, Ben Bella, Tafawa Balewa, Aminu Kano, Abdul Dhiof, Jomoh Kenyatta and the Mau-Mau cult, Mandela, Steve Biko and the ANC, Kamusu Banda, and all those that laid the foundation of modern Africa.
After this generation, leaders like Murtala Mohammed and Thomas Sankara rose in Africa but were quickly eliminated. They were not products of Western or American democracy but servants of patriotism, indigenous leadership and the love for their people. They lifted Africa from the global trajectory of slavery, colonialism and dependent continent. The West, as apostles of democracy and freedom, hunt and fought them, eliminated them one after the other until they were all killed and their spirit also killed, replacing them with vipers and disciples of fraud, looting, stealing, terrorism and killings.
This is what the West and America preached and gave to Africa as democracy. African democracy is not to provide the basics of life, it’s not to raise leaders, it’s not to provide governance. Democracy in Africa raises only thugs, election riggers, thieves in the name of leaders, looters, create corruption and a set of elite rogues who kill to remain at the top and protected by their father – the West.
In Africa, the product of democracy is poverty, domestic slavery, illiteracy and unemployment, collapse of both physical and institutional structures. In Africa, it is the West that define what and which is democracy. In Côte d’Ivoire, when Laurent Gbagbo exceeded the constitutional term and there was violence, he was taken to The Hague as anti-democratic but when Alassane Ouattara forced a constitutional change to exceed the two terms, he was hailed by the West as an embodiment of democracy.
In 2023, an election that violated all democratic ethos was conducted in Nigeria, among the first to congratulate the winners was the champion of democracy – America. In Africa, if it will cause violence and create instability, it is democracy, if it will produce development and the wishes of the people, it is anti-democracy.
Away from Africa, it is what works for the people that is their democracy, be it military, monarchy, and theocracy. Among the Asians, the argument is that democracy is western and US invention that may suit their way of governance but cannot be said to have universal application, and that it is incongruent to Asian cultures and values. To them, the American promotion of democracy around the world with mostly military presence smacks of hypocrisy and neo-imperialism. They argued that China’s active and rapid economic development from a non-liberal democratic government is a clear vindication of the need for indigenous models of governance and an alternative to the democratic model.
To send the message straight to the international community, in 1993, the ministers of several Asian nations issued their own Declaration on Human Rights, otherwise known as the Bangkok Declaration stating: “All countries, large and small, have the right to determine their political systems” and that “to impose the human rights criteria of one’s own country on other countries is tantamount to infringement upon the sovereignty of other countries and interference in the latter’s affairs.”
“Presently, Africa, and Nigeria in particular, has made nonsense of the tenets of democracy. You will see the West and America supporting the system because that is exactly what they want, breeding conflicts that will support their war economy, permit unhindered exploitation of minerals as it is in Nigeria, DR Congo, Mali, North and South Sudan and almost in all countries of the continent.”
In china, and many Asian countries, economic and electoral sabotage attracts capital punishment, a principle highly abhorred by the West. They buttress their argument further with the West’s imperialist activities in Asia, their support for anti-communist dictators during the cold war and the promotion of western values by the use of force of arms. To them, at the level of international politics, the West has no standing form of government as they preach, but a standing form of interest. They tolerate any friend in power.
Singapore and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) that are modern signposts of development in the global space today don’t have the western model of democracy and it is working for them. Saudi Arabia is a peculiar monarchy and it is working for them. When the military overthrew Nigeria’s First Republic leadership, many of the northern ministers could not raise transport money to go back to the North. In the same manner, Nigeria’s then Prime Minister, Alhaji Tafawa Balewa, had no property anywhere in the country today just as Yakubu Gowon who ruled Nigeria when Nigeria does not know what to do with money, cannot be linked to an estate till date.
In those days, schools were free and functional, hospitals were of global standard and public institutions were strong and working. By whatever name those systems were called, that was democracy. In Rwanda where a seeming picture of governance could be pictured in Africa today, after the genocide, the people looked at themselves and took a decision to build a home for everyone not minding what name you give the system and it is working for them. It is such self-examination and decision that Africa need to take.
“What Africa needs to do is seek any local arrangement that will ensure a decent collective living for her population, if we must live together irrespective of the cloth we wear. In states across the country where everything has collapsed and workers never paid for upwards of six months to two years and pensioners not paid for years, their governors that have served out their two terms of eight years are giving themselves parting gifts running into billions of naira and lifetime pensions worth the budget of a ministry.”
Presently, Africa, and Nigeria in particular, has made nonsense of the tenets of democracy. You will see the West and America supporting the system because that is exactly what they want, breeding conflicts that will support their war economy, permit unhindered exploitation of minerals as it is in Nigeria, DR Congo, Mali, North and South Sudan and almost in all countries of the continent.
How can Nigeria be said to be in democracy when the economy is in comatose? The country has over-borrowed its capacity; election is run on the platter of blood and thuggery supported by the government in place; medical services are in total collapse; schools are non-existent and other levels of governance are completely annihilated at the expense of the centre and the local system is collapsed into the state.
Democracy in Nigeria is pooling the peoples’ resources to massage the ego and place a few political elites on an insurance of good life at the expense of the people. This class of political elites do not mind what system is in place and how it is run. When you take the space at all cost, you keep it because that is the only surviving means of sumptuous life. It is either you kill to keep it or lose out. Every public system has collapsed such that individuals are more powerful than the state and so dictate the decision of such institution. It is in this assurance that the government will tell you to go to court in the face of outright injury because she knows the court is no longer working and there is only little means of enforcing any rule except that which favours maintaining the status quo. This can never be democracy!
What Africa needs to do is seek any local arrangement that will ensure a decent collective living for her population, if we must live together irrespective of the cloth we wear. In states across the country where everything has collapsed and workers never paid for upwards of six months to two years and pensioners not paid for years, their governors that have served out their two terms of eight years are giving themselves parting gifts running into billions of naira and lifetime pensions worth the budget of a ministry. And yet, they again converge at the senate. Politicians in Nigeria collect up to three layers of salaries every month from military to civilian pensions and their current pay.
In Africa, democracy is just a primitive conquest of civilisation!
Alleh Ph.D, writes from Abuja and can be reached on allehokpeh@gmail.com
