IN AN emergent democracy susceptible to capture by a powerful executive president, prompt and satisfactory answers to questions of public interests, clear misgivings on public policies, etc, can constrict spaces for conspiracy theorists to impute ill motives to public policies, projects and programmes.
Effective responses to public inquiries inform periodic interfaces of government with the public to clarify governance trajectory and forge organic links between them.
The ruling party couldn’t have embarked on the digital registration of its members months before the other parties, and the Act and the Revised Timetable came to light, without being privy to privileged information, underscoring institutional complicity that compromises the integrity of the electoral processes.
In advanced democracies – including dictatorially-inclined ones – the public is hardly kept in the dark about the direction of government. The American annual State of the Union address began since 1890, stretched in 1913 by President Woodrow Wilson to accommodate questions from Congressmen, was a special presidential interface with the American people. The American democratic tradition is worth internalising in New Democracies where each deft move by the government is defined differently by interest groups.
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After subsidy removal, concerns/questions were raised by alarmed Nigerians about the uncontrolled rising external debt profile of the economy; different Nigerian publics raise voices against hurried legislative approvals of presidential loan requests; and last week federal legislators expressed concerns, and asked why there were zero and minimal releases of the capital votes of the 2024 and 2025 budgets. And opposition parties voiced worries about the revised election timelines, and posed questions about whose interests they really serve.
It was Alex Mascot Ikechegh Rep (Aba North/Aba South) who raised flags about the non-release, and minimal releases of capital votes for the fiscal years 2024 and 2025, despite 1.5 trillion external loans to finance the budgets, and enhanced revenue generations by economic agencies in the two fiscal years.
Unable to provide answers to questions of members of the House Appropriations Committee, the Finance and Coordinating Economy Minister, Wale Edun, passed the buck to the Minister of State, Doris Uzoka-Anite, in charge of disbursement of budgetary funds to MDAs.
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According to her, the non-release of the capital votes was contingent on non-fulfilment of pre-release conditions by MDAs. Pressed further to name the ministries that met the conditions and those that didn’t, Minister Uzoka-Anite couldn’t answer. To cut a long story short, none of the Hon Ministers could satisfactorily answer the avalanche of questions from the agitated House Committee members.
A crucial question posed by patriotic Nigerians, is why shouldn’t legislative approval for a fresh loan not be subjected to critical scrutiny of deployment of earlier approved loans, with unauthorised deviations legislatively sanctioned? Or, is the alleged quid pro quo contingent on speedy loan approval greater than national economic interests? Let’s move to the political realm.
According to Section 77(2,) of the Electoral Act 2026 and the Revised Election Timetable, a political party must maintain a digital register of its members containing names, addresses, polling units, wards, NIN, photographs, etc, of its members. And Section 77(4) stipulates that a party must submit the register within a short time – according to the revised timelines (1st to 21st April), whilst section 77(7) states that any party that fails to meet the deadline won’t field candidates in the election, led the opposition parties to justifiably conclude that the Electoral Act 2026 and the Revised Election Timetable are specially structured to disqualify them from the 2027 elections, leaving only the ruling party to contest the elections.
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The ruling party couldn’t have embarked on the digital registration of its members months before the other parties, and the Act and the Revised Timetable came to light, without being privy to privileged information, underscoring institutional complicity that compromises the integrity of the electoral processes.
If one Lawrence Ibe’s post trending in social media titled: ”We Are Finished”, that after Hon Alex Mascot Ikechegh’s meeting with PBAT, he is set to defect to the APC, and sing a different song in the House Appropriations Committee isn’t a smear campaign, then we are really finished. He may defect to another party and make a sudden volt face from the legislative posturing that define him in the House Committee, but the questions the Committee raised can’t be bottled back.
The irritating questions shed light on whether governmental concerns for growth, macro-economic stability, national development, democratic deepening and consolidation are lip-service or genuine.
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Should the state of a democracy be gauged by efficient deployment of funded budgets into the economy by eagle-eyed legislative countenance against frivolous debt overhang; by the use of electoral laws, guidelines and timeliness to deepen democracy; and by prompt and satisfactory answers to issues of public interests, what would be the state of Nigeria’s democracy?
Against its underlying logic, subsidy removal didn’t contract Nigeria’s debt profile, that alarmedly keeps on escalating every now and then; and after being in power for almost a decade and a half, the APC change regimes have only concentrated massive powers in the presidency, rather than deepening and consolidating democracy, inducing questions functionaries of government could hardly answer, and allegations that could hardly be denied, defining Nigerian democracy as questions laden without answers and allegations beyond denial project, set on reproducing a particular party in power in 2027.
If one Lawrence Ibe’s post trending in social media titled: ”We Are Finished”, that after Hon Alex Mascot Ikechegh’s meeting with PBAT, he is set to defect to the APC, and sing a different song in the House Appropriations Committee isn’t a smear campaign, then we are really finished. He may defect to another party and make a sudden volt face from the legislative posturing that define him in the House Committee, but the questions the Committee raised can’t be bottled back.
Jahun writes from Dutse, Jigawa State.
