IN the current campaigns by Nigeria’s activist advocates of “free, fair and credible” election in 2011, and beyond, there is one underlying assumption: that the enthronement of a government which represents the true choice of the people, through their votes, will begin the process of halting the decline to state failure, begin the return of the country to the path of democracy and democratic development, and begin the delivery of “democracy dividends” to the masses of the people. This proposition, which many people indeed take as axiomatic, requires an explanatory note: I use the notion “begin” in order to strengthen this proposition – for there are many politicians of both the Right, the Left, and the Centre, who swear that three transformations here listed as objectives of “free, fair and credible elections” will immediately and automatically follow such elections. The present article, and subsequent ones, will look a little more closely at this proposition.
I hope readers will appreciate the reasons for my starting this piece with the following caveat: I am a staunch believer in democracy and “free, fair and credible” elections – both philosophically for their own sake, and politically and ideologically as a means of empowering the working and toiling peoples, the “wretched of the earth.” And I am using the word “empower” in its strongest political and economic sense. The question for me is: How will “free, fair and credible” elections, together with their inexhaustible possibilities and potentials, lead to concrete and substantive improvement of the painful and frustrating human condition in Nigeria? In other worlds, what is the link between “free, fair and credible” election and popular empowerment – in the strongest sense of the term?Read more here