When Abraham Lincoln said democracy is the government of the people by the people for the people in his Gettysburg address, he had in mind the belief and idea of human equality as well as the need for government to spring from and be responsible to the people. It was the very idea behind classical democracy as practiced by Greeks and many sections of precolonial African communities. However, with time, basically as a result of the industrial revolution, urbanization and the growth of the concept of individualism, the practical difficulties of direct democracy became pronounced. However, beneath the impracticalities of operationalizing classical democracy, was the subtle and fundamental changes in the concept and practice of democracy as well as its redefinition and reclassification while retaining the name by Western scholars to subjugate the mass of their people while exporting the corrupted version to Africa; as if Africa do not have its own version of democracy before colonialization.
Thus, by the time of Robert Dahl, democracy has become associated with the degree of responsiveness of the rulers to the needs of the people. It was a clever way of doing away with the pretense associated with peoples’ power and influence in democratic set up. In fact, Dahl advocated for the democracy be seen and referred to as polyarchy. It was an ingenious way of removing the ineffectual and buffoonery meanings tied to ‘the people’. Furthermore, Joseph Schumpeter totally dispelled the notion of people and democracy by ascribing rudimentary roles to the people and removing/limiting the responsiveness index. The reconfiguration of democracy to something else was vigorously done by western academics and faithfully implemented by western leaders. It was a recalibration of democracy to oligo-cracy, that is, rule by the few members of the society while pretending to rule on behalf of the people. However, in recent times, there is acknowledgment by liberal proponents that democracy in existence now is a representative democracy, which in itself, is misleading and debatable. Yet democracy in its simplest form is the rule by the people.
It should be made clear that driving the evolution of the concept and practice of liberal democracy has been the ideological position and dispositions of western scholars and leaders. In western world, semblance of participation, and delusions of influence are ascribed to the people to keep the system going given the history of revolutions and revolts in Europe and America. The façade was to be maintained as long as possible. But democracy in its classical sense entails three values, viz; 1) liberty, 2) equality, and 3) variety. The three values were initially evident in cases of democratic practice around the world, particularly in Greece and pre-colonial Africa but these have been replaced; evident with apathetic citizens that is increasingly becoming disengaged and uninterested in the democratic/political process in western democracies. That is why fewer and fewer number of people in established democracies are participating in electing leaders, seeing that the democracy on display is fake, non-representative and anti-democracy.
It was this idea that was brought to Africa and introduced during the colonial era and the mentality of boss versus the commoners were added and implanted among African rulers. Whereas the ‘democratically elected’ western leaders pretend to be responsive to the needs of the people, such pretenses were done away with among African rulers. They are good and brilliant students of the corrupted version of democracy introduced by the colonial masters. African leaders learnt and added their own (more) anti-democratic elements before and after independence. The concept of alienation and separation of rulers from people became established during the colonial era and pronounced after independence. There was no pretense towards the supposed power of the people. For example, in Kenya and Zambia, the few doing business with colonizers were the favoured ones resulting into the Mau-Mau movement and internal clashes respectively; in Nigeria, it lead to the creation of privileged class of few conducting business with and/or for the colonial interlopers, with the creation of the educated minorities and Government Reserve Areas (GRA) in many cities across Nigeria. The educated ones became the dominant force after independence and subsequently, its rulers.
Zambia, Tanzania and much of the rest of the so called British colonial enclave followed similar pattern. Southern Africa countries fared worse and that is why they have more democratic challenges than other parts of the continent. Same like scenario were replaced in all colonized countries in Africa. The French colonial interlopers were even worse, seeking to obliterate the cultures and identity of its colonized Africans during and immediately after independence. Religion and ethnicity became tools in the hands of, first the colonial interlopers and secondly, the emergent African rulers. To fall in line with western powers conceived notions and practice of its democracy, Africans rulers became more daring and thievery, given the lessons learned from colonial interlopers’ primitive accumulation of the wealth of colonized African territories. This was the type of democracy bequeathed to the then emerging African states and its rulers. The people were nowhere to be found except as hewers and fetchers of votes that ultimately does not count or meant to count. This marked the genesis of the struggles of ‘real democracy’ in African continent.
However, this process of democracy importation to Africa was not without its cost in terms of development. It was a process that shortchanged African demos (people) from which they are yet recover. A brief explanation is necessary here. While most stages in global North passed through the stages of human development through the evolution process, and succinctly captured by Marx in his accounts through historical dialectics, which starts form communal to slave, feudal, capitalism and communism; Africa’s development and accompanying ‘local’ democratic project were truncate by colonialization and the resultant introduction of formal and informal slavery. It was an ‘arrested development’ of the African continent. In other words, Africa and its development was arrested at birth.
Of course, slavery in whatever sense cannot be equated with democracy. Formal slavery was instituted in the sense that, European colonial lords established and facilitated, with the help of economically induced locals; the capture, buying and selling of able bodied men and women from the colonies (Africa), to work in factories and farm plantations in Europe and America. Informal slavery was however internal. Right to vote and protest, participation in local affairs, and human dignity of Africans, including Nigerians were all trampled on while colonial rule lasted. This is what we have called informal (internal) slavery. The situation has not changed much after independence. Outright stealing of votes, electoral violence and fraud have become the standard means of measuring democracy in Africa. Hearing voices from God to continue in office (Burundi), president for life (Gambia), killings and genocide (Rwanda, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Sierra-Leone and Kenya) in the name of democracy, and assumed integrity and benevolence (Chad, Togo and Nigeria), to mention a few, have rendered democracy comatose within the African continent. Hence, democracy and by extension, development took a flight. That also marked the beginning of the nexus of crisis of development and democracy in Africa.
Other by product of ‘arrested’ development of Africans inclusive of its indigenous democratic evolution include identity crisis and the development of institutions that owed their allegiance to the ‘queen’ as the titular head of colonized Africa, and in contemporary times, to whoever is the president. The colonial administration was so removed from the rest of the people and society such that Government Reserved Areas (GRAs) where created to house colonial administrators and officials. This also marked the formal separation and alienation of people from the state. Other colonial structures and institutions were secluded and made to be as far away as possible from the people. Modern structures and institutions have followed similar pattern. A case in point on colonial governance was the Native Police, which was an organ of the Native Authority. The Native Police was renowned for its violence and cruelty with a license from British colonial masters to threaten, maim and kill. The Native Force has metamorphosed into the present Nigeria Police Force without shedding its anti- democratic and anti-people toga. This is why the modern Nigeria Police is basically unfriendly and state-centric. This is just one example among many.
Thus, public structures and instructions were seen and viewed with suspicion, hostility and disinterest by the people. This consequently made these institutions weak and structurally dysfunctional and posed a big challenge to the development of democratic ethos among the populace. In conclusion, liberal democracy and its practice is currently problematic in the West and bastardized in Africa. Its exportation to Africa by the West and its interventionist agencies have not resolved the inherent contradictions of liberal democracy cum its variants and classical democracy. At best, celebrations of democracy day in Nigeria in form of public holiday or anywhere for that matter within the African continent, is part of the illusions of participatory and representative democracy; at worst, democracy day(s) is seen as nothing other than a well-deserved rest by people from the excruciating economic and political pains inflicted by Africa’s ‘democratic’ rulers without the expected but elusive dividends of democracy.
Olugbemiga Afolabi
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