26 Years Of Democracy: Celebrating Survival, Not Success

On Thursday, Nigerians marked another June 12 Democracy Day celebration, and I can’t help but wonder if we’re celebrating or commiserating. Twenty-six years of unbroken democracy – that sounds impressive on paper, doesn’t it? But when you peel back the layers, what exactly are we celebrating?

Let me be clear from the start – I’m not one of those armchair critics calling for military rule. God forbid! Anyone suggesting we return to khaki rule should have their heads examined. But that doesn’t mean we should be popping champagne either.

The irony of celebrating democracy on June 12 is not lost on me. We’re honouring an election that was annulled, celebrating a victory that was stolen, and remembering a man whose mandate was buried by General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida’s military machine. MKO Abiola won the freest and fairest election in our history, and what did he get for it? Prison and an early grave.

So when politicians today talk about democracy, I sometimes wonder if they understand the sacrifice that brought us here.

Former President Muhammadu Buhari did the right thing moving Democracy Day from May 29 to June 12 in 2018. At least now we’re honest about what we’re celebrating – not just the handover date in 1999, but the spirit of June 12, 1993. Better late than never, I suppose.

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But here’s what bothers me about our democracy celebrations – we act like we’ve arrived when we’re still crawling. Yes, we’ve had five different administrations from President Olusegun Obasanjo to President Bola Tinubu, and power has changed hands peacefully. That’s progress, I’ll give you that. But have you seen the quality of leadership we’ve been recycling?

Take a good look around West Africa and you’ll understand why some misguided souls were calling for military coups two years ago. Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso – our neighbours are falling like dominoes to men in uniform. When your stomach is empty and your children can’t go to school because of bandits, democracy can start looking like a luxury you can’t afford.

I remember when social media was buzzing with calls for military intervention after the 2023 elections. “Bring back the soldiers,” they cried. “Democracy has failed us!” What rubbish! These keyboard warriors don’t know what military rule looks like. Ask anyone who lived through the dark days of General Sani Abacha – they’ll tell you that no matter how bad our democracy gets, military rule is never the answer.

But let’s not fool ourselves either. Our democracy is still a toddler learning to walk. After 26 years, we’re still having election tribunals determine who really won elections. That’s embarrassing! In mature democracies, you know the winner on election night. Here, we wait for months while lawyers argue in court about who got more votes. Something is fundamentally wrong with that picture.

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has tried, I’ll give them that. The introduction of card readers, BVAS machines, and electronic transmission of results has reduced the worst excesses of ballot box stuffing and result manipulation we saw in 2003 and 2007. Remember when results were just written in hotel rooms? At least now riggers have to work harder for their fraud.

But our politicians refuse to play by the rules. They approach elections like warfare – win by any means necessary. Then they wonder why the judiciary has to step in to clean up their mess. I’m looking forward to the day when our elections are so free and fair that the courts have nothing to do with determining the winners.

Even America, with over 200 years of democracy, still has Donald Trump claiming he won the 2020 election. If not for their strong institutions, Trump might still be camping in the White House after the election. So maybe we shouldn’t be too hard on ourselves – democracy is messy everywhere.

What really breaks my heart is the security situation. In 26 years of democracy, we’ve lost nearly a million people to non-state actors. From Boko Haram in the Northeast to bandits in the Northwest, from killer herdsmen in the Middle Belt to unknown gunmen in the Southeast – nowhere is safe anymore. Our democracy has presided over unprecedented bloodshed.

I won’t blame democracy for insecurity – these problems existed before 1999. But I expected our democratic governments to do better.

Instead, we’ve watched helplessly as terrorists and bandits turned Nigeria into a killing field. Yes, our security agencies have tried, and without them we might have been completely overrun. But “trying” is not enough when innocent people are dying daily.

The paradox of our democracy is that we’ve made progress and regressed simultaneously. We now have a free press – just look at how social media dragged politicians left, right, and center during the last elections. We have civil society groups holding government accountable. We have young people refusing to accept the status quo.

But we also have more poverty, more insecurity, and more division than ever before. Our democracy has produced some of the most incompetent leaders in our history, people who treat public office like their personal ATM.

So, what are we really celebrating? I think we’re celebrating survival. We’re celebrating the fact that despite everything – despite bad leadership, rigged elections, insecurity, and poverty – we’re still here. We haven’t collapsed like Somalia or descended into perpetual civil war like some of our neighbours.

That’s not much of an achievement, you might say. But in a continent where democracy is dying by coup every few months, maybe survival is worth celebrating.

Our democracy may be crawling, but at least it’s moving forward. We may be taking baby steps, but we’re not marching backward into military dictatorship. And for now, in this crazy continent of ours, that might just have to be enough.

The question is: will we ever learn to walk properly, or will we keep crawling forever? Only time will tell. But one thing I know for sure – military boots will never be the answer to our democratic growing pains.

Happy Democracy Day, Nigeria. Here’s to hoping our next 26 years will be better than the last.