With barely a year to the next national election cycle, fears have been raised about the continued apathy of many Nigerians. Figures of uncollected Permanent Voter Cards in many states demonstrate this. Despite widespread disaffection towards the political system, Nigerians should not relent in discharging their civic obligations. Democracy is hollow without popular participation: to enjoy its elusive “dividends,” people should shake off their lethargy, demand accountability and exercise positive influence on the democratic process.
Participation starts with registering to vote. According to the Independent National Electoral Commission, 74 million persons were enrolled on its register by the second week of January. This figure is expected to hit between 80 and 85 million before the first round of polling. In the 2011 presidential election, 36,728,992 votes were cast, representing about 54 per cent of the registered voters. But in 2015, only 29,432,083 voted, representing 43.65 per cent of the 67,422,005 names on the roll.
One problem that cropped up then was the non-collection of PVCs by many voters. In many states, hundreds of thousands of the documents were left at INEC offices and collection centres. In this, part of the blame lay with the electoral body. Its logistics, notoriously poor in all its successive reincarnations, failed. Many people who genuinely wanted to collect simply could not, enduring long waits and fruitless, repeated visits to the centres.
But many more simply couldn’t be bothered. As the very raison d’être of the Nigerian union is being daily called into question by an increasing number, youth unemployment at 61.6 per cent and entire ethnic nationalities nursing deep-felt alienation, the people should resolve to take charge of their own destiny. Where to start is in registering, collecting their voter cards and making intelligent choices on Election Day.
In Oyo State, 657,267 PVCs had not been collected by mid-January; most had been ready since 2015. The figures of 49,000 unclaimed PVCs in Taraba and 21,651 in Akwa Ibom pale beside the 460,000 uncollected PVCs in Edo State. By April last year, according to INEC, 7.8 million PVCs were awaiting collection nationwide and 4.23 million were yet to be printed.
Nigeria’s democracy has become what researchers at the Johns Hopkins University, the United States of America, describe as mere “Electoral Democracy,” a system “in which elites and their hangers-on hold elections but citizens have little real influence on the process.” We are paying a heavy price for this abdication of responsibility to a particularly selfish, self-centred and avaricious political class. According to the IMF, 54 per cent of Nigerians were living below the poverty threshold of $2 per day in 1999; but in its 2018 Nigeria Economic Outlook, the African Development Bank says 152 million or 80 per cent of the population now live below the poverty level, 18 years into the Fourth Republic.
Yet, a news report calculated that the country earned about N77 trillion from crude oil and gas between 1999 and 2016. A revelation by Tim Okon, a former senior executive of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, showed that $300 billion oil revenues flowed in between 2010 and 2014 alone. Not only are the people pauperised, elected officials are unaccountable to them.
The National Assembly that should champion the cause of the people at all times has, however, become notorious around the world for appropriating vast sums for its members who, along with the executive arm, live in opulence, promote narrow interests and plunder the treasury at will. At the state and local government levels, governors, lawmakers and LG bosses are handpicked by political godfathers and proceed often to serve those interests with scant regard for the people.
Lack of popular pressure has allowed the political class to deprive the polity of an effective power sector: infrastructure deficit could need up to $1 trillion to propel it to the top 25 economies of the world, while unemployment is rampant and the majority are alienated.
The way forward is clear: since the outcomes of the democratic contests have been unsatisfactory and politicians disdainful of the populace, the people should resolve to live out a one-time US president Abraham Lincoln’s famous description of democracy as the “government of the people by the people for the people.” Democracy imposes a duty on the people to have civic consciousness, beginning with registering to vote. In other climes, political parties would be mobilising the people to register and collect their PVCs.
People should locate lawmakers’ constituency offices and interrogate their supposed representatives: they should stop demanding money or asking them to pay their house rents or children’s school fees, or collecting tokens from them. Public office is about service, not plundering public treasury. The Journal of Democracy, a Johns Hopkins University Press publication, says “people become more effective in the struggle to obtain democratic institutions when they move from emphasising survival values towards emphasising self-expression values.” A study by the Brookings Institution, a US think tank, found that democracies where people demanded and extracted accountability from elected officials tended to be more prosperous than those where citizens exerted little pressure on public officials.
INEC should, therefore, reform its logistics and public education machinery and ensure that as many PVCs as possible are collected. It should also step up its continuous registration to avoid the usual last minute rush that disenfranchises many and makes room for fraud and card buying by corrupt politicians.
Apart from ensuring that they obtain PVCs, eligible Nigerians should stop the veneration of public officials: they are to serve, not to be served. They should deliver good governance. For all citizens 18 years and above, the voter card is the weapon to keep officials in line, the ultimate exercise of sovereignty; it is an inalienable right and confers a duty on all to use it and do so responsibly.
