Bad democracy, bad elections, coups and international hypocrisy
By Ambassador Lilian Onoh
In July when soldiers took over power in Niger Republic, the cacophony of condemnation worldwide set new records for global coverage of events in Africa, which usually gets a scroll on BBC or CNN on a normal day.
It got more coverage than the kidnap of the Chibok and Dapchi schoolgirls, which is a more egregious crime than soldiers removing a non-performing leader. The soldiers didn’t even beat him up or kill him – they just kept him in Luxury Detention, whilst deviant rapists keep children who went to school as sex slaves and then come out and get government largess by claiming they have repented. This should be cause for ECOWAS to go to war against Nigeria and for international sanctions to be imposed for such vile human rights violations.
The question was why these same people didn’t threaten war for Mali, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Chad or Egypt. Could it be because they lack Uranium and other rare-earth minerals that are in Niger?
Ambassador Lilian Onoh
But as the debate on ECOWAS military action (presumably using Buhari’s Maradi train line from Nigeria to Niger) was still ongoing, the soldiers in Gabon decided to add some pepper to the already fiery soup.
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Gabon, though geographically in Central Africa, is still a near neighbour. Will the AU pick the gauntlet and send soldiers to reset the heads of the soldiers in Gabon when it took no action elsewhere? And let’s face it – which AU President is really concerned with Gabon when it’s so close to annual jamboree to the UN General Assembly when African Leaders will be in New York jockeying for a photo op with the American President to bolster their images in their respective countries?
When you add the vociferous but incoherent international noises of condemnations or tacit approval to the burning coup pepper soup, it is enough to confuse Lucifer into losing his way on a return trip to hell.
The question is why their vociferous condemnation or incoherent commentary is only reserved for coups and not for fraudulent elections, human rights abuses and other malaise which trigger these coups? They usually address these issues by such waffling Diplomatese that they essentially say nothing and also do nothing. What happened to “A stitch in time saves nine”?
In 2003 at my ward in my hometown, people queued up at dawn to vote. At 5.40 pm, INEC officials finally arrived but said they were waiting for election materials to arrive. At 5.50pm, they said it was getting dark and packed up what they hadn’t unpacked and left. At 6pm, before they had even passed Milliken Hill, we heard the election result for our ward, where no voting had taken place, broadcast on the radio! And the International Observers who were present in Enugu all reported “peaceful” and “generally fair” elections. Nigerian media went along. Was that “democracy”?
The experience left a bitter taste and aftertaste in the mouths of all who were not even given the chance to just cast their vote after waiting a whole day. The complicity of the International Observers in legitimising the fraud left a legacy of viewing them as irrelevant jamboree masters. They always end up using many words to say nothing and the bludgeon of preserving “Democracy” is used to justify every ill, as if “democracy” is now some sort of deity that must not be touched, no matter how awful.
Are the people in Dubai crying for democracy when the people living in Koboko “democracies” are running to Dubai to escape from their “one-Chance” democracies?
When is democracy not democracy?
If the vote is not free and fair, why justify it on the grounds of some myth called “democracy”? The French want the President of Gabon whose family has been in power for over 52 years to be returned to power on the grounds of restoring “democracy” in Gabon. That is a frightening thought. At least, in Niger, the man had only been in power for a couple of years not five decades!
But the question still remains, is it a democracy if the elections were not really elections? The only reason why the June 12 election remains in the minds of Nigerians is that there is nobody who disputes that Abiola won the election, whether held against a court order or not.
If a flawed election is justifiable, then a flawed military takeover can equally justify itself, n’est pas?
In reality, neither is acceptable. But when hypocritical double-speak becomes the definition of the international community, everybody loses. The words of condemnation become nonsense to the hearers who cannot attribute any principles behind the words except the rotten self-interest of the speakers which is diametrically opposed to theirs. Thus, their external, condescending self-interest cannot supersede the internal self-interest of the soldiers who can at least claim nationalism to justify their actions. Moreover, it is highly insulting to the citizens who have endured enough – more than the champagne quaffing double speakers in suits can ever comprehend.
Like most right-thinking Nigerians, I yearn for the day when I can freely get a voter’s card, which should have been issued with the ease of getting a BVN instead of torturing people for months without result. I yearn for the day I can say that my vote actually counted and that even if my candidate lost, I would accept the winner in good faith and hope he/she succeeds.
But when I know that trying to get a voter’s card in Abuja became an impossibility because I am Igbo and that even in my own state, those with voters cards were treated with the contempt of not even being allowed to vote, never mind even pretending to rig the votes, why should I or anybody else in this position be expected to see “Democracy” as anything other than daylight robbery dressed up in the cheap tinsel of sloganeering?
The 2015 Elections where INEC claimed that the combined Eastern vote was only 900,000 for the Presidential vote that was “won” with a disputed two million votes from a mass of underage voters in Kano, is still fresh in our memories. The lie that Easterners do not vote became the cover under which Jonathan lost. Hardly any media reported that the voting machines were largely not used in the East so the undercounting of the votes of a region with over fifty million inhabitants and the fictitious number of 900,000 ensured that very few East of the Niger recognised the legitimacy of the Government of the last eight years; more especially when Buhari immediately jettisoned his pledge to do only one term as soon as he entered Aso Villa. The experience of the last eight years cannot be defined as democracy for any Easterner by any interpretation of the word.
The agitation for a separate nation did not come from nowhere. It is a result of bad elections that should have made the international community rise up with the same ferocity they reserved for Niger in order to prevent a situation like Niger occurring.
At least with soldiers, people recognise that it is people wielding guns facing you. Both you and the soldiers recognise a certain adversarial relationship. But when a civilian without a gun is whipping you more than a soldier with koboko, it is more painful because you are supposedly responsible for electing the person torturing you and telling you to praise him for his koboko democratic credentials. At that point not even the combined decibel of all the world’s Bose Speakers blasting out the condemnation of hypocritical foreign self-interest will quell the roll-back to the era of “With Immediate Alacrity” Decrees from the khaki brigade.
A word is enough for the wise.
- Ambassador Lilian Onoh was Nigeria’s Ambassador to Namibia and former Chargé d’Affaires to Jamaica