Unless there is an immediate revolution in the country’s judicial culture, citizens may be in a better position to support the government in ending or arresting corruption in the country than a judiciary that is already infected by the virus of Nigeria Factor.
We need more support; it is about Nigeria, not an individual, the fight against corruption is for everybody, from the media we have to go to the grassroots, we will take it to children in the schools; we have to tell the children that corruption is bad, tell them why there is no chair in the classroom…. We will sensitise everybody to the evil of corruption. We need to let people know that corruption is bad, because some people don’t seem to know.—Ibrahim Magu, EFCC Chairman
Last week, this column called on those holding the levers of power to get ready to deal with the cost of change. The column argued that if the current administration is to arrest corruption, it must address the two types of corruption: the act of plundering nation’s resources and a governance culture that makes citizens feel that the wealth of the nation belongs only to the few with access to political and bureaucratic power. It concluded that fighting corruption effectively will require not just the willingness of judges to serve the cause of justice, but also mobilisation of citizens to stand up to defend their patrimony through use of citizens’ sovereignty to call promoters and defenders of corruption and undue privilege for political officers to order. It also asked President Buhari to insist that his ministers declare their assets. Today’s piece will focus on the role of citizens in a democracy and the responsibility of people in power to encourage citizens to have a stake in the way they are governed. It will argue that both citizens and democratic governments in the country need to cooperate more than they are doing, if corruption is to be removed from the country’s governance culture.
Born and raised mostly in the era of military dictatorship with no clearly defined mission for sustainable democracy and national development, a huge number of active citizens in the voting age today have grown to see themselves not as part of the governance process. The alienation of citizens at the instance of military governments continued into the few years of democratic governance since independence. The alienation reached its peak during the last administration, which essentially appropriated the state and its resources with a show of impunity that finally angered the citizens to the point of voting out a party self-referenced as the largest political party in Africa destined to rule without interruption for at least 65 years.
In a way, the vote for Buhari and his manifesto of change marked the beginning of citizen dis-alienation. But the effective use of citizens’ votes to change a government they did not feel comfortable with does not amount to full acceptance of citizens’ role in a democracy. Apart from electoral democracy which gives citizens the opportunity to choose or replace governments that rule them, citizens are expected in democratic cultures to see themselves in post-election times as stakeholders whose main responsibilities are to participate in policy debates, petition the government, and protest against public policies whenever they feel the need to do so. The old aphorisms: “A people get the government they deserve” and “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty” all illustrate the role of citizens in shaping the way their nation is governed, especially the readiness on the part of their rulers to see governance as a life-enhancing endeavour that expects people in government to commit to accountability and transparency in governance.
For long in our country’s frequently broken journey to democratic governance, most citizens have come to see politicians and government as overlords. In addition, when vocational civil society organisations mushroomed in the country during the era of military dictatorship, many citizens saw civil society as separate from the citizenry. This perception has been traced to the fact that most civil society organisations came into being and remain in existence through funding by former colonial powers and their collaborators. Many observers also believe that many civil society organisations, like other segments of the Nigerian polity and society, had been infected and degraded by the culture of corruption in ascendancy from decade to decade.
As this column observed last week, President Buhari’s call on citizens and the judiciary to play the roles allotted to them in a democracy enthusiastically and effectively remains one of the most profound statements from the presidency in respect of consolidating and sustaining democracy in the country.
Undoubtedly, there have been similar statements in respect of democracy in the past, but it is salutary that such statement came this time from a man whose personal integrity had contributed noticeably to the success of an opposition party to unseat a political party ‘destined’ in the words of its leaders to rule Nigeria continuously for close to three quarters of a century. But the president’s encouragement of citizens to be vigilant beyond electoral democracy must have raised citizens’ expectations about the future of democracy and development in the country. However, for the president’s statement to have a lasting impact, it must be backed by programmatic commitment at every level of government to stimulating citizens to get fully engaged in the war against corruption, a political and social vice that is inimical to the thriving of democracy and development in the country.
Unless there is an immediate revolution in the country’s judicial culture, citizens may be in a better position to support the government in ending or arresting corruption in the country than a judiciary that is already infected by the virus of Nigeria Factor. Like all aspects of the polity, the judiciary may need the type of re-orientation that other corruption-prone institutions in the polity require, for it to play a proper role in the fight against corruption. Building trust between the government and the electorate is the most important thing needed to reinforce the fight against corruption. It is perhaps easy for corrupt people to fight back and dirty as they seem to be doing already. Corrupt people in government, banks, and other resource-rich institutions are likely to have enough resources to purchase corrupt professionals in all spheres of life but they may not be able to have enough stolen money to spare for buying the conscience of most citizens.
The fight against corruption and for amelioration of governance in the country (now coded as Change) needs citizens’ support more than that of any other institution inherited from decades of venality in governance. The managers of Buhari’s manifesto of change need to interact more respectfully with citizens than the governments in the past. They need to be honest with citizens and provide them with information about forces that are working to prevent change in all forms. For example, it should not be easier for the government’s media aides to identify names of police officers who take N100 bribe on the street than it should be to provide meaningful information about those who stole over one trillion naira from the state. The news about 55 individuals-former ministers, governors, bank officers, etc— is not helpful so far. WHO as one of the mandatory five Ws and one H of news reporting is the first thing to be established before an event is turned into a news story. There is no excuse for government to forget to give citizens the names of the 55 individuals that had wrecked the economy.
If the manifesto of change is not to be rubbished by desperate members of the country’s venal elite, President Buhari needs to initiate programmes that can enhance participatory democracy by encouraging public debate and hearings on important policy initiatives, including bringing some matters directly before citizens in a referendum. Citizens feel the presence of governments all over the world through interaction with the public service. As of now, public service still acts as an agency to deny service rather than one to provide public goods and services to citizens. Making government agencies responsive to citizens is one way for the regime of change to establish trust with citizens to the point that they would take the risk of engaging forces that are hostile to good governance. It is after citizens are sure that those in power are serious about improving the institutions created to serve them that they too will “do the needful” to protect the machine of change.
Citizens on their part need not feel overwhelmed by the noise of anti-change media warriors or by the power at the disposal of those they had elected. For example, as bad as the current constitution is, it provides citizens the right to recall elected officials when they feel this is necessary. Citizens need to be vigilant if they want change. They must realise that the power of example evident in Presidential Buhari’s personal life may not be enough to sustain a regime of change. Other branches of government, especially the houses of elected lawmakers require close scrutiny at all times. Like the president, the lawmakers need to be made accountable to those that elected them. When any lawmaker acts in a way that undermines citizens’ interests, citizens should not forget that they too have the power to recall irresponsible lawmakers.
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