An unbiased assessment of the current democratic dispensation will show that things are not working the way they should. There are strong indications that our democracy is endangered by primordial factors, which may or may not be peculiar to Nigeria. I shall deliberate on some of them in the course of this discourse. A nation of 61 years old ought not to be where we are now. We should have passed the stage of what mode of primary a party can adopt and the mode of transmission of election results.

With available human and material resources at our disposal, Nigeria has no business whatsoever being the poverty capital of the world. It is sad that over 100 million Nigerians are living in poverty. The country has failed in all indices of development. Any adverse developmental report, we will not fare well. We are the third most terrorized country in the world. We are the poverty capital of the world. We are one of the worst places to be a mother in the world. We are among the most malaria endemic nations in the world.

What is development? Or put in another way, how do we measure progress? In trying to measure national progress, prices of essential goods can go a long way to give us some clues on how Nigeria has fared in the past six years when President Muhammadu Buhari assumed office. For instance, in 2015 when this change government came to power after defeating President Goodluck Jonathan in the general poll of that year, the price of a bag of rice was N7500. In 2021, the same bag of rice is now sold at N28,000.

However, the price can be more depending on the variety of rice, whether local or imported and the market. Before now, a bag of rice, especially foreign variety, was sold up to N30,000 or more. In 2015, one US dollar was about N200 or slightly higher. In 2021, it has hovered between N450 to N500 or even higher at the black market, despite sundry measures by the central bank of Nigeria to kill the parallel market and its ubiquitous operators. I don’t want to mention the exchange rate between the naira and other foreign currencies, in which the almighty naira does not fare better year in, year out.

In 2015, our insecurity was not so widely spread as to engulf the entire nation. At best, it was restricted to the North East, the epicenter of the protracted insurgency war with occasional flashes in Abuja, some parts of the North Central and the North West. But today, the story is radically different. Nowhere in Nigeria is secure anymore. Nigeria has become a killing field where blood flows freely on a daily basis as non-state actors have taken control of many unoccupied spaces within Nigeria and collecting sundry levies from the citizens.

Nigerians are killed daily in the North West as if the country is at war. Even during the Nigeria/Biafra war, things weren’t that as bad as we are having it now. We never had it as rough as we have it today. When I remember the Nigeria of 70s and 80s, my mind goes to Chinua Achebe’s There was a Country. There was indeed a time we had a country, a country where things worked, where our diversity was not officially pronounced as we have it now, when Nigerians were really their brother’s keeper. I remember a Nigeria where one can get a job without having any godfather, a Nigeria where a citizen can work in any part of the country without much ado. I remember with nostalgia when the railways were working and goods were moved from one part of the country to the other with ease. In the Nigeria of old, tribe, religion and where one comes from wasn’t a major criterion to get what you need in Nigeria. One does not need a godfather to be employed in the Nigeria Customs, Immigration or Prisons. But today, you must have two or more godfathers to get such lucrative jobs in the country.

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Even to get a Nigerian passport, you must bribe some Immigration officials. The same applies to renewal of passports. The system has become so corrupt that some people now embark on secret recruitments in some ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs). Under this warped arrangement, jobs are sold to the highest bidder and not to the best qualified. No one talks of competence anymore but who you know that can connect you and you get your choice job when millions of Nigerian graduates are roaming the streets in search of elusive jobs.

In Nigeria, our past will always be better than our present. That is why we seem to romanticize the past. And that is why there was a country indeed. What we have now is not the type of a country we had before. Before us is a failing state, a failed state or a state that has fallen. Make your choice. In a failed state, non-state actors take control of some areas and dictate what happens and even have the audacity to collect tolls from the hapless citizens. Our democracy has fast degenerated to autocracy where elected officials dictate what happens in total disdain of democratic norms and rule of law.  In this part of the world, the government chooses which court rules it can obey. Under our nose, the government has jettisoned the rule of law and due process in favour of arbitrariness and rule of the thumb. Even the press, the so-called watchdog of the society cannot be allowed to function effectively. This government has not hidden his agenda to ensure that the media is emasculated through over-regulation. The government wants to kill the media and undermine its constitutional function as enshrined in the constitution through the instrumentality of regulation.

Instead of dissipating unnecessary energy on how to regulate the media, which is already regulated, let our democracy and government be regulated. Without regulating the government, its excesses will definitely kill this nascent democracy. The excesses of our politicians will truncate our current democratic experiment if they are not curbed or checked forthwith. Not quite long ago, President Muhammadu Buhari assured Nigerians and the international community of free, fair and credible poll in 2023. He was highly hailed for such promise and the god talk.

However, what is on the ground as we move toward 2023 does not suggest the free and fair poll of Buhari’s promise. President Buhari, as usual has refused to sign the Electoral Act Amendment Bill citing the inclusion of direct primaries for political parties and other things for doing so. Are we back to 2018 when he did a similar thing? Will the lawmakers override the president?  Only time will tell. We hope the president’s refusal has nothing to do with the alleged mooted plan to truncate of electronic voting and electronic transmission of election results?

If the Electoral Act Amendment Bill is not signed into law before the 2023 general election, there is no way the 2023 poll will be free, fair and credible. Our type of democracy obtains in a failed republic or put in another way, in a banana republic, in a country where democratic ideals are in abeyance. Without true democracy, Nigeria is in trouble. If this democracy is truncated, Nigeria will be in a very big mess, without any hope of redemption in sight. With the signs on ground, the road to 2023 is apparently not well paved. The road is still full of thorns and deep craters and numerous man-made obstacles.