by Ralph Egbu

It is time, I believe, we tell ourselves the truth that what we are practicing here is not democ­racy and that in us there is hardly any spirit disposed to demo­cratic nuances.

I want to apologise to my fans for my inability to post on this page today the third part of the discourse about on “Abia Paradox” which has re­ceived acknowledgements for its expository depth on the path Abia should take from now. The concluding part would come perhaps next week. For the week I have to quickly join in doing a review of what the 2015 elections have been and hazard a guess on the implica­tions of the outcomes on our march to proper and sustain­able development.

In one of the analysis I did shortly after the presidential election, I chipped in the fact that one thing I detested about the poll has to do with clear manifestation that in spite of our boast and false posturing as a strong nation, our country from what I see, is yet to gain full sovereignty or has completely lost the one we gained with In­dependence in 1960.

It is time, I believe, we tell ourselves the truth that what we are practicing here is not democ­racy and that in us there is hardly any spirit disposed to demo­cratic nuances. It was nauseating for some of us great patriots to see how foreigners of different shades and small organisations led by young whites swarmed into the nation and virtually took over the administration of this nation in all segments and ram­ming down on us lessons on how to conduct ourselves in a most “civilised” manner. The ambas­sadors of various nations where virtually everywhere and dictat­ing to us what we should do and the way to go.

For me it was not amusing seeing young graduates from foreign nations teaching us les­sons on what democracy is and what it is not and why we should maintain peace and never think about annihilating ourselves over simple but necessary task of picking few from among us to be entrusted with power and the obviously onerous task of leading us into a modern soci­ety where life and living would be worthwhile. The level of this debasement of a people who de­scribe themselves as “The Giant of Africa”, was such we even took lessons and intervention from leaders like Dr. Amos Saw­yer of Liberia of all places.

Now nobody should get me wrong: there is nothing wrong in other nations offering assistance to other countries, but in a world where there is this constant fight for supremacy and pulling down one for the other to survive, the kind of assistance, how it is of­fered and by whom, inclusive of the kind of nations obviously has a link to the level of influ­ence and status the receiving na­tion carries. When nations like Ghana, Sierra-Leone and Liberia are among nations intervening to teach us how to behave, what that tells clearly is that the recip­ient nation is still at its infancy with rudimentary structures. We confer on ourselves backward status when every Tom and Dick can come in and in five min­utes can see our president and hold humiliating sessions with him. I am still wondering how many of us were happy hearing foreign officials telling us our officials could be punished by the non-issuance of visas. This prescription tells an ugly story about how they see and regard us. It is indicative that they are aware of our hate for our envi­ronment and love for what they have turned their nation into. It confirms our wrong perception about our world and the world generally and the kind of priori­ties we have set for ourselves as a people.

The foreign observers’ trend is one other aspect we must watch. We seem to welcome the idea and clap when they come and at the end issue many of their frivolous reports designed to maintain a direction and ensure a status-quo. Unknown to many of us, their activities have become a tool used by their local lack­eys to propel subversion of real democratic practice and to stall nationalistic march to true dem­ocratic development. These for­eign observers are few and they restrict their monitoring to few urban centres, where also their activities are limited mainly to the accreditation period. With ban on vehicular movements, they see empty but peaceful streets, at the polling units they see citizens in orderly queues and they return and pronto there is a report that the elections are transparent, fair, free and credi­ble, whereas the massive manip­ulations and subversions of the electoral process that take place at most crucial stages of colla­tion and in remote locations are not seen and so allowed to stand.

What is more, we the locals that should be more concerned about issues that touch us di­rectly rely on these reports from foreigners to draw our own inferences and to reach misdi­rected conclusions, which return to haunt us and leave us with greater hate and instability. To­day we are being led to praise Jega, the electoral boss, when his activities, if you ask me, posed far greater danger to both democratic practice and the sta­bility of the nation. In sane plac­es it would have been frowned at greatly that we were still talking about voters register and cards until few days to the take-off of polls. Given the contentious nature of social relations here, we could still allow voter card machines to be used for the first time for the most important elec­tion in the land, the presidential without the good sense of first trying it with polls of lesser con­sequence. This is why I join in commending President Good­luck Jonathan, a strong willed African Leader who could have capitalised on this to cause us plenty trouble.

In these elections, many un­democratic things happened across board, acceptance or re­jection depended on political cohesion and attitude. In some places voting centres where ei­ther in personal houses or in the bush. There where glaring cases of under aged voters. There were manifest threats just as voters cards were purchased, security agents were bribed, in fact all the rich parties and candidates had special votes for security personnel and these led to their being misused in many instanc­es, thousands of electoral offi­cials both official workers and adhoc staff still saw elections as a means to make the biggest money; it was heartrending that even youth corpsmembers who should be worried about the state of things joined in this race of perfidy. I cried for the nation when I saw that even the suf­fering old woman and stranded youths in villages preferred N500 to voting right to change the situation of things. Almost 55 years after Independence and with many examples to guide us, many still say we are learning. When would this Nigerian stu­dent graduate? We are not demo­crats and what we practice could be anything but democracy. It is painful.

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