Of all the nations that profess an embrace of democracy, Nigeria has had a field day of celebrations in recent times. Last year, we celebrated 25 years (a quarter of a century) of the return of democracy from over four decades of military autocracy. In 1999, Nigerian history and providence chased off a stubborn military  hegemony and replaced it with a hurried and untidy transfer of power to elected civilian authority.

More recently, we have just been celebrating two years of the Tinubu presidency, the 5th  such dispensation in the post military period. And last Thursday, once again in an annual  ritual that has been in place since after the annulment of the June 12, 1993 election, we observed yet anther episode of the annual June 12

Democracy Day. Prior to now, Democracy Day used to be  on May 29th, the day Nigeria returned to democracy after the decades of military rule. Political pressure and expediency has since consecrated June 12 into a national Democracy Day over and above May 29th.

In all this jumble of anniversaries, there is a sense in which Nigeria may have become one nation in which democracy both as a concept and national event has become almost a deity with an annual worship calendar. Different national leaderships now make it a duty to celebrate and observe the various democracy anniversaries if only to remind themselves of their fundamental commitment to developing and consolidating a democratic culture.

For a nation that has spent the better part of its post- colonial history under non-democratic rule, these fetish observances can be justified. From 1966 to 1999, the greater part of Nigerian history was spent under the jackboot of military leaders. Of the 15 leaders that the nation has been under since after1960, 7 have been pure military officers thrown up by coups in one form or the other. In terms of duration of reign, of the 65 years since after independence in 1960, only roughly 46 years have been spent under sporadic civilian democracies, interrupted, except in the last 25 years, by military interventions.

Of course, no one can celebrate our long military interregnums. Yet no one in their right mind can dismiss the years of military rule as completely wasted. On the contrary, it can be argued that the greatest and boldest acts of nation building in Nigeria took place under the military. The founding fathers hardly began the task of national building. But their single most important achievement was the procurement of flag and anthem independence in 1960. The edifice they inherited from the colonialists was an unfinished business. It was an arrangement, not a viable nation state.

They left us a tripartite ethnic behemoth. Hegemonic peer group conflicts led to ethnic tension and eventually a sad and wasteful civil war. The military intervention that followed, though sad in itself, led to many nation building initiatives. There was the creation of states from 12 to the present 36 state structure of the federation. The military dismantled the hegemonic four region structure  and reduced the lure of regional hegemony and antagonism. The military also began the process of integration of the nation by de-sectionalising the security forces. A unified national police and military command structure was created for the nation. Under the new arrangement, personnel from all over the country were deployed to serve all over the country irrespective of their states of origin, thus ending the threat of regional hegemony and ethnicisation of national security institutions which was at the root of the crisis and civil war. 

More strategically important, it was the military under the leadership of General Yakubu Gowon that pioneered the establishment of key national unity institutions. The National Youth Service Corp (NYSC) Scheme, now in its 52nd year was established to forge in young Nigerian graduates a new sense of national unity. There was also the establishment of Unity Secondary schools to offer secondary school education to Nigerian children in their formative years while they embraced a system of national merit moderated by a sense of balance and unity. Children were encouraged to attend these unity schools all over the nation to embrace national unity while growing up under a regime of meritocracy that also allowed for a certain equality of opportunities.

Similar nation building initiatives like the Civil Service Reforms, the Federal Character Principle,  quota system and balancing of opportunities in the public services were also initiated. While the policies to pursue a balanced federation were pursued, there was an allowance for the states as federating units to aspire to their individual attainments to excel and develop along their own lines and at their own pace.

However, the mechanisms of nation building adopted by the military were not always well thought out. In an attempt to balance the federation and unify aspirations, the military tended to see the nation more as a barrack than as an organic  polity with inherent human diversity and internal differences. The military tended to apply a uniform template  which did not provide for the difference of culture and rate of development of different parts of the country. This has of course led to a certain uneven development among different zones of the country. But it does not invalidate the principle of pursuing  the challenge of nation building.

The years of democratic intervention in our national history have had their inherent values as well. They have posited a political counter culture to the years of military autocracy. By its nature, military rule is inherently restrictive in terms of citizen freedoms and rights.

The military did not allow the freedoms of expression, association and belief to flourish. A nation, no matter how well structured, is first and foremost an organic  domain of freedom. When people are not accorded their full rights in a free society, development and national structure mean little. The military restricted freedom in the national space to their unified vision and garrison perspective.

With hindsight, we cannot forget too soon our experience under the military jackboot. The military beat us up if they felt we were not observing garrison discipline. They occasionally  flogged us with horsewhips for minor traffic offences. They curtailed the freedom of the press, did not allow the flowering of civil society organizations nor allow the flowering of ideas that were antithetical or opposed to the dominance of their authoritarian ethos. You dared not disagree with government. Dissent was treasonous. A society that restricted ideas was bound to die instalmentally.  Under the military, our nation was dying gradually as a union of ideals. That was the tragedy that befell Nigeria in the decades of military rule.

However, the spells of democratic civil rule that intervened allowed our people to exhale once again. Due process replaced impunity. Debate replaced ultimatums and commands. Institutions like National and State Assemblies provided avenues for policies and programmes of government to be subjected to interrogation and cross examination. Government lost its magisterial absolutism as elected officials who were accountable to the people replaced arbitrarily selected officialdom.

As against the prevalence of decrees and other forms of arbitrary rule, the moments of democratic rule have allowed for the return of formal legislation at national, state and local government levels as the sources of legislations to guide the making of laws for  governance.

Democracy has brought with it the familiar challenges of matching freedom with development. Nigeria’s adoption of the US-type presidential system poses the challenge matching the form of democracy with the substance of social and economic development. Under the existing democratic system, there are 774 local governments, 36 state governments plus one FCT government. And of course, there is an almighty federal government with 40-50 odd ministries and over 500 extra ministerial departments strewn all over the country.

Questions have been raised about the appropriateness  of Nigeria’s present form of democracy as an instrument for development of the country. The central problem is how the nation’s economy can sustain the elaborate machinery of the democratic institutions and also generate enough  extra to fund social and economic developments for a nation as large and complex as Nigeria.

In spite of nearly a quarter of a century of formal democracy, therefore, Nigeria is yet to imbibe the cultural attributes of a democratic society.  Our politicians still act with impunity on policy issues. The tendency to take arbitrary actions over and above legislated ones remains a constant temptation of the political leadership. The impulse to clamp down on free speech remains a constant temptation with key politicians as they occasionally order the  arrest and detention of journalists and opposition figures sometimes for weeks without trial.

In recent times, a few state governors have degenerated into imperial autocrats. They have harassed and intimidated their opponents, used intemperate language in their public utterances and tended to blackmail their appointees into toeing whatever partisan routes they have opted for.

A more interesting spillover of military authoritarian culture on current Nigerian democracy is the deliberate enlistment of military security operatives by politicians during electoral contests. This tendency is a carryover of the notion that military fiat can be summoned to  influence the outcome of electoral contests.

It is not only politicians and political leaders who have continued to suffer from this nostalgia for the military days. Even among the civil populace, elements of garrison mentality still linger. People occasionally invite soldiers to settle inter personal squabbles.  Soldiers still beat up civilians like power company workers, tax collectors and rival traders in market related squabbles. In disagreements, policemen and soldiers have engaged in open fisticuffs with each other in defiance of law enforcement agencies. In all of these incidents, the basic democratic belief in the rule of law and due process  is often jettisoned in favour of  jungle justice.

In the electoral process itself, Nigerian democracy has continued to wrestle with the basic requirements of the democratic process. Every democracy depends for its credibility on the reliability of the electoral process itself.  Ballots must be cast unimpeded. They must be counted and their count must be the sole determinants of the final outcome of the electoral contest. Once this process is compromised or tampered with in any manner, then the democracy in question is less than  free and fair. No matter how elaborately a democracy celebrates itself,  ceremony cannot in and of itself confer legitimacy and credibility on the system.

It is commendable that Nigeria has scaled these significant milestones in its democratic journey. It is also opportune that the milestones of democratic transition are celebrated and marked. These ceremonies indicate an irreversible commitment to the sustenance of democracy as a permanent feature of the Nigerian political ecosystem.

Democracy is by no means a destination. It is a process and often a turbulent journey. That journey must however indicate a trajectory of progress. The periodic observance of campaigns and electoral time tables is in itself a sign of progress and commitment to democracy as a destination. But successive governments that result from democratic processes must themselves renew their commitment by reinforcing the guardrails of the democratic endeavor not just as occasional showmanship but as an ingrained cultural value system. A leadership that results from a given democracy can only be as credible as the process that produced it. A credible democracy is therefore the bedrock of a respectable nation.