Is Democracy Not For The People? —Osuolale Alalade

Nigeria suffers from institutional amnesia. The more cynical would affirm that our country has no national memory at all. This is a dangerous diagnosis. But if you doubt this and you are beginning to spot grey strands along the rim of your receding hair line, take a minute to plot the known antecedents of some of the dignified daemons strutting the national canvass today.

Or simpler still, answer this question: What is black Friday? No member of the graduating class of 1978 of the University of Lagos, and indeed of Nigeria’s premier institutions of UI, ABU, Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University) has a good excuse to fail this mental recall of the highpoint of wanton and indiscriminate brutality by the Nigerian military perpetrated against Nigerian students. The military invasion by air, land and sea of university campuses to suppress legitimate demands of students for the review of an umpteenth hike in university fees left over 300 students and their sympathisers dead all over the country. Many young ladies of that era were violated. Nigeria had just squandered billions on a global cultural jamboree called Festac 77.

On black Friday in 1978, Nigeria witnessed the full fury of pot-bellied military men in their jack boots intoxicated with dictatorial powers as they crushed and mauled down in cold blood unarmed young Nigerians. These young men and women were challenging the axioms driving a nation that preferred to feast the world at the expense of training the young. Before long, the invasion of Kalakuta Republic followed as the same mad dogs, in immortal Fela’s words, left their “regular trademark of sorrow, tears and blood” in their trail as they razed down that iconic cultural landmark in another orgy of violence perpetrated by uniformed state agents dubbed the unknown soldier.

This dark chapter of our national history produced its heroes: Professor Ade Ajayi, the National Union of Nigerian Students (NUNS), Gani Fawehinmi, Dr. Sogbetun, Mrs Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, among many others. Of course, years later, the dark-goggled maximum ruler, Sani Abacha improved on these benchmarks of hubristic assault on the national psyche. If you have been through the gulag of a military dictatorship, democracy must count for something. It is therefore a sad paradox, when we are forced to adjectivise democracy. A new variant of democracy has emerged. This new democracy is a product of a conjuncture of many forces and elements at play in the international system.

We are pawns in this game that is beyond our control. It is important to understand that, from the perspectives in my little corner, if you compute that the total lethal capacity shared by all the constituent players around the globe is 1, the cumulative coefficient of the lethal power of all African states would be less than .0001 of this 1. The United States with its NATO allies roughly may share more than .65 while China, Russia, Brazil, India, may hardly account for .20. This is a very skewed distribution of power. Unfortunately, the world is in a situation where those with the most lethal power are struggling to keep their economies stable. Their populations that are accustomed to feeding fat on a disproportionate share of global resources seem to be suffering from relative want. The middle forces are beginning to increase their own appetite.

The two must get their extra dough from the weak members, including us in Nigeria and Africa as a whole. From our continent, the very powerful and medium powers can get the most with the smallest investment. In this scramble for African resources, there are two instruments available to those who would accentuate our rape. The classic instrument of the powerful players is coercion. An alternative to coercion is persuasion. A hybrid of the two instruments is the new democracy. A hybrid is required because evolved international sensitivity is against blatant use of force. It must be disguised. Hardly does anyone take quinine against malaria anymore. The end goal is to secure Africa’s resources through apparently legitimate but by effectively dubious means.

The new democracy is this new fangled and favoured instrument because it can, with little guile, be easily sold to populations to gain legitimacy for dubious processes. From its nebulous route would emerge elected officials of a plantation state beholden to powerful external forces. This new democracy has co-opted the sentiment of the power and will of the oppressed for freedom, participation and inclusion and corrupted the processes of democracy as traditionally understood to advance the economic objectives of powerful states in less powerful countries. Powerful external forces are prepared to use power to obliterate the national will to resist. We saw that in Cote d’Ivoire. They will exploit legitimate causes for democratic openings and corrupt the process to delegitimise it. We saw that in Libya. They will legitimise obvious travesties of democracy as we saw in Gabon. They cajole weak leaders into advancing nebulous policies that may even be against their own national interest. We are familiar with that. They use their funds to deepen the dependence of sub-regional organisations to ensure their policies are aligned to their (funding powers’) interests.

The AU and ECOWAS are obvious examples. All these are undertaken under the guise of advancing the will of the people and democracy. Therefore, in the name of democracy, there is massive assault on the struggling democratic processes in Africa. National processes, including democratic process, are ultimately mediated by self appointed powerful external forces that have determinant influences over their outcomes. In this dubious game, there is a lot of disinformation targeted at us. The virtuous is demonised, and the daemons among us are beatified. Just like our masters of old, they possess all the instruments to break our resistance. They can whip our raw backs gory sore. In effect, those who preach democracy are exploiting the fragility of the state of democratic institutions and structures in Africa to advance their economic goals to the detriment of African peoples. They have weakened the cause of those true democrats in Africa determined to crush the jack boots of their local oppressors. The Executive House Nigger is the unconscionable overseer of the interests of foreign oppressors in the state plantation.

Accordingly, our leaders whose ambitions are unbounded and without compunction, are content to emerge from contrived processes that compromise them. In fact, some of them revere the fact of being validated by foreign powers. Only recently, the story broke of one of our leaders who sought the blessings of foreign powers to violate the Constitution to keep himself in power. Meanwhile, to prepare grounds for this, he treasonably compromised the territorial integrity of the country to show to his putative validators abroad he was a statesman! A Senior Executive House Nigger had emerged. These sorts of characters pretending to lead are no more than Executive House Niggers without any autonomous wills of their own. They understand the protocols of the new democracy pushed by powerful international forces to know that they are dignified minions who must obey the call of their democratic benefactors from powerful elite predator states. They must act steadfastly and consistently in the interest of our neo-slave masters. Meanwhile, the powerful forces are building up a reservoir of potential house niggers that would readily take the place of any executive house nigger beginning to have funny ideas about national sovereignty. Read the wikileaks to understand that anyone in Africa who occupies any post as powerful as even of a Leader of Palm Wine Tappers Association is welcome in any western embassy to weep the woes of the plantation into the bossom of those who now own us.

As in the plantation, there are instruments to deal with those who resist. Like the old democracy, the integrity of the International Criminal Court, ICC, hitherto such a beautiful concept designed to advance the emancipation of the oppressed, is being compromised. It is now adapted to serve as a horse whip to break the backs of those Africans who begin to entertain some notions of national sovereignty and freedom in the emerged plantations. That is the case of a beautiful African, Laurent Gbagbo, who was hauled before the ICC recently. The trajectory of the crisis that culminated in this tragedy requires no regurgitation here. Suffice it to say that, shorn of its partisan polemics, a double catastrophe is unfolding for Ivorians today. In the realm of the plantation, whipping the recalcitrant should give some respite to the latest minted Executive House Nigger in our neighbourhood. I am back in 1978. Our haunting black Fridays begin again under crushing weight of now invisible jack boots wielding the whips that break into the soreness of our backs. All this under mean and the vicious of oversight of Executive House Niggers. Apes obey! Hey!

•Alalade wrote this article for TheNEWS magazine