The Federal Government of Nigeria has finally declared June 12 of every year effective from 2019 as democracy day and public holiday nationwide. Whatever informs the designation of that particular day as “democracy day,” the fact remains that no single event no matter how watershed, epic, epochal or even significantly milestone can be sufficiently democratic to guarantee the democracy in practice.
No outline of single electoral process, no matter how credible, free and fair can ultimately qualify as the final product of democracy and therefore, its guarantor and quintessence.
After all, the most notorious and known fascist dictatorship that the world ever know was foisted after the outcome of a credible, free and fair election that brought the Nazi Nationalist Party (NNP) of Adolf Hitler to power in Germany, in the early 1930s.
While a certain, even can be pivotal in the democratization project, none actually qualify to be canonized as ultimately representative of democracy other than the day former president Jonathan patriotically accepted defeat in the presidential election of 2015 to avoid the sudden eruption crisis, violence and disfiguring of the entity referred to as Nigeria.
Democratic process in any clime is a long and tedious journey, characterized by several twists and turns, and while its core values of credible, free and fair electoral process at least in the context of political liberalism is constant, its outcomes may sometimes spell a setback for the democracy. As democracy is not any definitive event, it is perpetually transitional and transformational, at constant flux and growing qualitatively in the renovation and reforms of institutions through which democracy delivers measurable tangibles. The formal institutions of the democratic process can only justify its existence by transforming to substantive mechanism for efficient service delivery and a solution provider in recurring contradictions arising from society.
To effectively transform from formal institutions to substantive mechanisms of public service delivery and solution provider to numerous questions of its society, democracy and its process must acquire and incorporate values and characteristics of its any particular society. Nigeria’s democratic process and particularly that of Bauchi state in the last 20 years has grossly under-performed in the areas of public service delivery and equally demonstrated incompetence to resolve critical issues, strategically germane to building consensus until now that a true son of the soil has emerged as the captain.
Key institutions of the state’s democratic process in the 20 years of civilian rule has functioned largely in legalistic formal sense, without socially valuable outputs that aggregate to qualitative improvements in the living conditions of the majority of the people, particularly those in the rural and semi-urban areas and endangering consensus on critical fundamentals to guarantee sustainable cohesion and stability.
Institutions in the dispensation of Bauchi’s political democratization in the past 20 years has functioned mostly, mechanically hanging on the automated oxygen of legalistic finesse, without the broad legitimacy of sustainable citizen engagement. The process of the formal institutions of the state in the context of democratization effort has not produced any socially tangible outcome that directly contribute to an inclusive political order and material improvement in the quality of lives of the broad mass of the people governed through their solicited mandate.
Institutions of state in a democratic process that do not continually adapt itself to resolving practical challenges and meaningfully bringing value to improvement in living conditions, stand the risk of not only stagnation and atrophy but decadence and extinction as was about happening in Bauchi state if not for the timely appearance of Sen. Bala Muhammed on the political turf.
Institutions cannot exist to merely reproduce and replenish themselves, and simply lay claim to its reason to exist as its mere ability to survive, without delivering on the broad social mandate of enabling and driving on a sustainable basis, better life for citizens as is gradually being experienced now in Bauchi state.
When all the formal democratic contents of the rule of law, separation of powers, checks and balances, independent judiciary, free press and so many others are present but are grossly deficient in the aggregate values and characteristics of the particular society, it should serve, they will function more to the whims of the operators than a benchmark to which its operators are held accountable.
The immutable contradictions of a democratic process are not merely resolved by more sloganeering about democracy and its periodic flash points.
From the point and fact of Bauchi state’s existential contradictions, democracy and its essentials are at crossroads, and its symbolism and dramas exhibited in past gubernatorial inaugurations, parliamentary proclamations and judicial ritualism are no substitutes to institutional efficiency and adaptations, only measurable by the fairness of the social order, inclusiveness of the political process and the material well-being of the broad of the masses.
As the new captain is determined to change the old order, provide quantitative and qualitative service ever witnessed in the existence of the state, all hands must be on deck to support his laudable objectives to fruition irrespective of any parochial attachments.
Bauchi under Governor Bala Muhammed is heading to becoming an Eldorado and a global tourist haven, a safe environment, a huge construction yard with a sound economic base and a motivated citizenry for sustainable self-reliance and economic dependence and growth.
So far, he has ignited the engine of government with few appointments announced and sworn to office for optimum output in line with his blue-print which targets underdevelopment for a fierce battle and poverty for total defeat.
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Muhammad is a veteran journalist
