Democracy and followership

No one needs a university degree or a course in political science to know that the crux, the bottom line, of democracy is all about “participation” of the people in how they are governed. This is what democracy is. When in some settings the military shoot their way into government, the quarrel or disagreement that would follow is not about vacuum in leadership or possibility of near absence of good governance. It is about alienation.

People protest because they are aware a tiny group of people have taken over power and would go ahead to not only play alone but substitute their whims and caprices for national vision, ideals and aspirations. Citizens do know when a few overpower the sovereignty. It is a pathway to gradual infiltration of oligarchism, government of a few for themselves. They know the consequences aren’t always pleasant. This is the key reason people, especially the englighened section, often rise to say no to arbitrary power change over.

This concept of keeping the citizens aside in the running of nations is a crucial subject matter and so requires some measure of detailed treatment which for constraints of space we would not undertake in this outing except to repeat the truth that in a good democracy by which we mean a system ran on clear democratic principles,the people stay at the center of it all. Sovereignty. Sovereignty isn’t structure. It is not about the law, it is about the people,or citizens having the ultimate power to decide, of being located in the center of the society’s power equation, determining the ideals, ideas and the mechanism for getting the dreams from the unseen stage into reality.

One leader of the old Soviet Union, I think Stalin, once told his people, “it is not the voters that count most in democracy, it is the person who counts the votes.” The position gained grounds yet it was not true. When the voter is relegated those who subvert the system may ride roughshod over the people and the country to continue to stay in control. Truth is in  short supply while what seems like sweet potatoes would turn ashes in their hands and mouths.

It may seem they are victorious but they walk on borrowed time. The country they lord it over would begin to thrive in disorder and later chaos. The fabric of sense of buy in and ownership that often would go with quality democratic practice would be torn, leaving the leadership with plenty of sound signifying no motion. Decay would set in and soon the leadership would be thrown away with ignominy or where the leadership hold is too strong, society begins to disintegrate. Crisis here and We have recent examples enough to warrant just one or two examples.

Russian leadership over time neglected the people and for that reason the country isn’t what the founding fathers envisioned . The union of many sub-nationalities that once stood like a behemoth broke up, producing many countries. Lets return home: a politician a few days ago reminded us that the people do matter in democracy saying that if they didn’t, politicians and their parties wouldn’t vote huge sums of money for vote purchase. The people matter, never mind, most of them don’t know the power they have which may be because we hardly teach citizens civics in schools. People act within the prism of what they know.

We come to the kernel of our today’s outing which is about followership. We have talked so much about the leadership class but unfortunately don’t give as much attention to followership.  We have in earlier paragraphs established the people as the foundation of any true democracy. They are the sovereignty. Right. Can this be said to be the correct situation in our case? We go straight to provide the answer . It is not so. There are so many.

The country as established doesn’t have ideals or better still ideology around which we ought to push the kind of country we want. We grow up not knowing exactly what kind of a country we want and what our roles are. This is the foundation and we must admit it is a poor one. When the foundation is terrible, collapse is a matter of time. Would it happen?  Yes, it will come to that. Countries that developed took time to train and even indoctrinate their citizens.

Ask a child or adolescent between the ages of 8- 15 what politics, governance and national development are about, the responses would shock. It would be from mum to various kinds of out of point replies. Nearly all won’t know what democracy is all over beyond getting to power and lording it over the rest. Some of our children would say it is about fighting one’s way to power and ensuring the best lifestyle for one and family beyond one generation. Lose the youth some of us have heard the young ones chorus,lose the nation.But already we have since lost them. They make the most demands and run the worst errands for political lords who are anti-democrats themselves.

The average adult citizen thinks the way like their children in spite of good education and exposure. For those who claim to know about governance and effective leadership, the truth is,it is still essentially about opportunity;  to give them power and authority they migrate the thought from where they stood on principles to the existing paradigm of no conscience, stealing and subverting due processes. They will do more terrible things than those they criticized and behave more recklessly with power and authority than has been the case before they got elevated into high offices.

The citizens whose cardinal responsibility it is to structure the system , set agenda and to hold leadership accountable at all times have themselves become the problem. They just exist, sleep and wake up with no vision for the country. The past time tool is “crying and wailing, lamentations of how terrible things generally have gone from bad to worse. Today everyone is singing the song of total destruction, yet none proffers solutions. The terrible cycle just continues to revolve around and round.

With what successive poor governance has made of the country the citizens have lost their mental balance completely. The spirit is grieved and the soul broken,they have become so vulnerable they behave and respond to even matters concerning them and their welfare like fools. Someone said in a gathering last week our citizens now rotate like wind waves, wherever the political wind blows they face without understanding of the consequences.As we move towards elections beginning from January 2027 the citizens are not interested in the various political engineering going on, all they look out for is” who will give me or us money “.

How much? Five thousand, ten and sometimes hundred thousand naira only and the support is procured. Remember it is not about policies. It is not about prevailing dislocations and suffering imposed on the citizens. It is about what to use to cook the next meal,eat with the children and wait for what tomorrow holds. Everyone is in this bitter race against survival. Rar race.

We don’t teach citizens what they should know and how to react. They are not taught nation building. Patriotism sounds the same as stupidity to them. Political parties wait till a few months to polls to collect funds from aspirants and later candidates and run after elections nothing else. Orientation agency is dead. Even the structures we inserted in the constitution to provide some measure of checks and balances have been captured by anti democratic forces who paid and fought their ways to power. Advocacy is alive when the world of imperialism wants something from us.

Who will belle the cat? Would the people wake up to the responsibility to vote and guide their votes? Are they ready to begin to set the agenda? Why are we no longer talking about restructuring, fiscal federalism, zonal realignment etc? Why can’t we shut down the borders and task ourselves to the proper rebuilding of this country? Are we cursed?