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Sep 12, 2022 Samuel Africa News, Cover Story 0
Excerpts from Muhammadu Buhari’s Speech at Chatham House, London 26th February 2015
Permit me to start by thanking Chatham House for the invitation to talk about this important topic at this crucial time. When speaking about Nigeria overseas, I normally prefer to be my country’s public relations and marketing officer, extolling her virtues and hoping to attract investments and tourists. But as we all know, Nigeria is now battling with many challenges, and if I refer to them, l4o so only to impress on our friends in the United Kingdom that we are quite aware of our shortcomings and are doing our best to address them.
With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, the collapse of communism, and the end of the Cold War, democracy became the dominant and preferred system of government across the globe. That global transition has been aptly captured as the triumph of democracy and the ‘most preeminent political idea of our time.’ On a personal note, the phased end of the USSR was a turning point for me. It convinced me that change can be brought about without firing a single shot.
As you all know, I had been a military head of state in Nigeria for twenty months. We intervened because we were unhappy with the state of affairs in our country. We wanted to arrest the drift. Driven by patriotism, influenced by the prevalence and popularity of such drastic measures all over Africa and elsewhere, we fought our way to power. But the global triumph of democracy has shown that another and preferable path to change is possible. It is an important lesson I have carried with me since, and a lesson that is not lost on the African continent. In the last two decades, democracy has grown strong roots in Africa. Elections, once so rare, are now so commonplace. As at the time I was a military head of state between 1983 and 1985, and only four African countries held regular multi-party elections. But the number of electoral democracies in Africa, according to Freedom House, jumped to 10 in 1992/1993 then to 18 in 1994/1995, and to 24 in 2005/2006.
According to the New York Times, 42 of the 48 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa conducted multi-party elections between 1990 and 2002. The newspaper also reported that between 2000 and 2002, ruling parties in four African countries (Senegal, Mauritius, Ghana, and Mali) peacefully handed over power to victorious opposition parties. In addition, the proportion of African countries categorized as not free by Freedom House declined from 59% in 1983 to 35% in 2003. Without a doubt, Africa has been part of the current global wave of democratization. But the growth of democracy on the continent has been uneven. According to Freedom House, the number of electoral democracies in Africa slipped from 24 in 2007/2008 to 19 in 2011/2012; while the percentage of countries categorized as ‘not free’ assuming for the sake of argument that we accept their definition of “free” increased from 35% in 2003 to 41% in 2013. Also, there have been some reversals at different times in Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Cote De’voir, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Lesotho, Mali, Madagascar, Mauritania, and Togo. We can choose to look at the glass of democracy in Africa as either half full or half empty. While you can’t have representative democracy without elections, it is equally important to look at the quality of the elections and to remember that mere elections do not a democracy make. It is globally agreed that democracy is not an event, but a journey. And that the destination of that journey is democratic consolidation – that state where democracy has become so rooted and so routine and widely accepted by all actors.
With this important destination in mind, it is clear that though many African countries now hold regular elections, very few of them have consolidated the practice of democracy. It is important to also state at this point that just as with elections, a consolidated democracy cannot be an end by itself. I will argue that it is not enough to hold a series of elections or even to peacefully alternate power among parties. It is much more important than the promise of democracy goes beyond just allowing people to freely choose their leaders. It is much more important that democracy should deliver on the promise of choice, freedoms, security of lives and property, of transparency and accountability, rule of law, good governance, and of shared prosperity. It is very important that the promise embedded in the concept of democracy, the promise of a better life for the generality of the people, is not delivered in the breach.
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