Nigerians better off under military rule, says Donald Duke

…“At least governance was not that expensive”

…says Nigeria merely pretending to practise democracy

Former Cross River State governor and presidential candidate of the Peoples Redemption Party, Donald Duke, has declared that Nigerians were better off under military rule, arguing that 27 years of civilian government have imposed enormous costs without delivering corresponding improvements in their lives.

“The people today, Sunny, I would tell you that they were better off under the military,” Duke said during an interview. “At least governance was not that expensive.”

He said the assessment should be measured against the welfare of citizens and the “democracy dividends” delivered since Nigeria returned to civilian rule in 1999.

“I’m speaking broadly now,” he said. “If we focus on the well-being of the people, what we term democracy dividends, how much has been delivered?

“We’re still having the same problems we had 27 years ago. It’s getting worse. The number of children out of school has not improved; it’s deteriorating. The healthcare system is not improving; it’s deteriorating.

“Infrastructure deficiency over the last 27 years—are we better off? The question is: are we better off today than we were in 1999? Hardly so. Hardly so.”

Duke said Nigeria had failed to resolve the fundamental problems that existed before the return of democratic government.

“The problems that existed before 1999—electrification, unemployment—those things are still there,” he said. “And I don’t see a structured approach towards dealing with these issues.

“This is my frustration, because there’s no problem we cannot resolve. We’re not a unique country.

“There are peer reviews you can do. How did you solve this? How did you do that? Are we thinking through our problems?”

The former governor said Nigeria’s governance crisis was worsened by an ineffective opposition and a political system in which election results often failed to reflect the wishes of voters.

“The opposition is terribly weakened and self-centred. Democracy is also in danger,” Duke said. “The results you get from the polls often don’t reflect the views of the people.

“So there’s a disenchantment with the system, both by the contestants and the public. Most people don’t vote because they believe their votes don’t count.”

He argued that disputed elections had weakened accountability because political officeholders who did not feel answerable to voters could easily disregard their needs.

“Because your vote doesn’t matter, there’s a tendency to take people for a ride and disregard what is required by the people,” he said.

Duke described Nigeria’s democratic system as a pretence, alleging that neither the legislature nor the judiciary provided effective checks on executive power.

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“We don’t have a democracy. We are pretending democracy,” he said. “We’re not a democracy. You and I know that.

“And the checks and balances from the National Assembly—you know there’s no check; there’s no balance.”

He cited the speed with which the National Assembly approved the return to Nigeria’s former national anthem as evidence of lawmakers’ failure to interrogate executive proposals.

“We changed the national anthem in a week. Nobody was asking questions,” he said. “They shouted, ‘On your mandate, we shall stand,’ abdicating their responsibilities.

“We had a Chief Justice of this country singing, ‘On your mandate, we shall stand.’ There’s no judiciary. We all know it. But are we prepared to deal with it?”

Duke blamed the country’s elite for abandoning the political space to people who treated public office as a permanent occupation.

“It’s a failure of the elite more than anything else,” he said. “We’re elites; we’re enlightened people. But we abdicated our leadership to those whom we should be leading.

“Politics is no longer a vocation. It’s an occupation for those people. And you can’t get them out.”

He warned that the widening divide between the rich and poor posed an increasing threat to social stability.

“There was a time when I used to be in the National Economic Intelligence Committee and Professor Aluko used to say, proverbially, that a time is coming in this country when the rich won’t sleep because the poor have not eaten.

“I think the time is coming.”

Duke said Nigeria’s failure was particularly painful because the country possessed the human and material resources required to transform the lives of its citizens.

“Nigeria is exceedingly blessed,” he said. “It’s sad. It’s painful that we are where we are.”