Is Proportional Representation A Silver Bullet? (2)

T

his proposition is a re­minder of how democ­racy began in Ancient Greece at about 500 BC. Fed up with monarchy, where one person ruled, and aristocracy that had a few privileged people gov­erning – with both types breeding dictatorships – people took gover­nance and their destiny in their own hands. The cities were small enough to enable the people to meet to make decisions on differ­ent aspects of their lives without representatives.

With population explosions across the globe, however, democ­racy or representative govern­ment has metamorphosed over the centuries; the loopholes are there for all to see nonetheless.

There are pertinent questions with regards to key features of democracy, as practiced in our clime? Are they positive on the human development index of the average Nigerian? Do our political leaders exhibit respect for basic human rights? Is the multi-party system providing enough room for tolerance of opposition? Is there respect for the rule of law? And do citizens’ votes truly count?

As a way forward, the Tinu­bu-led administration, which once called for a Government of National Unity, may consider setting up a high-powered but non-partisan committee to take a critical look at proportional representation electoral system. In the alternative, the National Assembly may include it in the ongoing constitution-review debates.

Such a committee, executive or legislative, should also re-ap­praise the recommendations of the 2014 Confab Report as well as Justice Uwais Electoral Re­form Committee Report in order to come forth with an electoral structure that will meet the needs and aspirations of a vast majority of the people.

We wish to observe that while proportional representation has its variants, sometimes com­plex and will reflect the relative popularity of the parties among the electorate by eliminating or discouraging vote wastage and domination of the electoral process by only big parties, both common features of the current simple majority electoral sys­tem, it is not without its own flip sides, especially in a political community with high level of il­literacy, lack of political ideolo­gy, party discipline and internal party democracy.

For proportional represen­tation to flourish in this clime, there must be party discipline and internal democracy. It may be recalled that in the pre-inde­pendence and early post-inde­pendence era, political parties, despite their imperfections, were largely ideologically in­clined and disciplined.

For instance, Richard Sklar described the Action Group as “the best organised, best fi­nanced, and most efficiently run political party in Nigeria.” To underscore this, following the motion tabled by Anthony En­ahoro of Action Group in 1953, asking the House Representa­tives to accept “as primary polit­ical objective the attainment of self-government for Nigeria in 1956”, the Council of Ministers decided by a majority that Ena­horo’s motion should be opposed while the amendment proposed by Ahmadu Bello of Northern Peoples Congress, which was to the effect that “in 1956” should be substituted with “as soon as practicable”, should be support­ed. In line with the position of the Action Group party, its four ministers in the Central Council of Ministers resigned in order to be able to vote on the motion along the party line!

It is difficult to recall in contemporary Nigerian politics such demonstration of party supremacy, especially when it touches on having to abdicate “juicy positions”! What we have currently as political parties appear to be amorphous col­lections of strange bedfellows, with only ideology to capture power and its benefits at all costs. We are persuaded that there is hardly anything to choose between the ruling All Progressives Congress and the opposition Peoples Democratic Party, Labour Party and New Nigeria People’s Party.

The collapse of party ideology, discipline, internal democra­cy as well as lust for political power, which raises the political temperature to the boiling point and leads to corrupt influence on all institutions of the state – the electoral management body, the police, the army, the judiciary – has its roots in the ginormous financial resourc­es available for political office holders, contrary to the system in the pre-independence and the independence era.

While we welcome in princi­ple the proposal on proportional representation electoral system (and recommends its inclusion in the ongoing constitution-re­view debates), there is the ur­gent need to make public offices financially unattractive. This will clear the current Augean stables, bring sanity to the elec­toral process and set the nation once again on the path of devel­opment.

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