Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Fw: PROF OLUKOTUN'S COLUMN

On Friday, 28 April 2017 16:33:39 UTC+2, Adeshina Afolayan wrote:

Olukotun as a quality noun
Olukotun as an adjective5
The opposite of opaque
Olukotun as verb
In transit
Transmit




> Democratic Recession and "Nigerian Democracy"
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> Let me begin by appreciating Prof Olukotun for, as usual, dissecting the issues with Achebean simplicity. But there are some fundamentals i suspect we need to highlight if we ever hope to fly with what i consider a pure political oxymoron, "Nigerian democracy" (always in scare quotes in my lexicon). 
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> Let me confess that i have not read Prof. Diamond's essay on democratic recession, but an abstract i saw tells me a lot in terms of locating and contextualizing terms and concepts. 
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> In fact, i think we should always be scared theoretically when we use the term "Nigerian democracy". This is because that is when we will be less baffled about the manifestation of antidemocratic and undemocratic practices that Nigerian political system demonstrates regularly. In the first place, Larry Diamond's piece is meant to address the state of global democracy (i wonder what that means). That assumption of a global trend in democratic configuration, it seems to me, already suffers from a contextual dislocation that figures as a subtext to Prof. Olukotun's piece about Nigeria. Democracy answers to historical specificities. There isn't even a seamless univocity in the understanding of the meaning of the fundamental of democracy. Should democracy be deliberative or procedural? Is majoritarian democracy a just system? Is "liberal democracy" a misnomer? 
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> To worsen matter, Larry Diamond's summary reflects a significant doubt about the correlation between instability and illiberalism and a democratic polity. This, if we, for now, forgo the teoubled theoretical relationship between liberalism and democracy, and instead focus on the conjoining of liberal democracy to Nigerian political realities, what would a democratic calculus reveal about our situation? What level of illiberal dysfunction and unstable structural manifestations qualify us to be "democratic"? I know this may be considered beating an old theoretical path in democratic theory, but have we beaten that path sufficiently well to justify an uncritical complacence about democratic practice in Nigeria? It seems to me that we can begin to untangle our political predicament firat at the conceptual level. Conceptual clarity will enable us to come to terms more with anomalies. 
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> Thus, i suspect a true.reading of Diamond's essay should commence with an analysis of divergence. To what extent does Nigeria qualifies as a democratic polity with the level of institutional disjuncture it possesses? I suspect an answer that takes reality serious will find the Nigerian state in that penumbral site where the difference between "democratic" and "authoritarian" merges seamlessly. 
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> Adeshina Afolayan
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> Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android
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> On Thu, Apr 27, 2017 at 12:49 PM, ayo_olukotun via USA Africa Dialogue Series
> <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
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> Sent from my BlackBerry 10 smartphone.
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> From: Margaret Solo-Anaeto <soloanaet...@gmail.com>
> Sent: Thursday, 27 April 2017 08:37
> To: Joel Nwokeoma; Prof Ayo Olukotun
> Subject: PROF OLUKOTUN'S COLUMN
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> DEMOCRATIC RECESSION
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> Ayo Olukotun
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> The
> term democratic recession may be somewhat fuzzy and hard to pin down; but
> thanks to University of Stanford, Professor, Larry Diamond, it has found its
> way into academic and popular discourse on democratic backsliding. It was only
> two years ago that Diamond in an update of an earlier seminal article published
> in the influential Journal of Democracy,
> the piece, Facing up to the Democratic Recession.  There is of course debate not just about the
> concept but about the underlying assumption regarding the extent to which
> democracy, globally, has retreated.
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>     This is
> not the place to settle these academic controversies, nonetheless, it is
> pertinent to recall in the Nigerian context that one of Diamond's key insights
> concerns what he called, "the subtle and incremental degradations of democratic
> rules and procedures." In other words, the slow almost imperceptible veering
> off, in the end tally into authoritarian regression and the breakdown of
> democracy. Such matters for example as the hounding of journalists and free expression,
> targeting of the opposition and those who fund them, denial of fundamental
> human rights such as the right to bail, may at first blush look like minor
> infractions or negligible errors but over time, they harden and billow into
> democratic rollback.  That is why for
> example the recent withdrawal of accreditation to the Punch State House
> correspondent, Olalekan Adetayo by the Chief Security Officer to President
> Muhammadu Buhari, Bashiru Abubakar warrants comment. As some observers have
> commented, that singular and reprehensible action brings up echoes of the
> infamous Decree 4 under which Buhari in his first incarnation as military
> president perpetrated a siege to free expression and detained journalists at
> will.
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>      True, Buhari has not on the whole in the period
> since 2015 been hostile to free expression but it needs to be clarified whether
> the recent clampdown constitutes a one off or signals a new direction.  It should be mentioned that Adetayo's alleged
> offence was no more than an article he did in Sunday Punch on April 23, 2017 entitled, "Fresh Anxiety in Aso Rock
> over Buhari's poor health." As Adetayo narrated his ordeal, the CSO who
> summoned him "was visibly angry about the story…which was about how the
> president had not been seen in public in the last two weeks except when he made
> brief appearances at the mosque inside the presidential villa for Jumaat
> services." To demonstrate his fidelity to journalistic ethics, Adetayo had
> included in the story, the reaction of Special Adviser to the President on Media
> and Publicity, Mr. Femi Adesina, who indirectly confirmed Adetayo's perspective
> by saying that the president was recuperating and that many were praying for
> him to fully recover.
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>     Fast forward to a few days later and
> observe that Buhari was pointedly absent at the scheduled weekly meeting of the
> Federal Executive Council, pleading that he needed to rest. This points up the
> fact that the Sunday Punch story is
> far from being a fictionalised account or the output of the hyperactive
> imagination of a journalist.  The underlying
> truthfulness of the report did not prevent Adetayo from receiving a lecture by
> Abubakar and to endure the humiliation of having his accreditation tag seized as
> well as being escorted by a DSS official to fetch his personal effect from the
> press gallery and barred henceforth from the villa. Predictably, Abubakar's
> harsh reaction has elicited condemnations from a wide spectrum of civil society
> activists and some state officials including Adesina who claimed ignorance of
> the putdown and dissociated himself from it. 
> It is interesting to put on record however that at the point this
> article was being finalised no apology had been tendered and Adetayo remains
> barred from the Villa.
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>      Authoritarian
> and jackboot instincts run deep in our polity and primordial culture. But having
> operated a democracy for 19 unbroken years our leaders ought to have lived down
> the slippery and high handed ways that have led us to the current downturn.  If it needs to be restated, the media
> implement remote sensing and surveillance functions on behalf of society, to
> the extent that they can warn both leaders and citizens of clear, present and imminent
> dangers.  The story about Buhari's
> possible deteriorating health and the attempt to cover it up constituted not an
> act of rebellion but of patriotism carrying an alert that should prompt all concerned
> to wise steps.  It is a pity and deeply unfortunate
> that it was not seen in this light and has therefore elicited the contemptuous and
> demeaning reaction from a state official. To reverse and heal up the wound
> which this incident has inflicted on the national psyche, Buhari should
> reinstate the persecuted reporter and put his aides on notice that he will not
> tolerate or be silent about blatant violations of the citizens' right to free
> expression.
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>      In a related connection, this columnist
> laments that shortly after the Emir of Kano, Mohammadu Lamido Sanusi,  raised critical queries about public policy hints
> were dropped in the public space that the finances of the Emirate would become
> a subject of inquiry and that like his grandfather he might soon be deposed. Indeed,
> the governor of Zamfara state, Abdulaziz Yari who was berated by Sanusi for
> saying that the outbreak of meningitis is traceable to the sins of the people, is
> reportedly leading a caucus to press for Sanusi's ousting.
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>    The health of a democracy is often measured
> by its tolerance of opposition and opposition views. It is precisely this
> factor that distinguishes a democracy which privileges robust debates from non-democratic
> and tyrannical forms of government in which the leader is always right. If we
> go down memory lane we will realise that constructive critics even in their
> most lacerating, tend to see more than the rest of society. To bring this
> truism home, Sanusi was excoriated by some when he blew the whistle about the
> monumental sleaze and corruption in the president Goodluck Jonathan administration.
> How right later events proved him to be! The point therefore is that the
> hounding of public intellectuals who speak truth to power stifles societal and
> political development and reinforces a culture of mediocrity in which those at
> the top cannot be disproved or be wrong. 
> This is not to say that if Sanusi is found to have mismanaged his turf
> the matter should not be investigated, but we should stop giving the impression
> that as soon as someone disagrees with established positions, state agencies
> and power mongers should begin to put the spotlight on him for the purpose of silencing
> him.
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>     It is a symptom of democratic recession that
> this administration is becoming more intolerant of critical opinions and views
> that depart from the mainstream. It is also ironical because the administration
> is made up of star opposition figures who advanced the democratic imperative by
> rigorously interrogating official shibboleths and cant. I do not buy the argument
> that Sanusi's outspokenness lowers the bar with respect to his revered traditional
> office. I think that the nation is lucky to have someone like him who departs
> from the telling silences and business as usual positions that have put us all
> in trouble.
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>      The country is groping for redirection and
> the administration should stop giving the impression that it resents criticisms
> of any sort.
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>  Olukotun is the Oba (Dr.) Adetona Professorial
> Chair of Governance at Department of Political Science, Olabisi Onabanjo
> University, Ago-Iwoye, Ogun State.
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