"First, perhaps we could dissociate the issue of representative democracy from economic necessity"Ken,By way of a brief initial response, since your thoughtful post deserves a longer, equally thoughtful response, let me say this: I refuse, with all due respect, to disentangle the two two entwined issues/questions precisely because I believe --and Africans rightly believe--that they are connected and should be connected.And Africans who are insisting that liberal democracy must deliver and safeguard their economic rights and that the relative, if diminishing, abstract freedoms it confers on them are hollow without concrete improvements in their lives are absolutely right.They have a right to insist on the economic dividend of "democratization" because the two were packaged and sold to Africans together, as coterminous "economic liberalization" and "political liberalization."Now, because the promised economic dividend of "democratization" has not manifested, you want to shrink the goalpost of expectation and outcome to exclude economic rights and dividends. Why? This is a form of benign gaslighting for African victims of liberal democracy.They bought into "democratization" in the 1990s because of the well-oiled "pro-democracy" propaganda of Euro-American think tanks and well-resourced foundations and governments. Traumatized by military rule and in desperate search for alternatives, they also accepted the similarly framed rhetoric of African "pro-democracy" elites that strongly correlated liberal democratization with the dawn of a better, more prosperous and inclusive economic order.Now that Africans have recognized that propaganda for what it is, a bait-and-switch gimmick, you're asking them to separate economic rights from political rights and leaving the culprits off the hook.Instead of asking Africans to make that discursive separation after the fact, why not scold the African and Euro-American promoters of liberal "democratization"--most of whom are still alive and are still sworn defenders of that system--for deceiving our people, promising them better economic outcomes if they embraced liberal democracy only for the system to destroy their lives, livelihoods, and polities.On Tue, Feb 13, 2024 at 9:58 AM Harrow, Kenneth <harrow@msu.edu> wrote:--Moses has been making this argument in various forms as long as i can remember, and if i may i'd like to continue how we might think about it. First, perhaps we could dissociate the issue of representative democracy from economic necessity. Claude ake, like most of us on the left, believe that rights include economic rights. That;s basically a socialist doctrine: people have the right to have their necessities met, the necessity for food, shelter, etc.Should we have the govt responsible for this? Do we have any choice?So, let's say, that's the first obligation for govt. so that the safety net, the welfare state, is not an option, it is the basic obligation for the govt to meet.What difference does it make if that is an elected govt or an authoritarian state? Who's to say an authoritarian state would be more responsive to the needs of the people? Was that true in argentina under the generals? Or wasn't it better under peron?In ecuador the gangs made life unbearable, and the new govt is not interested in protected the rights of those arrested and thrown into prison. But an unbearable life means a totally failed govt, and it has to change. In argentina now the economy had become unbearable, and a crackpot was elected to radically shake up the establishment.Whenever the misery quotient for the liives of the people is high, the govt has to undergo radical changes.Ok, moses, let's play with that concept. What if the conditions dictating the economic order are not primarily determined by the local authorities. Let's say the senegalese or other w african govts are bought off and sell europe and china rights to their fisheries. Is the compensating income from china and europe worth depriving the locals of fish? What if the imf loans dictate conditions, not the nigerian govt or ivoirian govt etc? What if the loans are a function of an economic order that local authorities cannot control?What if china has bought off drc govt officials and now own most of the mines; the pay in the mines is poor, but there is now less internal fighting w militias. Where do you draw your lines and focus on representative or liberal democracy, rather than on the conditions of the economic order that are indifferent to democracy or autocracy. In both cases, the minister is being bought off.What's left? The exchange of russians for french has increased security in the c.a.r., but decreased it in the sahel. Who benefits from this new colonial arrangement? Not the local people in most cases. That the sahel is now run by military autocrats hasn't improved anything in those three countries, perhaps made things worse in terms of security, and meant one side lost while another won.I think we have to reframe the issues, closer to examining the parameters of the economic order rather than the nature of the govt.
Ken
Kenneth Harrow517 803 8839Emeritus Professor of English, Michigan State UniversityHarrow@msu/edu
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From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Moses Ebe Ochonu <meochonu@gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, February 12, 2024 9:11:26 PM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Heartbreaking ReflectionsIn 2006, Harri Englund published a book in which he advanced a prescient critique of liberal democracy and other abstract rights-based regimes in Africa.
He articulated the critique under the conceptual rubric of the "freedom to starve."
He, like a few other critical political thinkers, foresaw trouble in Africa for liberal democracy, which prioritizes civic and abstract freedoms above the imperatives of welfare, livelihood, and wellbeing.
Even the title of his book, Prisoners of Freedom: Human Rights and the African Poor, advertises his almost prophetic critique.
If you insist on imposing or engineering a democracy which confers on Africans certain civic freedoms but does not improve their lives and instead impoverishes them, you're simply giving them the "freedom to starve," argued Englund.
Englund is not the only scholar to foresee this tragic unraveling of liberal democracy in Africa.
Even our own much-revered political theorist, Claude Ake, saw the disconnect and warned the uncritical African "pro-democracy" crowd to beware of a foreign-engineered democracy that promised Africans "abstract political rights" at the expense of "concrete economic rights."
Did we listen? For where?
Today, we have "democracy" — liberal democracy — in Nigeria but look at the literal and metaphorical starvation it has brought to our people.
--My two kobos worth :
After the election fever, the tensions before, during, and after the elections all fanned by a riotous partisan press, the dust of the various battles finally settling down along with the eventual inauguration of President Tinubu bringing more peace and quiet to the nation, one could easily attribute the doldrums in this forum to the usual lull and near emotional and financial exhaustion - and apathy - that sometimes follows the always hotly contested elections, and, of course, the inevitable post-election litigations by the sour grapes loser ( sour grape pussies and presidential wannabes) who never accept defeat and want everybody to believe "we was robbed"
Since for the past four months, this forum has been mostly (75%) inundated with news and views about Israel's war on the besieged people of Gaza - some of us took it for granted that the absence of news from the Nigerian home turf could only mean that nothing bad was or is happening where it matters most, in fulfilment of the adage "No news is good news"
That's why the contents of Salihu Moh. Lukman's Heartbreaking Reflections come as a complete surprise - even for those whose default position is " what good can come out of Nazareth/Nigeria?" - and maybe because this forum has previously been a barometer / temperature-taker of people's politics in Nigeria, a complete surprise with the demise of sour grapes losers Peter Obi & Alhaji Atiku remorsefully or bravely licking their wounds, their existence almost forgotten having disappeared from the political radar as irrelevancies immediately after the Supreme Court informed them that there was no legal basis to their unsubstantiated claims that each of them had in fact "won" the last presidential elections, and from that point on, one would have assumed that it would only be smooth sailing for the honourable Jagaban being a man of his word and with his awesome executive powers, in full command of his "Government of National Competence" to have at least commenced with implementing his political agenda and fulfilling the election promises he made to the people of Nigeria.
Salihu Moh. Lukman's litany of woes is general in nature, the failures of democracy in that part of the world, the people's inability to hold the leadership to account, and the continuing failure to build durable democratic institutions cause him to ask, "Of what value is democracy when elected leaders cannot solve the problems of citizens?" Is that question peculiar only to Nigeria? Ask the long-suffering people in other African countries: "But is this simply part of the order of nature? Is it because this land of ours is so poor that it cannot afford a decent life to those who dwell upon it?" As Old Major would have answered, " No, comrades, a thousand times no!"
At a time of a national crisis or emergency, it's up to Nigerians more than anyone else to determine their future. Post-the "No man's land" debacle about Lagos, and Nigerian commentator Femi Fani-Kayode's response to that crisis, since Jagaban the president of all Nigerians took over the reins of government the main crisis I have been aware of are these two disturbing news items:
# The demolition of Igbo-populated markets in Lagos
# Group raises alarm over the mass exodus of Igbos from South-East
--On Sunday 11 February 2024 at 01:33:48 UTC+1 Salihu Lukman wrote:
Heartbreaking Reflections
Salihu Moh. Lukman
Kaduna
For weeks now, the question, why did we fight against military rule, has been given me sleepless nights. Within a maximum interval of one hour, the question keeps coming back. No doubt, the need to have constitutional rule, which guarantee the right of citizens to elect their leaders cannot be wished away. But when constitutional rule fails to produce responsive governments in terms addressing challenges facing citizens, democracy then become elusive. Of what value is democracy when elected leaders cannot solve the problems of citizens? In other words, why should democracy only produce leaders who will only compound or create more problems?
The more this questions spin in my head, the more it produces strong feelings of disappointment, and to be frank, also raw anger. It forces me to look back into the hard road we travelled both as citizens and as activists to get to this point. Somehow, I find it very curiously disappointing that although we are supposedly in a democratic setup, our today's reality is as nervous as it was in the late 1990s. Although, today, we have an elected government with President Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu as President, it is difficult to predict the direction Nigeria is going. Almost every action of the administration of President Asiwaju Tinubu is reduced to political convenience, often with hardly any clear logic other than exercising the power to make decisions, which cannot be substantiated with reference to reasons. As a result, conditions of life are daily crashing. Being a loyal member of the APC and supporter of President Asiwaju Tinubu, it is very difficult to reconcile today's reality with all the campaign promises made.
Since 2015, as a party, we raised the expectations of Nigerians. We promised to change Nigerian politics but since winning the 2015 elections, we have only succeeded in changing all our promises to the disappointment of Nigerians. Many of our elected and appointed representatives in government have acted exactly, if not worse than, the PDP leaders we defeated in 2015. Many of our leaders who were in the frontline of the struggles against military rule and against the PDP, are today very comfortable and are behaving like emperors and tyrants. They impose their decisions on citizens and when citizens criticise them, they hurl insults and abuses in the same way old military regimes responded. The only difference is that cases of arrests and detention are no longer the case.
The consequence is that notwithstanding the fact that we are in a democracy, we have produced the sad reality whereby the leadership of President Asiwaju Tinubu is becoming more and more insensitive to the plight of citizens. In less than ten (10) months since the assumption of office, prices of practically everything has jerked up. For instance, 50Kg bag of Rice, which used to be about N28,000 in May 2023, is now (February 2024) around N70,000. 50Kg bag of Maize, which used to be N16,000 is now more than N60,000. 10Litre of Groundnut Oil, which used to be N10,200 is now more than N21,000. 10Litre of Palm Oil, which used to be N7,000 is now more than N12,000.
All these are happening because President Asiwaju Tinubu's government took the bold decision to remove subsidy on petroleum products and float the Naira exchange rate. As a result, a Litre of Petroleum Motor Spirit (PMS) has increased to N670 from N189. Litre of Kerosine increased to N1,300 from N1,000. 12Kg Cooking Gas increased to N12,500 from N3,800. Exchange rate of the Naira is now hovering around N1,500 to the US Dollar from about N700. Given all these, incomes of citizens have crashed to below 25% of its value before May 2023. The value is still going down. The question of providing new opportunities for income earning is at best academic debate. High level government officials continue to engage the issues from the vantage view of their comfort zones.
The truth must be told: There is a big existential problem facing citizens. Unfortunately, all we here is appeal for patience. How long are citizens expected to survive under this kind of very harsh suffocating reality? What is really the plan government is working on? As someone who was in the forefront of the struggle for democracy, this certainly wasn't what we fought for. Also, as a supporter of President Asiwaju Tinubu, we least expected that President Asiwaju Tinubu will be weakly responsive to the challenges facing Nigerians. Why did we negotiate the merger of the legacy parties that formed the All Progressives Congress? Did we really do that to produce a party that could produce leaders who will attend to the problems facing citizens? If so, where then are the leaders? Shouldn't President Asiwaju Tinubu be one of such a leaders?
Clearly, at this rate, APC under President Asiwaju Tinubu may have succeeded in turning our democracy into an insensitive party. The APC should ideally be the model being the ruling party, based on which it is able to orient initiatives of governments it controls to respond to challenges facing citizens. Unfortunately, as it is either the APC is alienated from citizens, or it is unable to orient initiatives of governments it controls to respond to the needs of citizens. With none of the organs of the party functioning, meetings at any levels are hardly taking place, all that the party does now is organising phantom primary in which so-called aspirants for offices are crowned as candidates of the party. Yesterday's fighters for democracy who resisted military dictatorship are today's Godfathers. Being today's Godfathers, they dispense patronage at will and shift anointment every election cycle. Is that the variant of progressive politics we are producing?
President Asiwaju Tinubu, APC leaders and Nigerian politicians can do better. How can anyone with the faintest of conscience live a normal life with a reality whereby the same citizens who elected them as leaders are impoverished by decisions we took as a ruling party? Is President Asiwaju Tinubu at all aware that majority of our citizens, including relatively high-income earners cannot afford medication when they are sick?
I must admit, both as an activist, as a politician, and as a Nigerian, I am heartbroken. I am devastated by the fact that the performance of President Asiwaju Tinubu in the last 10 months betrays all the expectations we had. We never expected that President Asiwaju Tinubu will be unmindful of the consequences of his decisions. The belief of many of us, and indeed most Nigerians is that President Asiwaju Tinubu is a responsive politician who will not recklessly take any decision without weighing its consequences on the lives of citizens. Being human, our expectation is that, if decisions are taken with grave consequences such as withdrawal of subsidy and floating the exchange rate, being the responsive leader he is, it is our expectation he will quickly review and recalibrate such decision with the overall objective of protecting the welfare of citizens. That is what progressive politics is all about.
If within a four-year tenure, after 10 months the scorecard is gory tales of existential crises for citizens, then the political value of such a regime is suspect. President Asiwaju Tinubu must wake up and urgently do the needful to demonstrate his true democratic and progressive credentials. APC leaders must also wake up from their current power drunkenness and push the administration of President Asiwaju Tinubu to become more responsive and stop behaving like a military administration. A civilian elected government, which trample on the structures of its own party and block its organs from functioning is as good as a military government. The choice between democracy and a dictatorship is clear. Once structures of party are blocked from functioning, capacity of any so-called democracy to respond to challenges facing citizens will be weak.
This is exactly our situation in Nigeria today. The question is whether the real President Asiwaju Tinubu who was adjudged to be a democrat and progressive, who was voted by Nigerians, will resurface at this difficult times? I pray and hope that the God of mercy will take charge and fix our leaders and nation, Nigeria. May God Almighty touch the heart of President Asiwaju Tinubu and all APC leaders, and indeed all Nigerian politicians, to understand that millions of Nigerians are confronted with life threatening reality today. Just like we asked for the votes of citizens during election, citizens are asking leaders, especially President Asiwaju Tinubu to be responsive to today's reality.
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