Nigerian Democratic experience :speech delivered by General Muhammad Buhari at Africa Diaspora Conference, House Of Commons, London, United Kingdom, on Tuesday, 5th March 2013

Protocols
1. May I thank the organizers for inviting
me and my associates to this conference
which, if I may say so, is growing in
influence by the day. The presence of
many Nigerians and distinguished Britons
on these historic premises testifies to
the importance and to the high
expectations of this occasion. At the end
of today’s proceedings many of us hope to
have a better understanding of our
problems and perhaps identify more
effective solutions to those problems.
2. My contribution today is based on
reflection and practical observation
rather than on studious research or
scholarly presentation. It is a soldier’s
and politician’s broad observations on
democracy and economic development in
my country, Nigeria.
By convention one usually would like to
talk about his country outside its shores
in glowing terms extolling its virtues and
defending its values and interests. But the
situation in our country is so bad and no
one knows this better than the
international community, that it would be
futile to take this line today.
Furthermore, it would be counter-
productive to efforts we are all making to
understand and accept our shortcomings
with a view to taking steps towards a
general improvement. If you continue to
be in denial, as Nigeria’s government and
its apologists are wont to do, you will lose
all credibility.
DEMOCRACY
3. There is no point in rehearsing all the
text-book theories of democracy to this
august gathering. But in practical terms
there are, I think, certain conditions
without which true democracy cannot
survive. These conditions include, but are
not limited to, the level of literacy; level
of economic attainment; reasonable
homogeneity; rights of free speech and
free association; a level playing field; free
and fair elections; adherence to the rule
of law and an impartial judiciary. But
these imperatives are not applicable to all
countries and all climes. India for
example, suffers from great poverty and
diversity but its efforts at running a
democracy are exemplary.
4. Democracy can best flourish when a
certain level of educational attainment or
literacy exists in the society. The vast
majority of the voters must be in a
position to read and write and
consequently distinguish which is which
on the voters card to make their choices
truly theirs. In recent elections in
Nigeria, many voters had to be guided –
like blind men and women – as to which
name and logo represent their preferred
choices or candidates to vote for. When
one does not know what the thing is all
about, it is difficult to arrive at a free
choice. It will be even more difficult to
hold elected office holders to account and
throw them out for non-performance at
the next election. Under these
circumstances, democracy has a long way
to go. Our collective expectations on a
democratic system of government in less
advanced countries must, therefore, be
tempered by these realities.
5. Nor must we discount the role of
economic development on the democratic
process. An even more compelling
determinant to human behavior than
education is, I think, economic condition.
I will return to this topic when discussing
elections, but suffice to remark here that
if, for example, on election day, a voter
wakes up with nothing to eat for himself
and his family and representatives of a
candidate offer him, say N500 (£2) he
faces a hard choice: whether to starve for
the day or abandon his right to vote
freely.
As the celebrated American economist,
late Professor J.K. Galbraith said:
“Nothing circumscribes freedom more
completely than total absence of money”.
6. For democracy to function perfectly, a
reasonable level of ethnic, linguistic or
cultural homogeneity must exist in a
country and this applies to all countries
whether more developed or less
developed. In the US, which like Nigeria
is a federation, Hawaii and Alaska send
two senators each to Washington as do
California and New York. In our own
country, Bayelsa with a population of less
than two million elects three senators to
the National Assembly in Abuja equal to
Lagos State with a population of over ten
million. Nassarawa State with about two
million people and Kano State with over
five times the population also send 3
senators each to Abuja. Such dilution
clearly negates the intent and spirit of
democracy.
7. Central and critical to democracy is
adherence to the rule of law. That is to
say, no individual, institution, not even
government itself can act outside the
confines of law without facing sanctions.
Executive arbitrariness can only be
checked where there is respect for the
law. Other desirable conditions of
democracy such as freedom of speech and
association can only flourish in an
atmosphere where the law is supreme.
Law does not guarantee but allows a level
playing field. In the absence of the rule of
law, free and fair elections and an
independent judiciary cannot exist.
8. As a result of the virtual absence of the
rule of law, elections in Nigeria since 2003
have not been free and fair. As a
participant, I can relate to this audience
my experiences during the 2003, 2007 and
2011 Presidential elections. Hundreds of
candidates have similar experiences in
State, Federal legislature and
Gubernatorial elections. Under Nigerian
law, these elections are governed by the
1999 constitution, the Electoral Law and
the Independent National Electoral
Commission (INEC) acts of 2002, 2006 and
2010. Ordinarily, an election is an
occasion when contestants will join the
electorate in celebration of freedom,
because the will of the majority has
prevailed. Winners and losers alike come
together to work in the interest of their
country. But this happens only if the
elections were deemed free and fair. In
2003, INEC, the body charged with the
conduct of elections in our country tabled
results in court which were plainly
dishonest. We challenged them to produce
evidence for the figures. They refused.
The judges supported them by saying, in
effect, failure to produce the result does
not negate the elections! In a show of
unprecedented dishonesty and
unprofessionalism, the President of the
Court of Appeal read out INEC’s figures
(which they refused to come to court to
prove or defend) as the result accepted by
the Court. The Supreme Court, the
highest court in the land, said this was
okay.
9. In 2007, the violations of electoral rules
were so numerous that most lawyers
connected with the case firmly believed
that the elections would be nullified. I
will refer to just two such violations. The
Electoral Act of 2006 stipulated that ballot
papers SHALL be serially numbered and
voters result sheets must also be tallied
on serially numbered papers. INEC
produced ballot papers with NO serial
numbers and also used blank sheets
thereby making it well nigh impossible to
have an audit trail. At all events, at the
final collation centre the chief electoral
officer, after 11 (eleven) states (out of 36)
were tallied excused himself from the
room – apparently on a toilet break – and
announced the “final results” to waiting
journalists. He had the “results” in his
pocket. At the time, several states had not
completed transmission of their tallies. As
in 2003 the courts rubber-stamped this
gross transgression of the rules. Some
election returns confirmed by INEC
stamps included, 28th April, two (2) days
before the election, 29th April, a day
before the election and astonishingly, 31st
April a date which does not exist on the
calendar, illustrating the farcical nature
of the election. The Supreme Court split
4-3 in favour of the Government.
10. In 2011 all pretences at legality and
propriety were cast aside. In the South-
South and South-Eastern States, turn-out
of voters was recorded by INEC at
between 85% – 95% even though in the
morning of the election the media
reported sparse attendance at polling
booths. The rest of the country where
opposition parties were able to guard and
monitor the conduct of the Presidential
election turn-out averaged about 46%. In
many constituencies in the South-South
and South-East, votes cast far exceeded
registered figures.
11. Which brings us to the need for an
impartial Judiciary in a democratic
setting. The judicial arm of the
government, properly speaking, should
be the interpreter and arbiter of
executive and legislative actions but the
Nigerian government since 1999 has
successfully emasculated the judiciary
and turned it into a yes-man. An
independent and impartial judiciary
would have overturned all the
Presidential elections since 2003. In
addition, hundreds of cases of judicial
misconduct have marred elections to
Local Government, State and Federal
Legislatures. The Judiciary has run its
reputation down completely since 2003.
12. Here, I would like to say a few words
about the international observers. In 1999
the greatly revered former US President,
Jimmy Carter walked off in a huff at the
conduct of that year’s Presidential
election. But compared to what took place
afterwards, the 1999 election was a model
of propriety. I am sure many Nigerians
like me feel gratitude to the international
community, notably the Catholic
Secretariat who deployed over 1,000
observers in 2003 and the National
Democratic Institute in Washington for
their work in Nigeria. In 2003 and 2007,
all the international observer teams,
along with domestic observers concluded
that those two elections fell far short of
acceptable standards. The Nigerian
government, along with the international
community ignored those critical reports.
Some members of this audience may
recall the trenchant criticisms by the UK
and US governments on the Zimbabwean
elections held about the same time as
Nigeria’s. Now the Zimbabwean elections
were very much better conducted than
the Nigerian elections as the opposition
party in Zimbabwe actually was declared
to have won the parliamentary elections.
13. Yet Western Governments turned a
blind eye to Nigerian elections and an
eagle eye on Zimbabwe’s and its supposed
shortcomings. No better illustration of
double-standards can be cited.
Accordingly, in 2011, the international
observers, having seen their painstaking
work in earlier years completely ignored,
took the line of least resistance and
concluded after cursory examinations
that the elections were okay.
14. So it is quite clear from these brief
recollections that many preliminary
elements of a democratic set-up are
missing in Nigeria namely: level of
educational development, level of
economic development, homogeneity,
level playing field, rule of law, impartial
judiciary and free and fair elections.
15. As observed earlier, democracy
cannot function optimally without a
certain level of economic attainment.
16. Economically, Nigeria is a potential
powerhouse, a large population, 167
million by the last official estimate,
arable land, more than 300, 000 square
kilometers, 13,000 square kilometers of
fresh water. In addition, the country has
gas, oil, solid minerals, forests, fisheries,
wind power and potentials for tourism
and hosting of international sporting
events. It is a miracle waiting to happen.
The lack of leadership and policy
continuity has resulted in great under-
achievement.
17. Many Nigerians in the audience today
will relate to the situation of our
countrymen and women. More than 100
million of our people live below $2 a day
according to the Nigeria Bureau of
Statistics and many internationally
recognized estimates. We lack security,
are short of food, water, live in poor
shelters with hardly any medicare to
speak of. Small scale farmers, foresters,
micro businesses such as market women,
washermen, vulcanizers, tailors, street
corner shop-keepers and the like lack
both power and meaningful access to
small scale credit to ply their trade and
prosper.
No wonder, the publication, “The African
Economic Outlook 2012” under the
auspices of the United Nations lamented
that poverty and underdevelopment were
on the increase. In fact, GDP figures in
the raw or in outline tell little about the
spread of wealth, employment levels,
infrastructural development and the
effect of socio-economic programmes
such as schooling, health care, and
security on the generality of the
population. You may sell a lot of oil in an
era of high oil prices and boost your GDP
and boast about it. But there is nothing to
boast about when 100 million of your
people are in poverty and misery. Life is
a daily hassle; a daily challenge. It is
under these circumstances that many a
voter is tempted to sell off his voting card
for a pittance on Election Day.
CONCLUSION
18. We now come to crux of the matter
by attempting some answers to the very
pertinent questions which the organizers
of this conference put to me. How stable
is Nigeria’s economy? The short answer
is that it very much depends on the
international oil market. The failure over
the years to diversify and strengthen the
economy or to invest in the global
economy has left Nigeria perilously at the
mercy of global oil prices. Instead of
using the so-called excess crude account
which in other countries goes by the
name of Sovereign Wealth Fund to
develop major domestic infrastructure
such as Power, Railways, Road
development, the account has been
frittered down and applied to current
consumption. There is no magic, no short-
cut to economic development. We must
start from first principles – by developing
agriculture and industries. Sixty years
ago, we exported considerable quantities
of cocoa, cotton, groundnuts, rubber and
palm kernels. There were sizeable
incomes to the farmers. Indeed in two
years, if I recall correctly, 1951 and 1953,
Nigeria produced a million tons of
groundnuts. Today, other than a few
thousand tons of cocoa, hardly any
cotton, rubber or palm products are
exported.
19. Until and unless serious budgetary
attention is paid to agriculture, the vast
majority of rural population will remain
on subsistence basis and will eventually
wither away by migration to the cities
and increasing the stress on urban life.
What is required is applying today’s
technology, primarily improved seeds and
seedlings, irrigation systems, use of
weather forecasts, and above all,
substantial subsidies and access to cheap
credit. In Nigeria, the basic tools for
agricultural take-off, the Six River Basin
Authorities were wantonly scrapped in
1986 under the disastrous Structural
Adjustment Programme. They are the
best vehicle for our country’s agricultural
revival and expansion.
INDUSTRIES
20. Next to agriculture, government and
railways industries are the country’s
biggest employers of labour. Industries
are vital in absorbing urban workforce.
Nigeria’s burgeoning industrial growth
was brought to an abrupt halt by the
Structural Adjustment Programme which
massively devalued the naira under IMF
harassment and bullying. Uninterrupted
Nigeria’s capacity by now would have
been able to produce basic machine tools,
bicycles, motor cycles, car parts, parts for
industrial machinery and the likes. But
alas, the car industry is down; tyre
manufacturing is down, both Michelin
and Dunlop have closed; battery
manufacturing and sugar industries are
down; cable industries all but down: all in
the wake of the Structural Adjustment
Programme. The last 14 years have added
to the misery due to red tape, high
interest rates, power shortages and
competition from developed economies
under World Trade Organization (WTO)
imperatives. Subsuming all these
problems is the old and ever-present
devil: corruption.
Corruption has shot through all facets of
government and economic life in our
country. Until serious efforts are made to
tackle corruption which is beyond the
capacity of this government, economic
growth and stability will elude us. On
corruption, don’t just take my word for it.
The Chairman of one of the bodies
charged with the task of fighting
corruption in Nigeria, Mr. Ekpo Nta of
Independent Corrupt Practices and other
related Offensive Commission (ICPC) was
quoted by the Daily Trust newspaper of
14th February, 2013 as saying that there
was no political will to fight corruption in
Nigeria.
21. A second fundamental question asked
by the organizers is: Can Nigeria as
presently structured administratively and
politically emerge an economically
competitive nation? I believe it can.
There is a lively debate going on in our
country about the need to re-structure
the country. What shape this reform is
going to take is uncertain. Even the most
vocal advocates of re-structuring the
country, although long on rhetoric seem
short and vague on details. We have tried
regions and this was deemed lopsided and
a trap to minorities. We tried twelve,
nineteen and now thirty six (36) states
and there is clamour for more. I firmly
believe that state creation has now
become dysfunctional, as
disproportionate amounts of our meager
resources go to over-heads at the expense
of basic social services and infrastructural
development. Moreover, I also believe
that Nigeria’s problem is not so much the
structure but the process. Nevertheless, I
believe a careful and civil conversation
should be held to look closely at the
structure.
22. But how do we go about it? Go back to
the Regions? I do not think this would be
acceptable; except perhaps in the old
Western Region. Try the present Six Geo-
political Zones as federating units? I
believe there will be so much unrest and
strife in South-South and North-Central;
this is not to say that there will be no
pockets of resistance in the North West
and North East as well – the consequence
of all these will unsettle the country. Go
back to General Gowon’s 12 state
structure? Here too, entrenched personal
or group interests will make collapsing
and merging states impossible to operate
in a democratic set-up. It is only when
you come face to face with the problem
you will appreciate the complications
inherent in re-structuring Nigeria.
23. However, once a national consensus is
reached, however defective, the
environment will facilitate political and
economic stability. At long last we can
look forward to Nigeria finding its place
among the BRIC nations and instead of
BRIC, the media would be talking of
BRINC nations: Brazil, Russia, India,
Nigeria and China. I sincerely hope this
happens in my lifetime.
24. The third question put to me by the
organizers is: Can the present electoral
body in Nigeria guarantee and deliver
credible elections that will strengthen the
nation’s democracy in 2015?
25. All the present indications are that
INEC as it is presently constituted would
be unable to deliver any meaningful
elections in 2015. I have gone to some
lengths earlier in my talk to describe
INEC’s conduct in the last decade. The
Electoral Body has developed a very cozy
relationship with Executive and Judicial
arms of government that its impartiality
is totally lost. In the run-up to the last
elections INEC requested (and received
with indecent haste) in excess of 80
billion naira (about £340m.) a hefty sum
by any standards, so that it could conduct
the elections including organizing bio-
metric voters data specifically for the
2011 elections.
26. But when opposition parties
challenged the patently dishonest figures
it announced and subpoenaed the bio-
metric data in court, INEC refused to
divulge them on the laughable excuse of
“National Security”. INEC’s top echelon is
immersed deep in corruption and only
wholesale changes at the top could begin
to cure its malaise. What is required is a
group of independent minded people,
patriotic, incorruptible but with the
capacity to handle such a strenuous
assignment of conducting elections in
Nigeria. It is not difficult to find such
people but whether the Government and
the National Assembly have the
inclination to do so I am not so sure. The
only way I and many more experienced
politicians than myself expect the 2015
elections to be remotely free and fair is
for the opposition to be so strong that
they can effectively prevent INEC from
rigging. I would like, here, Mr. Chairman
to repeat what I have said time and time
again at home in Nigeria with regards to
the election aftermath. Some
commentators and public figures have
wrongly pointed accusing fingers at me
for inciting post-election violence. Nothing
could be further from the truth. I have
been a public servant all my adult life: a
soldier, a federal minister, a state
governor and the head of state. My duty
is to Nigeria first and foremost. Post-
election violence was triggered by the
grossest injustice of election rigging and
accompanying state high-handedness.
27. Lastly, Mr. Chairman, I will attempt to
address the two very important questions
you put to me namely: How can the
poverty level in Nigeria be reduced? And
How can the masses generally benefit
from the nation’s vast wealth? As
remarked earlier, there is no short cut to
poverty eradication than to get people to
work and earn money. Poverty means
lack of income. If serious efforts are
made to support agriculture through
states and local government apparatus in
the shape of inputs, i.e fertilizers and
pesticides, extension services and
provision of small-scale credits,
agriculture will boom within 5 – 7 years.
Farmers will generate more income to
enable them to grow the food the country
needs and to look after our environment.
In addition, the drift to urban centres will
be greatly reduced. Equal attention
should be paid to the revival of
employment-generating activities such as
Railways, Industries, notably textiles and
other land and forest resource based
industries to absorb urban labour to
tackle poverty, reduce urban stress and
crime and at the same time boost the
economy. However, these two major
policy initiatives can only succeed if there
is substantial improvement in power
generation. As remarked earlier,
adequate provision of power will help
small scale business to thrive and link-up
with the general economy. Power is the
site of the legion, in other words, it is
central to all economic activity.
28. May I, Mr. Chairman, conclude this
presentation by referring to the
distribution of income in Nigeria today?
No better illustration of the huge income
disparity can be quoted than the
statement of Malam Adamu Fika,
Chairman of the Committee set up by
Government to review the Nigerian
public service. In the course of
presentation of his Report, the Chairman
pointed out that 18,000 public officers
consume in the form of salaries,
allowances and other perquisites N1.126
trillion naira (£4billion) of public funds.
The total Nigerian budget for 2013 is N4.9
trillion (£20 billion). This is the worst
form of corruption and oppression. A
wholesale look at public expenses vis-à-
vis the real need of the country has
become urgent.
29. Mr. Chairman, the Honourable
Members, Distinguished Guests, I thank
you for your patience and attention.

Gen. Buhari delivered this speech at The
Africa Diaspora Conference, House Of
Commons, London, United Kingdom, on
Tuesday, 5th March 2013