ELECTORAL AUTOCRACY, SUPREME COURT AND THE REST OF US 

Paul Obi tasks the judiciary to remain steadfast as elections petitions tribunals commence

“What distinguishes electoral autocracy regimes from electoral democracies are not the formal properties of political elections, but their authoritarian qualities. It’s not on the surface of formal electoral institutions that electoral authoritarian regimes differ from electoral democracies, but in the surrounding conditions of political freedom and legal security.“

– Andreas Schedler 

Electoral Authoritarianism: The Dynamics of Unfree Competition 

After gun-toting episodes, ballot snatching, manipulation, conspiracy by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and its unaccountable henchmen; mutilation and decimation of votes by both the ruling party All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in some locations on February 25 presidential polls, it is now regrettably an unresolved puzzle to all on whether Nigeria is an electoral democracy or a hybrid competitive electoral autocracy. In many parts of the country, polling units that were supposed to be democratic franchise centres shockingly turned to garrisons. In states like Lagos, Rivers, Plateau, Benue, Cross River, Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, Imo, Gombe, Ekiti and others, the presidential votes announced by INEC were a far cry from reality. After voting in the presidential polls, INEC -deliberately or not – shutdown BVAS and iREV, creating an atmosphere for worries. How will BVAS and iREV fail to function in the electronic transmission of presidential elections but transmit smoothly and electronically that of Senate and Houses of Representatives that held simultaneously? Is it electoral democracy? Or a grab-snatch-run with it type of democracy? Do the heist acts orchestrated on Saturday 25th February, 2023 meet the requisite minimalist definition of what constitutes a democracy? 

With clarity about the perfidious nature of the 2023 elections, Nigeria’s democratic sour notes are bound to worsen as the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) 2023 report already indicates.  V-Dem, a global think-tank based at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden that measures and ranks countries’ regime type(s) and democracy index around the world, ranked Nigeria 96th position as an Electoral Autocracy (EA) out of 179 countries. An EA country conducts regular competitive elections but lacks all the tenets of democracy – freedom, fair and neutral democratic institutions, transparency and accountability. Sadly, even Niger Republic, our northern neighbour scored higher on democracy with an additional 10 points index to be at number 86 in ranking. According to the V-Dem (2023) report A plurality – 44% of the world’s population or 3.5 billion reside in electoral autocracies, which include populous countries such as India, Nigeria, Pakistan, The Philippines and Turkey… In sub-Saharan Africa, a vast majority of the people – 68% reside in electoral autocracies and a total of 79% live in electoral autocracies such as Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo and Tanzania.  Only 21% live in electoral democracies such as South Africa, Ghana, while The Seychelles is the only Liberal democracy” in Africa. Again, in February, The Atlas of Impunity made up of the Eurasia Group, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and the Open Society Foundations ranked Nigeria 24^th on Global Impunity Index out of 180 countries around the world. These data and revelations are not just odious on Nigeria’s global image, but carry huge implications in the balance of power within the international community. 

For Nigerians, and the youths in particular, the 2023 presidential election would have provided a glimpse of hope that beyond the vagaries of misgovernance, neo-feudalism and neo-patrimony, voters can reshape Africa’s sleeping giant through their votes. That feasibility could only be attained democratically through electoral franchise – of one man, one vote; one woman, one vote. And in addition, meet Robert A. Dahl’s procedural minimal conditionalities of democratic elections. That’s the electoral body is fair, open and neutral. There are no state’s apparatus and forces deployed to disrupt or abrogate the plural choices of voters. And ultimately, the process is transparent and votes count is not criminally manipulated for the ruling party or those with the monopoly of coercion. And when there are complete failures of the above conditions, the judiciary can intervene as an indisputable and fearless arbiter with utmost fairness and clarity. To deny citizens all of those rights will amount to an invitation to self-help.  

Consequently, citizens have constitutional rights to determine what system governs them. Whether it should be electoral autocracy that feasts on the brazen and criminal manipulation of the electoral system and voters’ choices or what Schedler (2006) posited as reliable expressions of the will of the people. Or if they (citizens) so desire, an electoral democracy of plural preferences and political equality without inhibition. The state and its undemocratic accomplices like INEC cannot arbitrarily force on the throat of citizens a notorious system that nudges closer to criminality than transparency. In this 2023 elections circle, INEC added another mischievous and ominous crown: a quintessentially dubious umpire. Democratic institutions matter, but when they fail, they create a gulf between them and citizens that do not reflect the spirit of the 1999 Constitution. 

The letters and the spirit of the 1999 Constitution as amended do not in any way connote or support the ideals of electoral autocracy. The annals binding the 1999 Constitutional provisions all point to a plural system of liberal-electoral democracy – that edges towards the democratic pinnacle of the free world. More fundamentally, citizens and their votes constitute what Schedler termed carriers of political roles and collective actors at the polls not elsewhere. In that light, the judiciary and the Supreme Court under Chief Justice of Nigeria, (CJN), Justice Olukayode Ariwoola now have to ensure that democratic role accorded the citizens and voters alike in the 1999 Constitution and the Electoral Act 2022 is solely restricted to the polls and elections arena. Or tilt such democratic rights to centres of brute force and innocuous powers unknown to the 1999 Constitution.

Instructively, the finality of electoral democracy is bestowed on the judiciary – the Supreme Court as the final arbiter. Thus, in the face of the 2023 bizarre elections ritual, many of the outcomes – the presidential topmost, carry both constitutional and moral burden of legitimacy. Legitimacy rest with the people – voters. Hence, the onus before the Presidential Election Tribunal and Supreme Court will be to determine whether the Nigerian democratic foundation and its gravitas are rooted in electoral autocracy or electoral democracy. Should Nigerian democracy be consigned outside the ballot box? Will the judiciary and the Supreme Court guarantee the legal security required to safeguard electoral democracy as enshrined in the 1999 Constitution? Democracy, as Schedler observed in the quote above, must provide the platform for political freedom for electing leaders freely. When that fails, through democratic jurisprudence – the courts must also deliver the legal security that guarantees and secure that political freedom. In the post-2023 national conversation and ahead of the presidential election tribunal litigation and the Supreme Court adjudication, Nigeria must have to choose between authoritarian elections and democratic ones. The tools to do that now rest with the Presidential Election Tribunal and the Supreme Court. The stakes are high.

Obi is a media scholar and journalist interested in media, elections, politics and democracy