Nwankwo: Nigeria in Dire Need of Right Calibre of Leaders

Civil society activist, policy analyst and Executive Director of the Policy and Legal Advocacy Centre, Clement Nwankwo in this interview with Onyebuchi Ezigbo says Nigeria currently lacks right calibre of people as leaders but lends his support for the clamour for adoption of unicameral legislature as the first step towards restructuring of nation’s political landscape

What is your assessment of 25 years of uninterrupted democracy in Nigeria?

I think it is significant that the country has had 25 years of uninterrupted democracy without military intervention given that before 1999, we have never had a period where the civilians held sway for more than four or five years, I think five times the number of years is significant and should mean that in some sense we are beginning to stabilize to some extent on how this country should be run which is by democratic civilian route. Unfortunately, the process of voting, the process of the conduct of elections is still far behind and hopefully this is something we should see how we can fine-tune so we can achieve a particular direction.

In terms of development and delivering of democratic dividends, what impact has successive civilian administrations made on the lives of people?

I think in terms of expectations the question for a lot of Nigerians is have they received the dividend of democracy? For a lot of Nigerians the answer is a no. Has democracy fulfilled their expectations? For some the answer is a no, for some others not fully and for some it is still work in progress but I think that always the ability of citizens to be free which is what democracy creates is quite important and that is what we need to look at. 

The human rights, the human freedom that comes with democracy have we achieved that to the ultimate side? I don’t think so, I think that we still have a long way to go but certainly we are still on that trajectory and I would like to say to a lot of Nigerians who are very disappointed with democracy, who are not satisfied with the quantum of dividends they have received under democracy that we sometimes have to match expectation with reality of where we are. 

Is the government doing enough? I don’t think so. I don’t think that the Nigerian government fully understand how high expectations are. Do we have the right calibre of people in government trying to deliver on the dividends of democracy? I think not quite a lot in terms of the calibre of people who are in government. The selfishness in government is incredible, the corruption level is very high, the lack of accountability is very high and for a democracy I don’t think that the country is doing very well, applying the principles of democracy to development and for citizens who are disappointed. 

It is important that they continue to express themselves, that government provides the atmosphere that democracy demands, that enables citizens to express themselves. The day citizens are unable to express themselves, that day our democracy collapses and I think that is important for the government to bear that in mind.

How would you rate the performance of the National Assembly especially in carrying out it’s checks and balances function?

The difference between democracy and dictatorship is the National Assembly – the Legislature. Laws should be made that have citizen’s input into it. Laws should be made that allow people to contribute to how they are made. I think that citizens also expect the National Assembly to carry out good supervision and oversight of the executive and I think for a lot of citizens, that responsibility of the legislature is poorly being implemented. 

But certainly I think that if we look at some of the laws that have come out in this civilian administration, we have seen very important laws that the legislature has made. For instance,  the Physical Responsibility Act, the Procurement Act, the Extractive Industry and Transparency Act, and the Freedom of Information Act, the amendment to the Police Act. Several reforms to the constitution has all been very positive developments from the legislature. 

But expectations are very high and I think that for quite a lot of Nigerians, the legislature has a lot more to do to convince citizens that it is living up to expectation.

Some Nigerians have held the view that one arm of the National Assembly should be scrapped due to the high cost of governance. Do you agree with that?

My view in respect to the legislature is that we need to have an even balanced legislature that represents the country equally. I think if you look at the way the House of Representatives is structured, it has not or doesn’t represent a very good balance of the country with certain parts of the country skewed against the other. 

I think there needs to be a reform on this. Should there be a unicameral legislature or a bicameral legislature? I think I would quite frankly be more in tune with a unicameral legislature not necessarily about the argument of the cost of governance, but much more because I think it should be the process by which the legislature in this country should be evened out to ensure that the structural imbalance that the military created through creating a skewed National Assembly in support of some parts of the country against the other, that this will provide an important opportunity to do so. That is why I would be much more in support of a unicameral legislature. I think that citizens need to understand that running a legislature is a very expensive business. 

I don’t think that people understand that you can’t have a legislature that is part-time. When I see the work of legislators, when I see the work going on at the National Assembly, when I see legislators working Sunday to Saturday doing different businesses of the government, I realize that people don’t fully understand this. That is why people talk about part-time legislature. I don’t know of any legislator who works part-time, that is not possible. Yes they sit Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays but they have oversight responsibilities, they have constituency responsibilities, they have research to do, they have work to do and I think this runs seven days a week.

Is there any truth in the allegation that some legislators often collude with the Executive to enrich themselves while abandoning their oversight functions? 

I think that there are these allegations of a shake down of agencies of government. There are these allegations that agencies of government that should be over-sighted by committees of the National Assembly tend to pay for the activities of the committee to carry out oversight for them. I think that is an immediate indication of compromise if an agency is paying for an oversight of its responsibilities. This is certainly incompatible with transparency that should govern the way committees work. 

Yes, there is a concern regarding this and I think it is something the National Assembly needs to look at. If the National Assembly was to do oversight much more efficiently and effectively, then you actually have to talk about increased budgeting for the work of the committees and at this time, a lot of the committees don’t have sufficient funding to carry out the oversight in the way that you expect they should.

Do you think that legislators should be directly involved in the execution of constituency projects?

I think there should be a system that allows legislators to nominate projects that their constituency needs. I think the government should make a special provision for this, where you have a National commission for constituency projects or some agency of government that implements this. I don’t think that legislators themselves should be involved in implementing those projects. I think that part of the responsibility of the legislator who identifies what his constituency needs should be to ensure that they supervise and oversee the proper implementation of constituency projects. But certainly I don’t think that legislators themselves should execute the projects and in theory legislators do not implement projects themselves. However, the practical reality is that sometimes they nominate contractors and that is when the compromises come in. The Executive needs to treat the issue of constituency projects as key and important for legislatures and find some mechanism that is efficient and effective in delivering constituency projects to constituents.

The Legislative arm in Nigeria is oftentimes labelled as rubber stamp to the Executive. How can this be avoided?

I think we need to continually work to ensure that the legislature is independent and we did see the constitution amended to allow for the autonomy of the State legislature. Take them away from the power and influence of governors so they can also properly hold the checks and balances in the state and this time the governors are overbearing, the governors are all powerful, they are not allowing the state legislature to work just the same way they are not allowing local governments to function. 

So there needs to be some enforceable means to keep governors away from interference in the state legislature and to prescribe penalties for governors who do this so that they could be held accountable for subverting the institutions of states where they don’t allow state legislature to function.

What’s your assessment of Nigeria’s electoral process in past 25 years?

Can you make a comparison with what happened in Nigeria’s 2023 presidential election and that of South Africa in 2024?

Nigeria’s election has been a story of ups and downs. Unfortunately the 2023 elections and even before that, the 2019 elections marked down turns in the progress of elections in Nigeria. Election should be the check against impunity of government and be able to hold government, parties in power whether at the states or the national level to account. 

It should provide an opportunity for citizens to carry out a referendum on the government in power and vote for what they want.  The South African election showed an example of what you could say is how election should be conducted. I think the Nigeria electoral commission has failed Nigerians woefully in terms of the way it has managed elections. 

It has allowed itself despite constitutional safeguards for independence for it, to be hijacked by politicians. It has allowed that its members who are mostly nominated by politicians also take over their responsibility and so in that atmosphere you are going to continue to see very poorly conducted elections. And the danger of it is once people feel that elections do not and can not give them a government of their choice, then democracy is in danger and I say it right now that Nigeria’s democracy is in danger because of the failings of the electoral commission. Its failure to conduct genuine elections. Its failure to conduct elections that people feel represents their choice and their votes and this is the major threat Nigeria’s democracy faces at the moment.

As a leading member of the election monitoring group – The Situation Room, what do you think is at the root cause of INEC’s failings?

I think it is a compromise at the election umpire level. In 2007, if you can remember under General Olusegun Obasanjo’s Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)- led administration, the country’s electoral process was almost endangered. The country’s democracy almost collapsed and the person who was thrown up as president at the time President Umar Yar’dua publicly stated that he felt that the election that brought him into power was flawed and he initiated processes to reverse the failing confidence that citizens had in democracy and election and that confidence was rejuvenated in 2011 elections that was performed by Professor Atahiru Jega who was appointed from that flawed election of 2007. 

I think the country’s electoral process recovered in 2011, the country’s electoral process in 2015 election consolidated but after that you have seen a downward slide in elections in the country and you have seen citizens lose faith in elections and lose faith in our democracy and the president who benefited from the election of 2023 that we have criticised needs to determine that his own personal record of fight for democracy should manifest in reformation of Nigeria’s electoral process. If the continued deterioration in our electoral system isn’t halted then I worry that the next election could be catastrophic for the country. I think we must reform our electoral process before the next elections and I think it is urgent that this is done now.

Do you think that our elections can ever hold without major glitches?

Let’s even assume those glitches happened and the electoral commission identified them as glitches. The commission had the opportunity to correct those glitches when the three off season governorship elections were conducted in Bayelsa, Imo and Kogi states but those elections were also very poor. In fact observers were showing evidence of pre-filled result sheets and some of our member organisations have done investigations that showed what was uploaded on INEC result portal sheet, some of it were false. A lot of result sheets for some states were filled with the same handwriting from different locations in the state which is impossible. 

I am not convinced that INEC’s excuse of a glitch in 2023 is honest because if it was, there would have been major corrections ahead of the elections in Bayelsa, Imo and Kogi but none was done and we have upcoming elections in Edo and Ondo states. Again no certainty that this has been addressed in any way. So what we need in our electoral commission is complete overhaul and reform and I think unless we do that we will not be making any progress.

A good percentage of the civil society constituency which you belong has been accused  of being compromised, do you agree?

A – I don’t know about NGO’s being compromised. There will always be organisations that would be honest to say the truth as it is. Nigeria is rich in those organisations. I belong to the platform of the Nigerian Civil Society situation room which has more than 100 NGOs in it. 

We have consistently put out the correct situation about elections that we have observed. We have honestly spoken the truth about where our democracy is and there are a few other organisations and platforms that have also been able to speak out the truth. What you are seeing perhaps is that you do have a situation where some politicians, some government agencies recruit some individuals to create an NGO and those NGOs speak the language of those that have recruited them so let’s not confuse the two.