PEOPLE AND POLITICS

Corporate Nigeria and the future of Nigeria’s democracy

Mohammed Haruna

Three days from today by this time you are probably on a queue waiting to vote for our Federal legislators – assuming, that is, that you no longer have to wait on the other queue to get fuel for your vehicle or wait at the bus-stop for the rare and expensive vehicle to take you to your voting centre.

The run-up to this Saturday’s general elections has been anything but smooth on almost every count. Barely three days to the first general elections since 1999, there is still confusion on the very legal framework for the elections. Second, although INEC has now published a voter’s register, it never adequately displayed it and so the register too remains a source of confusion. Third, the campaigns have been marred by violence and deaths of very prominent politicians. Fourth, there are complaints by some of the parties, including the ruling PDP, that the design of the ballot paper, with its 30 political parties, does not adequately address the possibility of overlapping, and therefore, invalid thumb printing. Fifth, there are widespread apprehensions that the counting and tabulation processes may be ridden with fraud.

This litany of worries is indeed endless. But this is not this writer’s concern this morning. In any case it is probably too late in the day to remedy the problems before Saturday. It is, however, not too late to do something about the outcome of the elections inspite of these obstacles, most of them deliberate, in the way of free and fair election. In other words it is still within our power as voters to use our votes wisely and to make it difficult, if not impossible, for anyone to frustrate our collective will.

Admittedly, to vote wisely and to guard against rigging the poll are easier said than done. The single biggest obstacle to both is obviously the tazarce phenomenon. Those in power have the means, financial or otherwise, to manipulate us into acting unwisely. They also have the crude force to frustrate our collective will. Our experience at all three levels of government in the last four years shows quite clearly that not only do they have the means to buy or rob us of our conscience, they are more than willing to use such means.

However, because we are in a democracy, even if it is merely nominal, it is a little bit more difficult for those in power to resort to crude force. Instead, they are more likely to resort to propaganda. As Noam Chomsky, an American political activist and a professor of linguistics at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT, Boston, said in one of his essays, “Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state”.

In a totalitarian state or a military state like we have had, says Chomsky, it is easy to keep everyone in line. All you do, if anyone gets out of line, is to smash him over the head with a bludgeon. In a democracy it is not so easy because people are supposed to be free. Therefore, in place of the bludgeon, you use propaganda.

If you are a regular reader of these pages, you must have seen last week how the American leadership has used propaganda to incredible effect in transforming ordinary Americans from a peace-loving people into war-mongers going all the way back to World War 1. Each time the strategy has been essentially the same. Whether it is the German hordes, the Red Peril (“the Russians are coming”), the narco-traffickers (remember Panama’s Manuel Noriega, Bush Snr’s friend during his days as CIA boss but against whom Bush as president turned when Noriega was deemed no more of any use?), or in the current case of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, the strategy is to demonize the enemy to justify the use of force to remove him. The trick is to portray the enemy as a demon right on your doorstep ready and, of course, more than willing to take away everything that you cherish – your freedom, your other values, your property, even your life. And it does not matter even if the so-called enemy is thousands of miles away, for, has the world not since become a global village?

Naturally, propaganda appeals to your emotions and not to your rationality. In any case, as an ordinary person, you are not supposed to be rational, since rationality, many intellectuals believe, is supposedly “a very narrowly restricted skill” which only a small number of people are capable of having. The assumption of the propagandist is that as someone whose actions are essentially dictated by emotion and impulse, you, as an ordinary person, need to be protected from yourself, even if it means distorting facts and even telling you bare-faced lies.

As a person of emotion and impulse, it makes sense that you should be kept away from being an active participant in the democratic process. If you participate actively, you are likely to get in the way of the rational few who are supposed to know how to make democracy work for you. Your role in a democracy, therefore, is to be no more than a spectator in between elections when you are supposedly free to chose who you believe is best capable and able to protect your interests.

As it is in America so it seems in Nigeria. At least where America goes, Nigeria seems to want to follow. However, America’s democracy has since seized to mean government by the people, of the people and for the people. Instead, its democracy has become, in the words of TIME magazine in a cover story it did on BIG MONEY AND POLITICS in its edition of February 7, 2000, “Government for the few at the expense of the many”. In America, the usurpation of democracy by Big Business has meant Big Business often gets what it wants while ordinary citizens and small businesses pay the price. As you prepare to cast your vote in the general elections starting from this Saturday, this gross distortion of democracy should agitate your mind and help you decide who to vote for.

Corporate democracy in America, according to TIME has, among other things, meant (1) ordinary people and small businesses pick up a disproportionate share of America’s tax bill, (2) they are forced to abide by certain laws Big Business is granted immunity from, (3) they must pay debts incurred where Big Business may not have to and (4) they cannot write off tax returns on some necessities while Big Business can deduct the cost of its entertainment budgets, etc. In sharp contrast, the bail-outs, the tax concessions and the subsidies, etc, for Big Business have increased by geometric progression since before Ronald Reagan but particularly after him.

One result of all this as Gore Vidal – remember Vice President Al Gore’s distant cousin from last week’s piece? – points out in his 2002 book, The Last Empire, is that whereas in 1950 taxes on corporate profits accounted for 25% of federal revenue, in 1999 it accounted for only 10.1 per cent. After President George Bush’s unprecedented tax cuts of the last two years, which, by common consent, is seen to benefit the super rich at the expense of the poor, corporate tax as a proportion of in government revenue could only get even smaller.

Obviously, we do not want corporate democracy in Nigeria. Fortunately, Big Business in Nigeria is not as big as Big Business in America. Its influence on policy is, of course, greater than that of ordinary Nigerians but the former’s influence is not as overwhelming as it is in America. As ordinary voter you can help to stop the seed of corporate democracy germinating on our soil and from quickly growing into an oak tree.

You can do this by at least joining forces with those who are against the emergence of corporate democracy in Nigeria – I am assuming that like me, you too are against it – and organising yourselves through your associations and through your mosques and churches etc, to embarrass the hastily established Corporate Nigeria, CN, into withdrawing its financial contributions to the PDP. You can also stop it from canvassing for votes for PDP on our newspaper pages as has done lately.

The billions of Nigeria this faceless group of donors led by the Director-General of Nigerian Stock Exchange, Mrs. Ndi Okereke-Onyiuke, says it has raised in support of the Obasanjo/Atiku ticket is illegal and unconstitutional and it bodes ill for the emergence of true democracy in Nigeria. Not only that, as Dele Sobowale, speaking very frankly, said in his column of April 6, by its fund-raising activity on behalf of the PDP, Onyiuke’s CN clearly stands in violation of “the first imperative of Good Corporate Governance which is transparency”. CN stands in violation of the principle of transparency because it has refused to publish the list of donors to Obasanjo/Atiku campaign fund. It also would not publish the amounts donated by each donor. This cover-up, as Sobowale has argued, can only lead to even greater cover-ups in the future because you always need a bigger lie to cover up the previous one.

Akin Osuntokun, the articulate director of publicity of the Obasanjo/Atiku campaign committee says CN “is not a conglomeration of quoted companies,” and therefore, there is nothing wrong with its contribution to Obasanjo/Akitu’s campaign fund. Well, Osuntokun should know that this is sheer sophistry, for, a rose by any other name is still a rose. Even Onyiuke herself who has been defending the CN’s action with all the energy her ample proportions endows in her, has not denied that CN is a group of companies, quoted or unquoted.

Onyiuke’s argument is that the CN is supporting individuals not parties. The simple answer to this is that, party or individual, CN’s action is in stark violation of Section 221 of the Constitution. That Section cannot be more unequivocal. “No association other than a political party”, says the Section, “shall canvass for votes for any candidate at any election or contribute to the funds of any political party or to the ELECTION EXPENSES OF ANY CANDIDATE AT AN ELECTION” (emphasis mine). Nothing, I repeat, nothing, could be more unequivocal.

From what I have pointed out at the beginning of this article, it should be obvious that CN’s action in raising campaign money for the Obasanjo/Atiku ticket and in also canvassing for votes for that ticket, is not the only thing wrong with the forthcoming general elections. It can even be argued that CN’s action should be the least of our worries ahead of the elections. However, in the long run, the action should be a matter of the greatest concern to every Nigerian who wants a democracy which, unlike what we see of America’s version, is not a democracy “for the few at the expense of the many”.

You can organise to either shame CN into withdrawing its unconstitutional and illegal funding of PDP’s presidential ticket and stopping its adverts, or failing that, you can cast your vote for the presidential candidate who rejects the notion that what is good for Big Business is necessarily good for Nigeria.