Looking across Africa, I see leaders who are so fixated on gaining power and ravenously seeking to hold on to it without making much meaningful impact on the people or nation they are governing. Plus the elections that brought them into power are rarely free from various forms of electoral malpractices. That seems to be a sharp contrast to what we have on the other side of the divide, the West, where leaders keep making moves to ensure that their nations remain relevant among the comity of nations. Most of these states are under democratic rule as are the league of African nations.
Let’s spare these leaders for a moment: coming down to the basics [and bringing it to where it really started]; democracy without the people will surely cease to be what it has been set out to be. But what becomes when the people fail to play their part in a morally acceptable manner? That said, I will like to cast our mind back to the events that preceded last month’s gubernatorial election in Ekiti where the process was more of PVC auction – thanks to the top political parties represented in the election. All it took to sway PVC holders to cast their votes was between N3,000-N5,000 – talk about people mortgaging their future on ‘a platter of pottage’.
How did we get here?
Wrong question, you may say considering the fact that at no point had our electoral process been liberated from such malady. The Ekiti situation might have come in another dimension but it definitely served as a reminder of how votes have become ‘a piece of bread’ in the commodity market called polling station when elections are at hand. The medium of exchange could be different from time to time – money, 1kg of rice, recharge cards…you name it – but the M.O remains unchanged. However, should the power seekers lack the decorum to act right, ought not the electorates – the PVC merchants to be specific – subscribe to good conscience and allow sanctity prevail from their end?
The consequence
I wonder if it ever registered on the mind of the electorate [who are into auctioning their PVCs] that a vote sold is a right cheaply given away. Whenever right is traded, it becomes hard for the masses to hold public office holders accountable for their actions – especially when they fail to deliver. And the truth is that there seems to be an unwritten code/law guiding how things subsequently turn out in this kind of event. Will those who had been paid for their vote ever have the moral standing to speak against their elected leaders at the very moment things start going awry? - Maybe they would with a seared conscience. More so, a pay-to-vote stance goes to show that corruption is not only being fed by political dignitaries but also encouraged by citizens who end up getting the leaders they ‘deserve’.
Democracy ought to be sustained in fairness with elections devoid of manipulation and/or undue merchandise but with people continually engaging in morally derisive activities without being call to order for ethics to prevail, one will not be wrong to ask: is democracy under siege in our land? The question rings out even louder when one considers other government actions that infringe on the right of the people – a topic for another day, probably.