Nigeria: The relative cost of our democracy is unsustainable

This is too dear

I have written many times about the exorbitant and probably prohibitively unsustainable cost of the democratic experiment in Nigeria and there are many reasons to be concerned for how much we pay our lawmakers on average. [Nigeria: Our Exorbitant Government]

The graph below published by the Economist is more than just an eye-opener but it is also revelatory about how political office is a parasitic drain on the national resources since politicians cannot be considered part of the economic engine of a country.

What makes this graph worthy of the most righteous indignation begging for public insurrection is not so much about what the politicians earn, but the gap in earning capacity between the citizen and the representative lawmaker.

The comparisons

Australian lawmakers earn the most at $201,200 followed by Nigeria at $189,500 and then Italy with $182,000 and the United States at $174,000 all compared to the people they represent, we find that Australian and American lawmakers earn less than 4 times the average economic activity of their countries divided by their populations (GDP per capita), Italians just about double that and Nigerian lawmakers earn 116 times that.

The World Bank, the IMF, the CIA and the University of Pennsylvania all put the GDP per capita of Nigeria at between $2,661 ranking 137^th in the world out of 180 countries, $2,720 ranking 143/187, $2,800 ranking 148/194 and $1,716 ranking 152/185 respectively.

By comparison Australia is in the top 10 thrice, Italy in the top 30 twice and then the top 35 and the United States of America 4 times in the top 10, it goes without saying that Nigeria has no business paying its legislators in what is purportedly a representative democracy these atrocious amounts of cash that bilk and milk the country without contributing anything to its economic growth.

The consequences of expensive democracies

Worse still, it creates a competition for political office where the rewards far outweigh the commensurate perspiration leading to many situations where power-grabs by every means possible warps every notion of free and fair elections, talk less of representative democracy – it is utterly bad for Nigeria apart from the fact that it is unsustainable.

Looking at the chart again, you also wonder why Sub-Saharan African nations that hog the bottom third of GDP per capita tables are the ones that take the lead by far in the discrepancies between elected and elector besides the fact that only Ghana has consistently rewarded its electorate with the will of its people, Kenya did not in the penultimate election which has the current leadership indicted for crimes against humanity and Nigeria is a travesty in everything but name.

Nigeria is awash with oil money in the wrong hands which is used in acquisitive, ostentatious, hedonistic and wanton display of power, wealth, influence and mischief, it exacerbates a pressure cooker of ethno-religious and regional tensions, none of which the leadership have had the wherewithal to grapple with or understand that the consequences as it holds together with threadbare allegiances of snouts in trough might well be dire for the 2015 election year.

Enough is just enough

In my humble opinion, this democracy is neither representative nor working if the people we choose to represent us are so far removed from the reality of the citizenry that they literally live in a parallel universe, there ought to be no reason for Nigeria, Kenya and Ghana to be democratic outliers compared to the economic activity within their regions in comparison to their people, it calls for reform and this must be urgent, radical, far-reaching and deeply examining of the culture of corruption and influence-peddling we have allowed to become the raison d'être of political life.

This is the one time when the chorus from the village to the city and from the homes to the marketplaces of the country should ring loud – Enough is just enough.

Other reading

Nigeria: Our politically immature systems

Nigeria: Percentage Allowance Legislators

An admission in remission

The end does not justify the means

When President Bush yesterday admitted to the existence of CIA secret prisons along with the consideration that information obtained from certain of the imprisoned has since prevented terrorism attacks, I thought I could see in the background Niccolò Machiavelli being introduced as Press Secretary (Minister of Propaganda would be too 1930s to contemplate.).

The thought that hardened terrorists would voluntarily divulge information to Americans about plans they might have painstakingly arranged to bring ill to America does take a bit of imagination.

The Gitmo Workbook

In fact, the Abu Ghraib abuse which appeared routine as a means of warped entertainment and in reality blatant torture appears to have come of the Guantanamo Bay workbook since the man-in-charge there was brought in to toughen up the regime at Abu Ghraib.

Somehow, we just have found it difficult to believe protestations of Americans about not torturing their prisoners; caught in the web of the broad terror principle and this Machiavellian notion that subscribes to extraordinary rendition, the existence of Guantanamo Bay, the military tribunals and the unwarranted eavesdropping on Americans.

Immoral grounds

One by one, each of these has been completely discredited if not declared illegal, but we have torturously drawn water from stone as this admission now comes into the light of day.

One more admission is required, by whose authority was the CIA agents shopped to the press?

In all, everything that allows America to maintain the high moral ground in this war on terror has been lost to hubris and bluster, the former is the delusional confidence in the projection of American power and the other can easily be championed by Donald Rumsfeld.

Where truly we have been saved from some terrorist attack we are grateful for those mercies, however using the fear of terror to justify actions and activities that would not stand the scrutiny of basic terms of justice and fairness whilst we are continually stripped of our liberties for the sake of our supposed safety is nasty, unconscionable and Machiavellian – the end will never justify the means.

We have become our own terrorists

Why? Because we become the terrorists we are trying to fight, we deny ourselves the power of our democracies just as the terrorists would have liked to do and our so-called freedoms are rolled back into the bondage of a police state, worse than where those terrorists came from.

As it stands, the only leadership quality America now serves is in having funds and having guns, it is left to others to play the deft hand of real diplomacy in the New World Order.

DeepThroat II exposed too early

Privilege acquired and opportunity squandered

The Presidency of the United States of America confers on the person occupying that office great privilege and opportunity.

Privilege in that the electioneering that canvasses a population of just about 300 million people confers a de facto leader of the free world title that appeals to the possible aspirations of the global populace of just over 6 billion people.

Opportunity comes from realising that that position of leadership can be used with such deftness, diplomacy, vision and wisdom to bring to fruition aspirations that affect humankind for the better even if those goals are pursuant of national interests.

There are only a handful of presidents that that used but privilege and opportunity in that context – Abraham Lincoln as he fought to the Union and the Abolition of Slavery; Franklin D. Roosevelt as he fought to defend America and joined the Allies against Nazism; Dwight Eisenhower as he battled Communism with the sense of experience from the World War II and Ronald Reagan as his time saw the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe.

These presidents were not faultless in other policies and ideas, but history serves them well in terms what they did beyond the confines of fortress America.

Absolute Power can corrupt absolutely

On the other hand, this privilege and opportunity also allows for the exercise of executive power that sometimes appears to undermine the whole concept of transparency in democratic governance.

One such example was Watergate where the Presidency having been involved in illegal activities to undermine anti-war political opposition and the Democratic Party.

A member of the FBI known as DeepThroat fed the press with details of this reckless abuse of power and the lengths to which the Presidency went to conceal their illegal activities, some of which was to use state secrets and executive privilege to thwart efforts to get to the truth.

This lead to the resignation of President Nixon, however, we did not get to confirm who DeepThroat was till May 2005 that identity was kept secret despite all speculation for just about 30 years.

The dilemma of right or wrong

Obviously, that revelation lead different comments, some glad that service was done for democracy by exposing corruption in the Presidency and others who were concerned about the way in which the highest office in the land was undermined by what was seemingly unpatriotic.

These views can leave one in a quandary, but the issues are clear, if laws are being broken, they should be exposed and dealt with regardless of who is involved in breaking the law.

Basically, nobody should or must be above the law, it may well be that those in office take due consideration of the consequences of their actions as they contemplate the extra-judicial use of their privileges.

Also, whilst, there are clearly stated rules which may lead to dismissal if certain personnel in service of the nation make unauthorised contacts with the press; that matter of consequence also informs the fact that there are no objective and independent means of addressing abuse in the system.

Hence, personnel do have to break the rules to expose greater abuses of the law and executive power that the system would self-servingly conceal from scrutiny and the exercise of justice.

A scapegoat of the truth

It is then unfortunate that a long-serving member of the CIA was dismissed just six days before retirement for unauthorised contacts with the press; some recent leaks have involved revealing that the CIA had operated illegal prisons in Eastern Europe or that the Presidency had approved the surveillance of American citizens without allowing for clearly delineated due process of checks and oversight of the legislature and judiciary.

The Presidency railed about the fact that this was the most highly classified activity of national Security and that it was utterly unpatriotic to give up information that could undermine the War Against Terrorism and give terrorists the advantage that would have been lost to surprise.

That case is probably arguable that the Commander-in-Chief being the President does have untrammelled powers to protect the American People; however, it does not confer the right to ignore the need to subject all decisions to oversight even if the activity is of a highly-classified nature.

No way else to state the truth

In these matters, the only way to expose this abuse of executive office would have been to have the press hounds on the matter to scent out the facts and get the culprits.

Having subjected everyone of authority to a polygraph test; one cannot deign to imagine what questions were asked, but seeing what Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib offers; it would be remiss not to bring some of those interrogation techniques short of torture to bear on the hapless CIA staffers to nail their quarry.

Whistle-blowers are an endangered species as people in power create a climate of fear and tension that allows for illegal or even criminal activity to go unopposed and unpunished, searing the consciences of observers who know that things are wrong but they cannot do anything about it.

For services to democracy to curb the abuse of presidential power and the culture of secrecy that perpetuates the desire to engage in criminal activity under the guise of National Security - Mary O'Neil McCarthy, I salute you.