RESTORE DEMOCRACY

What is required is to restore democracy in Nigeria by returning to open and democratic elections in which the citizens count the votes openly in each polling station. Sorry to disappoint you, but there are no quick fixes for problems as huge and as complex as the ones facing us today. What has grown over a period of 24+ years, and has been especially exacerbated during the past 9 years, cannot be solved in just a few years. You can't get rid of weeds simply by cutting off their leaves or branches, or even their stalks. You have to attack them at their roots. And that is what we have to do here. We cannot afford to accept just piecemeal solutions.

We need to get to the root of the problems, starting with, We need a National Assembly that is once again responsive to the will and needs of the
Nigerian people as our Constitution intended. Why? Because, they are the root of so many of our major problems. They pass laws that affect major parts of the Administrative branch, corporate Nigeria, the thirty six states, and the citizens they are elected to represent. In addition, they authorize appropriations, pass budgets; approve appointments to judicial and administrative positions; declare war (supposedly), and have the responsibility for impeachment of federal officers including the president and vice-president, along with many other responsibilities. They are the source of tremendous power. When it works well, things bode well for the country. But, when the members fail at their job, they are a tremendous disappointment, and the country suffers. That is the situation we now must face.

Who Are These People? These are the chosen few from our entire population who have been elected to represent the interests of the Nigerian people, and they promise great things for the country when they are campaigning. However …

Once in office, their first loyalty is to themselves and ensuring that they get reelected.

Next is their allegiance is to their political parties in trying to ensure that enough of their members get elected to facilitate pushing their political agendas through their legislation. Third are their financial backers –the super-rich who contribute heavily to their campaigns, and who run ads supporting their anointed candidate while excoriating his or her opponent. Fourth come the people who voted for them.And dead last come the rest of the people in the country whose best interests they are also supposed to represent.

Don't They Listen to the People? No. Most members of National Assembly ignore most letters, e-mails, tweets, Facebook postings and phone calls. At best, they will have a staff member pore through them and pull out any that might be of particular interest or value to the representative They only care about people who happen to support their positions or carry promises of substantial campaign support. Politicians also don't pay attention to polls, which are valid expressions of the public will. They are likely to tell you that “polls don't vote; people do.” So, they ignore the polls, which are valid expressions of the public will, just as they do the people themselves. In so doing, they are ignoring the democratic principles upon which this country was founded.

Can't National Assembly Fix This Situation? National Assembly could fix it, but it lacks any desire or incentive to do so. After all, they are the ones responsible for creating it in the first place by taking money from special interests and paying them back in the form of legislation that is favorable to them. Expecting them to fix it of their own volition would be like asking drug addicts to cure themselves. They will have to be threatened with the only thing that can grab their attention and hold it -- the threat of losing their political positions.

But We Still Have Power. The average citizen has very little influence over introducing or passing any particular legislation. Unfortunately, that kind of power comes mostly with money. But we want to change that, and we can, because our power comes from the people and their right to vote, and those trump all the corrupt money in politics today. They may have hundreds of companies and rich people sending them money, but the people have millions of voters that count for far more power at the place that matters most – the ballot box. . This is the only place where we have an equal footing with the power brokers. This is where we can send a real and powerful message that can scare some sense into our legislators. Here's the strategy.

Get to the Source. The only way to eliminate the problems with our government is to eliminate the sources of the problem -- the representatives, the money, the financial plutocracy, and the political duopoly. And it can all be done at the ballot box. If we can change the representatives, we will be well on our way to restoring democracy. Consider the Meaning and Value of Your Vote. Remember, whenever you place an X next to a candidate's name, you are saying that you are FOR that candidate. You are supporting his or her candidacy. If you are voting for an incumbent, you are supporting a continuation of the same corrupt politics in Nigeria that is the source of our problem..

Even in you don't vote for an incumbent, but vote instead for another member of the same party, you are still voting for a continuation of business as usual, because that party member will soon become just another cog in the party machinery who will do the bidding of his (or her) party and financial backers. And we just perpetuate the problem.

Here Is My Proposal. Very simply, cast your votes as protest votes. Here's how to really get the attention of Akwa Ibom and its party politicians. In the primary elections, don't vote to re-elect any incumbents, unless those candidates are truly committed to and have pledged to eliminate (not just regulate) money in politics and to be responsive to the Nigerian people above all other interests -- corporate, political, or personal. This may be difficult for some voters to do because more than 99% of the voting populations vote for incumbents without regard to their legislative record. We need to overcome this pro-incumbent bias if we truly want to fix Akwa Ibom and restore democracy.

What about our own representatives? This is another hurdle we will have to leap. Although 76% of the people feel that most members of National Assembly don't deserve to be re-elected, still 53% feel that their own representatives do deserve to be re-elected. This is another bias we need to overcome for the good of our country. More than half of the voters in this country refuse to believe that their own representatives deserve to be re-elected. Yet virtually every one of them is part of the problem just as much as the others. If we vote for our own representatives, we are also part of the problem, because we are allowing the dysfunction in Akwa Ibom to continue. If we were to “gore everybody's ox but their own,” we would effect no change whatsoever, and just perpetuate the fiasco we now have. It is crucially important to make a strong statement through our vote to the politicians and the country as a whole.

In the general election, vote for “the lesser of two evils.” I have always held that, if you vote for the lesser of two evils, you are still voting for evil. However, the general election is the decisive one, and it may not always be best to vote against incumbents or members of the two major parties. I regret that, in some cases, we might have to bite our tongues and grit our teeth and vote for the “lesser evil.”

Voting for someone who is, say, 40% “bad” for our country is still better than voting for somebody who is 60% “bad.” We might not want to vote for a third party or independent candidate here, unless he or she has a legitimate chance of winning the election, but the two major parties have seen to it that third party candidates are so marginalized that they have virtually no chance of being elected to any major offices. Rather than casting a “spoiler” vote in this case, and possibly allow the worse of the two major party candidates to succeed, I would have to side with the “lesser of the two evils.”