The dynamics of electoral democracies especially as it regards accountability mechanisms is formed around the premise that citizens hold elected representatives accountable for promises made before, during and after election periods. As far as representative democracy is concerned this is one of the most important mechanisms in identifying the qualities of a good democracy. It is also important to note that accountability mechanisms despite being one of the most important mechanisms in liberal democracies is adjudged as one of the hardest too. No wonder some scholars have made reference to issues of democratic accountability as “ambiguous virtues’’. But as “ambiguous” as it may seem, democratic accountability is the future of liberal democracy worldwide.
In Nigeria the situation now is that democratic accountability is not only ambiguous but also a fast disappearing democratic mechanisms which portends great danger for the future of democracy in Nigeria. The campaign days of president Buhari was marked with a whole lot of promises. In short according to the Buhari Meter platform which is a civil society platform aimed at tracking the implementation of the campaign promises of the president, it can be adduced that the president made about two hundred and twenty two (222) promises. Since the Buhari meter platform was launched, it has become a basis for tracking the implementation of all these 222 promises and the truth of the matter is that there is nothing that can be healthier for a democracy than such accountability mechanisms such as the Buhari Meter.
Shockingly what Nigerians have witnessed since the assumption into power by president Buhari is a cunning and constant denial of the promises made by the president during the campaign days. This series of what I call “democratic denials” started with the claims by President Muhammadu Buhari and his party, the All Progressives Congress, that a key campaign document, “My Covenant With Nigerians” did not emerge from them. While evidence showed that not only was the document circulated in the run-up to the April 11 presidential election by staff of Mr. Buhari’s campaign organization, the literature was also extensively promoted by party officials, including using the APC website to do so. Not only that, the policy and research directorate of the APC presidential campaign, headed by former Governor Kayode Fayemi, produced the covenant document.
According to Premium Times, Mr Garba Shehu the Senior Special Assistant to the president on media and Publicity in a widely circulated opinion article published on August 28 2015, wrote, “In the course of electioneering, the presidential campaign had so many centres of public communication which, for whatever reason, were on the loose. “There is a certain document tagged ‘One Hundred Things Buhari Will Do in 100 Days’ and the other, ‘My Covenant With Nigerians’. Both pamphlets bore the authorized party logo but as the Director of Media and Communications in that campaign, I did not fund or authorize any of those. I can equally bet my last kobo that candidate Buhari did not see or authorize those publications.
The following week the former National Publicity Secretary for the APC and the present minister of Information, Lai Mohammed, picked the baton from where Mr. Shehu dropped it. Speaking during an interview with Channels Television, Mr. Mohammed said President Buhari and the party had nothing to do with any other campaign materials apart from the APC manifesto and constitution. Both officials spoke just as Nigerians began the countdown to Mr. Buhari’s first 100 days in office with conversations going on over whether the president and his party were on the path to delivering the “change” they promised. For many analysts Mr. Buhari now appeared challenged delivering on the promises contained in the covenant, and his team had already retorted to the tactics of battling to disown the document. For record purposes it is important that we note that the promises contained in those documents where never kept!!!.
The second move in this series of denials came from the same Garba Shehu as a reaction to the Buhari Meter 7 months report which was published by the Centre for Democracy and Development in early days of February 2016. In an interview that he granted to BBC hausa service he said that “The latest CDD episode is a shocking reminder to their failed attempt to hold the president to ‘one hundred promises in one hundred days’ which disastrously crashed on the head of the proponent,”. He went further to say that “the elevation of the act to a new high of 220 promises is a knee-jerk reaction that seeks to play to the galleries and score cheap points against the president. This is a clear case of solution looking for problem.” In this particular move he almost denied un-behalf of the president that the 222 promises were never made by referring to the promises as a knee jerk reaction.
In the last and probably the most bizarre move, the president himself was caught up in the web of denials. In what appears to be a major U-turn from what his campaign promises before the 2015 presidential election, president Mohammadu Buhari said he would not pay the N5000 stipend he promised to unemployed youth in the country. The president made the remarks at the weekend while on the visit in Middle East. In the words of the president “This largesse N5,000 for the unemployed, I have got a slightly different priority. I would rather do the infrastructure, the school and correct them and empower agriculture, mining so that every able bodied person can go and get work instead of giving 5,000, N5,000 to those who don’t work.” The president with the backing of the vice president joined hands and moved this train of denials when the presidency through the media aide of the vice president Mr. Laolu Akande came out to say that the president only promised that they were going to make conditional cash transfers of N5,000 to vulnerable and extremely poor Nigerians.
This series of denials even amidst abounding evidence of promises is a huge slap on the face of the integrity of the government especially one that came on the wings of the change mantra and also a conscious effort aimed at repressing democratic accountability. This moves must be resisted if our democracy must grow.
Nwabueze Chibuzor is a development worker, he writes from Abuja and can be reached via nwabuezechibuzor979@gmail.com , and tweets from @nwabu101.
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