Grim omen as ECOWAS loses Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger (6) 

EMERGING PRACTICAL evidence in both historical and contemporary contexts in Africa are now providing a strong basis to contradict or disprove some widely-held assertions in political theories and practice. The idea of democracy in practice with particular reference to Africa is hereby under a critical searchlight. If democracy is indeed about “the people” or the populace, then completely different definitions need to be fashioned out for the various civilian governments in Africa that have been confused and conflated to mean democracies. And some regimes that are currently being discredited as non-democratic may have to be reconsidered for a rechristening, based on their practical impacts on “the people.” In essence, the façade of mere use of terminologies as a refuge by some regimes to cover up their wrongdoings has not served any useful governance purpose in Africa. The celebration of quasi-democracies as real democracies has done untold damage to public administration in the continent over the years. Within the ECOWAS region, three countries where the military recently took over power are proving wrong, in so many ways, those that claim to operate democracies. It thus becomes necessary to juxtapose the so-called democracies with the so-called non-democracies on the grounds of impacts on the people.

Those who were not originally elected into offices but now try to legitimise their stay in office through election subsequently will have their fair share of mention and will deserve their own classification. Hosni Mubarak’s thirty years’ regime as the helmsman of Egypt had just been toppled on February 11, 2011, when his vice President Omar Suleiman announced that both he and Mubarak had resigned after 18 days of sustained Arab Spring protests. Mubarak’s exit paved the way for an election that led to the rise and ascendancy of Mohamed Morsi as the first democratically elected President who took office on June 30, 2012. No sooner had Mohamed Morsi got elected as the President of Egypt than the Egyptians revolted against him. Clashes between Morsi’s supporters and critics in late June 2013 culminated in massive anti-Morsi protests around the country on June 30, the first anniversary of his inauguration. Within just a year, Morsi had to step down. He was ousted by the military on July 3, 2013, even as many of those who voted for him had turned against him for many reasons, prominent among which were that issuing a decree that critics said put him above the rule of law, the hatred speech, the use of ‘us’ and ‘them’ by the Muslim Brotherhood he represented and the accusation that he governed clumsily.

During Morsi’s one year rule, crime had increased and prices skyrocketed. Every day more news of children and women being kidnapped were heard. For one year, the government was unable to find a solution to urban garbage piling up on the roads, catastrophic constant rise in food prices, frequent fuel shortages, tragic road and rail accidents that were caused by negligence, corruption and poor management that repeatedly took place under Morsi’s regime. Worst of all was the division of people into political identities and the hostility that grew between people and extended to break the unity of families. He was widely accused of allowing Islamists to monopolise the political scene, concentrating power in the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood. Morsi’s supporters reportedly terrorised and discriminated against Christians and looked down upon them as intruders. They even described Muslims who had differing opinions about Morsi’s style of government as ‘apostates’. They said ‘you are either with us or against us.’ Morsi failed to settle disputes with his opposition and build bridges of dialogue with the other political parties. He became something else.

Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, a military general, stepped in immediately, filling the position of a president and has remained there since 2013. Eleven years since he took office without an election, el-Sisi has been applauded for many achievements. He has legitimised and sustained his stay in office by organising elections subsequently. According to analysts and Egypt watchers, he has now become Egypt’s favourite. “People chose President el-Sisi because of his experience in overcoming security challenges,” wrote one political analyst in state-owned newspaper Al Ahram Weekly. “After all, he was a former minister of defence and head of military intelligence.” Although there have been some disputes locally on the claims about his performance in office, el-Sisi has been credited as one who has transformed Egypt since he came to power.

The country reportedly became a leading light of the region’s electricity sector while el-Sisi’s government has been gradually lifting state subsidies on electricity as part of reforms to overhaul the economy, and now exports power. Although the country has been experiencing some power cuts in the past few years, particularly in 2023, el-Sisi has explained that Egypt could save $3.5 billion annually from the power cut plan that commenced last July. On the power cut, el-Sisi further explained that while additional natural gas supplies are required to eliminate power interruptions, the government opted to export the gas to ensure the availability of diesel and fuel. By the standard of political pundits, el-Sisi cannot claim to run a democracy even though he was recently returned as president of Egypt in the election held at the end of 2023, winning a third term with 89.6 percent of the votes in favour of the incumbent.

Foreign, particularly Western, media might see all things differently concerning El-Sisi and his government probably calling for a speedy return to civil rule. But could such a call have anything to do with the quality of life of the Egyptians under the quasi-democratic rule, especially when compared with that under Morsi or even Mubarak? Access to electricity – in terms of population – in Egypt was reported at 100 percent in 2021, according to the World Bank collection of development indicators. The Benban Solar Park, a photovoltaic power station with a total capacity of 1,650 MW nominal power, is a power project of remarkable size and scope. With it, the country reportedly aims to contribute to increasing the share of renewable energy in its electricity mix to 42 percent by 2035. According to reports, the project can power over a million homes, totals over 37 square kilometres, and reduces carbon generation. Which one do the Egyptians need more, a Morsi-like democratic rule with all its troubles or an el-Sisi quasi-democratic regime with total electricity coverage and national security?

A Rwandan writer wrote that Paul Kagame’s Rwanda is still Africa’s most inspiring success story. Although it sounds like a personal opinion, it is a different matter as to whether this was a fact or a mere public relation stunt. Despite the views earlier expressed on pervasive despotism in Africa, Paul Kagame comes under scrutiny here in the context of development economics versus democracy in the continent. According to the writer, “the president’s critics outside of Africa are failing to acknowledge the complexities of governing post-genocide. He wrote that international analysts and champions of democracy have not embraced Kagame’s atypical approach, often assessing Rwandan politics through a Western lens and thus missing the complexities of governing post-genocide. As a result, they may have missed what is arguably the most edifying case study in national transformation of the last 25 years.”

There could be some merits worth examining in the argument. A sampler is that even as critical as The Economist magazine is, it acknowledged – through its Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) – in one of its recent publications that Rwanda’s president, Paul Kagame, and his party, the ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front, are forecast to secure majorities in the upcoming elections on July 15th, and will continue to dominate the country’s political landscape in 2024-25. According to the EIU, “we forecast that the economy will grow briskly throughout the forecast period, driven by a broad-based expansion across all sectors. Improvements in the business environment and investment in major growth sectors (mainly services and industry) will help to drive robust economic growth.” But Kagame’s government is not a popular democracy. Does that really matter to Rwanda now?

Why and how did Rwanda become one of Africa’s fastest growing economies? According to the country’s Vision 2020, the Rwandan state is tasked with ensuring good governance, which includes accountability, transparency and efficiency in deploying scarce resources to key sectors of the national economy. The 2017 Corruption Perception Index ranked Rwanda the third least corrupt country on the African continent behind the Seychelles and Botswana. The country is not just creating a business-friendly environment but also diversifying the economy from being almost entirely dependent on agriculture to now being dependent on services and a growing manufacturing sector.

Since Nigeria returned to the much-awaited and longed-for democracy in 1999, many economic and development indices have consistently nosedived. Much attention, time and resources have been focused on the next election cycles at the national and sub-national levels. These have largely hindered development. Political actors have habitually used and abused public funds to finance political ambition without accountability rather than raising funds from donations. The system of government that is top heavy with public officers in the executive and legislature living on huge salaries, emoluments and retirement payments that solely depend on public funds have taken huge proportions of annual budgets, associated with poor public policy outcomes and dysfunctional civil service that spends huge proportion of budgetary allocation under the official codename of “recurrent expenditure” – essentially public bureaucracy – than on socially or economically impactful capital expenditure projects and programmes. Poverty rate has increased to such an extent that Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) disclosed in November 2022 that 133 million people – 63 percent of persons – living within Nigeria are multidimensionally poor.

Since the return of democracy, the rise of Nigeria’s services sector – though slower than expected, on the aggregate – has coincided with a sharp contraction of its industrial sector. Historical data on the manufacturing output as a share of the total GDP per annum declined from 16.26 percent in 1999 to 6.55 percent in 2010 and slowly picked up annually to 9.65 percent in 2018. With foreign reserves rapidly depleted and the quest for foreign currency largely unmet, oil and gas prices instability and weakened manufacturing sector crisis have threatened Nigeria’s  aspiration  for industrialisation in the foreseeable future. A newspaper report of July 2009 echoed an industry report, saying that “Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN), has declared that 820 manufacturing companies have closed down in the past nine years of civilian rule and rendered thousands of people jobless.” Nigerians expected a good standard of living for the citizenry, in terms of taking care of the basic needs of the majority by generating employment and income. Ironically, the nation has never earned so much from the export and sale of oil as it has done under the past 25 years of democratic rule. The power sector, expected to trigger massive industrialisation has flopped and bungled the chances of reinventing itself in spite of billions of dollars pumped into it that failed to achieve any commensurate result.

Consequently, the high hopes expressed by people in the beginning of civil rule in May 1999 after many years of military dictatorship are gradually giving way to general anxiety, despair and political tension in the country. Nigeria’s chronic energy poverty over the years is partly responsible for current low levels of economic and social development as many multinational manufacturers had to move their processing plants to neighbouring Ghana where electricity is relatively stable and more reliable. It is pertinent, therefore, to ask if democracy is just one in a mix of governance options or is the ideal that any country has to aspire to. Could it be affirmed that the right individual leading a non-democratic system of government is far more desirable than the wrong person leading a democracy? The choice is open to all Africans to make.

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