St Augustine of Hippo in his work City of God explored a definition of a “people” which ought to retain our attention. According to this definition, “A people is the association of a multitude of rational beings united by a common agreement on the object of their love.” That definition enables us to understand what a nation is. A nation is an association of rational beings who share core values. On the basis of their shared core values, members of the association that a nation is write themselves a constitution and come to a common agreement use the constitution to regulate their relationship as they pursue those shared core values.
The constitution of their association establishes a government, that is, a conglomeration of institutions, that is, organs of government that provide security for members of an association that a nation is. These institutions enable the government to function so as to protect the people in their pursuit of their shared core values. These institutions are instruments in the hands of government, and government is itself an instrument in the hands of the people for their protection as they pursue their shared core values. Without a common agreement on shared core values reflected in the provisions of their constitution, without the use of a constitution that has provided protective and not oppressive institutions, there is no democratically governed nation in the true sense of the word.
What obtains is a state governed by a constitution decreed into existence without the consent of the people, an oppressive state held together at gunpoint. Its institutions will be anything but friendly. Such is the case where organs of government disable the governed rather than enable them to actualize their developmental potential. Such is the absence of democracy. Today, democracies are threatened, and the threat is from within. That threat is vividly illustrated in the book, How Democracies Die: What History Reveals About Our Future, coauthored by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, where these worrisome words can be found: “The tragic paradox of the electoral route to authoritarianism is that democracy’s assassins use the very institutions of democracy—gradually, subtly, and even legally—to kill it.”
The paradox in the betrayal of democracy is that, quite often, enemies of democracy are democratically elected. Having assumed office through democratic means, they turn around to use democratic means undemocratically to assassinate democracy. That happens either because there are no institutions to sustain democracy, or because such institutions have been weakened by strong men, and strong women too, by their strategy and tactics in the arena of public life. It is the paradox of exercising legitimate authority illegitimately, of using what is legitimate to procure what is illegitimate.
A land of weakened institutions is a land where reins of government are in the hands of strong men, and absurdity is elevated into public policy. It is my contention in this paper that, where and when democratic institutions are weakened, the people are disabled, and their capacity to flourish is eroded by the whims and caprices of strong men. A trip down memory lane to a neighbouring African country may be helpful in providing an illustration that such has been the story in virtually every African country.
Memory of a speech
On July 11, 2009, President Barrack Obama, while visiting Ghana, addressed the Ghanaian parliament. But his address was not just to his Ghanaian audience, it was meant for the whole of Africa. On that occasion, Obama spoke for democracy. Let me say here, by way of digression, that the jury is still out on Obama’s own legacy especially as it concerns his respect or lack of respect for freedom to hold and express religious convictions in the United States he led for eight years. There is also the opinion and there is the suspicion that he interfered with Nigeria’s electoral process in 2015 by helping to enthrone a strong man. But let us put that aside for another day. Let us, instead, take a look at the thrust of his speech before the Ghanaian parliament.
To Ghanaian parliamentarians, Obama said, inter alia:
Time and again, Ghanaians have chosen constitutional rule over autocracy, and shown a democratic spirit that allows the energy of your people to break through. We see that in leaders who accept defeat graciously— the fact that President Mills’ opponents were standing beside him last night to greet me when I came off the plane spoke volumes about Ghana—victors who resist calls to wield power against the opposition in unfair ways. We see that spirit in courageous journalists like Anas Aremeyaw Anas, who risked his life to report the truth.
We see it in police like Patience Quaye, who helped prosecute the first human trafficker in Ghana. We see it in the young people who are speaking up against patronage, and participating in the political process. Across Africa, we’ve seen countless examples of people taking control of their destiny, and making change from the bottom up. We saw it in Kenya, where civil society and business came together to help stop post-election violence. We saw it in South Africa, where over three-quarters of the country voted in the recent election—the fourth since the end of Apartheid.
We saw it in Zimbabwe, where the Election Support Network braved brutal repression to stand up for the principle that a person’s vote is their sacred right. Now, make no mistake: History is on the side of these brave Africans, not with those who use coups or change constitutions to stay in power. Africa doesn’t need strongmen, it needs strong institutions.
Earlier, in the same address, Obama had said:
This is a new moment of great promise. Only this time, we’ve learned that it will not be giants like Nkrumah and Kenyatta who will determine Africa’s future. Instead, it will be you—the men and women in Ghana’s parliament—the people you represent. It will be the young people brimming with talent and energy and hope who can claim the future that so many in previous generations never realized.
When Jerry John Rawlings died on November 12, 2020, my mind went back to that speech of Barrack Obama. Two propositions in that speech have always retained my attention. The first is that in which he said, “Africa does not need strong men, it needs strong institutions.” The second is the one in which he said the future of Africa will not be determined by “giants like Nkrumah and Kenyatta”.
A tale of two autocrats
I do not know if Obama had the two men—Nkrumah and Rawlings—in mind when he uttered those words. What I know is that, in his audience as he addressed the Ghanaian parliament were men and women conversant with the history of Ghana. In that history, Kwame Nkrumah and Jerry Rawlings stood out as “strongmen”, to use Obama’s words. And, to that extent, Obama’s address to the Ghanaian parliament sounded like an allusion to Nkrumah and Rawlings.
Nkrumah fought for the independence of Ghana, became her first Prime Minister, and was a strong leader with a vision. But Nkrumah the strong man stifled opposition, turning Ghana, not into a one-party state, but into a one-man state—which is what autocracy is. Autocracy is the rule of one man who has succeeded in convincing or intimidating the people into believing that he has undergone an apotheosis. Autocracy represses the democratic spirit that releases developmental energy in peoples.
With their developmental energy released, their land becomes a habitation of persons of actualized potentials. One major factor that has weakened, and continues to weaken democracy in Africa, contributing to the under-development of the continent, is that Africans have had and still have too many autocratic rulers. Such autocratic rulers might have acted and might be acting with good intentions. But autocracy manifests itself in paternalism, a totalitarian and tyrannical paternalism that insists that all must think like the leader who is presumed to be an unquestionable and infallible strategist simply because he is the leader.
Let me remind my audience that this Ghanaian narrative is only an illustration of what is in fact a continental narrative. Ghana, not unlike many African countries, including Nigeria, has had a history of being on the receiving end of her autocratic rulers in military and civilian dresses. In Ghana, after Nkrumah, not immediately though, was Jerry John Rawlings who presented himself as an anti-corruption crusader. At his first coming, he entered the political landscape of Ghana through a coup d’état. He overthrew a military government led by General Frederick Akuffo, who, in a palace coup, had earlier overthrown General Ignatius Acheampong.
At the end of his first coming, Rawlings organized elections won by Hilla Liman who took over from Rawlings on September 24, 1979, a week before President Shehu Shagari took over from General Olusegun Obasanjo in Nigeria. President Hilla Limann’s government was like a government on probation with Rawlings as probation officer. For, shortly after handing over to Limann, on December 31, 1981, Rawlings staged a second comeback. He staged another military coup that truncated the Limann administration. His second coming was longer than his first coming. By the time he organized elections to return the country to democratic rule, not only was he presidential candidate, he had no strong opponent.
His reign had been so repressive that no strong opponent could have emerged. So, Rawlings was elected civilian president. Like Nkrumah, who governed Ghana with iron fists, Rawlings was brutal in dealing with dissenting opinions. It was dangerous to disagree with both men. They both imposed their idea of governance on the people. Many young Africans of today only read about them. Many see them as heroes. Nkrumah and Rawlings represent two of the many instances of apotheosis of the African strongman leader. But I shall focus more on Rawlings.
Brutality or illegitimate use of a legitimate institution
It was quite significant that Jerry Rawlings died shortly after the #EndSaars protests in Nigeria. The #EndSaars protests represented a repudiation of police and military brutality in Nigeria. But the problem was neither SARS nor the Nigeria Police. The problem was and still is, proximately, the relationship between the government and the citizen, and, ultimately, the constitution. The purpose of government is to protect the rights of the citizen.
The purpose of the constitution is to establish institutions which ought to be used as instruments to protect the citizen. But here, there is a double jeopardy: the 1999 constitution is weak, and this weak constitution has established weak institutions incapable of protecting the citizen from the rule of the strong man. That is why successive governments in Nigeria have been accused of being at the vanguard of human rights violation in Nigeria. We still carry on as if we were under military rule. If government is at the vanguard of human rights violation, then the police, more specifically, SARS, will violate the rights of Nigerians.
And, we must add, it is not just the police. Nigerians are at the mercy of government and its officials at various levels and in every institution of government, and Nigerians are at the mercy of one another. Police officers are agents of the state. What is at stake is the relationship between the government and the citizen? What kind of state do we have? What kind of state has the 1999 constitution created in Nigeria? Is it a friendly state? Is it a state that respects the citizen? “The police is your friend.” So says a slogan. But whoever believes that slogan will believe anything. It is one of the most cynical lies ever told to Nigerians.
The Nigerian driving through police checkpoints knows that the police is not his friend because the state, whose agent the police is, is not his friend. If you have an unfriendly government then you will have unfriendly government agencies. If you have an unfriendly state you will have an unfriendly police. Police brutality in Nigeria is symptom of impunity by government. In a country where impunity is paraded as governance, police brutality cannot be addressed by a presidential directive issued to the Inspector General of Police. It is one of the many symptoms of our dysfunctional constitution.
We have ended up with a hostile state because we have a hostile constitution. The 1999 constitution sets up Nigeria in such a way that government is more powerful than the citizen. That is why the problem is not the police, not the judiciary, not the legislature, not the executive arm of government, but a weak constitution that has engendered weak institutions. The urgent task before us is to re-envision our society, re-envision and rewrite our constitution, rediscover what it means to be a nation, re-envision the police. Not to embark on this task is to continue to beat about the bush.
It is becoming increasingly clear that you cannot secure a country so vast and so populous as Nigeria with weak institutions controlled from Abuja. The brutality of the police and the military illustrate a lamentable absence of institutions capable of protecting the citizen. The military and the police are agencies of a strong-man state. Rawlings represented the ambiguity of military rule and its attendant brutality in Africa, and many instances can be sighted to buttress
