66 Years After Independence: How to make Nigeria great again – Prof Falode

Nigeria’s political, economic and security crises are not isolated problems but manifestations of a deeper structural malfunction in the way the country organises democracy, federalism and education, Professor Adewunmi Falode has said.

Falode, Professor of International Relations and Strategic Studies and Director of the Centre for Peace and Strategic Studies, CPSS, at the Lagos State University, LASU, Ojo, said Nigeria could overcome its seemingly intractable challenges if it stopped importing political models wholesale and began designing institutions around its own history, realities and peculiarities.

Delivering LASU’s 115th Inaugural Lecture, titled “Bespoke Solutions: Reimagining, Reifying and Realigning the Wheels of the Nigerian State,” recently, he identified democracy, federalism and education as the three major “wheels” that must be realigned to put Nigeria firmly on the path of stability, development, peace and national integration.

Of his prescriptions included a single, non-renewable seven-year tenure for elected public office holders, a decentralised centre with stronger and fiscally empowered states, and free and compulsory primary and secondary education.

Falode also called for the domestication of Nigeria’s democratic and federal systems, arguing that the country had for decades operated institutions that were not sufficiently adapted to its social, historical and economic circumstances.

His central argument was that Nigeria’s problem was not a lack of resources or ideas but the failure to align the country’s political and socioeconomic institutions with its realities.

He said: “Nigeria’s democracy is alien, expensive and exclusionary. It has failed to deliver its dividends in the First, Second, Third and Fourth Republics.”

Costly four-year democratic cycle

Falode picked holes in Nigeria’s four-year, two-term presidential and governorship system, which he said encourages permanent electioneering, litigation and political manoeuvring at the expense of governance.

Under his proposed arrangement, elected public officials would serve one non-renewable seven-year term.

He argued that the existing system leaves little time for effective governance because politicians spend substantial periods dealing with election petitions, positioning for another election and managing political battles.

How? “The presumed winner uses two out of four years fending off petitions, five months to govern, and the remaining one and a half years preparing for reelection,” he said, adding that Nigeria’s democracy has become an expensive cycle in which enormous public and private resources are expended during elections, while the aftermath is frequently followed by litigation, political tension and, in some cases, violence.

Rising cost of polls

Falode cited the escalating cost of elections as evidence of the problem. He recalled that the 1983 federal elections cost about N2 billion, while Nigeria budgeted N1.5 billion for the 1999 elections, N42 billion in 2011, N108.8 billion in 2015 and about N242.2 billion for the 2023 elections, with post-election litigation and other associated expenses not fully captured in the figures.

He lamented that despite the huge resources committed to elections, the process often ended with disputes that required judicial intervention.

“The shocking thing was that at the end of such elections, where humongous money had been expended, with countless lives lost and businesses destroyed, it would still take the intervention of the judiciary for the wheel of democracy to be realigned and readjusted,” he said.

Why seven years?

Falode’s seven-year proposal is designed to create a longer period of uninterrupted governance while removing the incentive for incumbents to divert public attention and resources towards securing a second term.

He argued that the proposed arrangement could provide about four years of stable governance, with the remaining period accommodating electoral preparations and litigation.

He cited countries that operate variations of single-term arrangements and urged Nigeria to study such models rather than assume that the American system it adopted is necessarily suitable for Nigeria.

“Nigeria will have to tweak its constitution to allow for a single term of seven years,” he said, but stressed that the reform must be achieved constitutionally and democratically.