By Festus Enegide
You cannot re-invent the wheel is a popular saying. The technology behind the invention of the wheel is constant and the same, admitting or needing no variation. The job is already done and all everyone has got to do is adopt it and proceed therefrom and not belabour oneself trying other means and methods to get the same job done. What this means is that certain things are fundamental and foundational that they need not – in fact, cannot – be tampered with.
They are settled opinions that need no further argument; what lawyers describe as “trite”; meaning that they are known and accepted by every Tom, Dick, and Harry as the gospel truth. Isaac Newton’s Law of gravity, for instance, or the knowledge that the earth is spherical, as against the earlier beliefs that it was flat or round.
The early Greeks gifted the world with their concept of democracy, as they did the Olympics. Defined by political theorists today as “Government of the people by the people and for the people”, this was the system of all-inclusive governance developed by the early Greek city-sates where all adults (unadulterated universal adult suffrage) gather in the village square to deliberate upon and take decisions on matters of state. The leaders stood directly before the people (no intermediaries; no go-between) to propose and defend policies; the people question them directly; adopt or reject proposed policies as they deemed fit.
Population explosion alone has made the Greek city-states’ model of democracy impossible and impracticable. Which “village square” will contain the teeming crowd of adults that we have today? Even in the real rural settings, this is a tall order. So, we have, out of necessity, modified – “watered down” -the Greek concept of democracy to what we now call “representative democracy” The electorate choose their representatives – Senators, House of Representatives members, House of Assembly members, Councillors – to sit in parliament as their representatives. They also elect Presidents, Governors and Local Government chairmen to act as the Executive powers of the State, holding power in trust for the people. Although this is debatable, political theorists generally posit that sovereignty remains with the people and that their representatives in the Legislature exercise this power on their behalf.
As with (extinct) feudal oligarchies and monarchies, the Executive powers (presidents, governors, and Council chairmen) symbolise the State at their various levels but mindful of Lord Acton’s maxim that “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”, different mechanisms have been put in place to discourage, even arrest, any drive towards absolutism or dictatorship by the powers-that-be. One of such is the concept of separation of powers and of checks and balances between the three arms of government, namely; the Executive, Legislature, and Judiciary. Another is the institution of periodic elections during which the electorate have the opportunity to exercise their right of choice – to renew a government or change it. One mechanism which had, before now, sat silently in our statute books is the electorate’s power to recall their representative even before election is due. The on-going Senator Dino Melaye recall saga, though novel, is one of the mechanisms adopted to ensure that sovereignty continues to reside with and in the people, like it did in the Greek city-states.
However, every mechanism put in place to ensure the sovereignty of the people remains a far cry from the raw democracy of the Greek city-states. Theorists of power are right when they, too, posit that in all societies, it is the elite that rules. Sovereignty belonging to the people is a ruse. In the pyramid of power constructed by power theorists, the ruling class, few as its members are, occupy the pinnacle and control the vast percentage of State power and resources while the people, vast in number, occupy the base and control the least percentage of State power and resources. How to return power to the people, in real terms as opposed to political clichés and empty sloganeering, is the challenge that confronts the modern State.
A fall-out of this skewed power relations is that the ordinary man in the street is short-changed and hardly gets his legitimate rights. Efforts to address or redress this are legion: some half-hearted, some contrived, and some genuine but have yielded scanty results. Last Thursday in Ekiti, Gov. Ayo Fayose bent over backward to move closer to the Greek city-states’ model or re-invent the wheel, as it were. He had seen, he said, that previous efforts to let stakeholders and ordinary citizens decide how to share dwindling State funds amongst competing needs have not achieved the desired results. Information having failed to trickle down or percolate the thick layer of bureaucracy to reach the ordinary folks at the base of the ladder; rumours and propaganda dangerous to the health and well-being of the State have thrived. He has had to explain himself over and over again about how and when allocations from Abuja are received; how much is received; how it is shared; those who sit on the committee that conducts the sharing; and how he has nothing to hide.
It would appear as if the labour leaders and other stakeholders who sit on the committee have not succeeded in dispersing the necessary information far and wide enough, thus necessitating the convocation of a Greek-style city-states’ meeting with two teachers from each school, representatives of local governments, parastatals and agencies of government, market men and women and other artisans, in addition to the political leaders – State Executive Council members, party leaders, legislators, and, of course, the media. The event was broadcast life by the state radio service.
Everywhere these days, the scourge of governors is the Paris Club refund. The politics that attends it is such that any governor not careful how he handles this delicate issue will have his fingers burnt. He will also be consumed completely by it. Abuja politicians – Ministers, Presidential aides, etc – eyeing governorship seats weave a lot of mischief around the money; portraying it as a largesse or bail out from the Presidency – which it is not – as well as giving the impression that it is much more than it actually is.
This way, they raise the hopes of workers and pensioners who languish as a result of backlog of salaries and pension only to have such hopes dashed when governors release the truth as it pertains to the refund. The Fayose experiment is thus sorely needed by State governors to effectively counter the mischief of Abuja politicians and other political opponents peddling misinformation to score cheap political points. An eye-opener at the Fayose “village square” meeting, which held at the newly-constructed pavilion right inside the Government House, is that primary school teachers are possibly the worst hit by the non-payment of salaries and that they have lost confidence in the Council chairmen’s commitment to their welfare. Despite Fayose’s repeated explanations that he had no control over Council funds, agitated primary school teachers who spoke wanted him to order the Councils to use their own portion of the Paris Club refund to settle them. It is not just an eye-opener but food-for-thought that those under the authority and control of the Councils have little confidence in them and would prefer the State government to handle their affairs. Where, then, do we go with the constitution amendment ongoing at the National Assembly intent on making the Councils financially autonomous of state governments?
Enegide, a publisher, writes from Lagos.