Democracy came under scrutiny on Thursday as editors, lawyers and public intellectuals gathered in Enugu for the opening of the 22nd All Nigeria Editors Conference (ANEC), where concerns over elections, the courts, political impunity and the future of the democratic project dominated the conversation.
The conference, themed “The Ballot, the Media and the Task of Keeping Democracy Alive,” opened with a sobering examination of the institutions that are expected to protect the integrity of the ballot and, ultimately, the legitimacy of government.
The first major paper, “Election Petitions in the Digital Age: Independence, Evidence, BVAS and the Courts,” was delivered by a former President of the Nigerian Bar Association, Mazi Afam Osigwe. The Senior Advocate of Nigeria offered a detailed assessment of the increasingly complex relationship between technology, election disputes and judicial intervention.
Osigwe’s presentation did more than examine the technical dimensions of election petitions. His observations touched on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the judiciary and the electorate, placing each within the wider responsibility of protecting the credibility of elections.
Then came a Professor of Political Economy, Pat Utomi, who is also a politician. His intervention was brief but unsettling.
Utomi warned that the democratic promise Nigerians once looked upon as an Eldorado was gradually disappearing before their eyes. His remarks carried a sense of urgency that went beyond the conference hall, prompting an uncomfortable question: What happens to a democracy when the institutions designed to protect it lose the confidence of the people ?
For me, his words evoked a memory from another Nigeria – and the voice of Chief Obafemi Awolowo.
In 1983, during the electioneering campaign in Sokoto, I had the privilege of being with Awolowo at lunch when a radio bulletin interrupted the gathering. It was the 4 pm Network News on Radio Nigeria.
The report suggested that the best candidate would not win the election. Awolowo, then one of the most prominent presidential candidates, was widely seen as the obvious target of the message.
There was no visible anger. Instead, Papa Awo (as he was fondly called) listened and dismissed the report with a characteristic calmness. ‘What a funny news,’ he said.
But what followed was more profound.
His concern, he explained, was not merely whether he would win or lose an election. His fear was what such an outcome would mean for Nigeria’s democratic order.
‘I can forsee disrespect for the rule of law while impunity reigns. Nigerians may for long forget true meaning of democracy’.
Those words of the sage returned to me in Enugu.
More than four decades later, the question is no longer whether democracy can survive without the rule of law. The question is whether Nigerians have allowed the language of democracy to remain while its essential institutions are steadily weakened.
Nigeria became independent from Britain 66 years ago. Yet the country’s democratic journey has been interrupted repeatedly by military coups, constitutional suspensions and periods of authoritarian rule.
The military did not merely take power from elected governments. It suspended constitutions, ruled by decree and altered the institutional architecture of the country.
In effect, democracy became a baton passed from one military regime to another through coups, before eventually returning to civilian hands.
But the return to civilian rule did not automatically end the culture of impunity that military rule had helped entrench. Some of the habits survived the uniforms.
President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua appeared to recognise the danger. His administration was associated with a stronger emphasis on constitutionalism and respect for the rule of law. But the political interests that had benefited from the old order proved difficult to dislodge. His presidency was cut short by illness and death, leaving much of that reform agenda unfinished.
Subsequent administrations have faced the same challenge: how to build institutions strong enough to resist political pressure and ensure that power remains subject to law. That challenge remains unresolved.
Today, the Nigerian democratic experience often appears strongest in its vocabulary and weakest in its enforcement.
Elections are held. Political parties compete. Governments are inaugurated. Legislatures sit and courts issue judgments. Yet democracy is more than the periodic ritual of voting. It requires institutions that can say no to power. It requires elections in which citizens believe their votes matter. It requires political parties in which internal democracy is not merely a slogan. It requires courts whose independence is trusted by both winners and losers. And it requires a media capable of scrutinising those who exercise public power without fear or favour. This is where the theme of the Enugu conference becomes particularly significant.
The media cannot keep democracy alive merely by reporting election results. Its responsibility extends to interrogating the processes by which those results are produced, the institutions that certify them and the conduct of those who wield power after victory.
Editors therefore occupy a difficult position. They must report without becoming political actors; investigate without becoming instruments in political battles; and hold power to account while subjecting their own assumptions and sources to the same scrutiny demanded of public officials. The ballot is the starting point, not the destination.
If citizens vote but their votes are subsequently undermined by manipulation, weak institutions, opaque processes or impunity, democracy becomes a shell. And if those who violate public trust can simply change political colours, join the dominant party and emerge politically rehabilitated, accountability becomes little more than theatre.
The deeper danger is not that democracy disappears overnight. It is that citizens gradually become accustomed to its erosion.
That may have been the warning embedded in Utomi’s intervention – and perhaps the reason Awolowo’s words from 1983 still resonate.
Democracy does not die only when soldiers seize power. It can also wither when the rule of law becomes selective, when institutions become subordinate to political interests and when citizens cease to believe that the ballot can produce meaningful change.
The 22nd All Nigeria Editors Conference therefore opened with a question larger than the mechanics of elections. It has placed Nigerian democracy itself on trial.
The verdict, ultimately, will not be delivered by the editors gathered in Enugu. It will be written by the conduct of political leaders, the independence of institutions, the courage of the media, the vigilance of citizens – and the willingness of the country to choose the rule of law over the convenience of impunity.
Sir Olamiti, a Fellow of the Nigerian Guild of Editors, is a media consultant, author, former editor of Sunday Tribune, and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Nigerian Institute of Journalism Alumni Association
