Raila Odinga’s warning on democratic reversals in Africa

 

It’s 17 days to Nigeria’s seventh general elections in this Fourth Republic which started in 1999. On Tuesday, January 31, 2023, at the International Conference Centre, Abuja, the Leadership newspaper at its 14th Annual Conference and Awards hosted the former Prime Minister of Kenya and leader of the opposition known as Azimio, His Excellency Raila Odinga. The elder statesman gave the keynote address at the well-attended ceremony where Vice President Yemi Osinbajo was the chairman and the Minister of Federal Capital Territory, Mohammed Bello, was the chief host. The royal father of the day was the Etsu Nupe HRM Yahaya Abubakar while Chairman of the Leadership newspaper titles, Mrs. Zainab Nda-Isaiah, gave the welcome address. Others in attendance include captains of industries, bank executives, inventors, technocrats, bureaucrats and other dignitaries and awardees.

Raila’s speech was titled, “Credible Elections and an Economy in Transition.” It’s important to note that the former Kenya prime minister was an old warhorse who had contested the presidency of Kenya five times without success.  2022 was his biggest chance given the endorsement of the immediate past president of Kenya, Uhuru Kenyatta, ahead of the August 9, 2022 presidential election. Uhuru supported Raila against his own Vice President, William Ruto, who eventually won the last presidential election whose result has been roundly rejected by the Raila’s camp. In mid-January 2023, after the Kenyan Supreme Court had ruled that Ruto won the presidential election, an Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission whistleblower allegedly came out to say Raila won the election by about 2.5 million votes. Why did he not come before the Kenyan Supreme Court as a witness to prove his claim?

Anyway, while many may dismiss Raila as a sore loser, crying wolf, it is important to still analyse what he said to Nigerians and indeed Africans during his recent visit to Nigeria as a guest of Leadership newspapers. I was privileged to listen to him at the event and believe that there are lessons and wisdom in some of his submissions that other African countries desirous of democratic consolidation may find useful. For instance, he said, “If Africa wants to achieve the goals of Agenda 2063, then we must prioritise and entrench free, fair and credible elections by all member states.  Since the reintroduction of multiparty politics in the 1990s, the quality and credibility of our elections have steadily deteriorated.” That’s a genuine concern I dare say. Not a few African intellectuals have expressed similar views in the past.

By the way, what is Agenda 2063? According to the African Union, Agenda 2063 (The Africa We Want) is Africa’s blueprint and master plan for transforming Africa into the global powerhouse of the future. It is the continent’s strategic framework that aims to deliver on its goal for inclusive and sustainable development and is a concrete manifestation of the pan-African drive for unity, self-determination, freedom, progress and collective prosperity pursued under Pan-Africanism and African Renaissance. The genesis of Agenda 2063 was the realisation by African leaders that there was a need to refocus and reprioritise Africa’s agenda from the struggle against apartheid and the attainment of political independence for the continent which had been the focus of the Organisation of African Unity, the precursor of the African Union; and instead to prioritise inclusive social and economic development, continental and regional integration, democratic governance and peace and security amongst other issues aimed at repositioning Africa to becoming a dominant player in the global arena.

Another incontrovertible statement by the former Kenyan PM is that, “Free and fair elections are indicators to investors that there is a government in place that believes in fairness and the rule of law. When a government comes in through a fair ballot, investors get the reassurance that their property will be respected, taxation will be fair, investment rules will be simple and clear and they will not have to resort to corruption and bribery to set up or stay in business.   Illiberal regimes send signals that are the direct opposite of what the investors are looking for.” Therefore, “elections are important political risk assessment tools for investors.”

It is difficult to dismiss the following submissions from Raila. He noted inter alia that, “Elections and democracy are failing in Africa not because a majority of Africa’s voters prefer authoritarian, non-democratic forms of government. It is happening because an organised elite, keen to protect narrow selfish interests, has forged strategic alliances and captured strategic systems and institutions of various nations with the sole purpose of subverting the substance of elections.

 “In the last decade, many of our nations have evolved modern systems for collection, collation, transmission and tallying of election results. Many have adopted a results management system that combines traditional vote counting and tallying processes, and use of technology to verify voter eligibility, register votes and transmit results.  In addition, we have seen the evolution of the electoral laws to allow representatives of political parties to independently tally the results and transmit to party tallying centres. But as we have witnessed in Kenya both in 2017 and 2022, technology is getting compromised and results altered. This has severely damaged the credibility of election management bodies in many of our countries.” He is on point here. Unknown to many, technology is not the silver bullet that will resolve all our election conundrum. While it reduces human interference, even the few who will manage the process can decide to compromise it. It’s a Catch .22 situation.

The former prime minister is not an armchair critic; he has a lot of field experience.  He proffered useful, actionable and feasible solutions to Africa’s electoral debacle. Some of them are as follows: Existing electoral laws are not seen to assemble an electoral system that people believe is transparent, accountable and democratic. There is therefore a need for further reforms to make the voting process more accessible and reliable; enhance protections against mistake, irregularity, confusion, and fraud.  There is a need to rethink use of technology. Either we adopt reliable election technology, including voting machines that generate a voter-verifiable audit trail, so voters can confirm that their choices are being recorded accurately or we go fully manual.

Noteworthy are his other submissions which include the following: If Africa’s elite autocrats are uniting against free and fair elections; Africa’s democrats must also unite and defend democracy. We must build a continent wide pro-democracy coalition and look out for each other. The continent’s democrats must treat the subversion of election anywhere on the continent as a subversion of the people’s will everywhere on the continent.  It should be clear in word and deed that whoever makes a move to ascend to power by means other than credible and constitutional elections is not only condemned, but subjected to sanctions and removal from such office.” On point!

There’s a saying in Yoruba language that, “only half a word is spoken to a virtuous and responsible child, when it enters him or her, it becomes whole.” Raila Odinga has said his own and I strongly believe there’s a lot of wisdom in his submissions. As Nigeria goes to poll in about a fortnight from now, it is important to note that the Nigerian electorate will not take any excuse from the Independent National Electoral Commission having supported it to have financial and administrative autonomy and collaborated to have credible electoral reform which birthed the Electoral Act 2022. INEC must do all within its powers to ensure credible, successful and peaceful 2023 general elections.