The Shadow of Illiberal Democracy By Chidi Amuta

As Nigerian politicians jostle for winning pedestals, an outlandish reality has sneaked into town. The country is sliding from an opportunity to build liberal democracy towards an Illiberal democracy and, I am afraid, even an outright populist autocracy.


The signs are now abundant: the personalization of security institutions, an assault on the legislative branch, a division of the nation into regime devotees and dissenting partisans, a preference for the military over the police in matters of security , law and order, serial blackmailing of honest judges and constriction of media freedom and avenues for civil disobedience. There is above all the increasing use of intimidation strategies to frighten regime opponents.

The recent invasion of the Nigerian Parliament by state sponsored masked gunmen was only the more open and brazen prelude to the onset of illiberal democracy. Whether or not he ordered that disgraceful assault , the incident may go down as Mr. Buhari’s poster political imprint. His subsequent political career will either be an affirmation of his familiar Illiberal identity or its repudiation in favour of an open democratic agenda.

The scene was somewhat reminiscent of the 5th October, 1993 invasion of the Russian parliament by military tanks in support of Boris Yeltsin who was intent on protecting his narrow electoral victory against pro-Gorbachev legislators. With that incident, Russia entered a long night of Illiberal democracy that has endured till the present Putin virtual autocracy.

Illiberal democracy defines a systematic assault on the foundations of freedom which make liberal democracy strong. The assault on individual rights , the rule of law and freedom of expression are only followed by invasion of representative structures. Intimidation through the systematic abuse of security institutions completes the picture.

What makes Illiberal democracy more dangerous is that it is often the handiwork of an otherwise freely elected header. A fledgling autocrat hides under the banner of democracy and popular mandate to advance an anti democratic one man agenda.

The use of the strategies of illiberal democracy to foist an autocracy can resonate in developing societies if the aspiring autocrat is armed with a vision and a thoughtful direction for his nation. To deploy the tools of autocracy in the absence of a vision is the highway to mindless absolutism. Nigerians under the current Buharir rule should , in popular parlance, ‘shine their eyes’.

There are fundamental cautions and road signs for present day Nigeria.First, It is not just enough to invoke vacuous notions of nationalism or to dredge up a peasant nostalgia of a glorious past that wasn’t there to begin with. Second, it does not make much political sense to erect a moral divide between ‘saints’ and ‘sinners’ on matters of public corruption while frightening honest judges and blackmailing tactful journalists. Third, an open liberal democratic culture requires greater rigor and respect for the independence of the institutions of freedom. Fourth, a pretension to democracy that ascribes to an elected leader the status of an infallible pontifax Maximus can only lead to autocracy, fake moral absolutism and ultimately an Illiberal democracy.

In many parts of the world, democracy and its liberal foundation is under serious threat from leaders with divergent absolutely agenda. Xi in China, Trump in America, Erdogan in Turkey, Maduro in Venezuela, Putin in Russia, Viktor Orban in Hungary, and the butcher, Duterte, in the Philippines all represent the different faces of a new breed of ‘strong men’ . They all signal the threatened state of democracy. They all have come to power under the guise of one form of democracy or the other but are all intent on subverting the liberal foundation of democracy.

These leaders are different faces of one man rule flying the flag of a new nationalism. They insist that the people desperately want economic power over and above the fine values of liberal democracy- free speech, political correctness and old institutions run by worn bureaucrats.

Uniformly, the strategy of rising one man autocracies is to find an enemy to blame the nation’s ills on in order to cloak and market their rise to the popular masses. Putin blames pro West elites; Viktor Orban blames George Soros and Nicholas Maduro blames the US and his neighbours.

In Nigeria, Mr. Buhari blames his political opponents especially the PDP whose splinter brought him to power for nearly everything from rampant corruption to Herdsmen killings and his incoherent economic policies… He carefully and craftily directs this message at his more illiterate mass audiences while alienating the elite who are likely to ask questions about his basic competence.

.Every fledging autocrat still clings to the title of democracy as an instrument for winning the next election and hanging a banner of popular mandate on what is clearly an anti democratic scheme.

In the older democracies like the US, a certain resilience of institutions can be trusted to protect and preserve the democratic order. Even then, populist autocrats try and test the resilience of old institutions as we are seeing with Donald Trump in the United States.

The plight of young newish and fragile democracies under strong man autocracy is more worrisome. The institutions tend to be fragile, tenuous and often compromised . Those who head them see their allegiance to the strongman as higher than their sworn obligation to the constitution and the nation.

It is a typical African political disease. This is the rule of the president as ‘African Chief’ to whom all institutions and privileges of state are extensions of a semi feudal domain. In Nigeria, the tradition of the president as ‘Oga’, a respected elder has been institutionalized. With the succession of ageing civil war generals as elected presidents, we are in an ‘Ogacracy’..

Mr. Buhari’s flirtation with Illiberal stunts is not entirely his making. Because of his draconian military antecedents, he and his devotees may have come to cast him as the quintessential strong man who can bend institutions to discipline an errant society.

Far from it. His leadership of the executive branch in the last three years indicates differently. We may in fact be dealing with a rather weak leader. Urgent decisions are delayed. The most strategic institutions are manned by incompetent people with private agenda. An entire national security structure is uncoordinated while the machinery of government presents as rustic and rudderless. Key presidential functions appear outsourced to ambitious deputies and clannish warlords. An entire nation is now engulfed by a huge question: Who is in charge here?

A weak and incompetent leader straining to foist a populist autocracy is a recipe for tragedy. To do so on the eve of a general election is to bring Armageddon even closer and mortally endanger the possibility of democratic becoming. A diverse and fractious polity such as ours is best left as a very liberal, pluralistic and even noisy democracy. The challenge of leadership in a place like this is to navigate the political complexity of diversity by making political deals when necessary; To seek to ‘conquer’ partisan opponents.is wrong headed.To insist on a forceful autocratic path is a highway to Yugoslavia. Nigerians, I am sure, don’t want to go there.

• Dr. Chidi Amuta, a member of Thisdsy Editorial Board, is Chairman of Wilson & Weizmann Associates Ltd.., Lagos.