Nigerian Democracy: Redesign the System

JOE WILLIAM-OBI  argues that politics must be redesigned to repel and punish profiteers in order to attract patriots

Nigeria does not suffer from a shortage of elections; it suffers from a shortage of electoral finality. In theory, democracy in Nigeria is in the hands of the voters. In practice, Nigerian elections are routinely concluded by judges- months, sometimes years, after ballots have been cast. In that legal interim, the will of millions of Nigerians is suspended in legal limbo, while courtrooms, not polling units, become the true battlegrounds of power. This is not democracy.

It is a system failure.

The consequences are profound. Voter apathy grows because citizens increasingly believe their votes do not count. Politics becomes a high-stakes commercial enterprise rather than public service.

Electoral contests turn into investments to be recouped through office, not mandates to be earned through credibility. Unless Nigeria confronts this structural distortion of democracy head-on, no amount of rhetoric about good leadership will rescue the republic.

Nigeria’s democratic crisis is not merely about bad actors; it is about bad incentives. Political systems shape behavior. When public office is lucrative, permanent, and shielded from accountability, it attracts opportunists. When it is modestly compensated, time limited, and transparent, it attracts citizens motivated by duty and patriotism. Nigeria has consciously built the former system, and now lives with the terrible consequences.

In functioning democracies, elections end at the ballot box. In Nigeria, they end in the courts. This abnormality has eroded trust in institutions and weaponized the judiciary, placing judges under immense political pressure and public suspicion. A democracy that cannot settle its elections decisively is a democracy in slow decline.

There are workable alternatives, though. One instructive example comes from the state of Texas in the United States of America. There, legislators earn a base salary of just $7,200 per year and meet only once every two years for a 140-day session. Outside that period, they return to their private professions. Politics is not a career path; it is a temporary civic duty. In the First Republic, parliamentarians were first and foremost lawyers, journalists, etc. They had their professions and vocations. That was why the First Republic politician, Tony Enahoro once famously said: “In my time politics was not a full time business”.

Much confusion surrounds the Texas per-diem allowance, but clarity here because it brings the beauty in it into focus. The daily allowance, which is about $221 per sitting day, is not income. It is reimbursement for basic living expenses incurred while temporarily serving away from home. Modest accommodation, meals, and transport consume nearly all of it. There are no year-round allowances, no luxury entitlements, and no opaque benefits. The system ensures that citizens can serve without being financially punished, but not unduly, even criminally enriched.

Nigeria has chosen the opposite model. Legislators sit year-round, earn salaries and allowances running into tens of millions of naira monthly, and exercise personal discretion over opaque benefits such as constituency projects and security votes. Nigerian legislators even collect newspaper and clothing allowances! No wonder public office has become one of the most profitable ventures in the country. It is therefore not surprising that elections are fiercely contested, monetized, and litigated. When politics pays extraordinarily well, it attracts extraordinary desperation because it has become an all comers’ affair particularly suited to the despicable, the insatiable, the conscience-less scums of the earth. In Nigeria, elections have become warfare.

Nigeria does not need to copy the Texas example wholesale. It needs to adopt the principle. With a national median annual 500,000–600,000 income, legislative pay could be constitutionally capped at three to four times that figure, with only transparent, independently audited reimbursements for official duties. All allowances should be publicly disclosed, independently audited, and stripped of personal discretion.

Politics must stop being a route to sudden wealth or it will attract those who will bleed Nigeria to death as is the case today.

Compensation reform alone, however, is insufficient. Structural safeguards must follow. Clear term limits should apply uniformly across executive and legislative offices. Senators, House members, governors, and the president should be limited to two four-year terms, after which they must step aside. This prevents political entrenchment, weakens dynasties, and allows new ideas to emerge, an approach successfully used in countries such as Mexico and Kenya. The down side though is that it will erode ennobling and enabling experience from the legislature. But this sacrifice has a lot of upsides.

Internal party democracy must also be enforced. Open primaries, supervised by INEC and monitored by civil society and the media, would weaken godfatherism and reduce the imposition of candidates. Equally important is reforming the appointment process for Electoral Commissioners to include civil society, professional bodies, and transparent public hearings. No democracy can survive when election umpires are perceived as extensions of the Executive.

Campaign finance reform is long overdue. Nigeria should introduce limited public funding, strict spending caps, and real-time disclosure of campaign finances, drawing lessons from countries like Brazil and South Korea. Politics must stop being a contest of who can out-spend and out-litigate the rest. Nigeria must embrace all the benefits that the progress in computing and telephony could bring. Information and Communications Technology should help us to exit the dark age of electoral rigging. Once it is crystal clear that electoral results are determined by the real votes cast and nothing else, electoral disputes will decrease to the barest minimum.

Yet the most transformative reform lies elsewhere: the introduction of citizen juries for electoral disputes. Instead of allowing a single judge to determine the outcome of millions of votes, who they will benefit, panels of randomly selected citizens should decide disputed facts such as vote manipulation, ballot snatching, or vote buying. It is far harder to corrupt twelve randomly selected citizens than one individual Judge. It will be far harder to make all the jury members keep silent after the ruling.

Citizen juries would reduce corruption, speed up dispute resolution, unclog the courts, and, most importantly, restore public confidence. Judges would retain a supervisory role, with appeals limited to procedural issues. Pilot programs could begin at state or local council levels before national adoption.

Nigeria’s democracy cannot be reformed by cosmetic changes or elite bargaining. It requires structural courage. Politics must be redesigned to repel and even punish profiteers and attract patriots.

Elections must be settled by citizens, not endlessly negotiated in courtrooms.

The time for incrementalism has passed. Nigeria must choose whether to continue managing democratic decay or deliberately rebuild a system that truly belongs to the people but which has been failing the people. By learning from global best practices and adapting them to Nigeria’s unique context, the country can reclaim its future and restore hope in the promise of self-government.

To make the electoral reform complete, the scandalous practice of defecting from one political party to another after being elected into office constitutes a breach of citizens’ trust and undermines democratic principles, and must be punished. It is inexcusable larceny to take the votes the people cast for a given party through the election of a given candidate to benefit another party – through defection. It makes a mess of the choice the electorate made during elections and actually voids their votes as it fluffs away their support for a particular party. To address this issue, it is, therefore, proposed that legislation be enacted to impose clear consequences for such actions. Any elected official who defects to another political party shall vacate their seat immediately.

Furthermore, such individuals should be subject to a 10-year ban on contesting for any public office, be ineligible for appointment to an executive or a judiciary position, and be barred from participating in any public-funded contracts.

Nigeria has come at a crossroads. It is clear that Nigerian democracy has failed Nigeria. Crucial decisions must be made which will have far-reaching consequences for Nigeria’s survival, let alone flourishing by competing favourably among the other nations. Today, Nigeria is a big failure that saddens her citizens and shames the Black Race. The choice before us is stark; reform Nigerian Democracy, redesign the system; claim the future or watch Nigeria continue to slide into hell.William-Obi, Historian, a Certified Public Accountant and a Nurse Practitioner in the United States, writes from Texas, USA