Who Will Defend Their Democracy? – Abdul Mahmud

By Abdul Mahmud

In today’s Punch newspaper, my friend and fellow writer, fondly known within our writing circle as Dunni Baby, Abimbola Adelakun, asked a haunting question in her column: “If a coup happens in Nigeria, who will fight for democracy?” She went further: “Who are the people who will go out and confront the soldiers to fight for democracy? Some Nigerians on Twitter can sit behind their screens and tweet the usual cute nostrums about how the worst democratic rule is still preferable to military rule, but if it ever happens that our democratic leaders get ousted by coupists, will they go and fight to defend democracy?” And then she answered herself: “I seriously doubt it”. She closed with an even sharper line: “Rather than blackmailing people by painting a picture of a terrifying fate that awaits us if democracy succumbs to the military, the question should be, who has benefited from this arrangement enough to want it sustained? Stop telling us what we have to lose if we lose democracy; show us a better life, and we will be motivated to defend democracy on our own”.

She is right. And she is wrong.
Right, because there is little left in our country’s democracy worth defending. Wrong, because we do not abandon what we have broken. We hand it to those who broke it and watch them fix it. If a coup were to happen, we know who must defend democracy. The very men who wrecked it. Professor Mahmood Yakubu, former Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, and his then eloquent disciple, Festus Okoye. These two must be summoned to the front lines, megaphones in hand, shouting, “On Democracy We Stand!” For it is their democracy.

The one they built, disfigured, and buried beneath collation sheets. Professor Yakubu must lead the procession. After all, the patient bleeding on the floor is his handiwork. He presided over an election that insulted reason and mocked expectations. He promised technology, he delivered theology, and when it mattered most, he converted transparency into transcendence. Under his watch, the people’s will was first uploaded, then deleted, and finally explained away as “technical glitch”. Festus Okoye, the chief interpreter of that gospel, must walk beside him.

His was the voice that coated deceit with legality, urging us to “trust the process”, even when the process was already in a coffin. He called the confusion procedure. He called betrayal democracy. So, if the tanks ever roll out tomorrow, Mahmood and Festus must be the ones to meet them. Let them stand bravely before the soldiers, holding ballot boxes like shields, chanting, “Give us our democracy!” For truly, it is not ours.

And someone must unlock the Calabar and Ikot Ekpene Prisons’ gates for Professor Peter Ogban and Professor Ignatius Uduk, the Professors who once rigged elections for Godswill Akpabio and Nse Ntuen respectively. Let them walk free, bearing his certificates of electoral wisdom. The court that jailed Professor Ogban had observed that the rank of university professor is not easily attained, nor attained by fools. But fools do not defend wisdom, do they? Let Mahmood, Festus, Ogban and Uduk stand shoulder to shoulder, the four great doors of democratic salvation. Or better described, the quartet of holiness venerated for defending democratic renewal. Let them lift the banner of “On the mandate of democracy we stand” and march into history as the defenders of the system they destroyed. The rest of us, including Mike Igini, will stand aside and applaud. After all, how do you defend what no longer belongs to you?

The coup already happened. It did not arrive in khaki. It came in agbada, armed with ballot papers and PowerPoint presentations. It was executed with collation sheets and broadcast live. No soldiers needed to march. Civilian coupists perfected the art of overthrowing democracy while quoting the Constitution. Our democracy was toppled in slow motion: in polling units where votes evaporated, in tribunals where mathematics replaced justice, in press conferences where lies were dressed as explanations. So yes, if a coup happens, Professor Yakubu and his disciples must defend democracy. It is their child, malformed and gasping. They must cradle it, weep over it, and swear it will rise again.

For the rest of us, democracy has become an empty word. It promises freedom but delivers frustration. It calls itself a government of the people but speaks only in the accents of the powerful. The people are exhausted. They do not dream of democracy anymore; they dream of electricity, food, and safety.
Abimbola is right again: show us a better life, and we will defend democracy without being asked. But our leaders, civilians and military alike, are not interested in better lives. They prefer better convoys. They fly off on foreign trips to “woo investors” while wooing comfort. They commission statues of themselves and host banquets for failure. They celebrate trivialities while the nation bleeds, like the ever-entertaining Governor Amuneke, who mistakes theatrics for governance. And we are told to wait. To keep faith. To defend a democracy that will not defend us. What, then, is democracy without justice, without equality, without trust? It is what we have: a stage play where the actors forget their lines, but the audience keeps clapping because there is no other show in town.

So, when the coupists come, as Abimbola fears, we already know who should greet them. Professor Mahmood Yakubu will lead the parade, ballot box in one hand, PVCs in the other. Festus Okoye will trail behind, issuing press statements about how democracy must be preserved, even as it gasps its final breath. And when the prison gates open, Professor Peter Ogban will march out, pardoned and proud, ready to teach a masterclass on “Elections and Integrity”.

Yes, these are the true defenders of democracy, its midwives, morticians, and mourners rolled into one. The rest of us will watch, clap politely, and hope the bullets of history are well-aimed to hit their marks.

After all, it is those who destroyed democracy that must defend it. It is theirs, after all.