The State of Democracy in West Africa

Full Transcript:

Introduction: 

Hello and welcome to the Rules of the Game podcast, where it is my job to discuss and compare democratic institutions.

What comes to your mind when you hear democracy? Many people lose faith in democracy because in many countries people feel pretty powerless even though they live in a system called democracy. But how can we make government systems more democratic? How can we build democratic institutions so that political power is shared, and more evenly distributed? These are the questions I ask on this podcast, and I’d like to find the answers talking to advocates of democracy all around the world.

With Idayat Hassan I discuss the state of democracies in West Africa. She is the Director of the Centre for Democracy and Development, an organization that is advocating for democratic reforms across the West African Region, and based in Abuja, Nigeria. The organization was founded in 1997 in London by Nigerians in Exile when Nigeria was still under military rule. But it relocated to Lagos when Nigeria made the important transition to a democratic regime in 1999. It has remained a bridge building institution between policymakers, civil society activists, and academics in West Africa ever since.

If Idayat Hassan could change one institution in her home country Nigeria, it would be to strengthen the whole system of Federalism, to give local governments more autonomy, and more decision making power. What currently worries her is the reemergence of Coup d’Etats across Western Africa that make politics less predictable, and destroy democratic principles. She elaborates how the situation has been developing in recent times.

An institution that the Centre is advocating for is the proportional representation electoral system that would get rid of the zero-sum politics, and allow emerging political parties to gain fair representation in parliament. Yet, proportional representation has received very little attention in the region so far.

Idayat Hassan is a lawyer and has held fellowships in universities across Europe and the United States. Idayat received her bachelor’s degree in law from the Lagos State University, and she holds an LL.M. in legal theory from the European Academy of Legal Theory, based in Brussels. Her interests span democracy, peace and security, transitional justice, and information and communications technology for development in West Africa. Idayat frequently appears in international and local media as an expert on the region and is regularly quoted in the BBC, Washington Post, The Economist, Radio France Internationale,, Deutsche Welle and many more.

I am your host, Stephan Kyburz, and this is the thirty-third episode of The Rules of the Game podcast. I am a political economist with a PhD in Economics from the University of Bern in Switzerland. And I previously held positions at the London School of Economics and Political Science and the Center for Global Development.

You find a full transcript of this episode on my website rulesofthegame.blog. I am always curious to hear your opinion, so please send me an email to [email protected]. A great way to support my podcast is to leave a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. So if you want to do me a favor please rate the podcast and your favored platform. If you find my discussions interesting and you’d like to support my work, consider buying me a coffee at buymeacoffee.com and you find the link to it on my website rulesofthegame.blog. 

Please enjoy this wide ranging conversation with Idayat Hassan.

Discussion:

Stephan Kyburz: Idayat Hassan, welcome to the Rules of the Game podcast. I’m very happy to have you on the show.

Idayat Hassan: Oh, thank you very much for the invite. It’s a pleasure.

Stephan Kyburz: My first question as always is what is your first memory of democracy or of politics in general?

Idayat Hassan: I think my first memory when it comes to democracy was really watching my parents vote in the 1993 presidential elections. It was quite interesting because the kind of joy, the glee, the way people went to vote in that elections, as a child, it was definitive. It was definitive, because they kept describing to us how much it was of open ballots, open secret ballots. People queuing behind the candidate, behind the photograph of their candidates. Also, all debates and the excitement that went around it. Even though I was a child, it was quite striking. And it became more striking particularly when that election, which was just, free, fair and credible, even 30 years after it was annulled and the struggle for democracy then began. And of course by the time we would return to military rule. We would end the military rule, I was already out of high school. And that was a long walk again. As a teenager watching every day people protesting on the streets, people asking for the actualization of the […] of mandate, the labour union extremely active, compared to now. It gets to the extent where eventually an election was conducted in 1999. That was really, really instructive, and that was really instructive and striking because I saw what they called like the free, fair, credible elections. Even though I may not have been able to make so much sense of it, the peace. Then, I saw from that peace to a whole several years from 1993 of course to 1999, in between over 5 years of so much protests, killings, looting, almost division of a country, agitation. You know this real agitation, and of course as a child I took a part in it. Not really as being on the barricade but using my pen to write on the pages of newspapers, what they call the kiddies’ corner in those days, to now finally see democracy and to now work in terms of deepening democracy. So it’s been a process and it’s been a very interesting process for me personally.

Stephan Kyburz: Yeah, thanks for sharing this memory and 1999 was really a monumental moment right for Nigeria’s democracy and with a transition to a democratic regime from an authoritarian regime. And the organization you are the director of is the Centre for Democracy and Development, and it was actually founded prior to that, in 1997. And how do you feel like you know the constitution of 1999? How has it been working for Nigeria so far? What do you think of – if you look back – the constitution really established new institutions of democracy. How do you think about the constitution now?

Idayat Hassan: I think it’s been an interesting time when you look at it, that the CDD was established in 1999 [1997]. As a centre of excellence to mobilize global opinions towards democratization, not just in Nigeria but on the continent, and it was set up by a group of African exiles in London living in the United Kingdom. And when you look at it, a lot has actually changed, a lot has changed because people like myself who were not parts of the process, we were just like kids those days, are now at the helms of affairs, which has shown you that there has been a movement. I think basically also is the old talk about constitutions, constitutionalism which was one of the pillars, which they laid their work in 1997, and continued the work immediately upon the return to democracy in 1999. And CDD established a presence in Nigeria. One of the first things they put on the table is the need to have a citizens’ constitution. And they held the first roundtable with all the senior government officials, including the attorney general and the minister of justice in presence, to agitate for this and this eventually led to the establishment of a Citizens’ Forum on Constitutional Reform that even drafted a citizens’ constitution. And in all this period we have agitated, we have mobilized, we have advocated. We have done research, looking at what is working and what is not actually working in the constitution of Nigeria and we have actually seen some progress. There has been some progress in terms of some things changing even when you look at the electoral laws. Previously, there was nothing against you displaying partisan loyalty to be an electoral commissioner in Nigeria. But by the 2010 amendment of the constitution, of the 1999 constitution was amended, it became actually unlawful to actually have partisan loyalty. We’ve looked at it to even the way of revenue sharing mobilization who gets what? It’s been advocated for, but there were still some very critical issues while a lot has been made in terms of electoral reform concretely in Nigeria, other thorny issues, particularly in terms of defining what true federalism really is, addressing local governments and the real essence of what decentralization entails. How to bring about transparency and accountability into the old local governance system? All these are parts of issues missing aside from the issues of gender citizenship, which are core issues that affect Nigerians on a daily basis. And I’ll tell you that these are issues, because when people call us, so Nigeria is the poverty capital of the world, you cannot address the issue of poverty, unless you make local governments work for the poor. But the laws establishing local government, the law that gives its functions, the law that talks about how monies and resources should actually be shared between the states and the local government, they all remain the same way they have been since 1999. And these are just few examples. But I guess that as a people, we cannot continue but to agitate. I think the gender issue is also something that is very close to the hearts of many Nigerians, inclusive of myself as a woman. What do we talk in terms of a law, the grand norm of the country which is the constitution, not according the same right to both men and women. One, the constitution itself does not adopt a gender neutral language. Secondly, it does not accord the same rights to women and men in terms of transferring citizenship of the country. And you can find that this is very problematic because when you look at Nigerians all over the world, they are migrants, or immigrants, they are moving from one place to the other. Either because of their expertise, also even marrying and intermarrying among races, even to get the citizenship particularly like that. It will not be an anomaly to be a Nigerian woman, married to a foreigner and you cannot accord the same right of citizenship on your husband. You will have to still go through the normal route of naturalization which is fifteen years after. The same goes to the indigeneity principles itself, which means that I’m Idayat from Lagos, but I’m married to somebody from Kogi, or else any Kaduan, any part of this country, I cannot claim citizenship, I cannot claim indigeneship of that state. So anything I want either academically, politically or even for the kids, I have to go  back to my state of origin. And I think this is one of the most interesting and the most engaged aspects of the ongoing constitutional amendment program, with women trooped to the streets for like one month protesting to have these same laws, which keeps reinforcing the patriarchal nature of our country. But of course at the level of the parliament, it was voted against, all the 5 bills, that would have accorded women the same rights, including that of affirmative action.

Stephan Kyburz: If you could change one institution, what institution would you change, or where do you think is the most leverage to get in Nigeria? Is it like the local level or is it at the national level, or what if you could just rule that sense, and change an institution, what would we be?

Idayat Hassan: I think it would be all the essence of what federalism actually means in Nigeria. It’s not just about one institution. It’s really about defining this whole concept of federalism. Yes, we do know that federalism is an important concept and the way of administration has got to be localized or contextualized with local nuances. So we cannot transpose the Swiss federalism, nor can we transpose that of the American federalism to our home context. Before our context we have to make it work which talks about the institutions itself. So how are the subnationals relating with the federal government? Then should it be so federal centric, like it’s already central then it’s overtly centric, leaving little powers to the other federating units. Then the other layer of the federal unit, which is the state, again they do a power grab without allowing it to trickle down to the local government system where citizens really are itself. So addressing the core issues of federalism means that you will not just get the executive properly working. You will not just get the legislature working effectively. But even the judiciary, because you have a way of separation of powers, checks and balances, more importantly, making government governance work for the poor by strengthening the local government system itself.

Stephan Kyburz: So currently the states are quite powerful, right, relative to the local government? So you agree that the local governments should be strengthened and have more autonomy, is that right? 

Idayat Hassan: Exactly! So you need to have the local governments have more autonomy. You also need to have the state governments to have autonomy, and of course at every layer. So it’s like a tyranny from all layers. So you have tyranny from the federal towards the states, the states to the local government and so on and so forth.

Stephan Kyburz: And looking a bit more broadly, so the Centre is really working in all of Western Africa. So it has a much broader scope than just Nigeria. In terms of looking at the whole region, what are the biggest challenges so far? How do you see democracy developing or what are the issues more broadly in the region?

Idayat Hassan: I think really on a regional basis, one of the most biggest challenge we have is democracy itself. So for quite a long time, we like to talk about democracy, we argue that the return to democracy, the rise of constitution and constitutionalism, the third wave of democratization in Africa started from West Africa with the Benin constitutional conference of 1991. That this was quite instructive and this makes us to be an outlier in all of Africa, and in the last decade or so also, we’ve had a series of elections. Elections have become the norm, not an exception, and by elections becoming the norm, not the exception, it’s also indicative that in several countries, we have seen sitting incumbents overturned in an electoral process, in Nigeria in 2015, in Ghana in 2016, where sitting presidents were defeated at the polls by the opposition. In Sierra Leone, in Liberia we also see ruling parties defeated during the elections. And Yahya Jammeh, the ousting of Yahya Jammeh, after he lost the elections, and he refused to go, the collective approach by both the national government and ECOWAS actually cemented the belief that democracy has actually come to stay. And that democracy will thrive in the region. Since 2020, the last two years, we have had a reversal, we are beginning to have a reversal of democracy through the return of coups d’etats. You may also recollect that previously, West Africa was judged the most coup prone area, region in the world, having recorded the most numbers of coups. And we said we have zero tolerance for unconstitutional change of government. But again, we are back to coups d’etats. So in the last couple of years we have had coups d’etats in Mali. Then we have what’s after the 2020 coup d’etats in Mali, we witnessed again what they call the coup d’Etat rectification, the rectification of another coup, which we have seen in Burkina Faso, a first coup d’etat in January, and just last month in October, we had a rectification coup or whatever. No, that was not a rectification coup, a coup d’etats by another set of putschists led by Ibrahim Traory. Again, we have seen coup d’etat in Guinea Conakry as well. Aborted coup d’etat in Guinea Bissau, the same also in Niger Republic ahead of the presidential swearing-in, after the elections in 2020. Put together, I think this is worrying. We are talking about successful coups d’etats, and two unsuccessful coup d’etats, which gives us the basis really to worry that we are having a roll back of democracy. But we also need to interrogate why there is this roll back of democracy in the region. One, most of these coups d’etats are associated with fraud elections, and political reform processes. So you look at Guinea-Conakry, Alpha Condé himself pushed through an unconstitutional third term. Like he changed the constitution. He had a referendum during covid and he was able to put his tenure, put it back to 0. We say that you reverse, you do a reversal and you start counting, the clock starts counting again. Because the […] does not have retroactive effect. So they’re able to get away with that. Both in Guinea Conakry, which of course led to the ousting of Alpha Condé, in Togo, in Côte d’Ivoire, like these are anomalies. Then this kind of […] elections are also indicative. So in Mali, it was a combination of a disputed parliamentary election, plus included the insecurity pervading the country, not just northern Mali, all of a sudden, but even central Mali, that led citizens to troop to the street and protest against the […] government, which eventually gave the basis for the putschists to strike. So all the democratic indices, the failure of democracy to deliver development has become imminent. People are querying and questioning: what is the essence of democracy, even in the real sense? They have nothing to put actually on their table. They have absolutely nothing to put on their table. There is no food. But even if people are hungry, the least they desire is security. A democratic administration that is not able to secure the people again then becomes problematic. And when you look at most of these coups d’etats, successful coups d’etats, so citizens rise up in support of the putschists. It’s not that the demand for democracy is low in West Africa, there is a consistent demand and appreciation for democracy, as the way of governance, as the acceptable way. But today many people are even having conversations, where they have a sense that a transitional arrangement which is historical; in fact, since I started working in democracy, at least I have learned one thing this last one year, that the work of a putschist, after Tandja in Niger, after Mali in 2012, is basically just to organize elections. Not to do the work of administration. But you read all the transitional agreements reached by these people, they are searching to replace the work, to do and implement what a democratically elected administration should do, not to organize elections and exceed the same […]. And this is supported most times by citizens.

Stephan Kyburz: So the citizens, they want security, right? So that’s one element why sometimes you even see support for authoritarian ideas, right? And that’s why I think on the other side, it is so important to show that democracy actually can be stable and if the institutions are built in the right way then democracy can also stabilize. What’s your opinion on parliamentary and presidential systems? Do you see any connections between either of the two, coups d’etats, or stability in government. What is your opinion on those two systems of government?

Idayat Hassan: I think it’s really about how this system of government is actually implemented. It’s the institutionalization to […]. The difference, I think, the problem with West Africa is what is the difference between constitutional and constitutionalism. We do have a constitution, but how are those constitutions being implemented. They’ve been implemented more in omission than really in compliance. So it doesn’t really make a lot of difference when you talk about parliamentary or presidential systems. It’s really about the quality of leadership that is very, very important. And even this leadership, the kind of respect they do have for the citizen, and the norms that are there, both at the regional level and at the sub-regional level, to hold them to account.

Stephan Kyburz: And so you have also worked a lot recently on disinformation and the media landscape. Disinformation is also a huge problem. Can you quickly elaborate what is the focus also of your Centre in this regard?

Idayat Hassan: So interestingly at the Centre for Democracy and Development, since 2017 we started working on disinformation because we discovered that that was actually one of the biggest challenges to democracy itself, the information disorder is just […] on democracy, on the corrupt, and the quality, and it has been exploited by different actors and we decided to work, not just in Nigeria, or not just fact checking and civic literacy, but really in terms of gathering everything, of what exactly is actually happening in this ecosystem. And there were very important findings that we have. And I think I should put it out there that, while in other parts of the world people still see social media not as positive, I think in Africa, in West Africa where I work, social media continues to also have its own positives. Because we have actually used it to hold elected officials accountable. We have used it to change policy. We have used it to organize as civic actors really in terms of informing citizens’, in terms of advocating. So it has its positives, but it also has got its negatives, which is more in terms of the online manipulation of information, and how it is actually enabling digital authoritarianism. But the story of disinformation in West Africa would not be complete without saying that while social media is very important, there is a link, there is a bloodline between the online and the offline. So it builds on each other. It reinforces each other. What is on social media of course gets taken into the offline space, on one phone, most times are colleagues, and on the tech platform we say what’s is the internet penetration? So far so good we have just like 17 plus [percent] internet penetration. In West Africa very few countries have 50% internet penetration. How many phones are there in the hands of the people. But one phone, one single phone can actually work as a pavement radio where people can share, where people can listen to disinformation. Secondly, is the fact that it doesn’t work in isolation. It builds on pre-existing narrative, nuances, cleavages in society, and this is what makes it really believable. But the real problem is that the scope has increased. The techniques that are being used. It’s a multiplicity of techniques we have seen. And at the same time we are having a proliferation of actors involved in it. So I aside from our domestic disinformation, we do have it also that it is profit oriented. So businesses are involved. And of course West Africa is the role foreign disinformation is playing in West Africa is becoming bigger with each passing day. And this foreign disinformation is not just limited to Russia, China. We are seeing countries like Iran, Saudi Arabia, and more Golf countries are playing, even inclusive of France, on our continent. So here in the region, so we have become a launch pad, where we have seen people weaponize or organize disinformation to interfere in the American elections, the U.S. elections of 2020, operating from Nigeria and Ghana. At the same time it is a grey zone for people to test strategies, which they will actually utilize in other parts of the country. Aside from what is actually being consumed here, how the supremacy war, that we are finding amongst nations operating in our own information ecosystem with Mali, Central African Republic being one of several examples where we have actually seen that really happen. So it’s actually a bigger problem and the problem really why we worry a lot about disinformation, is that there is a need to protect democracy in this digital age. And you cannot protect democracy if you do not deal with the issue of disinformation, which is tricky pinning democracy of what it actually entails. So It is not just being used in elections to confuse voters, to delegitimize candidates and electoral management bodies, just as few examples. But it also reinforces this gender inequality we have, as people are taking what is already prevalent in our culture from the offline space into the online spaces. In the same way, it has been engendering conflict, we already acclaim that insecurity is one of the big challenges we’re actually facing in the subregion currently. But here in terms of insecurity, even beyond the state actors using it to disinform people, we are seeing non-state actors such as Boko Haram, or the Katibat Macina using the same information to bring a form of superiority of their strategy, of their statements to citizens. Aside from the fact that its spikes violence, in Jos, in Plato state, Nigeria, we had seen how social media messages led to the outbreak of violence. The same we saw in Cote d’Ivoire with one person dead and a market destroyed just by the instrumentalization of disinformation, in this regard. Then it’s been used during strong authoritarianism, and I think that would be my final point, aside from several things disinformation is dangerous. Authoritarians, illiberal governments themselves are using disinformation to pass around the message that democracy is not necessarily the ideal type of government, at times maybe in conflict situations. And that the all idea, the precept of democracy, which is what we hold dear to our hearts, the doctrine of separation of powers, when you look at the fact, and the institutions of government, when you look at the legislature will make laws, and the executives will implement, the judiciary will interpret the laws. That all these processes itself are so time consuming, unlike what an autocrat could do. With information of how some countries, foreign countries like China, Russia have been able to lift people out of poverty or they have been able to manage insecurity. While authoritarian governments, local, national authoritarian governments also use this narrative. They weaponize it to prop themselves up. After the Guinea Conakry coups d’etats, the putschists did not approach the radio station to make the announcement first. The first sign that there was a successful coup d’etat was actually the message they shared on Whatsapp. Of the downcast[?] of Alpha Condé from that to a message from Colonel Doumbouya on it, before they then went to the national radio station to actually make a formal announcement. At the same time in Mali, they presented the coup as a “fait accompli” after they started showing how all the diplomats were going to pay a visit to them immediately after the coup d’etat in 2020, watching it on Twitter. It was just like oh they have actually become acceptable who is there to really talk about it. And these are some of several ways where disinformation, how disinformation is weaponized in the region.

Stephan Kyburz: It’s fascinating that even authoritarian forces, they realize how important Whatsapp is compared to Radio in this case, that they announce first through Whatsapp channels that the regime has changed and only later going to the radio. I’d like to come back one more time to the main institutions of parliament and that is the electoral law. And I would just be interested to hear from you, what’s your opinion on like most countries in Western Africa using a first past-to-post system in single-seat districts, a plurality voting system that usually favors the bigger parties, the parties in power. And it’s quite hard to challenge that power right from the outset. So how do you see that political competition using this type of electoral law compared to a more proportional electoral system? Is that something you discuss in the Centre or do you have an opinion on this question?

Idayat Hassan: I think for us as a Centre for Democracy and Development, we have also noted that to be a problem because what it does is that it instills. We already have a zero-sum political system, but what it does, it keeps reinstilling it, where people see that it’s elections are not just to serve people, it’s actually a war. It’s he who gets everything at that point that will be able to enjoy the look of office for the next 4-5 years. And I think it’s a challenge. It’s a challenge that we really have to address and I think one of our agitations, our advocacy has actually been to move towards the proportional representation system, so that we would be able to find a solution to the zero-sum political system which is currently obtainable. But there is not so much really in terms of support for this kind of system here because you are talking, it’s more like a war, you just want to emasculate people.You want to strip them of the power that makes them extremely important at this point in time. And I do not think at any point, they are really interested in terms of getting off this, letting go of the powers that they do have. And most of the constitutional arrangements, at a point in time in 2015, we were having like 6 countries going through constitutional amendment processes in West Africa. In the last three years too, we have had like 4 countries go through the constitutional amendment process. While this process continues to go on and it’s actually […], one thing it has never done at any point in time, is its ability to address core issues that affect people. So most of these are more self-serving for the leaders than really for the people.

Stephan Kyburz: I’m glad to hear that proportional representation is also something you work on in the centre. I’m a huge advocate of proportional representation, because I think it makes the political system more balanced, and it is better for political competition. So that emerging parties have more chances to actually get into parliament and it reduces that zero-sum nature of political competition. Because I think that zero-sum nature, it’s one of either party that gets most of the power, and I think that’s quite an obstacle to finding solid political solutions. That’s why I always want to talk a lot about proportional representation on my podcast. And I think many cases around the world show actually how it can change the nature of politics in general.

Stephan Kyburz: My last question is what are your book recommendations? If you could recommend articles or books to the audience, what would that be with regard to your work or maybe also more generally.

Idayat Hassan: I think that one, to really understand the role the digital plays in West Africa, I’d like to recommend “Whatsapp and Everyday Life in West Africa: Beyond Fake News”, this is a new publication I co-edited with my colleague Jamie Hitchen, that gives an idea to how Whatsapp it’s actually been mobilized, it’s been utilized in West Africa, either from the level of the charge, how it’s been used for trading process, how it’s been used for political processes and or the what nots that goes beyond fake news itself. That is quite illuminating because we had case studies of even how churches, evangelical churches are utilizing this book itself. I think that’s a very good one to read.

Stephan Kyburz: I’ll definitely link to your book and also to the work of the Centre for Democracy and Development. Is there any other book that comes to mind?

Idayat Hassan: Yes, the second one I really love and I keep reading like all the time is “Democracy In Decline?” by Larry Diamond and Marc F. Plattner, and Condoleezza Rice, with Condoleezza Rice having written the foreword. It’s a book of all time considering that in that book we have like eight scholars debate the future of democracy in the world. I think another book that I really do love is “Democracy in Africa” written by Nic Cheeseman. That’s also like an old book, but it remains really instructive in terms of understanding democracy.

Stephan Kyburz: So just one more comment on looking forward to the Nigerian general election. What is your hope or your worry for the election? It’s coming up very soon in about a hundred days.

Idayat Hassan: The election is mixed bag. One, it’s positive in the sense that for these elections we do have lots of excitements, and lots of agitation. A lot of excitement, positive enough, particularly by the young people. And when we also look at the numbers of registered, the new registrants on the voters lists, around 70% percent are young people, which is indicative and which might show that they might do have an impact on who emerges as president, especially if they go out to vote. The second and very important issue is that these elections are also very difficult elections besides the positive. One is because of the [..] insecurity pervasive in six geopolitical zones of the country. The fact that all of a sudden people have become not ideologically oriented the way we talk about ideology, but populist politics is also playing out. And with the role disinformation plays, with the frustration of the people, and the lack of knowledge of how winners emerge. It could actually lead to be one of the most contested elections. And if care is not taken, the possibility of a post-election violence is something that we would not preclude from happening in these elections.

Stephan Kyburz: Thanks a lot for that assessment. Let’s hope that it will be a safe and fair election! And yeah, Idayat Hassan, I thank you very much for having taken the time to be a guest on the podcast. I enjoyed the conversation very much and it was very insightful. Thank you.

Idayat Hassan: Oh thank you very much, Stephan. It’s a pleasure and I really enjoyed the podcast.

Outro:

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