By Toyin Falola
In the previous part of this reflective piece, I have been able to show that the crisis of democracy in Nigeria cannot be resolved using institutional reforms alone. Although constitutional reform, integrity of elections, and robustness of public institutions are crucial, they cannot change the nature of a political culture that has always been informed by discrimination, distrust, and instrumentalist use of identities. While institutions can control political behaviour, they cannot necessarily nurture democratic disposition. This is why Prof. Jega’s keynote allows another and possibly deeper reflection, not only on how the Nigerian state should be governed, but also on the culture of citizenship that can sustain such governance.
A revival of democracy cannot merely be procedural and electoral but also moral and intellectual. It would be not just institutional but civilizational as well. The problem with this approach lies in how the moral and intellectual grounds of governance, as an intercultural enterprise founded on notions of trust, accountability, historical consciousness, and dedication to the common good of all, should be reconsidered. The major message of the keynote address lies in how important electoral integrity is. According to Jega, “good democratic governance… is an essential requirement for the progress and development of a modern nation-state.” Thus, ‘good democratic governance,’ and not merely ‘good governance’ in its narrow definition, is an essential requirement to catalyze socio-economic as well as sustainable development.
Elections are occasions when sovereignty is granted to people. With the loss of legitimacy of elections, there comes the decay of legitimacy of democracy itself. When elections become nothing more than theatrical performance prepared in advance, there is no more participation in civic affairs. But the integrity of elections must not be viewed merely as the efficient conduct of elections or the proper tallying of votes. These administrative measures are crucial but inadequate. The integrity of elections is a reflection of the ethics of the polity. Elections are fraudulent not only when institutions malfunction but when political agents decide to put expediency above integrity. And democracy requires something more than independent electoral commissions; it requires a citizenry that can recognize that integrity is a precondition for respect and obedience to the constitution. For many postcolonial democracies, the tragedy is that elections have turned into periods of existential struggle and not political debate. The office of politics has become one of the key means of accessing economic opportunities, safety, and influence. Therefore, to lose an election has become being excluded from society altogether. Such an atmosphere creates favourable conditions for identity politics as it gives people the language to transform their political fears into community action. Elections are no longer about political ideas but about fear. Discourse becomes dominated by stories of historical persecution, regional privilege, and religious insecurity.
In this sense, Jega’s address to the conference explicitly rejects this trend by arguing for issue-based politics that is founded on national rather than sectional interests. The suggestion that the “discourse of politics must be changed from identity to policy” bears special weight because this suggests shifting the focus of democracy to developmental issues. National progress is achieved not through homogenization but through negotiation among conflicting visions via institutions that enjoy trust among all actors involved. Yet, this move demands more than mere policy change; it demands a different kind of political imagination. Modern governance often presupposes that development is mainly measured in economic terms – gross domestic product, infrastructure, investment, or financial stability. This is valid, but African philosophy has traditionally considered development using different criteria: healthy communal relations, equal distribution of chances, defense of vulnerable individuals, and building harmony in society.
It is here that the decolonial significance of Jega’s lecture becomes especially apparent. Decolonization is often mistakenly reduced to recovering historical memory or critiquing colonialism. While both remain indispensable, decolonization also requires reconstructing the intellectual categories through which governance itself is imagined. The colonial state privileged hierarchy over participation, administration over dialogue, and control over reciprocity. Democratic renewal therefore demands not merely institutional continuity under indigenous leadership but an epistemic departure from inherited colonial rationalities.
The future of Africa must not be born from epistemic dependency. There exist intellectual traditions in Africa that can help in the creation of new theories on democracy. The consultations, consensus building, mediation, restoration of justice, and communal accountability are the practices that can once again be studied academically. These practices should neither be glorified nor be neglected; they have to engage with constitutional democracy to shape the future of Africa in terms of democratic values. The concept of pluriversality will assist us in recognizing the importance of the most promising idea contained in the keynote address, that is, plurality as a strategic advantage and not political weakness.
According to Jega, “Nigeria’s diversity should be seen not as a fault line to be managed but as a strategic strength to be exploited.” Obviously, this statement rejects the deficit model of thinking that has been prevalent regarding African plurality. Plurality becomes a problem when there are no mechanisms for accommodating multiple identities as equals. This conclusion is amply justified by historical precedent. African civilizations have not been culturally monolithic throughout history. Trade routes have linked disparate peoples across many decades; migrations allowed for the cultural exchanges that took place alongside competition; religions intersected through accommodation as well as rivalry; multilingualism existed without engendering political conflict. Difference has historically been negotiated rather than eradicated. Our current fixation on clear-cut boundaries around identities has more to do with the breakdown of continuity inherent in the disruptions introduced by colonial classifications and post-colonial politics than anything else. Citizenship must therefore be made the main political identity in democratic states. But citizenship cannot merely be constitutional citizenship.
Citizenship must become ethical citizenship, a disposition based on mutual recognition, civic duty and public accountability. Citizens must see themselves not just as passive recipients of government policies, but also as active participants in democracy itself. The wisdom of the African proverb is very useful here to understand this perspective of ethics. For instance, for the Akan people, it is commonly known that the village thrives if everybody takes part in the construction of the roof. As is obvious from the proverb, it reflects a certain political axiom according to which the work of governance cannot be delegated to politicians alone.
To maintain democracy, the contribution of teachers, journalists, historians, religious leaders, students, entrepreneurs, civil society organizations, and average citizens is needed. Nations fall not just due to the failure of their leaders but due to the disintegration of civic virtues. At the same time, the keynote gives us an opportunity to think about the place of the scholar in all of this process. Universities play an important role in democratic societies, being responsible for critical thinking and historical memory. Consequently, academic scholarship must not become abstract speculation or propaganda. Historians, political scientists, sociologists, philosophers, and jurists have a responsibility to develop what can be called “democratic literacy.”
The need is especially pressing at a time when the digital age brings disinformation, polarization through algorithms, and fragmenting public discussion. Historically uninformed citizens are vulnerable to manipulative politics. People ignorant about the historical process of federalism, constitutional development, colonial administration, or interethnic cooperation are vulnerable to simple explanations that make up enemies in order to blame them for national problems instead of acknowledging governance failings. For these reasons, history goes beyond being an academic subject; it becomes a vital tool of democracy.
One of the key points of the lecture is his optimistic perspective. Even in providing such an unforgiving analysis of governance problems in Nigeria, he refuses to fall into a fatalistic attitude. He assumes throughout that institutional reform, good governance, civic engagement, and accountability are possible. This is not to say that such an optimistic perspective can be considered naïve. It is instead a belief in the role of historical agency, that is, that people are neither prisoners of their past nor automatically released from it.
Jega’s final appeal can be seen as a call for a reassessment of the project of democracy in Nigeria from the perspectives of history, ethics, and citizenship. If identity politics continues to serve as the subject matter of the lecture, then its true essence lies in the moral framework of governance. Identity takes on dangerous overtones when the system of democratic governance fails to harness diversity through the processes of justice, inclusion, and accountability. For Nigeria, the issue is not one of obliterating diversity but rather developing democratic cultures that can harness diversity and convert it into a source of strength.
