Discipline and Accountability under Democratic Leadership By Major General

Text of address by General Muhammadu Buhari at the Student Democratic Forum Lecture at Abdullahi Smith Lecture Theatre, Ahmadu Bello University Main Campus Samaru, Zaria Saturday, July 20th, 2002 at 10.00 a.m.

Forwarded by Babayola Muhammadu Toungo workaids@alpha.linkserve.com

1. It is with great pleasure that I stand before you today. I would first of all, like to thank members of the Students' Democratic Forum for inviting me to talk on Discipline and Accountability under Democratic Leadership.

2. The importance of this topic for present day Nigeria cannot be overemphasized. Indeed so important are the two, i.e. democracy and accountability, meaning, unless they are there, democracy will not be able to deliver any of its expected dividends. The topic coheres well enough and most appropriate for us today. Accountability, so to speak, is a form of self-discipline, and, while it is possible to be accountable without democracy, it is impossible to be democratic without accountability. I therefore understand from the topic of my talk that you want me to tell you what makes democracy tick.

3. When we talk of democratic leadership we usually mean representative, responsible government i.e. a government freely elected by the people and is truly responsible to them. Let's agree at the outset that, whatever the ideology in question, we recognize democracy as perhaps the best, form of government today, provided we agree on a definition of what democracy truly means. As Reinhold Niebuhr rightly observed "Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary."

4. The democratic system itself is in reality a culture, i.e. a culture of elections, rights, obligations, checks and balances. Like all cultures, it requires believing in, nurturing, tending and participation.

The most prominent aspect of democratic governance is the development of a democratic civil culture that sets out, and itself obeys, the rules and practices that characterizes the ability of a people to govern themselves according to constitutional provisions. In short subjecting everything to the rule of law.

In theory, which we must translate into practice, the democracy that Nigeria needs is one that is founded on periodic, free and fair elections; and in it, the majority rules while the rights of the minority, are respected and guaranteed by law. It should be anchored on the independence of the judiciary, freedom of faith, expression, association and aspirations. All these must be based on the principle of the rule of law, due process and the equality of all persons before the law.

5. The functioning of this democracy must be based on the concept of the demarcation of powers, with adequate checks and balances to guard against the arbitrary exercise of power and ensure accountability in governance. And here we might as well paraphrase Reinhold; and, for our purposes, say:

"Man's capacity for accountability makes democracy possible but man's inclination to corruption and lack of accountability makes democracy unnecessary." Essentially, therefore, democracy is about making the leadership accountable to the people and the people themselves disciplined.

6. It is an understatement to say that there has been a clear lack of accountability in the conduct of public affairs in this country. The public service, as the executive agency of the government of the day at various levels thus, federal, state and local levels, wields enormous powers, where the government of the day allows it to function within the normal guidelines and regulations laid.

Nowadays, this power is wielded with much arbitrariness and abuse of procedure. In the democracy Nigerians are asked to practice and which we are being told is the one being practiced; the public is entitled to know what policies, activities and development projects are approved by the appropriate agency. In addition, the people must have access to the estimates made for public expenditure in order to ensure that expenditures of public funds are limited by approved estimates.

Even when all these transactions have been carried out lawfully, the public is entitled to demand that they must be properly kept in the appropriate books of accounts and independently audited and accounted for.

Whether this is being done in the very democracy we are practising today; is a big question that I will like to leave the answer to the public.

7. As I observed on a different occasion, the last time the annual financial account of the Federal Government were prepared and submitted for audit was, I understand, in 1980. And at the 1984 conference of Auditors-General of the Federation and State's Directors of Audit, it was revealed, to the astonishment of no one, that eleven states last submitted their annual accounts for audit in 1967! During the tenure of our government 1984-85 we instituted a programme to update audited accounts and publish them. But, as usual, this was soon forgotten away by the Nigerian penchant for lack of implementation and follow-up.

There must to be consistency in policy planning and clarity in stating policy objectives so that we always know what we are doing and why. This can only be done if we have a purposeful public service in place. No doubt, recent events have badly dented the service, but this situation is not irreparable or irreversible.

For our democracy to succeed and the regime of accountability to prevail, Nigeria's public service must rediscover itself. It must find its way back to the pre-1966 Golden Age.

8. Today the lack of accountability has, for instance, helped to create wide distortions of income distribution throughout the society.

And because little is being done to the culprits, this has also fueled the scramble for appointments, especially to executive positions, which, because of the same lack of accountability, enable their occupants to do as they please.

The mad rushes for the presidency, and the unending clamour for its rotation among the zones, derive directly from the rich pickings which lack of accountability confers on it. This is a very serious matter, which ought to be remedied.

But more serious are going to be some of the longer-term after-effects on the younger generation that did not know that at one time a system of accountability existed in this land. But simply knowing this without doing anything about it is unlikely to help our nation. The prosperity that embezzlement and other fraudulent practices conferred, especially in the recent past, is a direct result of this failure to investigate and punish.

In general, corruption and every aspect of lack of accountability benefits from the fact that ours is a nation that doesn't ask the right questions. But in some instances, there is no need to ask questions because the evidence talks louder than words. However, whether questions are asked or not, we all know that in no distance past many public officers controlling votes, awarding contracts or belonging to task forces enforcing any kind of law became lords unto themselves.

They did as they pleased, generated revenues for themselves and their families, and they competed with each other in erecting mansions and indulging in conspicuous consumption - with money largely derived from public sources. And many still do.

9. Moral absolutes that used to be the pegs on which our society's values were anchored had, by design and default, been abandoned, so totally that one could, with justification, wonder whether it would ever prove possible to revive public morality. Neither the hold of religious precepts, nor the sanction of public shame, nor yet the eyes of society, or the fear of the penalties nor even secular civic pride or the plain responsibility of being just human would make people behave according to the rules and follow laid down procedure. The fact remains that we will not overcome these manifold problems by mere act of democratizing. Of course democracy is not an end in itself.

It is only a means to an end, which for us is good, representative, responsible governance and its other dividends. Certainly not the type of dividends our ears are daily fed with today.

And if Nigerians want to fully realize the gains of democracy which I believe they do; people must be ready to play according to the rules, and pay the price required. They must be their own watchdogs and guard against the many forces that look capable of subverting the system.

"That people naturally prefer freedom to oppression can indeed be taken for granted," said Chester Finn, Jr., "but that is not the same as saying that democratic political systems can be expected to create and maintain themselves over time. On the contrary, the idea of democracy is durable, but its practice is precarious."

10. In Nigeria it is not just voter-apathy that threatens democracy and responsible governance. It is what, for want of a better term, I call system-apathy. At one extreme end people are impatient - they don't have sufficient patience to play according to the rules of the system; while at the other extreme end, they are too patient (docile is the word) to accept any determined corrupt money-bag to produce election result he wants in any constituency in the country today.

So much so that this docility has turned corrupt public officers into statesmen. We should all be worried enough to want to do something about it. The first antidote against such subversion is to ensure that elections are free and fair, and representative of the popular will. But that is not enough to deliver the goods. The leader elected must have what it takes and have vision for the polity and be a person of integrity. The leader must be able to communicate and have a proper sense of history; but, above all, he must be ready to lead by example.

In addition, what our country needs in its leader now is astuteness in crisis leadership and courageous enough to confront corruption head on.

11. The second antidote is to have effective checks and balances to curb arbitrariness and any creeping despotism in the leader. These checks, which ought to emanate from several different sources, must be patriotic and strong enough to deter the most determined dictator. Firstly, there must be a return to the party supremacy and discipline of the first and second republics. The leader elected must be loyal to his party and its programmes; and be respectful to its by-laws. This is very important since the electorate normally elects on the strength of party programmes; and without this type of respect for party supremacy the leader becomes an unguided missile let loose among the people.