With a 40-day period of mourning having elapsed following the untimely death of Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem on Africa Liberation Day, Kayode Fayemi looks back on the life and work of the great Pan-Africanist activist and scholar. Highlighting his extraordinary energy and compassion for ordinary people, Fayemi salutes Tajudeen's unfaltering commitment to speaking truth to power. Looking back on an array of institutional, activist and scholarly achievements, Fayemi points out that while Africa may have lost one its brightest gems, Tajudeen will forever remain a symbol and inspiration for ongoing struggles.

Where does the intersection between activism and politics take place? Kayode Fayemi explores this sometimes complex relationship in the context of Nigeria’s fractured political landscape. He concludes: “I believe we can revive the State in a qualitative manner and make democracy more meaningful to our people, provide jobs for the jobless, improve healthcare, modernise agriculture and reclaim our young people from a future of violence, decadence and despair by linking activism to politics and not drawing artificial divisions.”

The topic of my presentation this afternoon gives the impression that there is a difference between activism and politics, and that it requires moving from one to the other. If one follows this line of thought, one might be tempted to assume that the two – politics and activism – are mutually exclusive. There have always been attempts both in recent times and in our not so recent past to make a distinction between those who stand at the barricades seeking change in their quest for a better society and those who wield power in politics in defence of the State. Indeed, theories have been propounded about State-society relations deepening the difference between civil society and political society. Activists are often seen as occupying the moral high ground, irrepressible in their campaign for what they believe in, often living in utopia in the quest of the unattainable and generally cantankerous and obstinate in the pursuit of their beliefs. On the other hand, politicians are seen to be janus-faced – on the one hand, charismatic, visionary, fascinating and sophisticated, and on the other, repulsive, cynical, calculating, and opportunistic. My own interest this afternoon is really not to indulge in any deep philosophical or political arguments about these distinctions many of which you are familiar with but to simply explore – based on my limited experience, the possibilities of harmony in this pseudo-dichotomy – to explain that this pattern of categorizing people is at best a luxury, and at worst irrelevant in our own setting.

I am going to suggest that this pseudo-divide of activism and politics has impeded our abilities to connect with each other and work together towards a more positive future. I am convinced that the structuring of actors on the basis of either/or, and us/them with one of the other being valued more leads to domination and we need to really try as much as possible to avoid such separation and fragmentation and work towards community and cohesion. Consequently, I intend to argue that politics – properly conducted - is a form of social activism and another stage in the struggle to restore the dignity of humankind – an integrated continuum rather than discretely compartmentalised oppositional phenomena, often complicated and contradictory, but mostly in the quest to make a fundamental difference.

Activists have always occupied that realm between the household and the State, populated by voluntary groups and associations, sharing common interests and largely autonomous from the State, but often promoting core values that are consistent with what the State ought to stand for – participatory involvement, transparency, accountability, openness, ownership, legitimacy, equality of opportunities and respect for fundamental human rights.

Many people always ask activists and politicians the same question: Why, with all the callings in this world that could perhaps earn one considerable social, financial and personal security, would anyone want to go into something like activism or politics, particularly in a setting as dangerous as Nigeria, unless one has a death wish? The unvarnished truth is that many activists and, I believe, even politicians love life too much to want to celebrate death. Many activists who make a transition into partisan politics have probably done so for the same reasons they embraced activism. It was not aimless boldness that drew many into activism. It was often a selfish desire to live their lives in freedom, peace and in a democracy that transformed ordinary folks into bold activists against all forms of oppression and in the service of their communities.

This is why perhaps the issue should not be one of transition from activism to politics, but the extent to which we are able to achieve citizen participation in our democracy. Our discussion should really focus more on the making of leaders and citizens in a good society because without direct citizen participation, the legitimacy of our political institutions will continue to decline. It is for this reason that I strongly believe that political leaders – be they politicians or activists should worry because their ability to lead effectively is being seriously undermined by the desertion of average citizens from the public space, deepening the crisis of legitimacy in our State. Yet, this lack of legitimacy cuts both ways. When we the people withdraw our trust in leaders or discountenance politicians, we make our democratic institutions less effective and risk making ourselves ungovernable.

While politics may have lost its edge globally - suffering a decline, apathy or disinterest, it is also true to say activism is on the rise in the form of single issues pressure groups which have continued to thrive around the world – whether in the form of campaigns like ‘Make Poverty History’ or in the promotion of an international rights regime in the form of an International Criminal Court or a fair trade regime in the world.

Yet even these popular campaigns still suffer from certain limitations in a world that is essentially statist and in which citizens’ rights are better protected locally, even if we subscribe to universal ideals. In our case, it is the belief that another Nigeria is possible – one that embraces democracy, fairness, equity and justice and the possibility of saying what we like, write what we think, participate in the political process without fear of intimidation, make our votes count so that our views will matter. These are the beliefs that have continued to propel the activists that I know in the struggle for a better society.

But let me back up a little and locate this discourse within the context of our recent history in Nigeria as it concerns the relationship between activism and politics in Nigeria. Many will recall that with the sudden demise of the dictator, General Sani Abacha in June 1998, things had begun to look up for the country. We saw the end of military dictatorship in sight. Those of us who were involved in the campaign to restore the mandate of Chief MKO Abiola, the winner of the annulled election of 1993 had expected that it was only a matter of time for Abiola to be installed as President and for him to convene a sovereign national conference. Our focus at the time was not elections, but the institutionalisation of a fundamental restructuring of the Nigerian state and the strategy in the democracy movement was to put pressure on the new military leadership to release Abiola and install him as President. The new military leader, General Abdul-Salami Abubakar was seen as a common sense choice amid a largely obdurate military clique determined to maintain the status quo.

Clearly under pressure locally and on the international scene, he made every effort to win the confidence of the civil society movement by releasing jailed leaders and requesting exiles to return home. And then, all of a sudden Chief Abiola died and this threw us into a deeper quandary in the democracy movement and the country tilted on the precipice. To arrest the religious and ethnic polarisation that had surfaced, General Abubakar went for elections, even at a time that many felt the national question had gone beyond simply organising elections and putting people in authority. Yet, because the military was so despised, the decision coupled with the sudden death of the most legitimate arrowhead of our struggle increased the urge for anything but the military, a mood which we shared but which equally caught us unawares in the democracy movement.

In the ensuing confusion, the central question for us in the democracy movement was: should the democracy community and the human rights movement participate in, or boycott the transition programme announced by General Abubakar? After extensive deliberations, we agreed that the new dispensation required new strategies, which should reflect a balance between principle and pragmatism. Some expressed strong views that the democracy movement’s capacity to influence change would be severely limited if it decided to boycott the transition programme. Equally, others felt that getting involved in the military-directed transition would amount to a betrayal of the last bastion of the people’s defence against oppression – especially as the professional politicians were eager to return to business as usual with the military, without addressing the root cause of the governance crisis in the first place. In the end, there was no consensus on the way the pro-democracy movement should proceed and we only agreed that individuals could participate while letting political groups stay out of the fray.

My own sentiment was with the latter group since I believed that the path, players, processes and patterns of the transition adopted by General Abubakar could only result in neo-militarism rather than a civilian, democratic dispensation. At the time, many of us were fond of saying that the path we were treading was one of transition without transformation. We argued severally that it was wrong to suggest that any opening after Nigeria’s prolonged authoritarian rule was inherently irreversible and would lead to the deepening of democracy without interrogating the nature of the opening itself. We felt at the time that we needed to think more carefully about the implications of what we considered to be a staged-managed democratic transition, especially in a setting where the ethos, language, and character of public discourse remain completely militarised.

Looking back, the civil society leadership may have been correct to be cautious about embracing the military transition of 1999, but I now believe we were tactically wrong for completely eschewing participation in politics. The fact that the military had not responded to a full-scale defeat by the democracy movement could hardly be discounted in understanding the nature of post-military governance. The eventual dominance of the party hierarchy by retired military generals and civilians closely connected to them certainly set the tone for party formation and also resulted in authoritarian presidential governance. Essentially, the nature of that transition ensured a mere reconfiguration of the political space, rather than a transformation of politics.

Given this context, the eventual election of an ex-military General with significant support from the military constituency was seen by many of us in civil society as an extension of continued military rule. The fact that most of the governors elected (save in the South West) were all what we referred to derisorily at the time as “Abacha politicians” was further confirmation to some of us that we had no business being involved. Yet, even with all of this, we could have started the process of organising along political lines, rather than agonising about the dominance of these elements. After all, we were the ones who risked our lives to fight for the restoration of democracy in Nigeria – only to vacate the space when power was literally lying on the streets. Indeed, as Nigeria’s Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, recently noted,

“…one ceaseless complaint against the democratic movement is that its protagonists carried out this struggle at immense personal sacrifices of varying dimensions, only to hand over future responsibilities to proven reprobates and opportunists…whatever self retiring principles may have governed the impulses of a number of us in that struggle…we have indeed left the field to brigands, parasites and unworthy custodians of power and authority, including even collaborators, that is those who have not only made such struggles necessary in the first place, but contributed to our personal woes, and even stained their hands with the blood of our fallen comrades.” [1]

So, we ended up having a democracy without democrats and the result is clear before our very eyes. In spite of the current government’s best effort, the crisis of governance remains deep-seated. Yet, for many of our citizens – democracy was supposed to bring the end of military dictatorship in form and content; they hoped that it would bring greater involvement of ordinary people in politics, whether in state institutions or in civil society ones. They hoped for real and immediate dividends in employment, clean water, better shelter, accessible health care, improved education, reliable and consistent power supply, rehabilitated roads and food on the table. Beyond electoral democracy though, it was also obvious that the nation-state has become a source of unending conflict itself. Many Nigerians of unquestionable nationalist credentials had begun to question the very viability of Nigeria, especially if left in the hands of a centralised state. Constitutional reform was therefore seen as a major pivot for creating and sustaining democratic institutions that can address deepening conflict in Nigeria. To our people, the rising disquiet in the Niger Delta and other parts of Nigeria, for example, may not be a sign of a failing democracy but a sign of a maturing democracy that is conflictual and contradictory – which should find its own level through mediation, deliberation and negotiations.

Although the challenge of reforming the State is fundamentally structural, the issue of leadership – particularly how we conceptualise leadership is central to it. For too long, our political culture has perpetuated the myth that strong leaders can bring about change single-handedly – rather than convert the formal authority derived from their electoral mandate into a process of democratic renewal. In my own view, real leadership ought to involve motivating people to solve problems within their own communities, rather than reinforcing the over-lordship of the state over its citizens and to build and strengthen political institutions that can mediate between individual and group interests. The authoritarian residues of politics over the last seven years have achieved the purpose of turning many away from politics even if they are still active in their neighbourhood associations and their community projects. The main challenge of political leadership therefore is to reconnect democratic choices with people’s day-to-day experience and to extend democratic principles to everyday situations in citizens’ communities and constituencies.

Understandably, if you make political discourse more negative as some do – you deliberately turn ordinary people off politics; more people grow cynical and stop paying attention to politics. This experience is not unique to us in Nigeria; in fact it is the crisis that democracy is experiencing all over the world, with low turn out at the polls and scant regard for political leaders. Yet, if we as citizens choose not to play a part in this process of activism in our communities and our State, we will get the politicians we deserve, allow the hijack of the political realm by special interests and ethnic jingoists only keen in the promotion of their narrow agendas.

To avoid this problem, many of us in the Nigerian civil society sought the middle way after the election of the new government in Nigeria in 1999, even as we were lukewarm about the dawn of electoral democracy in the country. We put skills that were abundant in civil society to the service of the new government as a way of helping to bridge the gap between civil society and an elected government. At our own level in my institution - the Centre for Democracy & Development - we became associated with government at several policy and practical levels – assisting with the shaping and running of the Human Rights Violations Investigations Commission (the Oputa Commission); promoting an agenda for constitutional reform, helping with the reform of the security sector and democratic control of the defence and security establishments, building civil society capacity and pursuing issues of transparency and accountability. Our point always was that democracy is not an abstract concept. It must be relevant to people’s lives. If democracy is not capable of curbing corruption, guaranteeing transparency and improving people’s well being and quality of life, it is at best an empty concept, at worst a sham. Poverty and despair, oppression and humiliation, economic and social insecurities are breeding grounds – even if not the only reasons – for violence and conflict and as much as Nigerians want democracy, they also want to see concrete evidence of democracy making a difference in their lives.

My own experience of working with government over the past seven years as an outsider looking in is captured by the African adage that it’s not possible to shave someone’s head in his absence. The wheel of government bureaucracy turns very slowly and frustratingly so if the central actors are not alive to issues of transformation. No matter how good the policies formulated by outsiders are, implementation is key to transformation. It is for this reason that those who want to re-draw the map of Nigeria’s future must return to more solid grounds rather than tie themselves to the apron strings of power-holders that neither have a track record nor demonstrate a vision that they are better than what we can offer our people. This solid ground must be within a larger movement though, one that accommodates the place of political institutions and not simply the celebration of astute individuals as the ultimate panacea to our crisis of governance. The most practical way to link individual choice to collective responsibility is to participate in the institutions that influence our lives. We must ensure that formal and informal institutions are democratised and given more responsibilities for exercising state power. To do it well, we have to see Nigeria as a permanent enterprise that has to be fought over and restructured in order to provide cover for all Nigerians.

This is why I see the debate about whether activists should become politicians superfluous. Important as they are, the institutions of direct state power and electoralism are just the tip of the iceberg in the democratisation complex. Indeed, genuine democracy ought to rest on a much richer ecology of associational and organisational life and should be nourished and reproduced through every-day struggles of the citizens. But when we broadly define these everyday struggles as simply the handiwork of ‘civil society’, we strip it bare of its spontaneity and deeper meaning and romanticise the civil society as the rationally ordered, codified and all-knowing alternative to government and overplay our abilities as activists to counter the inherent inequities of class and markets. Even worse, we are presented or we present ourselves as antidotes to globalisation, which is why causes like ‘Make Poverty History’ have been hugely successful in form but exaggerated in their expectations. The reason for this crisis of exaggerated expectation that activists suffer is not far fetched. The truth is that as long as we live in the post-Westphalian world of sovereign states, we exaggerate the ability of the civil society to stand up to the power of the nation-state or the mega corporations on its own steam.

This is why I am not sure that the solution to the current deficit that our democracy is experiencing can be solved with posing activism as a counterpunch to politics. For autonomous institutions to play a different role in mediating citizens’ democratic choices, their organic development must be combined in a more nuanced manner and a more systematic way with the use of public and state power. The choice is therefore simple: one can continue to snipe on the fringe and complain that government is not listening to the yearning of the people. Alternatively, one can stop agonising about missed policy opportunities and organise in a manner that places citizens as drivers of change in our quest to restore communitarian values and a future of hope and possibilities for our people.

I know the world sees us - Africans - as incurable optimists and hope mongers. The other day, the New York Times, attempting to unravel the roots of the consistent optimism of the average African asked for my thoughts and I argued that while it may be difficult to find a verifiable basis for our collective and individual optimism amid unremitting misery – hope is God’s last bastion for the African, the evidence of the unseen future of a life more abundant – since, for many, things can hardly get worse than they are. [2]

Yet, as I said earlier, this is not bleary-eyed optimism. It is not the optimism that believes that the crisis of governance in our land will simply go away; it is not the hope that we will all be winners of million dollar lottery tickets today. I am talking about the hope of our founding fathers in the struggle for independence and freedom and their unshaken belief in our inalienable right to rule ourselves. It is the hope of the freedom fighters resisting apartheid and racial discrimination in Southern Africa; the audacity of hope and the determination of optimism that led us to resist the military oppression in our land because of our belief that another Nigeria is possible – one that will be accountable to its citizens, legitimate in their eyes, transparent and respected around the world; the hope that allows us to hold our heads high, proud of our accomplishments and contributions to humankind - the hope that help is on the way.

I believe we can revive the State in a qualitative manner and make democracy more meaningful to our people, provide jobs for the jobless, improve healthcare, modernise agriculture and reclaim our young people from a future of violence, decadence and despair by linking activism to politics and not drawing artificial divisions. It seems to me a self-evident truth that where there is no civil society engaged actively in social activism and the promotion of core values in society, there can be no political society and the state runs the risk of decay and illegitimacy. Renewing our democracy through the strengthening of institutions and public participation increases our collective capacity to tackle the major problems facing our society – with a corresponding achievement of individual contentment even as we pursue the common good. This is where we ought to be headed and I am convinced we will get there in our lifetime.

* This is the text of a lecture presented at the Ralph J. Bunche International Affairs Center, Howard University, Washington, D.C., USA on Thursday, March 16, 2006.

* Until recently Director of the Centre for Democracy & Development, Dr Fayemi is an advisor to the Nigerian government on NEPAD and Security Sector Reform and to ECOWAS, African Union Secretariat, NEPAD Secretariat and Economic Commission for Africa. He now aspires to the Governorship of Ekiti State in Nigeria.

References

[1] Wole Soyinka, “A Nigerian Morality Tale”, Foreword in Kayode Fayemi, Out of the Shadows: The struggle for Freedom and Democracy in Nigeria, (Lagos: CDD & BookCraft, 2005), p.viii. Also see an interesting interview with Olisa Agbakoba, former President of Nigeria’s Civil Liberties Organisation in The Guardian (Lagos) on July 20 & 21, 2004 – “I am tired of being an armchair critic”

[2] See New York Times, March 5, 2006 or International Herald Tribune, March 6, 2006

As we await the formal release of UK Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Commission for Africa’s report, it is right that the question of Africa’s odious debt has assumed a central place in the debate with the Global Call for Action against Poverty. But what exactly do we have on the table to guarantee that the Blair Commission as well as a number of other initiatives takes seriously the views from the ground on debt?

It would appear that the Commission’s general thrust on debt is relief, not cancellation. Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, is touting the British proposal for developed countries to help finance 100% multilateral debt service cancellation for sub Saharan Africa, with the savings to be channelled into education and health projects. Gordon Brown is also promoting his plan for an International Finance Facility which if successful would result in an immediate doubling of aid from OECD countries, essential to the meeting of the Millennium Development Goal targets. The idea is that donors would make long-term pledges to the IFF extending over 15 years, and these payments would enable the IFF to issue bonds, turning the income into capital available for immediate disbursement.

Even though this has moved the debate closer to what African civil society activists have called for over the last two decades, it is still a far cry from outright cancellation of the continent’s odious debt. For this reason, one is still sceptical about anything short of outright debt cancellation for the continent. Resident in Nigeria, a country whose debt burden has hovered between $32 - $35 billion dollars in the last decade with a poverty profile of seventy percent of its population living below the poverty line and an eighth of its total earnings disappearing into the hole of debt repayments, there is very little that can help Nigeria in Gordon Brown’s proposals. Although it is commendable that the British government is moving beyond the enhanced Highly Indebted Poor Country Initiative (established by the World Bank and the IMF), which failed to provide a realistic and sustainable exit from debt, the current approach remains skewed, disjointed and uncoordinated with other key players and one wonders what is stopping Britain from going the whole way.

Apart from the practical problems arising directly from the continent’s debt trap, there is also a huge moral burden that the debt issue poses for the future of Africa. The bulk of the debt owed by most African countries, certainly by Nigeria, is a carry-over from their authoritarian past – when many of the governments were extensions of metropolitan powers totally unaccountable to their citizens.

Also, the debts were incurred in the heydays of tied aid and dubious loans, in the era of the discredited export credit guarantee schemes. Even if one were to argue that a debt is a debt and any cancellation would result in a loss to those who owe no debt, surely there is a moral responsibility here for the industrial world, given the manner innocent children, most of who were unborn at the time the debts were incurred, suffer untold hardship out of deprivation occasioned by the debt burden.

In any case, we already have a precedence that demonstrates a willingness to cancel debt if it is in the strategic interest of particular powerful countries. Iraq just had $20billion of its debt wiped off in the aftermath of Saddam Hussein’s removal from office. This shows that where there is political will, and citizens’ pressure of governments in the global North is central to this, we should not despair about the ultimate possibility of debt cancellation. In any case, this is increasingly becoming a case of “Can’t pay”, not really one of “Won’t pay” in several African countries. Clearly, poverty - as exemplified by the inequality arising out of unfair sharing of global opportunities - remains the greatest threat to security and democratic consolidation in Africa today and, at the broadest level, globalisation is resulting in deep polarisation between rich and poor throughout the continent.

One’s call for debt cancellation should however not be mistaken for indulgent endorsement of bad and undemocratic governance in Africa. The argument has often been put by some in the West that debt relief or even a Marshall Plan for Africa would not lead to transformational development, allegedly because all the monies would be stolen. This reverse logic is often an excuse for inaction by Western authorities that are themselves indulgent of bad governance in Africa. The story in Africa is clear in the past and even now. Bi-lateral and multilateral agencies continue to seize the momentum provided by the weak capacity of the state to impose received wisdom and new theories of development rather than align external assistance with local needs and efforts and yet turn around to blame the countries in questions for the eventual failure of such policies that they claim to be Africa owned - a claim that is often rejected by many Africans. Where state institutional capacity is weak, an immense burden of responsibility is placed on development partners in which real dialogue with the people and wide consultations (not cosmetic ones a la PRSP) ought to underscore whatever actions are taken.

Ultimately African governments have not performed well over the past decades. The citizens in several African countries are however challenging bad governance in all its ramifications and it is also true to acknowledge that some governments are changing. The problem for them is that there is a limit to how best governments can manage poverty and this is why we need a clean slate on the continent. Only after this would our moral armour be strengthened against bad and unaccountable governance on the continent. Unfortunately, the Blair Commission is likely to fail this test.

* Kayode Fayemi is Director, Centre for Democracy & Development, a research, training and advocacy organisation in West Africa based in Abuja, Nigeria.

* Please send comments to

In the arena of post cold war democratisation in Africa, Ghana clearly hit the ground running. From the first election in 1992 that saw the transformation of Flight Lt Jerry Rawlings to President Jerry Rawlings, through the 1996 'stolen election', to the 2000 election, which resulted in the alternation of power from Rawlings' National Democratic Congress (NDC) Government to John Kuffuor's New Patriotic Party (NPP) government, the 2004 election promised all the elements of a consolidation election.

This was the context of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS)-West Africa Civil Society Forum's observer mission to Ghana's election this week. Although ECOWAS deployed its own official observer mission, the leadership of West African civil society bodies affiliated to ECOWAS also felt we needed to undertake our own mission. It was a small team of ten led by Sierra Leone's civil society activist and politician, Zainab Bangura, and we deployed in five regions - Greater Accra, Volta, Ashanti, Eastern, and Northern regions. I was in the Greater Accra region with our Team Leader, Zainab Bangura, and coordinated the reports from our colleagues in the hinterland.

Although we were prepared for a well-run election, as Africans who have also 'monitored' elections in several African countries, we were on the lookout for inadequacies. In terms of the preparation and even-handedness of the electoral commission, we were not disappointed. The Electoral Commission arranged our accreditation promptly even though we applied late, it sent its officials to train us on the peculiarities of elections observation in Ghana, and the training covered a range of subjects from security to the voter register. Finally, the EC invited us to contact its officials immediately we notice anything unusual during the voting exercise.

In the period prior to the polls we also met with the leadership of the major political parties, NPP, NDC and CPP, and they all evinced a strong desire for a peaceful and well-run election. All espoused non-violence and all said that if they lost they would seek redress through legal means or accept defeat. It was apparent that campaigning also involved an element of voter education, for example in how to mark the ballots correctly, making the point that those with a vested interest can be the most committed teachers.

The parties were not without complaints, especially officials of the official opposition NDC, and these were extensively documented in a “Memorandum for Foreign and Domestic Observers and Monitors” which was shared with us by its officials. Their concerns ranged from the Voters Identification Card system, delays in disbursement of funds to the EC, manipulation of the media and biased coverage in favour of the ruling party, training of foreign mercenaries and importation of weapons and the alleged partisan involvement of President Obasanjo of Nigeria.

On the eve of the election, the NDC insisted on a meeting of all the political parties with the Electoral Commission to discuss lingering concerns about the “flawed process”. We attended the meeting as observers and it was interesting to see the manner the Electoral Commission responded to all the allegations made by the NDC, both in the way it conceded on some of the gaps noticed by NDC and in the manner it held its own grounds on other aspects of its preparations. I am familiar with many of these allegations as a Ghanaian resident and felt the EC did a good job of demonstrating its independence.

On Election Day, our team visited no fewer than forty polling stations in the Greater Accra region. It was only in one station that the election did not start promptly at 7.a.m because materials did not arrive there due to a vehicle breakdown. We made a point of speaking particularly to party polling agents and it was remarkable that not a single polling agent, particularly those from the opposition parties had any complaints to make to us. In a few polling booths with unusually large number of voters, there was some rowdiness, but by the time we brought this to the notice of the Deputy Chairman in Charge of Operations at the EC headquarters, the Commission promptly took action.

In all cases, police presence was hardly noticeable as they stood some distance from the polling officials, except when their attention was requested. Our colleagues in the other regions painted pretty much the same picture, except the Northern region where there were pockets of violence in the Bawku constituency. With respect to counting, this was done at each polling station immediately after voting stopped at 5.p.m. In a unique collaboration between Joy 99 FM station, the Institute of Economic Affairs and Ghana's largest mobile telephone company, Spacefon, results were relayed by phone to the news studio and broadcast, across the country.

What Ghanaians have managed to do with this election is prove that election management is no rocket science. It requires adequate and competent preparation, a high degree of transparency, a responsible government, which respects its own citizens and an alert citizenry ready to protect their vote. It does not matter who wins the election in Ghana as the results were still coming in by the time this was written, but the process that I witnessed was without exaggeration better than what transpired in the last US election. (Editors note: Subsequent to this article being written, President John Kufuor has won re-election for a second term.)

Yet in spite of all one has written, Ghana is not without post election challenges. If President Kufuor wins the election, he would be mistaken to interpret the verdict as a vote of confidence in his government's performance. Ghanaians still worry that their economy is too aid-dependent with sixty percent of the budget coming from external assistance and extreme poverty still stalking the land.

My own assessment listening to Ghana's proliferating FM stations and to ordinary people in my four years of part-residence in Ghana is that the legacies of authoritarian rule and the search for stability count more for ordinary Ghanaians than immediate economic gains. But this may not be for long. As long as many Ghanaians see the shadow of former President Rawlings lurking in the opposition NDC though, the likelihood of its victory in presidential election is remote.

The irony is that the NPP government has not necessarily performed creditably in ensuring the security and safety of ordinary Ghanaians, especially Ghanaians in the Northern region. The brazen murder of the local monarch, the Ya Na in Yendi District, a centre of traditional influence in the Northern region remains a major source of tension and there are those who see the NPP as responsible for this, given the prominence of major NPP figures like Aliu Mahama (current Vice President), Joshua Hamidu (former National Security Adviser and now High Commissioner to Nigeria) and Malik Alhassan Yakubu (former Interior Minister) in the conflict. Indeed, the only area that witnessed serious conflict during the election was the North, especially the Bawku constituency where Hawa Yakubu, prominent civil society activist and ECOWAS Parliamentarian was a candidate.

Equally, in terms of development, the property owning democracy and golden age of business that NPP promised Ghanaians is yet to materialise four years after it came into office. Generally, the economy is no better than where the NDC left it. Over the past two decades, market forces have dominated the economy and this trend has continued with the NPP government. The economy is reliant on the export of primary products thus making it vulnerable to the general shocks of the global economy including price fluctuations. Further, since the 1990s, the economy has been characterised by high rates of inflation, high interest rates, depreciation of the cedi, dwindling foreign reserves, excessive public debt overhang and stagnant economic growth, implementation of the government poverty reduction strategy notwithstanding. The real test of NPP's popularity will come in 2008 when Kuffuor's term expires, and the opposition parties have managed to re-organise themselves.

There are lessons too for other West African countries, especially the most populous of them all, Nigeria. It is arguable that elections in Ghana have resulted in enhanced legitimacy because the chain has remained unbroken since 1992. Having run the fourth election in an unbroken cycle, the Electoral Commission in Ghana is regarded as one of the best managed in the whole of Africa. Its Executive Chairman, Dr Kwadjo Afari-Gyan, and his fellow commissioners have become well-known elections gurus in the continent, earning the respect of peers across the board. Sitting in on one of the Commission's meetings with political parties, one can understand why. Dr Afari-Gyan demonstrated a mastery of his brief without being arrogant, entertained legitimate complaints from the opposition parties and left all with a clear impression that he was not in the pocket of any government or opposition party.

The challenge is therefore to organise an Electoral Commission that is truly independent of Government and wholly accountable to the people. The Ghanaians can help by sharing their experience with other West Africans, and since Dr Afari-Gyan is already the Secretary-General of the Elections Management Bodies in Africa, there is a platform to achieve this objective.

Also, given the plans by ECOWAS to establish a full Elections Unit in the ECOWAS Secretariat, that Unit has the specific challenge of assisting to enhance election management in West Africa, by providing capacity strengthening initiatives and strictly upholding the provisions of the Supplementary protocol on Democracy & Good Governance signed by all Heads of States in West Africa, but yet to be ratified by the majority of these leaders.

Another lesson that West African states should take to heart is the relevance of freedom of information and the vigilance of civil society. A major credit for the transparent conduct of the Ghanaian election goes to the several FM stations dotted around the country and the vigilance of CODEO - the local domestic observer mission of 7,000 people. Although some of the FM stations can be a bit over the top in the use of inelegant adjectives to describe the President and opposition leaders, they feed the public with regular, minute-by-minute updates on the elections, and in the process prevent potential problems. They also broadcast provisional election results as soon as counting is completed at the polling booth and follow this to the collation centres until final results are delivered. And, more importantly, they are encouraged to do so by the Electoral Commission. So, the idea that a result known to everyone at the local level suddenly produces another winner as it happens in Nigeria is immediately nipped in the bud.

Finally, what Ghana proves is the importance of distance between the Electoral Commission and the political leadership in any state and the confidence that comes from understanding and surefootedness. We need a better understanding of electoral geography in all of our countries in West Africa, a factor that may well be responsible for the fear of election among the contending parties in Cote d'Ivoire. Two, we should let the public nominate elections commissioners and subject them to public scrutiny before Parliament appoints them in our countries; three, we must fund the electoral body direct from the Consolidated Account without any interference from the ruling Government; four, the electoral body must be supported by an independent bureaucracy, not the regular civil service, and finally, we must ensure that the electoral law promotes independent candidacy and proportional representation rather than winner takes all mentality in our countries where diversity should be celebrated.

In all of these areas, Ghana is light years ahead of many West African states but that is really where the greatest hope lies. Here is a country that was a complete basket case in the early 1980s and many never thought it could recover from its abysmal state. It also defies political science theory up to a point, in that the people are still poor but they value democracy. Barely two decades later, Ghana is an example and a beacon of hope for the rest of Africa. African states' permanent transition too may yet lead to transformation and I believe that if the chain remains unbroken in many of our states, we will improve electoral legitimacy.

* Dr Kayode Fayemi is Director, Centre for Democracy & Development, in Nigeria. This article is reproduced with permission of CDD.

* Please send comments to

* Click on the link below for press statement by the West African Civil Society Forum on the Ghana elections.

Reading Nigerian newspapers online often requires a huge dose of patience lest you do severe damage to the computer staring you in the face. Doing this alongside an unrelenting assault by those I call Reaganistas in the US requires a greater dose of restraint to avoid jail on grounds of committing grievous bodily harm. While not unmindful of what they say about speaking ill of the dead, I believe we do need a balanced perspective in these times of effusive praise and fawning adulation for Reagan.

I have been confounded by the unbalanced, uncritical and shallow tone of many articles on Reagan in the Nigerian newspapers and frankly stunned by at least two editorials in our more enlightened newspapers. Unlike op-ed articles, newspaper editorials ought to be more reflective, balanced and restrained in their judgment. Not so for the ones I have read.

Reagan has been credited with ending the Cold War; others have attributed as his greatest attributes the fact that he paid little attention to detail, got to work at 9 a.m., took a nap in the afternoon and retired at 5.p.m. He was not an insomniac like Nigeria's president, so the argument went.

To another set, it was the vision thing - a man of few beliefs - low taxes, less government, strong nation, who focused on them all like a beam and regained greatness for his country. And not to be accused of lop-sidedness, some feebly acknowledged that he may have plunged his country to its greatest economic recession in a period of unrivalled expansion and did not care much for African-Americans. Perhaps some of this is true, they may even all contain aspects of truth, but they are not the whole truth about Ronald Reagan's presidency. We may never agree on what the whole truth is, but we should also not let Reaganistas intimidate us into silence. Now, what, in my view, is Mr Reagan's record?

On the Cold War, I am not aware of any definitive documentary evidence that apportioned sole responsibility to Mr Reagan for ending the Cold War. Sure, if symbolism were the sole basis of the collapse of the Soviet Union, soundbite platitudes like Soviet Union is the “evil empire” or “Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall”, might have sufficed, but discerning observers certainly knew that the Soviet Union of the 1980s was a deflated and declining power primarily on account of bad governance.

The fact is that most of what Mr Reagan did, such as the INF Treaty, was more a continuation of Mr Carter's policy rather than a rejection. However, some in the Reagan administration as well as right wing academics deliberately exaggerated the Soviet Union's power in order to get their “Star Wars” and padded contracts for America's military industrial complex. As James Schlesinger, jnr, America's erstwhile Defence Secretary said of Star Wars, “it was nothing but a collection of technical experiments and distant hopes” which Mr Reagan treated “as if it were already a reality.”

Even with this, partisan observers can only argue that Mr Reagan merely accelerated what was, at best, inevitability. As we grapple with the return of the Cold War under someone who thinks of himself as a clone of Mr Reagan, we should ask ourselves if the so called war on terror is not another agenda foisted on the country and the world by actors driven by dogma rather than common sense.

On his “voodoo” economics of low taxes, small government and strong nation, ask David Stockman, who was his Budget Director. In his book, The Triumph of Politics, Stockman had this interesting sentence about Reagan's supply side economics, “If the Securities and Exchange Commission had jurisdiction over the White House, we might all have had time for a course in remedial economics at Allenwood penitentiary.”

The deficit ballooned from $79 billion to $179 billion in his first year in office alone. He talked often about tax cuts, but eventually raised taxes through excise duties, but no, these were not taxes, they were merely “revenue enhancers”. By the time he left government in 1988, few would agree that American government was smaller than it was when he assumed office in 1980.

But for me as an African, my biggest yardstick for judging Mr Reagan's place in history was his foreign policy. A man not given to moral leadership, strategic thinking or deep introspection, he quickly embraced the false distinction drawn by his UN Ambassador, Jean Kirkpatrick, between “totalitarian” (left wing) and “authoritarian” (right wing) dictatorship, a thesis which soon provided the basis for crushing left wing despots whilst embracing right wing dictators and “constructively” engaging the apartheid government in South Africa became the first test of this thesis.

Soon, Reagan's CIA Director, William J. Casey began his assault on nationalist movements deemed to be close to the Soviet Union by providing financial and military support to their opponents. From Renamo in Mozambique to Unita in Angola, and from the Contras in Nicaragua, who Mr Reagan described as the 'moral equivalents of the American founding fathers', to the Mujaheedin in Afghanistan, Mr Reagan utilized proxy wars to sow the seeds of today's terror around the world in the name of fighting communism.

Even the New York Times mildly opined in its obituary, “The Reagan Doctrine…was to have lasting repercussions in the fight against terrorism”. And, those who want to know about the right wing dictators, who benefited most from Reagan in Africa should ask Liberians about Samuel Doe, the Congolese about Mobutu Sese Seko, the Sudanese about Nimeiry and the Somalians about Siad Barre - four countries which received 80 per cent of US aid to sub-saharan Africa under Reagan.

It is hardly a coincidence that Africa's most virulent and unrelenting post Cold War conflicts have occurred in these four countries. In my view therefore, Reagan failed the test of greatness as far as foreign policy was concerned and he was largely absent without leave in his domestic policies.

I don't begrudge Reaganistas for their efforts at pushing Reagan as a saint, and I have taken the daily assaults on American television with extra-ordinary equanimity - afterall, I am a stranger in this land - but I resent half baked analyses by my own compatriots that fail to advance our knowledge in any way.

Of all the obituaries I have read here on Reagan, allow me to quote at length Professor Thomas Cronin, McHugh Professor of American Institutions. According to him, “Americans evaluate the greatness of a President on criteria that are over and above popularity and re-election. Did Reagan expand opportunities for all Americans regardless of race, gender or income bracket? It is my view that Reagan has not enlarged the equity factor nor the educational opportunities for most Americans”.

On the global scale, he continued, “President Reagan was lacking in moral leadership, an essential quality for greatness. He was too late, too little, and too lame when it came to human rights at home and abroad.”

There is no doubt that Reagan admirers can quote others who hold contrary views and they reserve the right to do that. I might even agree with them that he projected and injected boundless optimism of America's greatness, which affected and infected his people during his time in office, but when it came down to it, Reaganomics left Americans with a deficit that succeeding generations will continue to pay, sowed the seeds of terror through his Reagan Doctrine, promoted irresponsibility and incompetence in government and showed a clear hostility to equality among the races. Now, this may be a harsh judgment but I hope it allows Reaganistas to at least acknowledge that the jury is still out on Reagan's greatness, and we should all await history's judgment on him.

* Dr Fayemi is Senior Visiting Scholar in African Studies at Northwestern University, Evanston, USA.

* Please send comments to