Nigeria does not suffer from a shortage of elections; it suffers from
a shortage of electoral finality. In theory, democracy in Nigeria is
in the hands of the voters. In practice, Nigerian elections are
routinely concluded by judges- months, sometimes years, after ballots
have been cast.

In that legal interim, the will of millions of
Nigerians is suspended in legal limbo, while courtrooms, not polling
units, become the true battlegrounds of power. This is not democracy.
It is a system failure.

The consequences are profound. Voter apathy grows because citizens
increasingly believe their votes do not count. Politics becomes a
high-stakes commercial enterprise rather than public service.
Electoral contests turn into investments to be recouped through
office, not mandates to be earned through credibility. Unless Nigeria
confronts this structural distortion of democracy head-on, no amount
of rhetoric about good leadership will rescue the republic.

Nigeria’s democratic crisis is not merely about bad actors; it is
about bad incentives. Political systems shape behavior. When public
office is lucrative, permanent, and shielded from accountability, it
attracts opportunists. When it is modestly compensated, time limited,
and transparent, it attracts citizens motivated by duty and
patriotism. Nigeria has consciously built the former system, and now
lives with the terrible consequences.

In functioning democracies, elections end at the ballot box. In
Nigeria, they end in the courts. This abnormality has eroded trust in
institutions and weaponized the judiciary, placing judges under
immense political pressure and public suspicion. A democracy that
cannot settle its elections decisively is a democracy in slow decline.

There are workable alternatives, though. One instructive example comes
from the state of Texas in the United States of America. There,
legislators earn a base salary of just $7,200 per year and meet only
once every two years for a 140-day session. Outside that period, they
return to their private professions. Politics is not a career path; it
is a temporary civic duty. In the First Republic, parliamentarians
were first and foremost lawyers, journalists, etc. They had their
professions and vocations. That was why the First Republic politician,
Tony Enahoro once famously said: “In my time politics was not a full
time business”.

Much confusion surrounds the Texas per-diem allowance, but clarity
matters here because it brings the beauty in it into focus. The daily
allowance, which is about $221 per sitting day, is not income. It is
reimbursement for basic living expenses incurred while temporarily
serving away from home. Modest accommodation, meals, and transport
consume nearly all of it. There are no year-round allowances, no
luxury entitlements, and no opaque benefits. The system ensures that
citizens can serve without being financially punished, but not unduly,
even criminally enriched.

Nigeria has chosen the opposite model. Legislators sit year-round,
earn salaries and allowances running into tens of millions of naira
monthly, and exercise personal discretion over opaque benefits such as
constituency projects and security votes. Nigerian legislators even
collect newspaper and clothing allowances! No wonder public office has
become one of the most profitable ventures in the country. It is
therefore not surprising that elections are fiercely contested,
monetized, and litigated. When politics pays extraordinarily well, it
attracts extraordinary desperation because it has become an all
comers’ affair particularly suited to the despicable, the insatiable,
the conscience-less scums of the earth. In Nigeria, elections have
become warfare.

Nigeria does not need to copy the Texas example wholesale. It needs to
adopt the principle. With a national median annual ₦500,000–₦600,000
income, legislative pay could be constitutionally capped at three to
four times that figure, with only transparent, independently audited
reimbursements for official duties. All allowances should be publicly
disclosed, independently audited, and stripped of personal discretion.
Politics must stop being a route to sudden wealth or it will attract
those who will bleed Nigeria to death as is the case today.

Compensation reform alone, however, is insufficient. Structural
safeguards must follow. Clear term limits should apply uniformly
across executive and legislative offices. Senators, House members,
governors, and the president should be limited to two four-year terms,
after which they must step aside. This prevents political
entrenchment, weakens dynasties, and allows new ideas to emerge, an
approach successfully used in countries such as Mexico and Kenya. The
down side though is that it will erode ennobling and enabling
experience from the legislature. But this sacrifice has a lot of
upsides.

Internal party democracy must also be enforced. Open primaries,
supervised by INEC and monitored by civil society and the media, would
weaken godfatherism and reduce the imposition of candidates. Equally
important is reforming the appointment process for Electoral
Commissioners to include civil society, professional bodies, and
transparent public hearings. No democracy can survive when election
umpires are perceived as extensions of the Executive.

Campaign finance reform is long overdue. Nigeria should introduce
limited public funding, strict spending caps, and real-time disclosure
of campaign finances, drawing lessons from countries like Brazil and
South Korea. Politics must stop being a contest of who can out-spend
and out-litigate the rest. Nigeria must embrace all the benefits that
the progress in computing and telephony could bring. Information and
Communications Technology should help us to exit the dark age of
electoral rigging. Once it is crystal clear that electoral results are
determined by the real votes cast and nothing else, electoral disputes
will decrease to the barest minimum.

Yet the most transformative reform lies elsewhere: the introduction of
citizen juries for electoral disputes. Instead of allowing a single
judge to determine the outcome of millions of votes, who they will
benefit, panels of randomly selected citizens should decide disputed
facts such as vote manipulation, ballot snatching, or vote buying. It
is far harder to corrupt twelve randomly selected citizens than one
individual Judge. It will be far harder to make all the jury members
keep silent after the ruling.

Citizen juries would reduce corruption, speed up dispute resolution,
unclog the courts, and, most importantly, restore public confidence.
Judges would retain a supervisory role, with appeals limited to
procedural issues. Pilot programs could begin at state or local
council levels before national adoption.

Nigeria’s democracy cannot be reformed by cosmetic changes or elite
bargaining. It requires structural courage. Politics must be
redesigned to repel and even punish profiteers and attract patriots.
Elections must be settled by citizens, not endlessly negotiated in
courtrooms. The time for incrementalism has passed. Nigeria must
choose whether to continue managing democratic decay or deliberately
rebuild a system that truly belongs to the people but which has been
failing the people. By learning from global best practices and
adapting them to Nigeria’s unique context, the country can reclaim its
future and restore hope in the promise of self-government.

To make the electoral reform complete, the scandalous practice of
defecting from one political party to another after being elected into
office constitutes a breach of citizens’ trust and undermines
democratic principles, and must be punished. It is inexcusable larceny
to take the votes the people cast for a given party through the
election of a given candidate to benefit another party – through
defection. It makes a mess of the choice the electorate made during
elections and actually voids their votes as it fluffs away their
support for a particular party. To address this issue, it is,
therefore, proposed that legislation be enacted to impose clear
consequences for such actions. Any elected official who defects to
another political party shall vacate their seat immediately.
Furthermore, such individuals should be subject to a 10-year ban on
contesting for any public office, be ineligible for appointment to an
executive or a judiciary position, and be barred from participating in
any public-funded contracts.

Nigeria has come at a crossroads. It is clear that Nigerian democracy
has failed Nigeria. Crucial decisions must be made which will have
far-reaching consequences for Nigeria’s survival, let alone
flourishing by competing favourably among the other nations. Today,
Nigeria is a big failure that saddens her citizens and shames the
Black Race. The choice before us is stark; reform Nigerian Democracy,
redesign the system; claim the future or watch Nigeria continue to
slide into hell.

Mr. Joe William-Obi is a graduate of History from the University of
Ife, Ile-Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University), a Certified Public
Accountant and a Nurse Practitioner in the United States. He writes
from Texas, USA, where he has lived since leaving Nigeria in the
1980s.