Containing the inevitable heartbreaks of democracy

Since the announcement by the Independent National Electoral Commission of the results of the Nigerian presidential election, I tweeted on my Twitter account @EboeOsuji. He was driven by what must be the feeling of deep disappointment among the 14.4 million Nigerian voters who did not vote for President-elect Asiwaju Bola Tinubu as he and his supporters celebrate victory. In my tweet, I remembered Robert Kennedy saying, “Democracy is messy and difficult. It's never easy. Richard Galen, another American political strategist agreed. "Democracy is messy," Galen said. “It's messy whether you've been doing it since 1789 or doing it for the first time in 2005. The problem with democracy is that you have elections. The problem with dictatorships is that... you don't have one."

I added my own observation that the real problem, of course, is that only one person will be declared the winner of a contested seat, and others who have worked just as hard or even harder have to endure depressing feelings of disappointment. I sympathized with those who feel this sentiment after the Nigerian presidential election. I urged them to accept the declared outcome, for the sake of the country they love so much. In doing so, they would have rendered the most important public service they could have rendered in these delicate times.

Some would say that part of the mess of democracy is that there are always irregularities in elections, whether in the United States or Nigeria. There is no need to dwell on a comparative analysis of the frequency or extent of irregularities in the different countries. And there will be those who will argue that given the inevitability of electoral irregularities, it is impossible to envision a scenario where the party that did not win will accept the results of an election as free and fair. This circumstance tells us that the only people who celebrate the outcome of an election are only those who are declared the winners. It doesn't matter what margins they win.

The INEC said Tinubu received 8.7 million votes, Atiku Abubakar 6.9 million, Peter Obi 6.1 million and Rabiu Kwankwanso 1.4 million. Naturally, the only Nigerians interested and happy with these results are Tinubu and his supporters. It goes without saying that if the distribution of votes remains the same but only the names of the candidates are reversed in any configuration, Abubakar, Obi or Kwankwanso and his supporters will now be beaming with joy at having garnered 8.7 million votes - Tinubu and his supporters will complain about electoral irregularities.

This means, in any case, that any presidential election will leave millions of Nigerians dissatisfied with the outcome. This is the main reason why democracy is messy and unsatisfactory. Let us remember Winston Churchill's observation that "democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried".

Perhaps Switzerland, as it often does with things, has the best job of handling the mess of gaining power through elections. There is not a single person who is easily identified at any given time as "the" President of Switzerland. This function is performed by the Swiss Federal Council, made up of seven members. Members rotate on an annual basis to serve as President of the Federal Council – thus effectively serving as President of Switzerland – but only for one year at a time. Maybe Nigerians (and Americans too!) should try the Swiss approach. It diffuses the importance or concentration of political power in one person, as it instead emphasizes the value of sharing it.

For now, however, we need to make the most of the system we have. This is not the Swiss system. Perhaps the trick is to remember how we feel when the Super Eagles lose important games - a heartbreak that every Nigerian knows all too well. The same feeling gnaws at the heart of every Nigerian if the return of election certificate is presented to the candidate(s) whom he did not support. It's an inevitable feeling of disappointment that we have to learn to live with. Nigerians must not allow these feelings to control our actions and our lives. Life will otherwise be much more difficult for us individually and for the country we love. I know better than anyone how it can be.

As a senior official at the International Criminal Court, I have seen how some of Kenya's and Côte d'Ivoire's leading figures ended up on the benches of the ICC, when the post-election passion s was soothed, simply because they couldn't handle the negative emotions that are constant with every election. This is not a story any politician would want for himself.

I urge all those who did not win to embrace the outcome and channel the same pre-election energy into the post-election nation-building demands that Nigeria needs...