For Gordon Brown, the British Prime Minister this may be his longest weekend in politics as he faces the prospect of two major electoral defeats, back to back in less than seven days, amidst calls that he should step down and call fresh general elections. The council elections whose results were released on Friday showed the Labour Party suffering its worst humiliation at the polls in 30 years; it lost its four remaining county councils of Staffordshire, Derbyshire, Nottignhamshire and Lancashire, a total of about 300 seats, and came a poor third with 23% rating behind the Tories and the LibDems. Today, the British would again go to the polls to elect Members of the European Parliament and there is no doubt about it: Labour will be beaten, probably taking third or fourth place. Gordon Brown's fate and that of his party could be sealed by tommorrow morning.

In June 2007, Gordon Brown was one of the most popular leaders in Europe, so popular was he in Britain that in an August 12, 2007 election, Labour was rewarded with its biggest victory over the opposition Conservative party since 2003. At the time, Brown was considered a responsive and caring leader. But reports of scandals of integrity in his government, the gradual failure of the British economy, with corresponding implications for the quality of life, and increasing perception that he is a weak and indecisive political leader began to take their toll.

The first sign that the Brown administration was beginning to lose its grips came in May 2008, when Labour lost the London Mayoral local election, as Mayor Ken Livingstone was beaten by the Conservative Party's Boris Johnson by a wide margin. But nothing has shaken the Brown government more than the recent discloures of expenses claims scandals. Since May 14, the government had been caught in the web of a sordid melodrama in which MPs and Cabinet Ministers were exposed to be no better than cheating and fibbing fraudsters using taxpayers money to gain personal advantages.

Brown himself was found out: he claimed parliamentary expenses for two properties at the same time, and he is repaying close to 200 pounds for he says, "the avoidance of doubt." Angry British taxpayers were inconsolable and they threatened to take their revenge on the three major parties and particularly Labour and Gordon Brown. And they have done so. Although the Conservative party has gained an advantage over Labour, it has on the average, fallen short of the 43% that it won in last year's local elections. One striking fact is the emergence of independents in many constituencies who vowed to present themselves for election in order to force change and check the rot in Britain's public politics.

And so a few days ago, British voters turned their votes into stones. And they hit the target. The local election is a referendum on the Brown government, which is now effectively, a dying government. The expenses scandal eroded whatever reputation the Brown government may have had left. And as if fate has a hand in the matter, the Prime Minister has continued to stumble from one mistake to the other since May, ten of his Ministers who were implicated in the expenses scandal have tendered their resignations, in a manner that has sent a strong signal that the government is in trouble. James Purnell, the Work and Pensions Secretary left word that Brown should "stand aside to give Labour a fighting chance of winning the next election". Caroline Flint in walking away also accuses Brown of using her as "female window dressing."

Other Ministers who have abandoned Brown in his moment of trial are Beverley Hughes, Hazel Blears, Jacqui Smith, Tony McNulty, Margaret Beckett, Geoff Hoon, John Hutton and Paul Murphy. To create an air of invinciblity, Brown quickly tried to reshuffle his cabinet, but he merely shot himself in the foot further, by advertising weakness and confusion. It is now so bad that Brown has most of the Labour back-benchers and his party members asking him to stand aside in order to save the party. They have even found a replacement for him, his long-time rival: Alan Johnson, who is said to be a much smoother and less bullish personality. Brown is suddenly looking worse than John Major and Tony Blair, and is in danger of becoming a threat to Her Majesty's Government. But rather than realise that the game is up, he continues with the Stalinist line that he is "the right man for the job", although all indicators now point to the contrary. He may well survive, but if he must, he would have to clear the expenses claims mess and turn around the ailing economy.

But what should be more important to us, looking at UK politics from a distance, is how public perception of leadership performance is immediately reflected in the choices that voters make at the polls. That is how it should be, you may say. But it is big news because it is never so in Nigeria, at least since the PDP became the biggest and the most powerful political party in Africa with the ambition to rule Nigeria for the next 60 years! We have just seen in the council elections in Britain, how important the voter's choice is. It is so important that members of the Labour Party are being forced to worry about the future of their party. And they are prepared to sacrifice the Prime Minister. Labour may not well win the next general elections as the current attitude of the British voter sends only one signal: time for change. The voter's influence is writ large. In serious societies, that is how democracy works.

In 2008 in the United States, we saw precisely the same pattern. American voters were so disgusted with the George Bush administration and the Republicans, they decided to vote for the Democrats. The people wanted change and the Democrats had as Presidential candidate a man called Barack Obama who was the most effective communicator of that aspiration. In Nigeria, it does not matter how badly a leader performs. As long as he is in power, everyone kow-tows to him. People are re-elected to positions in Nigeria not because the people still want them but because they must complete an assigned ethnic quota. Nigerians are forever confronted by their leaders with election results which bear no reflection of reality. Nigerian leaders are rewarded with undeserved victories.

We run a system therefore, where good performance is not rewarded. In fact, if you perform too well, you could be removed like Charles Soludo. Compare council elections in Nigeria to what has just happened in Britain. Sitting governments in Nigeria's democracy do not lose council elections. Because council elections are veritable indications of a government's popularity at the grassroots level, Nigerian politicians, especially the Governors do not even allow the people to decide. They fix the numbers on their behalf. All the bye-elections and re-run elections organised since 2007, have almost all been won by the ruling PDP. Other political parties follow the same pattern in local elections. And this is so despite the general consensus on the inefficiency of our political elite.

But the British, our former colonial masters, have unwittingly shown us the direction in which our democracy should be going. Can you imagine any Cabinet Minister in Nigeria criticising the President openly or walking out on government on the grounds of principle? Our Ministers and the commissioners at the state level worship the Head of Government. Why won't they? Nobody talks about expenses scandal in Nigeria. What is creating such a storm in Britain is accepted practice in Nigeria and to be a Minister in Nigeria is considered a lifetime opportunity. Besides, no Minister would have the confidence to step aside. The word out there is that you don't walk out on a Nigerian government, to do so is to sign a suicide note. "You want to walk out on them after they had called you to come and eat and you too don chop?" Nigerian democracy is still at the level of the stomach and what to eat, not principles. Even when a Nigerian Minister is accussed of wrong-doing, he would rather sit tight and hope that the protests will vanish after a while. The evidence is of course soon forgotten and the man of scandal is rewarded with chieftaincy titles and national honours. In Britain, out of all the serving Ministers facing questions over their expenses claims, only are two are still in office: Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling.

The Prime Minister is being asked to step aside by his own party members who want to save the party. Lord Mandelson and Lord Falconer are on his side but many of his party members are critical of his performance and the rebels among them have said so openly. But Brown should not complain. He too was disloyal to Tony Blair. Adn hemay soon end up as one of the Prime Ministers with the shortest tenures in British politics. In Nigeria, the Head of Government is always right. Our governments are run by a kabiyesi, now a rankadede mentality. It doesn't matter how weak or indecisive the Head of Government is, he would be told that he will get a second term. President Yar'çdua has been told by sycophants within the PDP, that he can have a second term if he wants it.

Even when there were rife speculations about the President's health, nobody in his party could come out openly to ask him to clear the air on the matter or step down if he could not hold office. Who would dare? Public opinion matters in Britain. That is another thing that we have seen. Here in Nigeria, public opinion is dismissed as noise-making, and people who write newspaper articles and try to expose the truth like the guys at The Daily Telegraph who blew the whistle on the expenses claims scandal, are accussed of looking for attention. If Obasanjo were to contest again for the Nigerian Presidency tomorrow, in fact he could win.

British voters are impatient: they use their votes to make statements. Since 1951, they have gone back and forth between the Conservatives and Labour, with the Tories dominating power between 1979 and 1997, but now in the next elections, it appears they will go back to the Conservatives. It may take a really long time before the LibDems and the UK Independence Party (UKIP), gain an upper hand. But what matters is not the scope of the choice that they make, but the fact that the people are more powerful than the politicians and that there is a system in place that allows the people's voice to be heard and to be the driving force of the kind of political reform that Gordon Brown is now promising as part of his late-hour plan to restore trust in politics. British voters have also shown that no politician can insult their intelligence. The key political reform that Nigerias needs is such that guarantees the power of the voter and the integrity of the ballot. There lies the strength and power of democracy.