Democracy in Nigeria: Realty or Farce…..

In the words of Anthony Akinola, “The glory of Nigerian democratic politics was in the 1950's whenelectioneering periods were like festive occasions for us young children. The rare opportunity to see the Awos, the Ziks and the Bellos was anticipated with feverish anxiety, the type of anxiety with which we awaited great festive occasions. Great Men like the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo, continuously educated Nigerians on the importance of democracy and the need for the citizenry to be on full guard to prevent another military intervention.

It's more than 30years on from those days, and present day Nigerians live in the Reality/farce of what we all know as democracy, but the question we need to ask ourselves is;

Is Democracy In Nigeria A Reality Or Farce?
Many great definitions exist for this concept, but we will attempt to analyze Nigeria's democracy based on the premise of the definition we will adopt.

Democracy may be a word familiar to most, but it is a concept still misunderstood and misused in a time when totalitarian regimes and military dictatorships alike have attempted to claim popular support by pinning democratic labels upon themselves. Yet the power of the democratic idea has also evoked some of history's most profound and moving expressions of human will and intellect: from Pericles in ancient Athens to Vaclav Havel in the modern Czech Republic, from Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence in 1776 to Andrei Sakharov's last speeches in 1989.

In the dictionary definition, Democracy "is government by the people in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system." In the phrase of Abraham Lincoln, democracy is a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people." The system practiced in most countries that claim to practice democracy is “Elected Dictatorship”.

In a country where the people have no say about electricity, security, power, fuel or any of the issues that directly affect their existence. A country where we had to resort to “Occupy Nigeria”, and even after this, the government refused to budge on their decision to increase fuel prices; in a country where the educationof her children and youths are constantly interrupted by strikes over nonpayment of staff fees, internal quarrels over the lack of basic amenities in schools, when the children of our leaders are sent to other countries at very early ages, and return to continue the vicious circle by also leading us. In a country where the fear of Boko Haramhas led her president to cancel all democracy day celebrations for fear of bomb blasts and other attacks; In a country where the battle line has been drawn before the next elections.

The beauty of Democracyis that it emphasizes the power of the individual ballot. From the ward to the national level, your ballot becomes Mightier than the gun as you apply it to elect the councilor that represent you from the village level.

In light of this, I ask Nigerians, and indeed the world;

Is Democracy In Nigeria A Reality Or Farce?
The Brain
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