Democracy Day: Has Democracy Worked?

Today in my dear country Nigeria, we celebrate Democracy day. In my opinion, this day should be a day we ask questions about the journey of our democracy. Who has it favoured and who is it favouring.?

It's days like this that I wish Baba Fela Anikulapo was still alive, in one of his songs, he commented on Nigeria's democracy, he said:

"Democracy, crazy demo,
demonatration of craze,crazy demonstration,if [it is not] crazy,
why is it that as time goes in Africa, things are just getting bad,
getting bad more and more.
Poor man cries, rich man continues to mess [up things]"

Baba Fela said these words when he realised like other well-meaning Nigerians in the 90's that democracy in Nigeria and Africa at large was no more "government of the people for the people and by the people", it had became an avenue for the "elected" to amass wealth at the expense of those who elected them.

The question we should ask ourselves is, how has things change since the 90's?. Have we finally gotten democracy to work for us in Nigeria? If Fela Anikulapo was still alive, will he take back his critism on Nigeria's democracy?

The fact is : Things has gone worse. Our democracy has not favoured the majority of the people.

We have succeded in producing Political elite that can provide 33 private jets to attend the Wedding of a former head of state's daughter's wedding.

We have produced Political elite that only need us during the election periods.

We have produced Political elite who are importing arms and ammunitions massively to "empower" the youth of this country.

We have produced Political elite, who will run abroad for medical checkups, send their children to the best schools outside of the country because they themselves cannot trust the system we have in Nigeria.

We have produced "citizens" who are living below $1/day, and out of frustration has lost hope in Nigeria and now thinks of leaving Nigeria for other countries as a turning point in their lives.

We have produced a set of people who thinks that when corruption favors them, it's not bad - then they call it "connection" "unmeritted favour" etc.

Our democracy has not been working. And if things continues like this, I'm afraid if Nigeria will not become history. Becuase people are getting more tired of this 'democracy' day by day.

My fellow Nigeria, today is the day we should ask our government to account for 'democracy' in Nigeria.

Let's remember the wise words of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who said "Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and senators and congressmen and government officials, but the voters of this country."

God bless Nigeria.
Happy Democracy Day.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Domainking Crash: How to get your domain back

It's still a shock to those of us that hosted sites and registered domains with domainking Nigeria that our sites and domains are gone. For website designers, it was a real mess, how do one explain to clients that the site they paid for is gone? I bet most of us lost clients to the mess. In this post I will be explaining to those that registered domains with domainking.ng how they can retrieve their domains back (as I did to mine). One thing we must know is that, domainkingNigeria is just a domain reseller , they actually register domains with publicdomainregistry.com (PDR). Now to move your domain, you need to contact PDR to help you move your domain to another reseller . Luckily for me, I found another reseller of PDR named Qservers . The following are steps to moving your domain: First register with Qservers Download and fill this form from PDR here NOTE: you have to fill the form manually, then scan it. Since you are transferring to qservers, you will
Read more

Humans do not want to change their minds

Image
I'm having a rethink about the the title of this post, maybe it should have been "Humans do not want to be told to change their". In other to protect our ego, we humans resist being told that we are wrong - whether its about our favorite football club or about our religion or about the politicians we choose to support - we feel that our ego is threatened when we are told by others that we are wrong. Permit me to share with you an excerpt from James Harvey Robinson’s enlightening book 'The Mind in the Making:' "We sometimes find ourselves changing our minds without any resistance or heavy emotion, but if we are told we are wrong, we resent the imputation and harden our hearts. We are incredibly heedless in the formation of our beliefs, but find ourselves filled with an illicit passion for them when anyone proposes to rob us of their companionship. It is obviously not the ideas themselves that are dear to us, but our self-esteem which is threatened. .
Read more

Dear Parents, Stop Killing Us:

Image
Our parents are increasingly forgetting that the child is more important than the grade. In a bid to get the child the grade,  they create someone who thinks that cutting corners is the way to get things done.  In a bid to make the child "happy", they create someone who believes hard work is for people who can't afford the cost of cutting corners.  Our parents have forgotten that they can get us good grades but the good things that really matter come from hardworking. You can get me a job,  but you can't get me job satisfaction. Our parents are forgetting that their God-given responsibility is to bring up the child and not his report card. Our parents are helping us get special examination centers so that we can "make our results at once" rather than teaching us to study smart.  Our parents are telling us that we can get anything we want just because we want them and not because we are ready to work for them. Our
Read more