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Nigeria Must Adopt a Suitable and Peculiar System of Democracy to Salvage our Situation By Emakoji Ayikoye New York, USA September 22, 2005
With due respect to the international community and to the rule of international laws, I have to argue today that Nigeria is not the United States of America nor is it Great Britain; and arguably, Nigeria will never be any other country but itself. The whole idea of this democracy which we are trying to practice, that unfortunately seems not to work out very well for us, needs redress. We as Nigerians are a peculiar people with a peculiar cultural norms and values; as such, we must adopt a system of democracy that will suit us and our vast peculiarity. Our current system of democracy is a “counterfeit” system that is contrary to who we are. An Americanized, English or a French based system of democracy will not work for us because we are Nigerians!
Just imagine the chaos that would erupt over the American or British society should the Russian system of governance be imposed on these societies and vice versa. What we have in Nigeria today is an imposition of a system of governance that is foreign to us and that is why it is not working out for us. I don’t ever imagine that the exact replica of Western democracy will ever work for us in Nigeria.
To the skeptics, I challenge you to look critically into Western democracies and you will be stunned to find numerous predicaments within these systems. America, Great Britain, France, Germany and India, in spite of their popular democracies have numerous problems that many Nigerians, who want the replica of these systems, do not know of. These problems include extreme poverty, corruption, racial, class and gender discriminations to say the least. Nothing so crystal clear, like the recent disaster Hurricane Katrina unleashed on America has exposed to the rest the world how deficient even the great American democracy itself really is. Even Great Britain has began to move in a direction like never before to deport people legally living in Great Britain who preaches hate and terror. Why then should Nigeria be stuck trying hard to appease the international community when the very fabric and foundations that holds our country is being threaten by some unscrupulous elements and philosophies in the nation; by this, I mean those who have from the no where invented this irrational idea of splitting the country.
I believe that those who wrote the western constitutions by which these western countries govern themselves did so, by taking into account the cultural philosophies of these countries as well as the nature of their society at that material time. Since then, societies are continuing to transform and numerous challenges is unfolding upon these nations on daily basis. I also believe that due to the challenges of the modern world, parts of many western constitutions would be revised and perhaps changed to suit their present and future societal challenges.
Western democracy has not completely wiped out the challenges their nations are facing; so, I wonder why Nigeria and any African country should adopt a system of democracy that has not in itself been immune to deficiencies. In other words, American, British, French, German and Indian democracies have not absolutely rid their societies of all of human predicaments. There are poverty, racial, gender and class discrimination in these countries as well. Of course, there are high levels of corruption in these nations too. Therefore, Nigeria should look beyond emulating these democracies in its entirety. We must look into the debts of our society, culture and where we are at this historic moment in our national life and formulate a democracy that will work for our collective good.
To put it across in a different sense, I like to say that Nigeria must formulate a constitution that takes account of our differences, similarities and ethnicity as well as out strength and weaknesses; Nigeria should adopt a system peculiar to us and that recognizes our reality as a socio-politically and socio-economically different people than the west. Additionally, Nigeria must take into serious consideration our religious differences and the conflicts that are clearly peculiar to us, as we formulate a radically new system that befits us and our future; not only that, if Nigeria must lift her people to a new horizon of existence, and if Nigeria is to salvage her current circumstances, we must adopt a new constitution that will take cognizance of our technological and educational realities as well.
To allow for more intellectual commentaries from our think-tank and political experts, I draw the curtain here on this proposition. But, do not forget that Nigeria must adopt a suitable and peculiar system of democracy to salvage our situation!
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