Nigeria pretending to practise democracy – Donald Duke

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Former Cross River State governor and presidential candidate of Peoples Redemption Party, PRP, Donald Duke, has declared that Nigerians were better off under military rule.

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He argued that 27 years of civilian government had imposed enormous costs without delivering corresponding improvements in the lives of the people.

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“The people were better off under the military. At least governance was not that expensive,” Duke said in an interview weekend.

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He added that the assessment should be measured against the welfare of citizens and the “democracy dividends” delivered since Nigeria returned to civilian rule in 1999.

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“I’m speaking broadly now. If we focus on the well-being of the people, what we term democracy dividends, how much has been delivered?

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“We’re still having the same problems we had 27 years ago. It’s getting worse. The number of children out of school has not improved; it’s deteriorating. The healthcare system is not improving; it’s deteriorating.

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“Infrastructure deficiency over the last 27 years — are we better off? The question is: are we better off today than we were in 1999

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“Hardly so. Hardly so,” he added.

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Duke said Nigeria had failed to resolve the fundamental problems that existed before the return of democratic government.

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“The problems that existed before 1999 —electrification, unemployment— those things are still there. And I don’t see a structured approach towards dealing with these issues.

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“This is my frustration, because there’s no problem we cannot resolve. We’re not a unique country.

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“There are peer reviews you can do. How did you solve this? How did you do that? Are we thinking through our problems?” he queried.

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The PRP presidential candidate said Nigeria’s governance crisis was worsened by an ineffective opposition and a political system in which election results often failed to reflect the wishes of voters.

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“The opposition is terribly weakened and self-centred. Democracy is also in danger. The results you get from the polls often don’t reflect the views of the people.

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“So there’s a disenchantment with the system, both by the contestants and the public. Most people don’t vote because they believe their votes don’t count,” Duke contended.

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He argued that disputed elections had weakened accountability because political officeholders who did not feel answerable to voters could easily disregard their needs.

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“Because your vote doesn’t matter, there’s a tendency to take people for a ride and disregard what is required by the people,” he said.

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‘On your mandate…”

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Duke described Nigeria’s democratic system as a pretence, alleging that neither the legislature nor the judiciary provided effective checks on executive power.

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He said: “We don’t have a democracy. We are pretending democracy. We’re not a democracy.

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“You and I know that. And the checks and balances from the National Assembly, you know there’s no check; there’s no balance.”

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He cited the speed with which the National Assembly approved the return to Nigeria’s former national anthem as evidence of lawmakers’ failure to interrogate executive proposals.

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He lamented: “We changed the national anthem in a week. Nobody was asking questions. They shouted, ‘On your mandate, we shall stand,’ abdicating their responsibilities.

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“We had a Chief Justice of this country singing, ‘On your mandate, we shall stand.’

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“There’s no judiciary. We all know it. But are we prepared to deal with it?”

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Duke blamed the country’s elite for abandoning the political space to people who treated public office as a permanent occupation.

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“It’s a failure of the elite more than anything else. We’re elites; we’re enlightened people but we abdicated our leadership to those whom we should be leading.

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“Politics is no longer a vocation. It’s an occupation for those people. And you can’t get them out,” he said.

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The former Cross River governor, who warned that the widening divide between the rich and poor posed an increasing threat to social stability, said further: “There was a time when I used to be in the National Economic Intelligence Committee and Professor Aluko used to say, proverbially, that a time is coming in this country when the rich won’t sleep because the poor have not eaten. I think the time is coming.”

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He said Nigeria’s failure was particularly painful because the country possessed the human and material resources required to transform the lives of its citizens.

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“Nigeria is exceedingly blessed. It’s sad. It’s painful that we are where we are,” Duke lamented.

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