By Uzor Maxim Uzoatu
Nigeria claims to be practising democracy but there appear to be no democrats in sight to put to practice government of the people, by the people, for the people.
It is only in Nigeria that some characters are making the mad magic of believing that there can ever be democracy without the presence of democrats.
It does appear that the plutocrats and their allies who gave birth to civil rule in Nigeria are quite desperate to eviscerate the normal rule of law that ought to be the hallmark of a true democracy.
Nobody, no matter how highly placed, should be allowed the impunity of suborning the due process.
To give him his due, ex-President Muhammadu Buhari put to practice the art of running a one-man democracy, a sort of sole administrator of civil rule.
Buhari prophesied that he would only be missed after leaving office, and his dire prophesy has already come true.
It is now being celebrated in certain quarters that the president in a democracy is a master strategist for putting the leaders of the parliament and the entire legislature in his pocket.
By Uzor Maxim Uzoatu
Nigeria claims to be practising democracy but there appear to be no democrats in sight to put to practice government of the people, by the people, for the people.
It is only in Nigeria that some characters are making the mad magic of believing that there can ever be democracy without the presence of democrats.
Nobody, no matter how highly placed, should be allowed the impunity of suborning the due process.
To give him his due, ex-President Muhammadu Buhari put to practice the art of running a one-man democracy, a sort of sole administrator of civil rule.
Buhari prophesied that he would only be missed after leaving office, and his dire prophesy has already come true.
It is now being celebrated in certain quarters that the president in a democracy is a master strategist for putting the leaders of the parliament and the entire legislature in his pocket.
After every coup, what the military sacks is the parliament. Now the parliament is nowhere to be found.
Of course this serves the intents and purposes of the authors of democracy without democrats.
There are some commentators who aver that attention should be paid to patriotism instead of wasting time on insisting on the proper conduct of democracy.
The ground rules of democracy ought to be in place for this country to ever crow in the comity of nations about being democratic.
The sad matter is that our rulers are exempt from the rules of mere mortals, and we claim to be practicing democracy.
It’s an act of shamelessness to break the rules simply because one is beholden to the sacred cow syndrome that is known as the Nigerian Factor.
There appears to be no end from a very dark tunnel.
When General Ibrahim Babangida and his fellow arrangers in the military decided to draft General Olusegun Obasanjo into the presidential contest at the inception of civil rule in 1999, all the ground rules were broken with impunity so as to have their way.
The drive obviously was to ensure that no law should stand in the way of Obasanjo becoming the president because in the democracy birthed by army generals impunity is law.
Let’s take some words from former Vice-President Dr Alex Ekwueme: “If I am a troublemaker, Obasanjo would not have been civilian President because that Jos convention where he was elected, after the returning officer announced the results, I had in my pocket a copy of the NEC decision of November 1998 show ing that to qualify you must win your local government.”
The attitude of the military to our democracy can be decoded from General TY Danjuma’s statement that he would go into exile if Obasanjo was defeated in the 1999 contest!
Curiously, when Obasanjo undertook his Third Term plot to perpetuate his tenancy as Nigeria’s democratic president, the selfsame General Danjuma thundered: “We did not fight the Nigerian Civil War for one man!”
Talk of Nigeria’s democratic presidency as war booty…
Danjuma has since been hard done by and he is now lamenting that the Nigerian military is not neutral.
Of course we do get to learn every day.
The “Army Arrangement” which ace musician Fela Anikulapo-Kuti sang about is still all the rage even as the country claims to be in the groove of democracy.
It conduces to the phantasmagoria known as democracy without democrats.
At the rate we are going, the so-called democracy without democrats may someday for sure be jolted by the like of the following damning words of Oliver Cromwell that sacked the Rump Parliament of England on April 20, 1653:
“It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonored by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice. Ye are a fractious crew, and enemies to all good government. Ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money. Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess?
“Ye have no more religion than my horse. Gold is your God. Which of you have not bartered your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth? Ye sordid prostitutes have you not defiled this sacred place, and turned the Lord’s temple into a den of thieves, by your immoral principles and wicked practices? Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation. You were deputed here by the people to get grievances redressed, are yourselves become the greatest grievance.
”Your country therefore calls upon me to cleanse this Augean stable, by putting a final period to your iniquitous proceedings in this House; and which by God’s help, and the strength he has given me, I am now come to do. I command ye therefore, upon the peril of your lives, to depart immediately out of this place.Go, get you out! Make haste! Ye venal slaves be gone! So! Take away that shining bauble (mace) there, and lock up the doors.
”In the name of God, go!”
Uzor Maxim Uzoatu is a renowned poet, journalist and author
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