Former president Olusegun Obasanjo says Nigeria needs a strong democratic culture, adding that the electorate must get it right during this year’s general elections.
Obasanjo stated this at the 2023 Port Harcourt International Conference held at the Obi Wali International Conference in Port Harcourt on Thursday with the theme, ‘Deepening Democratic Culture and Institutions for Sustainable Development and Security in Nigeria’.
The former president, who delivered the keynote address, titled ‘Respecting the Principles of Democracy’, stated that Nigeria’s democracy has gone through twists, dives and turns since after political independence.
He said the best of the country’s history has been the sustenance of democracy since the military transfer of power to a democratically elected government in 1999.
But he observed that there may be reasons to doubt how many lessons the leaders and followers have drawn from the country’s past and how far they are willing to go to deepen, widen and strengthen democracy and democratic practice.
Obasanjo declared that the ways in which the political class has practiced democracy have deepened contradictions, negative coalitions, distrust, disloyalty and unpatriotic tendencies within and between communities and constituencies all over the country.
He stated that what it means was that there were deep structural and philosophical problems that must be dealt with.
He said if the practice of democracy was superficial and opportunistic and it is designed to pursue a struggle for limited objectives, it would precipitate variants of fractured engagements that cannot address structural and philosophical contradictions and challenges.
Obasanjo said, “In fact, the order of the day would be community against community, religion against religion, leader against leader.
“Ordinary citizens are then dragged into the directionless, meaningless and opportunistic personal or narrow ambitions of leaders. The end result will be confusion, diffusion, distraction and possibly leading to separation and disintegration.”
The former president stressed that democracy was possible in Nigeria and the people have the capacity to build a culture of democratization.
But he insisted that Nigerians must recognize and accept the fact that it was an evolutionary process with principles.
He said, “Without retracing our political steps in the right direction, the current process will either not produce the right leaders or it will leave so many broken blocks on the path to governance and attract resources and energy away from the task of rebuilding Nigeria and consolidating our democratic practice.
“The result will be a democratic quagmire, increased corruption, insecurity and survival of the fittest, richest and better connected with little or no recognition of merits. The implications and cost of such a scenario to our present and future can best be imagined. I pray that God will grant us the wisdom to do what is right for our country and people at all times and more so now.”
