Ensuring that Democracy Thrives in Nigeria

Karl Marx once said “Capitalism contains the seeds of its own destruction”. Well recent events have proven this maxim true, greedy capitalists would always nibble to the very last piece of capital till there is nothing except a dark pit for entire economies to fall into. Somehow, Nigeria’s Democracy shows this tendency, capable of auto self -implosion normally as a result normally narrow mindedness of the politicians and apathy of followers.

Nigeria democratic history is replete with tales of self-sabotage, corruption, sectarianism & sectionalism and excessive abuse of power.

To understand how Nigeria’s democracy contains the seeds of its own destruction, we could look at marketing. The key to marketing your goods remains at understanding who your clientele really is. Some products are designed for the general populace, others are designed for the young or the old, some at certain ethnicities others exclusively for certain religions etc. Hence, marketing in all these cases is designed to suit the the respective clientele. Politicians follow a similar tactic, in Nigeria our politicians rather than focus on the entire pie, allow their narrow-mindedness deceive them into segmenting the “market” into distinct sections.

Mature democracy works on the principle that politicians would always focus on a creating a coalition of people who may be diverse but have similar interest. The key word here is interest not ethnicity or religion. Sometimes this interest could lead to the exclusion of others or it could be utterly myopic. In mature democracies, politicians market ideas not sentiments or differences.

In our democracy, politicians in order to gain the support of their political base consisting mainly of members of their ethnic group, market sentiments and differences, this automatically cuts people into various factions. One of the effects of this divisive strategy is the general increase in ethno – religious conflicts whenever democracy returns another being that it creates disunity. The more ethno – religious violence the country experience the more likely democracy in Nigerian would implode, as past military adventurism occurred as a result of the absence of peace or the threat of wide scale violence.

Like Wall Street bankers, Nigerian politicians, well a good number of them, enjoy placing their hands in the cookie jar. The problem of corruption in Nigeria is magnified under democracy, because there are multiple power centers, this means there are many places where stealing takes places. Corruption in Nigeria makes it difficult for good governance to work, absence of good governance means poverty and unhappy citizens, this unhappiness might translate to youth restiveness. Corruption is another reason often cited by the military whenever democracy is overthrown.

There are other reasons why Nigeria’s democracy is threatened but these 2 factors listed above top the list. Sectionalism by politicians disunites Nigerians thereby sowing the seeds of violence and makes fighting corruption are very difficult task, while corruption impoverishes the people leading to dissatisfaction with democratic rule. Unfortunately Nigeria continues to repeat the same cycle with return of democracy. We have to learn from history to cut this vicious cycle and ensure that democracy thrives and is sustained in Nigeria.

http://storried.com/ensuring-that-democracy-thrives-in-nigeria/

If anything must change in Nigeria, let's start it individually... let's change/overhaul our orientation s..chikena...then let's vote buhari for President come 2015