Why Democracy Won't Work for Nigeria

Democracy can be a good system of government, but if we look at things presently in Nigeria, we can all agree with me that democracy is not what Nigeria needs to achieve its numerous development targets.

Imagine the so many distractions our current president Goodluck Jonathan is facing- from ANC accusations of him being linient to CPC accusations of being religiously biased after he sent out a cheerful message to his Christian citizens.

Some of the reasons why I strongly believe that democracy isn’t the best system of government to rescue Nigeria are as follows:

1.       The executive arm of government face so many distractions from opposing parties

2.       Slow execution of plans- imagine the processes and approvals required before Mr. President can execute a development project, the senate and representative needs to give their approval to execute or implement certain laws and bi-laws, and as we know the nature of our so-called legislatures, they often demand presidential handshake before they can agree with Mr. President’s point, which cost Nigeria billions to achieve through illegal and unnecessary fun allocation and setting up of committees upon committees. Seriously if it were today, I don’t think the Lagos 3^rd Mainland Bridge would have been built with the sluggish execution of projects by the claimed democratic governments.

3.       Exorbitant cost of governance- democracy as practiced in Nigeria cost a fortune to run. Every sector in Nigeria must have a senate committee with funds allocated to them. Imagine the number of legislators at the federal and state levels, their allowances and salaries alone can tackle most of Nigeria’s problems. Aside these, we have special advisers to Mr. President on every sector, and those special advisers have drivers and Pas, and their Pas may also have their own drivers and offices to maintain too. When we sit down and analyze the whol scenario, we will discover that Nigeria’s budget is mostly spent on governance and we still expect a headway, how?

      Another waste pipe in Nigeria’s democracy is the office of the first lady. We have this office at both the state and federal levels, and they do virtually nothing besides travelling and creating unnecessary fuss that’s always packaged in the form of ‘women empowerment’ that hardly yield positive result. All these never existed during the military era.

4.       Nigeria is too diversified to be governed by a western system of government- seriously, we mustn’t copy from the Europeans and Americans in this regard. Nigerians need to sit down and draft our own system of government based on our problems, cultures and diversity. If I have my way, I would suggest we practice regional system of government similar to the one practiced after independence before the military intervention.

     

      In this new regional system of government, we will have six geopolitical regions using the existing geopolitical structure. Each of these six geopolitical regions will have to produce a regional minister. That is, we will have a North-Central regional minister, North-East regional minister, North-West regional minister, South-East regional minister, South-South regional minister and then South-West regional minister. And from these regional ministers, we will then have a prime minister to be rotated say annually amongst the regional ministers. And the regional ministers will serve a six year term through regional elections that will be held nationwide.

     

      Now, each region will be required to come up with ways to develop and harness resources in their region, and they will also be in control of the resources they generate, while they return a certain percentage, say 30% to the central government for running the central government.

      And then, the central government will only focus on providing national security, law and order, education, immigration services and cultural development and preservation. At this point, each state region will have to handle their power, regional security, and other minor policies.

      On the issue of legislature, we will only have a handful of Nigeria cultural legislators selected from prominent traditional rulers, labour, religious bodies, youth and women forums. And they will be on part-time, and to be paid allowances based on the number of times they seat for meetings.

      Believe me, if Nigeria hangs on to democracy, we may not achieve most of our dreams because democracy has a lot of challenges that can’t be handled by our present Nigeria.