DEMOCRACY

The origin of Democracy is traceable to ancient Greek; “Demo” meaning people and “kratia” meaning government, these two words in Greek “Demo” and “kratia” metamorphosed into the word “Democracy” and it is Abraham Lincoln that defined Democracy as the government of the people by the people and for the people. This definition can be divided into three explainable parts;

A.    Government of the people refers to government on behalf of the people

B.     Government by the people refers to representative government and

C.     Government for the people means that the government should be carried on the people of high principle that is that those trusted with the affair of government should not be politicians who seek to make themselves rich or powerful at the expense of those whom they are supposed to serve-the people

  In Nigeria, everything there is to say about Democracy that we claim to practice, we do not have it in our political system and as for me the political system that best describes ours is “Oligarchy” it is a form of Government that places political power in the hands of a few people. Democracy in Nigeria to the politician is a whole new ball game; it is the survival of the fittest/strongest. In the past years to be précised, Nigeria elections has been the kind where all the parties nominates their candidates and then they go to a board meeting of all the god-fathers and make a general selection of the top person to come out s the winner after the whole campaigning noises and false promises and we the citizen after standing in the long queues to cast our vote, they make the “selection” and not “election”.

  Nothing could be easier, and yet it is the hardest: to be simple (Ephesus, 2^nd edition, 1957, in German).