RIVERS OF BLOOD AND THE PRICE OF POWER IN A DEMOCRACY: LESSONS FROM THE 2019 ELECTIONS
Democracy is been canvassed globally as the best system of Government. This opinion is mostly championed by Europe and North America and even financed by International Monetary Fund-IMF and World Bank. Democracy seems to be so dear to the western world that it is been forced down the throat of Nations particularly those nations that seems to share a different political inclination and ideology in their system of government.
Infact democracy is not only a system of government but transcends to have its economic correlate which is the much vaunted Neo-Liberal Economics which is the brain child of globalization. For the Western Nations democracy is equivalent to open market, rule of law, human rights, freedom of worship and association in brief fundamental human rights and more especially so in Africa.
By the collapse of the Berlin wall and the global overflow of capitalism European Nations led by the United States of America and Britain seemed to be in the haste to democratise AFRICA. To the extent that known dictatorships hitatho friendly to imperial powers of Europe and North America were been forced to democratise with obstinate regimes been dismantled by the forces of the CIA and secret services in industrialized Europe and even ASIA.
In Nigeria Civil Society Actors suddenly became the friends of imperial forces who sought opening and ceased most opportunities to furnale dollars for militant groups to carry out campaigns to enthrone democracy in the country. BY the combined forces of providence and human treachery Nigeria organised an election in 1999 and men on plain clothes assumed political positions.
From the said period the transition from one tenure of Four years to the order has been an art in warfare rather than an organised process of political transition regulated by an impartial arbiter and led by rules. But worse there is a progressive reduction of the democratic and political space been usurped by political actors out to seek power for its own sake-benefits that is attendant upon it. Hence. the ordinary Nigerian is continuously disempowered and reduced to a none participant in the democratic project.
Experts in the politics of the third world or developing societies will give us some parameters of interpretation of politics in this clime and factors that drive political actors-ethnicity,religious fanaticism and bigotry, tribalism and even prebendalism etc but poverty and the politics of disempowerment driven by a culture of corruption in public service seems to have much more insidious and endemic effect than the earlier stated factors acting within their traditional influence.
As the years go by it seems the stake of participation in the Nigerian Democratic process either as a contestant or electorate is getting indeed higher. As the system witnesses the predatory expropriation by the ruling elite political office as business heightens the quest for political power and the role of violence as an invaluable tool of political control. Thus, it came to pass that in the countdown to the 2019 General Elections in Nigeria, political actors saw the indispensable role of violence thus mobilized same, groups seen as outlaws were fully equipped as private armies to counter formal state coercive structures known to play partisan roles always in favour of wielders of state power and incumbents.
The general insecurity across the country after the National elections in Nigerian is the cost of power and the price of ambition of of political office seekers that have thrown caution to the wind and abridged the rules to confort. To pretend that this system of government represents the bast in the face of the brigandage and death is either to mock democracy or raises questions as to its integrity. It is time for us to think.
Arochukwu Paul Ogbonna is the National Coordinator of Civil Rights Council in Nigeria. A Human Rights Group fighting for the oppressed in the society
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