democracy hasn’t failed
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Former President Olusegun Obasanjo was just reported to have said that Western liberal democracies are not working for Africa (Daily Post, November 20, 2023).
In his keynote address at a consultative forum to discuss the theme “Rethinking Western Liberal Democracy for Africa” held in Abeokuta, he said, among other things, that liberal democracy was invented without taking into account the history, culture and traditions of the African continent. He said that it was The opinion of the majority is not taken into account. And Africans do not have to practice a system of government that “we do not have a hand in defining or designing.”
President Obasanjo has advocated what he calls “Afro-democracy” in place of Western liberal democracy. Many of Mr. Obasanjo’s past interventions have been subject to dehumanizing arguments.
But rather than attacking his character, we should consider his arguments, their premises, and their implications. I am confident that, if subjected to the scrutiny of critical thinking, his recent claims about what he called Western liberal democracy will prove to be logically insufficient and unsustainable.
At a time when the winds of military dictatorship seem to be blowing across Africa, many young Africans are despairing of Africa’s ruling elites and are therefore tempted to welcome military regimes. Making claims is dangerous.
President Obasanjo’s main argument that Africans have no need to practice foreign systems of government assumes, or at least suggests, that Africans lack the ability to make effective use of foreign inventions. ing.
Apart from the fact that if a European had made such a claim, the European might have been called a racist, this statement also means that Africans today It ignores the fact that we know that people are better at leveraging their ideas.
Computer science did not originate in Africa. Today, Africans are considered some of the best computer scientists in the world. The same is true for different academic disciplines and professional practices. The game of soccer originated in Europe. Today, African athletes are some of the best in the world.
Japan, an Asian country, practices Western liberal democracy, even though its culture is very non-Western. In addition to this, the same applies to South Korea and India.
But you don’t have to go too far to Asia. There are African countries where what Mr. Obasanjo calls Western liberal democracy is practiced without shutting down cities after every election.
Indeed, even by Africa’s poor air service standards, Botswana and Namibia in the Southern African subregion are not far from Abeokuta. Here in West Africa, Liberia has accomplished the unimaginable.
At the risk of being criticized for quoting Westerners to get my point across, I will paraphrase Canadian philosopher and theologian Bernard Lonergan. “A statement is not just a statement, it is an answer to a question.” President Obasanjo’s statement answers the wrong question. Isn’t the question whether Western liberal democracy is working for Africa?
The question is whether Africa’s oligarchy, of which Obasanjo is a member, has allowed democracy to work for Africa. The answer is, without hesitation, unequivocally negative.
If democracy is not functioning in Africa, it is because the ruling elites, civilian and military, in Africa in general and Nigeria in particular, deliberately refuse to practice democracy.
For example, when Obasanjo said that Western liberal democracy was being imposed on Africans, I said that the 1979 Constitution, despite its clearly anti-federal and anti-people provisions, Its identical twin sister, the 1999 Constitution, was imposed on Nigeria by military decree.
In fact, the decree that created the 1979 Constitution was signed by then General Olusegun Obasanjo. The 1979 constitution established a vast state in which the beneficiaries of Nigeria’s oil and other resources are state officials. To make matters worse, Article 2 of the Constitution places sovereignty in the hands of the state rather than the people, making the state more powerful than the people. Article 9 of the same Constitution nails the coffin of democracy by making any effort to reform it nearly impossible.
Democracy here is understood as a government of the people, by the people, for the people, but men and women without democratic qualifications or democratic dispositions plan and carry out unethical means to take over the real power of the state. It doesn’t work in that case. In recent memory,
General Sani Abacha advocated “homegrown democracy.” President Obasanjo is currently advocating “African democracy.” However, democracies have common characteristics that define them. These characteristics are consultation, representation, and accountability.
Specifically, we elect people to represent us because we can’t all sit in the halls of government. Those elected to represent us must consult with us before entering the halls of government. And they have to go back to the people who elected them and explain what they have done and are doing in government as representatives of the people.
But the people who will ultimately take the reins of government in our land are not representatives of the true people, but of political godfathers. They and their godfathers are the beneficiaries of an electoral process that habitually violates its integrity.
Because their “elections” depend on the ideals, deals, and agreements of elites rather than voters, they have no obligation to represent or consult with the people; they are accountable to the people. I don’t think there is any obligation. In fact, they demand respect and worship from people while despising them.
President Obasanjo told those invited to the consultative forum that they would “clinically examine the practice of liberal democracy, identify the shortcomings of our society, know the human condition as it is, and “We are invited to come up with ideas and recommendations that will better serve our purpose.” By our experience and the experience of others. ”
But let’s not act like surgeons looking for a human heart inside a patient’s belly. It is not the shortcomings of democracy that we should consider, but the shortcomings of the ruling elites in Africa and Nigeria. In other words, beyond analogical predictions, democracy does not matter.
The problem is that they blatantly refuse to put democratic ideals into practice. That outright rejection is rooted in selfishness, the habit of subjugating everyone but yourself. Ironically, in a country where oppressed heroes worship their oppressors, their selfishness is celebrated.
That’s not to say that selfishness isn’t found in other climates. In fact, this is the world’s oldest pandemic. But while other parts of the world have good laws in place to manage this pandemic, here in Nigeria we have to impose a constitution that is fatally flawed, one that encourages the rewards of bad political behavior. deliberately refusing to mismanage the pandemic by
Declaring that democracy has failed poses a danger. It has the potential to seek non-democratic means to seize the reins of the state.
But this is an opportunity to examine our conscience to ensure that democracy has not failed. Rather, pseudo-democrats have ensured that democratic ideals are practiced even in violation. They failed, not democracy.
Father Akinwale, OP OP is a Professor and Vice-Chancellor of Augustine University, Ilara Epe, Lagos State.
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Source: guardian.ng