By
Patrick Utomi
One of the sad paradoxes of Nigeria’s political journey is
the current widely held view that in politics anything goes. To explain the
most disgraceful personal conduct, it seems ‘okay’ to just say ‘na politics
na’.
This dominant vice of politics, as the art of the indecent,
rather than the art of the possible, which is dominant in contemporary
political culture in Nigeria is exactly opposite the core issue in Western
political thought and history. There the central issue has been morality or
public virtue, as Montesquieu calls it.
The great escape from misery for Western civilisation, beyond
Angus Deaton’s case for the contribution of health care and the discovery of
the germ theory of disease, has largely come from freedom that democracy
offers.
