Showing posts with label Baron Montesquieu. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Baron Montesquieu. Show all posts

Thursday, September 10, 2020

Why Character Matters In Politics

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’. 
                                                                     *Prof Utomi 
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.