By Polycarp
Onwubiko
The federal government should stop the annual jamboree called “Democracy
Day” on May 29 because several of us consider it an inanity and brazen
frivolity. The annual celebration of the supposed ‘democracy day’ on May 29
exposes the country as a laughing stock and people who are not serious on
development and civilized value system. It showcases us as a people who have
brazenly refused to join advanced and civilized countries of the world, to
showcase scientific inventions but to celebrate electoral fraud and other faux
fax.
The fact remains that Nigeria
adopted democracy as a form of government in its 1960 Independent Constitution
and 1963 Republican Constitution. Democracy would have taken firm root in Nigeria but for
the vaulting ambition of some northerners who want to impose their decadent
ethno-religious value systems and control government at all costs. The
consequences brought about electoral brigandage and political crises which led
to military regimes which for all intent and purposes were led by their kith
and kin. The intransigence also led to the fratricidal civil war from 1967-1970.
The military autocrats brazenly
maintained the overt and covert agenda of the feudal caliphate and centralized
governance, thus bastardizing the principles of federal system of government,
which promotes true federalism; thus forcing the country to be practicing
jaundiced unitary system of government or ‘hegemonial federalism’. Of course,
the consequences are what stares us in the face, and if inch-by-inch leading us
to the brink of a failed state. It should be pointed out without equivocation
that true federalism is a desideratum to reinvent Nigeria .
However, consequent of the
jaundiced mindset of these imperialists who occupied the presidency more than
other people, the concept and practice of true federalism were lost. It was
this same pull-and-push mentality that forced former President Olusegun
Obasanjo to chicken out to the forces they pulled together and became so naïve
that he declared May 29 as ‘democracy day’. It should be pointed out that if
for anything, if we count out October 1st, the day that should truly be
declared ‘democracy day’ was the day the same Obasanjo, in Military uniform,
handed over power to Alhaji Shehu Shagari, the first elected politician to take
over power from the military. Not that Nigeria had never been ruled by
civilians before then, but Shagari’s ascendancy was unique in the sense that it
marked real water shed for the democratisation of the country. Even though that
republic was short-lived through a military coup led by Major General Muhammadu
Buhari, the current civilian president, it remained a reference point in the
annals of the democratic history of the country.
Like the foolery called ‘Democracy
Day’, it is also instructive that some states in the country, including several
that If impunity is not brazenly celebrated in Nigeria, the immediate past
President Goodluck Jonathan and now civilianised Muhammadu Buhari, ought to
have abolished this non-sense called ‘Democracy Day’ celebrated on May 29.
There is virtually no need for ‘democracy day’ to be marked at all or no that
day because there is no precedent anywhere in the world.