Former Nigerian President, Olusegun Obasanjo, on Monday said that liberal democracy as practiced in United States and its Western alliance nations has not worked for Africa.
The former President explained that the Western style of democracy failed in Africa because it does not consider the views of the majority of the people and doesn’t take into account the continent’s history, culture and tradition.
Obasanjo, who spoke while delivering his keynote address at a high-level consultation on ‘Rethinking Western Liberal Democracy for Africa’ in Abeokuta, the Ogun state capital, described Western liberal democracy as “a government of a few people over all the people or population and these few people are representatives of only some of the people and not full representatives of all the people. Invariably, the majority of the people are wittingly or unwittingly kept out.”
Advocating what termed ‘Afro democracy’ in place of Western liberal democracy, President Obasanjo said that African countries have no business in operating a system of government in which they have no hand in its “definition and design.”
According to him: “The weakness and failure of liberal democracy as it is practised stem from its history, content and context and its practice. Once you move from all the people to a representative of the people, you start to encounter troubles and problems. For those who define it as the rule of the majority, should the minority be ignored, neglected and excluded?
“In short, we have a system of government in which we have no hands to define and design and we continue with it, even when we know that it is not working for us. Those who brought it to us are now questioning the rightness of their invention, its deliverability and its relevance today without reform.
“The essence of any system of government is the welfare and well-being of the people: all the people. Here, we must interrogate the performance of democracy in the West when it originated from and with us the inheritors of what we are left with by our colonial powers.
“We are here to stop being foolish and stupid. Can we look inward and outward to see what in our country, culture, tradition, practice and living over the years that we can learn from, adopt and adapt with practices everywhere for a changed system of government that will serve our purpose better and deliver?
“We have to think out of the box and after, act with our new thinking. You are invited here to examine clinically the practice of liberal democracy, identify its shortcomings for our society and bring forth ideas and recommendations that can serve our purpose better, knowing human beings for what we are and going by our experiences and the experiences of others.
“We are here to think as leaders of thought in academia and leaders of thought with some experience in politics.”
