The Presidency reacted angrily on Monday over former President Olusegun Obasanjo stance on failure of Western style liberal democracy, blaming him for the current state of Nigeria’s democracy.
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Special Adviser on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, stated that rather than pontificating, Obasanjo should know that democracy the country currently practises dates back to direct inputs by Obasanjo when he led the country’s first as military Head of State from 1976 – 1979 and as civilian President from 1999 – 2007.
“Obasanjo ought to know that he brought this thing into Nigeria. He was the one who made us adopt it in 1979. He must have seen it as expensive and unsuitable when he governed us for eight years and even wanted an extension for another four years.
“So, the way he is sounding, it is like the man is getting wiser after leaving office,” Onanuga said, reacting to Obasanjo’s post-presidential stance.
The Presidency’s response followed comments by Obasanjo where he 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.
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.”
But The Presidency, through Presidential Spokesperson Onanuga blamed President Obasanjo for a poorly copied model during his tenure as Head of State and, later, President, criticising him for not advocating a better system despite his current views saying, “If he believes in what he is saying now, he ought to be an advocate of the need to go back to the parliamentary system.
“We were practicing the parliamentary democracy the British left for us. Then, the military struck in 1966. And when we were going to return to democracy, instead of going back to what we were practicing before, parliamentary democracy, which was not expensive, it was this same Obasanjo who accepted the recommendation of the constitutional assembly at that time that recommended this American-style democracy.”
Onanuga criticised Obasanjo’s implementation of the Presidential system, saying, “Obasanjo also knew that he copied this Presidential system very wrongly. He copied the form and structure. But he didn’t copy the spirit of it.
“Something that should have been under him in 1999 to 2007, he even made attempts to modify the constitution.”
@The PUNCH