Former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, while speaking in Abeokuta at a high-level consultation he organised on ‘Rethinking Western Liberal Democracy in Africa’, recalled how his former political party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), lost a local government election in Ogun State in 1998 because he rejected plans to bribe officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
Obasanjo, while making the claim, said party leaders had told him that there should be money allocated for the police and INEC, but he rejected the proposal on the belief that INEC officials and policemen are government workers earning salaries monthly, adding that he told politicians and professors at the debate that he is not always comfortable with the phrase, ‘Nigerian factor’, when discussing democracy and other issues affecting development.
According to him, he came across the ‘Nigerian factor’ slang when the nation held the first local government election, and his party lost because politicians said he refused to take cognisance of the Nigerian factor while planning for the election.
Obasanjo said: “When things go wrong, you said the Nigerian factor. The first thing I learned in politics was this thing I called Nigerian factor. In 1998, we had the first local government election. We had parties, and here in Abeokuta, we met in my office, and they came up and said, ‘Look, this is money for INEC, money for police.’ At a stage, I said, ‘What nonsense! Is police not being paid, and INEC too?’
“They said ‘that’s how we do it. I said, ‘You cannot do that.’ So, they didn’t do that. And, of course, we lost all the local governments. We lost all. And then they came to me and said, ‘Baba, you see? If you had allowed us to do it the way we used to do it, we would have won. And I felt guilty.
“During the next election, which was State Assembly, I just stayed in my house. I said, ‘Well, do whatever you want to do; I will not be part of it’. So, I didn’t even go. But, the result was the same. One of the people who got money didn’t even distribute it to where he was supposed to distribute it.”
While saying it is time to be realistic, the former President noted a hungry will sell his vote for just N1000.
“When you are hungry, whatever anybody tells you cannot go in. Poverty is a great enemy of democracy. Ignorance or lack of education is a great enemy of democracy. And we seem to be deliberately fomenting poverty and lack of education,” Obasanjo said.
The Informant247 had earlier reported that Olusegun Obasanjo, the former Nigerian President, clarified that Western liberal democracy has not worked for Africa, adding that liberal democracy does not consider the continent’s history, culture and tradition.
The former President, while delivering his keynote address at a high-level consultation on ‘Rethinking Western Liberal Democracy for Africa’ in Abeokuta, the Ogun state capital, explained that the Western style of democracy failed in Africa because it does not consider the views of the majority of the people.
Obasanjo, the convener of the gathering, 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 total representatives of all the people.
”Invariably, the majority of the people are wittingly or unwittingly kept out, he said.”
He advocated for what he termed ‘Afro democracy’ instead of Western liberal democracy.
According to him, African countries have no business in operating a system of government in which they have no hand in its “definition and design.”
Obasanjo said, “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.”
