Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Nigerian Election: Let us Try the Lottery System

Nimi, thanks for posting this essay. I'll read it carefully after my class but I wanted to write to say how much I appreciate the out-of-the-box thinking. This Western-style liberal democracy is not working in Africa. It is a threat to the stability of many states and it is impoverishing our people. We need to get creative in reworking democracy to suit each country's peculiar socioeconomic, historical, and cultural conditions. In the frenzy to "democratize" in the 1990s, we let Western prodemocracy donors and governments browbeat us into adopting their kind of democracy. It is killing us, literally. We need to reconsider this zero-sum, winner-takes-all democracy. Our African traditional system is based on consensus and collective governance, not on this adversarial system of liberal democracy. I'm writing an essay on this and it will be published by an American magazine.

On Wed, Feb 27, 2019 at 7:36 AM Nimi Wariboko <nimiwari@msn.com> wrote:

Dear All:

 

As we debate, decry, or celebrate the results of the Nigerian presidential election I want to put before you another option for choosing leaders or legislators in the country: the alternative method of election by lot, sortition. I published an essay on this in September 2017 in the Premium Times and the link is provided below. Since I published this essay I have been contacted my many people all over the world who have been pushing for a similar method of selection of leaders in democratic countries. Ireland employs something like this in its political system; deploying it when dealing with the constitutional prohibition against abortion. Kofi Annah before he died started advocating for the lottery system of selection.  

https://opinion.premiumtimesng.com/2017/09/22/election-by-lottery-a-new-approach-to-nigerian-democracy-by-nimi-wariboko/

 

Thanks,

Nimi Wariboko

Boston University

United States

 

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