After approximately three years in Nigeria during which time I got acclimatised, acculturated and acquired a real feel of the country, I witnessed firsthand the 5th ofAugust, 1983 elections which the then party in POWER openly boasted about, describing the results as “NPN Magic” (fraudulence writ large, their hands took a dip in the election bag of tricks from the devil’s toolbox) and wasn’t at all surprised by the Buhari-Idiagbon coup of 31st December 1983 to usher in the Happy New Year.
For nationalists and patriots, unity of purpose cum “national cohesion” is devoutly to be wished for, and since Independence back in 1960, consistently falling short of those national objectives, Nigerians are at least in agreement about the divisive, if not corrosive nature of the Nigerian elections that have been staged so far, resulting in people getting the governments that they deserve.
As we all know, no matter the specific details that are peculiar to Gambia, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Cameroon, Kenya or Nigeria, on the whole, it would seem that in the so called “ multi-party democracy” the main function of the opposition - I daresay including His Majesty's opposition in the United Kingdom ( Westminster model) seems to be to at all costs , oppose and disrupt, not very different from the military jargon “to destroy, degrade and disrupt” as the best way to approach the enemy, in the political sphere, the enemy being synonymous with the incumbent government.
Multi-party democracy is obviously not working in the way that it ideally could, in Nigeria, what with the political, ethnic, religious tensions usually bedevilling the costly, cut-throat elections, not to mention the usual aftermath, namely the always hotly disputed elections results, the main question for Ejuchegahi A. Angwaomaodoko the author of the piece, is simple : If a viable opposition party cannot be formed, and if the cross-carpetting cannot be stemmed, in as far as the cross-carpeting etc is not unconstitutional, illegal or unlawful, what could be so terribly wrong with a “One-Party Democracy”?
2027 Elections: Is Nigeria Sliding Into One-Party Democracy?
https://thisdawn.com/2027-elections-is-nigeria-sliding-into-one-party-democracy/
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