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From Ndubuisi Orji, Abuja
Presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) for the 2027 election, Atiku Abubakar, has said that Nigerian democracy is yet to translate to prosperity for the citizens, 27 years after the end of military rule.
Atiku stated this at a Democracy Day Convening, organised by the Coalition of Political Action Committee (COPAC), a civic and political engagement platform affiliated with the African Democratic Congress (ADC) on Friday, in Abuja.
The former vice president, who was represented by former chairperson of the House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs, Nnenna Elendu-Ukeje, said while citizens celebrate freedom, transparent governance and social justice, they must confront the unsavoury truth about democratic reality under the present administration.
According to him, while the country holds periodic elections, seventy percent of Nigerians do not believe that those exercises reflect their wishes or afford them opportunities to vote out bad government. He added that many of the democratic institutions are allegedly weaponised against the citizens they were created to protect.
“We have a robust politics, but governance is plainly absent. We celebrate democracy, while a hollowed-out version is served to us daily, marked by constitutional overreach, creeping illiberalism, and a stubborn refusal to submit to the checks of accountability.
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“Our ambitious annual budgets have become rituals honoured more in the breach than in the observance. At a time when our country faces the gravest security challenge in its history, only 7.11 per cent of the defence budget has been accessed. Democracy, sadly, has not translated into prosperity.
“The cost-of-living crisis has exploded into an unbearable burden that is crushing ordinary families. Fuel, food, transport, and medicine have become luxuries that few Nigerians can afford.
“ Our national debt has ballooned beyond manageable limits, mortgaging the future of our children, while debt servicing devours the revenues that should be invested in education, healthcare, security, and infrastructure. The national budget bears witness to all of this.
“Food insecurity has become synonymous with our daily reality. The statistics are staggering, and the warnings of impending hardship now haunt millions: farms lie fallow, markets stand empty, and far too many of our people have grown accustomed to going to bed hungry — in a country that cannot even guarantee their safety.”
The former vice president, while decrying the escalating insecurity in the country, noted that citizens are killed daily in a spate of violence.
