A moment of silence, please. It’s question time. What is the colour of democracy? Green, purple, blue, yellow, black or red? Perhaps, all of the above? Well, yes, yes… the answer is any of these colours depending on the country and the people under consideration.

In Europe, America, some parts of Asia and elsewhere, democracy is of the green hue denoting a lush verdant of political peace and abundance in the virtues of participatory government. But what is the colour of democracy in Africa? Red? Just that. And in Nigeria, it is crimson red, signifying a polity in atrophy. Mind you, this is not the assessment of a high noon alarmist. Never. Or how else could you sum up the precipitate entropy in our polity. Like an overheated catacomb, the nation’s political matrix is in an eternal state of entropy, utter disorder and chaos.

In analytical chemistry, entropy is a state of disorderliness in a system. The same can be said of the Nigerian political system in the past 24 years. The subsisting bedlam and confusion are daily gnawing at the nation’s foundation, making the entire political structure anaemic, almost.

With the birth of democracy, one had thought we have seen the last of urban violence, ethno-religious uprisings, brazen banditry and inequity in the distribution of resources. But each passing day, the reverse appears the case. Violence is still our second nature. Ethnic and religious upheaval have become the only enduring signposts on our highways and byways. Banditry has taken centre-stage with fresh fervour, and equity has taken flight to far-off places.

In our home-grown democracy, justice has transformed to a highly priced jewel only fit for the affluent. Take a teaser. In year 2000, in Zamfara State where the Islamic legal code, Sharia, is an opium, a certain citizen Buba Jangede had his arm chopped off for allegedly stealing a cow. In the best of times at that time, a cow can’t cost more than N30,000. Poor Jangede would not have got a better deal seeing he does not have a healthy purse to buy justice. Yet, out of the same Zamfara spewed forth a surfeit of reports on inflated contract bills running into millions of naira by government officials while the Sharia enforcers looked the other way. You see what I mean? When the poor steals, we enforce Sharia; when the rich steals, we look away.

It is not true that democracy is a fodder for violence. But it is true that it guarantees freedom of worship, association, and speech. This is, of course, in consonance with the provisions of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. But neither democracy nor the constitution stipulates that such association or freedom of worship should be used as a weapon to unleash violence on the people. Here again, is the weakness of our democracy, grossly circumscribed by the ambiguity of the constitution. For while the constitution endorses freedom of worship and association, it is silent on what becomes of bigotry and the bigoted mob who have inclined themselves on the plane of religious liberty to create tension and unleash hate on society.

 Again, in year 2000, barely one year into the 4th Republic, a gang of gung-ho men massed into the streets of Lagos to maim and to kill. Here, I recall that a morbid band of bad boys under the aegis of the Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC) held Lagosians hostage. They drew strength and protection from the constitution. In fact, their progenitors readily raced to section 40 of the 1999 constitution which proclaims freedom of association to seek refuge.

The year 2000 Lagos violence was a mere replay of similar bloody dust-ups in different parts of the country. Early that year in Kaduna, a whiff of fury wafted through the air in yet another ethno-religious uprising during which the once serene Kaduna ambience was turned to a macabre dunghill of death. Lives, human lives, were wasted at the snap of the fingers. Property were destroyed in the most tragi-comic manner such that you wouldn’t know whether to cry or laugh.

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 Expectedly, the Kaduna carnage threw up a backlash of reprisals in the South East where the news of their kinsmen being killed in Kaduna sent hot adrenaline sloshing through the veins of Ndigbo. The result was more death and pain in the polity.

Since the journey to the 4th Republic started in 1999, the nation has gone through a peristalsis of self-induced convulsions. If it is not ethnic feud, it is religious umbrage. And when it is not violence precipitated by increase in fuel prices, it is political acrimony pitting the executive against the legislature. It has continued till this day.

Why, for heaven’s sake are we over-heating the system and making democracy assume the temper and temperament of boiling water in a kettle set on a gas burner – volatile and effervescent?

Truth is, it will be no gain for anyone if democracy fails. Not even the military with an inveterate penchant to seize power in the name of righting the wrongs of the civil class. Democracy is a pristine political system which has become a way of life in some developing countries.

It thrives on the strength of the common good of all. And such good must be the product of representative efforts. Stuck in the underbelly of democracy is disagreement or conflict. But such disagreement must be void of any form of rabidness or violence.

Under the Presidency of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, both the executive and the legislature behaved in a manner that suggested we were still tied to the apron of dictatorship. These two arms of government did not only disagree, they indeed fought dirty and openly. And as they fought, the people fainted. They fainted from hunger and despair on the streets, in their homes and in the work places. Their vehicles fail on the usually rough highways because there was no fuel to power them.

Nigerians fought so hard to beget democracy. Now, they are fighting even harder to make it unworkable. Such a pathetic paradox. For every cool breath inhaled, we let out a hail of hot, horrid air into the political system. That is what we have succeeded in doing these past 24 years: creating entropy in the polity.

The post-2023 elections twaddle wafting through social media, and unfortunately through the conventional media, has only revealed one thing: Democracy has further divided the nation. The next government must make this its priority: Unite Nigerians.

Aside the critical issues of insecurity and economic revival, the unity of Nigeria should be paramount in the agenda of the incoming government. Never in the nation’s history has Nigerians come to this sordid juncture of vengeful intolerance expressed viciously through hate speech, ethnic jabs and religious vitriols. To ignore this fundamental issue of uniting the nation is to send an open invitation to anarchy. Nigeria cannot afford another civil war; another #EndSARS fury. The next government must avoid this landmine and navigate the nation through the blades of bile and beef to the corridor of tolerance and national cohesion.