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Please allow me a space in your popular newspaper to express my feeling about the military regime and the present democracy. The experience of military rule in Nigeria, according to available records was very sad that many souls were lost while others suffered immeasurable degrees of mal-treatment. A good memory of General Ibrahim Babangida and Sani Abacha era can give the present day Nigerians an opportunity to consider what the future can bring, if politics is not carefully managed. Democracy, the world over is defined as a government of the people by the people and for the people of a particular country.
The process of a good democracy is through a well-organized election, which political parties are formed. It is an exercise which every citizen is expected to participate, by choosing their leaders through casting votes either by open ballot system, secret or open/secret style. Of course, this practice enables one man to cast only one vote where the winner is mandated to run the affairs of government for a legally fixed period of time. In the adverse, dictatorship is a forceful government which is by law, illegal and unpopular.
The reason of its illegality and unpopularity is obvious; this is because no rule of choice or acceptability is followed by the people, who occupy the space of leadership as defined by the relevant law of the nation. With this type of government, only a selected few people rule the people against their own will. In such situation, the few who rule therefore can do anything they can, wish or be able to do by using threat of gun to coerce the people in order that they may steal the country’s resource/treasury without any challenge. However, this was the case in Nigeria during the period of the aforementioned military regimes.
Now, anyone who wish good for Nigerians today should do very thing within his/her ability to discourage a repeat of whichever from of dictatorship whether, direct, indirect, semi-or a combination of them. As things go in our democracy today, it seems that most people have urgently forgotten about the gallant struggle that forced out military regime in Nigeria and those who used their blood, talents, resource, etc. in varied ways and situations to bring about democracy today. However, apart from military rule being a self-chosen, illegal and oppressive government in that case, is democratic governance of today not the same or worse than the forgone military rule when we consider the value of our currency, fuel price, price of essential commodities, insecurity and state of our economy etc that bedeviled Nigeria?. Are we running politics with or without bitterness? Or, should we applaud the leaders who do politics of selection, rather than that of election? If we say, a forceful leadership or government is not a choice of the people and it always bring about unbearable dangers on innocent populace, is it not ideal that we recount our steps towards breakdown of law and order? Should we re-invite military back to power and allow enormous lives lost? Please let us consider the sacrifice of pro-democracy groups, the press, some military officers, labour organization, international organization, and individuals etc who earned us democracy that we enjoy today. Let the good memory of such people like Kutis, Ganis, Col. Umars, Mrs. MEE Mofe Damijos, Simbiats as well as human right activists and numerous others unmentioned here be easily and quickly forgotten, because these people almost ran the same course of Christ for Nigerian, yet our nowadays leaders turned democracy into kleptocracy and plutocracy which makes most Nigerians to adopt corruption as an acceptable means of livelihood.
By Nsikan Edem Ekpenyong
Department of Mass Communication, ABU, Zaria
