BY KOLA ODEPEJU
Former President of Nigeria, Olusegun Obasanjo, a.k.a Ebora Owu, who often loves to have his voice heard all the time through his utterances or letter writing, goofed again recently as he came up with “Afro Democracy” theory. At a lecture titled ‘Rethinking Western Liberal Democracy’ which took place in Abeokuta at his presidential library, Obasanjo was of the opinion that western democracy that we imported isn’t working for us in Africa; that rather than improve the lot of the people, it has pushed them to abject poverty and therefore there’s need to fashion out our own type of democracy in line with our own cultures, traditions, beliefs etcetera.
Opinions have been expressed by some analysts across the country on his proposition and no doubt, Obasanjo would be surprise about the level of condemnations that have greeted his theory. He must be surprise because he must have expected people to welcome his theory for the simple reason that, truly, this imported western democracy hasn’t benefited us as expected. But the fundamental question arising from this very fact is that; is it the fault of western democracy that this form of government hasn’t worked for us or our own fault the practitioners? I make bold to opine that the purported failure of western democracy to work for Africa is the fault of we the practitioners but not that of democracy as a system of government.
The poser for OBJ is: why is the same democracy working in the western world where we imported it from? Why are the people in the advanced democracies living well while we wallow in abject poverty here despite practicing the same system of government and in spite of our God-given numerous natural resources in commercial quantities? Of course the answer isn’t far fetched. The answer is simply about leadership.
Leadership determines the living conditions of the people. Good leadership brings about good and comfortable living condition for the people and vice-versa. So it’s not about the system of government but about practitioners of such system of government.
In “Why Nations Fail”, a book co-authored by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, the authors were very analytical in explaining the difference between the developed western countries of the world and their underdeveloped counterparts of Africa. According to them, leaders of the western countries make good use of their natural resources to develop their climes and to benefit their people while the reverse is the case with African leaders. African leaders rather than utilize the resources heavily deposited in the continent by nature to develop the continent and to improve the living conditions of the people, they only revel in primitive accumulation of our common wealth at the expense of their subjects. This is the reason for the underdevelopment of Africa and the pervasive abject poverty in the continent.
If OBJ is ready to listen to the truth, he needs be told that it’s not Western Liberal Democracy that has failed us, we are the ones that have made it not to work for us by our counter-productive attitudes of corruption, greed, violence and lack of consideration for the people. And OBJ isn’t excempted from these aforementioned negative attitudes. In fact, he’s the worst culprit’s of all the leaders that have ruled this country.
For instance Pa Olusegun Obasanjo should ask himself if it’s the Western Liberal Democracy that instructed him to introduce “Do or Die” approach into our politics. It’s an indisputable fact of our history that Pa OBJ is the father of “Do or Die” politics in Nigeria. So rather than query Western Liberal Democracy as he fallaciously posited, he and other African leaders (many of them) should be queried over their roles on non-workability of Western Democracy in our continent.
The hypocrisy embedded in Pa Olusegun Obasanjo’s thoughts isn’t difficult to discern. He was just being hypocritical by saying that western democracy isn’t working for us. Let’s even forget about his regime as head of state, as a civilian president for eight solid years, in what way did his regime improve the lot of the people of this country? It would be recalled that OBJ’s eight years was that of total misrule as it was characterized by dictatorship, political violence (due to his introduction of ‘do or die’ philosophy into our politics), infrastructure collapse, power outage in spite of spending $16b on reviving the power sector and humongous corruption despite his anti-corruption posturing..
Thus a fortiori, Pa Obasanjo should bury his head in shame for making such a pronouncement. Rather than blaming Western Liberal Democracy, he should blame himself and his ilk for the underdevelopment of Africa and the massive poverty affecting the African people. No matter how good a theory or a system of government is, it will be practiced by humans who by their nature, are likely to bastardise it through their greed, corrupt tendencies, self-centeredness and ineptitude.
Kola Odepeju, newspaper columnist and social commentator writes via kolaodepeju@gmail.com
NOTE: Views expressed here are those of the writers and do not represent the Editorial position of GrandNews Online or any of its employees.
