Democracy Or Plutocracy? -By Mukhtar Dauda Abdullahi

Democracy in Nigeria makes me think always, this happens due to failure to understand its true nature. The practicalization of democratic system and its golden features seems not in existence in Nigeria. So, what is democracy? Democracy may be defined from various angles, but seeing it from the angle of people participation one can use the definition of former American president in person of Abraham Lincoln who sees it as ” Government of the people by people and for the people.”

The definition above shows/stated that for a system to be democratic in nature, there must be participation of citizens of the state in governing circle. The particpation may come from angle of voting, campaigning, exercising their fundamental human rights e.t.c. Any system of government that fails to allow the citizens to participate in governing activities, that system can not be seen as a democratic one.

Nigeria claims to be practicing democracy as her system of government for almost 61 years but to be frank with my readers the system of democracy is not in practice in this country. The curious reader may ask why ? The answer is simply lack of the presence of the golden features of democracy ranging from the following:  Absence of free and fair election. The election that Nigeria claims to be having is not free and fair one. 2ndly her constitution is not being respected, this is why a lot of political, economic and social irregularities do take place in the country. Thirdly the issue of rights of individuals is not being handled the way it supposed to be handled.

So Nigerian system of government can only be seen as a plutocracy due the lack of practicalisation of the golden features of democracy in the country. Plutocracy is a system of government that can be seen as government of the rich by the rich and for the rich. Looking at the nature of Nigerian politics one may easily identify the silent features of the above mentioned system.