By; BAYO AKAMO, Ibadan
Former Interim National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Chief Abdulkareem Adebisi Akande on Wednesday declared that multi-party parliamentary democracy is the best form of government that is left available for Nigeria for now.
Chief Akande stated this while addressing a press conference on his 79th birthday held in his Ila Orangun country home in Osun state..
The former governor of Osun state stressed that with the present situation in the country, there is the urgent need for Nigeria as a country “to follow her British colonial masters in practising multi-party parliamentary democracy.”
“Ladies and gentlemen, given the benefits of hindsight and our unsavoury experiences in the past, it is now crystal clear that multi-party parliamentary democracy is the best form of government that is left available for Nigeria, if it wants to catch up with the rest of the civilised and rapidly developing world in the next decades before oil revenues will no longer be in vogue” he said..
Chief Akande maintained that “up to the present age, evidence-based analyses has proved parliamentary democracy to be the most accountably transparent form of government in the whole world”.
“It has made the United Kingdom lasting, rich, stable and respectable globally. It makes the very young Israel very strong economically and militarily. It is transforming India from acute poverty and hunger into self sufficiency and reliability in virtually in all fields. Considering that, apart from being transparent and very accountable, Parliamentary Democracy is inclusive and does not promote the sort of unhealthy rivalry Nigeria is experiencing between the Executive and the Legislative arms of the government. Therefore, it appears to be the best form of governmental structure for Nigeria.”
The former governor of Osun state added that western education and participation of Africans in the military during the First and Second World Wars created a new set of elites who became known as “politicians”, and they eventually took over powers from the colonial officers.
He stated further that “during the cold wars which followed the two World wars, the global political debates on economic programmes were for choices between ‘Socialism’ and ‘Capitalism’, while the debates on the form of suitable government in Africa oscillated between those for one-party or multi-party presidentialism or those for parliamentary democracy” saying, “Nigeria had to follow her British colonial masters in practising multi-party parliamentary democracy.”
“We have seen from the above that African Tribal Municipalities were dictatorial, corrupt and oppressive. With independent political party arrangements, multi-party parliamentary democracy can make Nigeria great too. Democracy–the type being practised in the UK, India, Canada, Australia for many centuries now and in Israel since 1948–has become the accepted culture of the people in those climes. Anything less accountably transparent cannot be good for Nigeria –an African country that has suffered slavery, repressions and indignities for centuries and whose education has been so ruthlessly bastardised in the recent times to the extent that University graduates are no longer gainfully employable”.
According to Chief Akande. ” it is because our educational system is bad that our people are abjectly poor. The American democracy of multi-party presidentialism is too complicated and costly for a country of poor people with large illiteracy rate like Nigeria.”
