Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has simply been reported to have stated that western liberal democracy just isn’t working for Africa (Daily Post, November 20, 2023.)

In his keynote at a consultative discussion board deliberating on the theme, “Rethinking Western Liberal Democracy for Africa” in Abeokuta, he stated, inter alia that liberal democracy was invented with out contemplating the historical past, tradition and custom of the African continent; it doesn’t take note of the views of the bulk; and that Africans don’t have any enterprise training a system of presidency “in which we have no hands to define and design”.

Instead of western liberal democracy, President Obasanjo advocated what he known as “Afro democracy.” Many of Obasanjo’s previous interventions have been met with advert hominem arguments.

But slightly than assault his individual, his assertions, their presuppositions and implications must be examined. I’m satisfied that, subjected to the scrutiny of essential pondering, his most up-to-date assertions on what he known as western liberal democracy can be discovered to be logically wanting and unsustainable.

At a time when the wind of army dictatorship seems to be blowing throughout Africa, a time when many younger Africans are left hopeless by Africa’s ruling elite and are subsequently tempted to welcome army rule, it’s harmful to make such assertions.

President Obasanjo’s essential argument that Africans don’t have any enterprise training a overseas system of presidency presupposes or no less than means that Africans lack the capability to place to good use no matter is of overseas invention.

Apart from the truth that a European might need been described as racist if the European had made such an assertion, the assertion ignores the truth that Africans are as we speak discovered to excel in placing to make use of different ‘foreign’ concepts.

Computer science didn’t originate from Africa. Today, Africans depend amongst among the best laptop scientists on the planet. The similar is true of various educational disciplines {and professional} practices. The sport of soccer was born in Europe. Today, Africans are amongst its finest gamers on the planet.

The Asian nation of Japan, regardless of its profoundly non-western tradition, practices western liberal democracy. The similar is true of South Korea and of India, to say however these.

But we’d like not go too far-off Asia. There are African nations the place what Obasanjo calls western liberal democracy is practiced with out shutting down their cities on each election day.

Surely, even by the usual of poor aviation providers in Africa, Botswana and Namibia within the southern African sub area will not be too removed from Abeokuta. Liberia, right here in West Africa, has simply finished the unimaginable.

At the danger of being accused of citing a westerner to make my level, I’ll paraphrase Bernard Lonergan, Canadian thinker and theologian, who stated: statements will not be simply statements however solutions to questions. President Obasanjo’s assertion solutions the mistaken query. The query just isn’t whether or not western liberal democracy is working for Africa?

The query is whether or not the oligarchy in Africa, of which Obasanjo is member, has allowed democracy to work for Africa? The reply, with none iota of hesitation, is unequivocally unfavorable.

If democracy just isn’t working in Africa, it’s as a result of civilian and army members of the ruling elite in Africa normally, and in Nigeria specifically, have willfully refused to apply democracy.

When, for instance, Obasanjo stated western liberal democracy was imposed on Africans, I’m reminded that the 1979 Constitution, which, regardless of its patently anti-federal and anti-people provisions, in addition to the 1999 Constitution, its equivalent twin sister, have been imposed on Nigeria by army decree.

In truth, the decree that introduced the 1979 Constitution into existence was signed by then General Olusegun Obasanjo. The 1979 Constitution establishes a humongous state whose functionaries are beneficiaries of Nigeria’s oil wealth and different sources. To compound the scenario, part 2 of the Constitution locations sovereignty within the fingers of the state, not within the fingers of the folks, thus making the state extra highly effective than the citizen. Section 9 of the identical Constitution nails the coffin of democracy by making any effort at amending it a close to mission unimaginable.

Democracy, understood right here as authorities of the folks by the folks and for the folks, can not work the place women and men with neither democratic credentials nor democratic temperament design and deploy immoral technique of taking up reins of state. In latest reminiscence,

General Sani Abacha advocated ‘home-made democracy’. Now President Obasanjo is advocating ‘Afro democracy’. But democracies have a standard denominator comprising its defining options. These defining options are session, illustration and accountability.

In concrete phrases, as a result of we can not all go into the chambers of presidency, we elect folks to symbolize us. Those elected to symbolize us should seek the advice of with us earlier than going into chambers of presidency. And they need to return to the individuals who elected them to present an account of what they’ve finished and what they’re doing in authorities as representatives of the folks.

But the individuals who find yourself on the reins of presidency in our land will not be true representatives of the folks however representatives of political godfathers. They and their godfathers are beneficiaries of an electoral course of whose integrity they habitually violate.

Since their ‘election’ doesn’t rely on the voters however on the beliefs, offers and pacts of the elite, they neither contemplate themselves obliged to symbolize the folks, nor obliged to seek the advice of with them, nor obliged to be accountable to them. They the truth is demand respect and adoration from the folks whereas they maintain the folks in contempt.

President Obasanjo reminded invitees to the consultative discussion board that they have been invited “to examine clinically the practice of liberal democracy, identify its shortcomings for our society and bring forth ideas and recommendations that can serve our purpose better, knowing human beings for what we are and going by our experiences and the experiences of others.”

But allow us to not behave like a surgeon who’s in search of the human coronary heart within the abdomen of his affected person. What we must be analyzing will not be the shortcomings of democracy however the shortcomings of the ruling elite in Africa and in Nigeria. In different phrases, to transcend analogical predication, democracy just isn’t the issue.

The downside is their blunt refusal to apply the beliefs of democracy. That blunt refusal is rooted in egotism, the behavior of conquering each different self besides the self. By approach of an irony, that egotism is applauded in a land the place the oppressed hero worship the oppressor.

It just isn’t that egotism just isn’t present in different climes. It is the truth is the world’s oldest pandemic. However, whereas in different climes, good legal guidelines have been made to handle this pandemic, right here in Nigeria, there’s a deliberate refusal to mismanage it by the imposition of a fatally flawed structure, a structure that facilitate the reward of dangerous political conduct.

The pronouncement that democracy has failed poses a hazard. It bears the potential of calling for undemocratic technique of seizing the reins of state.
But that is an event to look at our conscience in order that we are able to see that democracy has not failed. Rather, pseudo-democrats have ensured that beliefs of democracy are practiced within the breach. They, not democracy, have failed.
Fr Akinwale, OP OP is Professor and Deputy Vice Chancellor at Augustine University, Ilara-Epe, Lagos State.