Prince Adewole Ebenezer Adebayo came fifth in the last 2023 general election. He didn’t win, obviously. His party, Social Democratic Party (SDP), at its first attempt, however, made a good showing with membership at the two levels of the National Assembly, including few memberships at the state level.
In this interactive session organised by the Nigeria leadership series as hosted by the Africa leadership group, Adebayo said Nigeria is only making attempt towards democracy. How do you see the state of our democracy in Nigeria right now, the election process and are there ways by which there can be an improvement or ways things can be made better? My impression of our democracy is that democracy is yet to come. What we are having are attempts towards the democracy.
So, we are like somebody who wants to study medicine and is doing premed. So, if they make the right grades, they can start medicine. We are like, in those days, there used to be A levels or higher school.
You go to do your HSC1, HSC 2 because you wanted to gain admission to a university. From 1999 till now, we have being in a civilian rule but we have not managed to enter into democracy because democracy is not a permanent state. It is the presence of certain dynamics.
So, even a previous democratic state can slide away from democracy. So, the tools of democracies are not complete yet. One is that the power is still not flowing from the people yet.
For two reasons: The psychological self disempowerment by the peo.
