Fela Anikulapo Kuti takes no prisoners; he was as lurid as it gets. On matters ranging from sex, politics, corruption, culture, gender, and the likes, he dissected at will. Fela was as much a social clock as it gets. And so when he dropped the song ‘Teacher Don’t Teach Me Nonsense’, he lamented about our version of democracy being the mediocre type yet we keep pushing it as if it will automatically correct itself someday. Many thought Fela had gone mad again when he tagged it a ‘Demonstration of Craze’. For who decapitates a jealously guided concept as democracy, pulling out such a totally decrepit but fitting description of Nigeria’s version of such governance template to be an abject demonstration of craze?
And yes, Fela was right. Ever since we have been practising democracy, we, leaders and followers alike, have not been short of displaying abnormal tendencies regarding the polity. If not so, how would you rather classify a leader who would leave his own country when it was burning hot and to take a vacation? If not so, how would the followers keep looking on both in stupor and general adulation? If we were not capable of such demonstrations of craziness, how would we be so hypocritical that a corrupt individual himself is given powers to apprehend a less corrupt citizen? It just fails to add up. We seem to have gotten the right things muddled up and converted for the worse. It now appears we even take pride, as a people, in doing things the opposite of the right way.
Many distance themselves from politics because they feel it is filled with liars and thieves – people often driven by selfish gains. That notion is not far from the truth. This is why politicians are driven towards another trait of craziness – readiness to engage in fisticuffs publicly on matters so trivial that an ordinary citizen would have laughed off or agreed to a consensus.
Shall we recant of politicians who keep their own children secure in the best facilities and rather recruit louts who kill, main or beat other citizens at their beck and call? Shall we tell of politicians who steal the public treasury dry once they have access to a privileged office? Is it not worthy enough to scrutinize those who have made it their life ambition to institute their own evil plans once they have a chance at a democratic position? Is a situation where politicians exert their official influence to rig elections or thwart the will of the people not desperate enough to garner public outcry? Are all these not signs of a tinge of craziness? They are all beyond the ordinariness and the minimum that is expected of public officers.
It is shameful that democracy has been so ridiculed to this point by the current practitioners of it. Democracy was first popularly practised by the Greeks as a government of the people, by the people and for the people. Democracy got further popularised as a template for governance when the founders of America adopted it as a breakaway from the hold of the British monarchy. 200 years of modern democracy and it is under threat of being killed with strange practices here and there.
Yes, democracy is neither a living thing nor can it breathe like us Nigerians; but the citizenry is the entire constituent of this thing called democracy. And if we chose never to do it right, that entirely is an onus resting on us as a people, not on democracy itself as a concept.
In the light of all these, the Nigerian populace need have a rethink; a wake-up call is necessary to shock us back into self-aware citizens, lest the control of all of our lives is totally taken over by a few crazy ones at the helm of national affairs.
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