By Sunny Ogefere
Former permanent secretary in the ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Joe Keshi has urged the Federal Government to name June 12 Democracy Day instead of the May 29 that is currently fixed at.
Keshi also noted that the President Muhammadu Buhari led All Progressives Congress, APC, is yet to fulfill its promised change to the electorates.
Keshi said this in an interview with Sunny Ogefere on the sidelines of Democracy Day and what it truly stands for.
Democracy Day
“I honestly feel that the time has come for us to properly name June 12 as the Democracy Day. What is happening now is that we are confusing two things together – Presently in all the news items nobody is talking about democracy per se. The concentration is on the government’s performance. So it is the government’s performance that is being judged; whether the APC government has performed or not and nobody is talking about Democracy Day in reality
So if we separate the two, it means that the actual Democracy Day will focus on what is actually democracy and the relevance of democracy to our lives. As it is now our democracy is still very fragile and we are not doing enough to expand the consolidation
For example, if you name June 12 as Democracy Day it gives us the opportunity to talk about democracy itself; as a system of governance whether it is walking or not walking well. But more interestingly, it gives us the opportunity to do two other things. Firstly, to celebrate the heroes of our democratic struggle; and secondly, to talk to young people about the whole essence of democracy itself and why they should be involved.
So you do not mix it up with judging government’s performance
But in terms of democracy, well you could look at it and say we have done 18 years. But the reality is that the political parties are doing badly. There is no internal democracy; they are all riddled with crisis and that is because the managers of the party have stifled the parties; to the extent that it is difficult for new entrants to come in and be useful or even seek for election.
For instance look at the cost imposed by political parties for you to want to contest. You are going to charge somebody who want to contest for office of the president about $11million, is that what democracy is all about? The political parties are so badly managed that I doubt if they pay annual dues or membership fees. They all depend on government even till date. In the news currently, some party members were complaining that the governors refused to bring money to organize the party, is that not corruption?
Until we understand that the role of political party is to galvanize people towards a shared vision of policies and issues and we defend them, there is no ideology, there is no philosophy guiding any political party at all. So if election is conducted today, if party A wins everybody decamps to party A. If you look at the APC, more that 70 per cent of the core members of the APC were in PDP.
So we are moving on but it is worrisome because what we are doing is not really democracy. It’s all about power and power. You just grab power and you are a democrat. If not how will you see a situation where some people have carpet crossed four or five times? Any time a party wins they cross and they keep on. The states are not free still. The party managers manage the states for those they want to remain in power. So it is no free and fair yet at the political level.
We need to consolidate our democracy or else we will be in trouble in the future”.
Present Governance
“The unfortunate thing about the APC administration is that they started by looking at the past and pretending that without dealing with the past, they cannot deal with the future. That is not true. Election is about the future and not the past. Secondly, is the fact that the fundamentals for Nigeria’s greatness is there.
When you compare 1960 to 2017, you will discover that in 1960 there was hope that Nigeria will be a great nation as compared to some of the Asian countries. But within 30 years, all those Asian countries have grown to become super powers in their own right. We are still struggling; we do not have an industrial base, we do not have a scientific base; you can just name everything that is missing.
But the fundamental to leap into greatness is already there, we have it now; what we lack is the leadership to drive the process and if we can just get the leadership, under 10 years, we can actually do wonders. And that is why it is so sad that the government that promised change came and has not been able to engineer that change. Instead, it has expanded the contradictions in the Nigerian society by the way it has marginalized and discriminated against a few people, by the way it has pursued the fight against corruption.
What is wrong with that battle is that it is not being fought with a view to properly eradicate the disease because what fuels corruption is mostly dependent on government. So the first thing to do is how to reduce the influence of government in business; how do you get private sector to take more roles and pull out the government
Today we are still awarding so many contracts for infrastructure and so on. The question is can we not get the private sector to build these infrastructures? We keep repeating the same thing over and over again, and these are all the avenues that funds get leaked out of the system … We are more or less fighting individuals, we have not blocked the leakages or the circumstances that encourages corruption.
Our health system is still in the same place; our educational system is still in the same place. So substantially, there has been no change. Of course on the economic front, there are beginning to be a few good things, but if care is not taken and this is not done across the value chain, we might go back.
Right now the major focus of the political class is on politics and politics of succession.”