Obasanjo Wants Nigerians To Strengthen Democracy

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo, has appealed to Nigerians to refrain from comparing Nigeria’s young democracy with other democracies, saying that rather, the country’s democratic process should be strengthened.

Obasanjo made the appeal in Abuja on Monday at a conference on “Party Politics in Nigeria and Lobbying, the Lobbyist and the Legislature” organised by the National Institute for Legislative Studies (NILS), Abuja.

The former president, who chaired the session, for a paper delivered by INEC Chairman, Prof. Attahiru Jega, said it was wrong for people to compare Nigeria with democracies that were more than 200 years old.

“We have a young democracy and we believe that the process of our young democracy should be strengthened and we have embarked on the process of strengthening our democracy.

“We should not compare ourselves with those who have been practising for over 200 years because they had made some mistakes in the past which they have corrected.’’

He said that as older democracies had learned from their mistakes, Nigeria too, in its democratic process, was bound to make mistakes.

The former president advised political parties to develop good manifestos for elections and implement them to the letter after the elections.

“There are areas where political parties need improvement; one is the area of manifestos. I discovered that manifestos are made for campaigns and thrown away after election.

“How then can we hold parties accountable for the promises made to us? Also, there is the issue of discipline and service because we rarely see service in politics,” Obasanjo said.

Presenting a paper entitled, ’’Party Politics and Elections in Nigeria,’’ Jega noted that political parties were very important institutions in a democracy.

According to him, modern democracies cannot function without political parties because they serve as platforms for “interest aggregation and interest representation in competitive electoral politics”.

Jega called on political parties to work toward ‘‘democratic consolidation rather than democratic reversal.”

He also advised them to pay attention to generation and articulation of ideas and play better, positive roles in elections in the country.