Retired Assistant Inspector General of Police, Austin Iwar, speaks with JOHNSON BABAJIDE on why Nigeria is not on the right path, 23 years of democracy.
Sir, Nigeria’s democracy in the current dispensation is 23 years today. Do you think the country has grown in terms of democratic practices?
Democracy is a very difficult thing to attain and it takes years before democratic principles and practices are entrenched in our culture; it will take a while. Our democracy is still developing; it is just 23 years. Even for a child of 23 years, he is still growing, especially when you have a child who may not be on a right path. But we are learning as we move along because I know that initial eight years of our democracy is not the same now.
If you recall very well there were a lot of problems when [Olusegun] Obasanjo was in power. But most fundamentally, in my own opinion, what happened in 1999 was more of government from autocratic military regime to autocratic civilian regime, because what drive democracy are state institutions not really the government. Unfortunately, we changed government but we did not change our characters of state institutions. So the state institutions that are supposed to protect and drive democracy still have the characteristics of military system.
For instance, when you talk about respect for human rights, that respect and protect of human rights is driven by the state institutions.
So how can we get to that level of democratic development?
I think that as we move ahead, we should institutions of democratic governance, we should focus on them because, internally, most of them are weak and most of them are not structured according to democratic principles. We don’t have systems and processes that will reflect democratic principles.
In moving forward, next government has to focus on that. Why we have massive security problem in the country is because we have weak institutions, institutions that are not developed to manage this crisis. We expect so much from these institutions but we have not taken time to change their characters that formed their philosophies of doing things. We need to focus on them or else we will continue to have these challenges and we will keep on blaming each other.
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