Nigeria is a country that claims to practice a Democratic Presidential System of Government that is based on Democratic principles, (a country with such government or yet equality of rights, opportunity, and treatment for her citizens). I have read the claim that they follow the United States style of democracy; one ought to ask which style?
For the system practiced in Nigeria is in no-way close to the United States system, imperfect a democracy as it may be.
Let me prefix my writing here by saying that a learner of democracy ought to learn right. An apprentice who desires to be good in carpentry learns well from the master by following exactly how the master does his/her work. The learner’s mastery can only happen when the art of the master is followed.
Nigeria, in this light cannot claim to have or follow the United States System based on the democracy as currently practiced.
Now to the President Goodluck Ebele Azikiwe Jonathan, I am writing to remind you that before you became the son of Bayelsa State, you sir, were the son of Rivers State. To watch you, your wife, and your agents go all-out to destroy River State is shameful. Your disagreement with the democratically elected governor of a state should not be void of the understanding that each governor is elected solely for the interest of their state. What is going on between you and Governor Ameachi is a disgrace and greatly saddening. You’re style sir, is undemocratic and leans towards a dictator; a king who now thinks that Nigeria is your little kingdom which must be your own arbiter of justice.
No governor regardless of the political party should dance to your drumbeat because you are the president, and worst not when the beat is in contemptuous of the accepted democratic ethos.
Mr. President, I have watched and read your actions with dismay and the so-called governors loyal to you.
These governors are not democratic in principle and could not spell democracy if it were written across their foreheads. They are nothing more than a toady who runs to bid dictatorial principals but one thing these sycophants have not realized is that when you Mr. president, are allowed to trample the constitution in the abuse of power by disrespecting a duly elected governor of a state, they risk the same vein of abuse from you when they do not toe the line in dancing to your beat.
Mr. President your actions shock the collective conscience of any society where the true aspiration is that of democracy and justice. When the Police are compromised and used for political gains against your opponents, that is not democracy. When the Chief Security Officer of a State (the governor) is vagrantly disrespected by the police commissioner or a junior minister in your administration, and your wife, and nothing is done, then one wonders “what is the democracy that you Mr. President have been tutored of.” Mr. President, enough of this madness, recklessness, and the shenanigans which in most civilized nations; these actions have merited impeachment.
Your autocratic ways have no smell of democratic imbue. Mr. President the style in the current governance has become a disgrace, a squalor of mockery. From the time of your ascendance to the office that you now occupy I have prayed for you to have wisdom, humility, and guidance and that I will continue to do. But I must tell you sir that your actions and style are hypocritical and a danger to the Nigerian democracy.
Just because a governor is not in agreement with you in one area should not render them useless to your regime. You should step back and look at the big picture realizing that each leader with his particular strengths and beliefs connect with others that you may not connect with. Just as all in a family unit do not have to agree in every way, yet they are branches of the same tree.
May God lead you; direct you in the path of good governance,
Written By Apostle E. Uche Nyeche
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