The Speaker, House of
Representatives Honourable Yakubu Dogara on Monday said that despite 19 years
of the return to civilian rule, Nigeria’s democracy is still very fragile
warning that those in the position of power should be careful not to truncate
it.
Speaking on Monday in Abuja at
the 2018 Democracy Day Lecture, Hon Dogara cautioned that all over the world,
democracies nowadays hardly die at the hands of people with guns but in the
hands of civilians leaders who have dubious allegiance to democratic norms and
values.
He noted that elections have
sometimes produced enemies of democracy and urged the citizensto be
eternally vigilant in order to protect and defend our hard-earned democracy.
The Speaker argued that there
is every reason for Nigerians to celebrate almost two decades of the civilian
rule because the beauty of democracy is that it gives hope for a better future to
the people and that history shows that the rich and powerful have always
interchanged places with the poor and vulnerable.
He further stated that it is consensus and compromise that
drive the wheels of democracy and urged those who hold levers of power to
resist the temptation of sliding into dictatorship because tyrants and
dictators have always ended miserably such as the likes of Mussolini, Hitler,
Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein and others.
According to him, “It is a
great privilege for me to stand before you on this auspicious day of marking
what the freedoms associated with democracy mean to us. I want to particularly
thank Mr President for deciding that we invest this day in celebrating those
who made the sacrifice to bring us here, and what we have been able to as a
nation use this opportunity to achieve.
” I believe he will be marking
his third year in Office by tomorrow. As it is said in Hausa: the song is
sweeter to listen to from the mouth of the composer. I believe he will be able
to tell us as a nation what these three years as the system has meant to us”.
Speaking further, he said that,
“Any generation that has gone to sleep would have awakened to the rude shock
that the Courts and other democratic institutions have been weaponized against
them, and as much they have become subjects, instead of citizens, where
obeisance to the government is demanded as against the
government fearing the people. That must not be the case with our own
democracy, and for us to ensure that our democracy survives, we have to be
eternally vigilant.
” Let me also talk about
tyrants, despots, those who threaten democracy, enemies of open society. As a
matter of fact, we don’t have to dig too deep down moral lanes to be able to
fetch some moral lessons to warn them, as history is an open book to them. It
doesn’t matter whether they are dictators who came before Hitler, to dictators like Hitler,
Stalin, Mussolini, name them, Sadam Hussein, Mumar Ghadhafi, a certain charging
has ended their lives.
“And it would be wrong for us
to think that we can do what they did, and not see what they saw. As a matter
of fact, the beauty of democracy is in forbearance. Those of us who are true
democrats here will exhibit light in the way and manner in which we carry out
institutional prerogatives with forbearance and with grace, those are true
democrats”, he stated.
Tribune
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