Democracy Day 2022: So Far So Worrisome, Otunba Segun Showunmi

Drawing from the now global trending song from Kizz Daniel; Buga, the part where he says “so far so good” well I think in our case it's so far so worrisome, as such, there is not much to be proud of. 

Time has been spent on the democratic process from the beginning of the present republic in 1999. 

It is time to review the journey so far so that we might consciously take the appropriate steps to reform, rejig and refocus whatever it is that we think we are practising that tells us it cannot be going right. 

The first challenge to my mind is the political parties and their internal organs, too much depends on the characters of those involved as against any clearly defined ideology. The danger with this is that people have no qualms waking up in party A, having lunch in party B, having Dinner in Party C and by the wake of dawn they are right back to A. It frustrates the few who have out of share discipline stayed to build the platforms that the jumping jacks have been hopping back and forth from shamelessly. 

Right now, the party have reduced itself to nothing but the election-contesting platform where no one is sure of what each stands for. 

The shameful part is that those who created the reputation and perception challenges that loyalists have to contend with are mostly without conscience; the most audible revisionist of the old mess they created. This is not right we need to fix it. 

We have without remorse over-monetized the process in a nation with high poverty and unemployment where we can trace the spending powers of most gladiators to access the public till. This is the most depressing for a country that mouths anti-corruption as we do. 

Pray how do people pay N100m only to appear at the pinnacle and in the most absurd manner, display in Technicolour, just who we are as a people, that we are uninspired to do anything but money. 

How far have we come with the real responsibility of democratic development of the country and the expected progress we ought to have made? Light is at a shameful low, unemployment is depressingly too high, and national unity is almost scattered, but then again can a maladministered set of political parties bring about good governance? 

For whatever it is worth, I suppose since we are in the civil rule we might say that is a good thing but certainly we cannot say to ourselves that we have done well with democracy. So, truly, there is nothing to Buga about. Indeed we have gone low low low.

May the next few months be used to interrogate the issues, less we go from frying pan to fire and hopefully, we would not implode our country in the process.