By Ayobami Ife, Abeokuta
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo on Monday passed a damning judgment on liberal democracy foisted on Africa by the West, saying it has not worked and will never work in the continent.
Obasanjo ruled Nigeria between 1999 and 2007, a period of two term of eight years as an elected civilian President on the ticket of the then Africa’s largest political party – the People’s Democratic Party(PDP) and transferred power democratically to a successor on May 29, 2007.
Barely 16 years after, the ex – President and elder statesman picked holes in liberal democracy as a system of government in Africa, saying aside the fact that it is not truly a representative government of the people, but also because its definition and design did not take sufficient cognizance of the peculiar nature of African people – their culture, tradition, needs etc.
This in part, he noted, explained why Western liberal democracy failed in the continent and will never work as a system of government in Africa as it does not take into account the view of the majority of the people.
He made this position known in his keynote address at a high-level consultation on “Rethinking Western Liberal Democracy for Africa,” at the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library (OOPL) Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital.
Obasanjo defined western liberal democracy as a “government of a few people over all the people or population and these few people are representatives of only some of the people and not full representatives of all the people. Invariably, the majority of the people are wittingly or unwittingly kept out.”
He said instead of Western liberal democracy, Africa should opt for what he termed, “Afro democracy.”
Obasanjo said the essence of the gathering is to enable participants including university lecturers to interrogate liberal democracy, its performance and the propriety of operating a system of government which the Africans do not have hands in its “definition and design.”
According him, even the inventors of the liberal democracy have started questioning its desirability and urged Africans to begin looking inward and outward to see what in the continent, countries, culture, tradition, practice and living over the years that they could learn from, adopt and adapt with as a better alternative.
“The weakness and failure of liberal democracy as it is practiced stems from its history, content and context and its practice.
“Once you move from all the people to representatives of the people, you start to encounter troubles and problems. For those who define it as the rule of the majority, should the minority be ignored, neglected and be excluded?
“In short, we have a system of government in which we have no hands to define and design and we continue with it, even when we know that it is not working for us.
“Those who brought it to us are now questioning the rightness of their invention, its deliverability and its relevance today without reform.
“The essence of any system of government is the welfare and well-being of the people: all the people.
“Here, we must interrogate the performance of democracy in the West where it originated from and with us the inheritors of what we are left with by our colonial powers.
“We are here to stop being foolish and stupid. Can we look inward and outward to see what in our country, culture, tradition, practice and living over the years that we can learn from, adopt and adapt with practices everywhere for a changed system of government that will service our purpose better and deliver?
“We have to think out of the box and after, act with our new thinking. You are invited here to examine clinically the practice of liberal democracy, identify its shortcomings for our society and bring forth ideas and recommendations that can serve our purpose better, knowing human beings for what we are and going by our experiences and experiences of others.
“We are here to think as leaders of thought in the academia and leaders of thought with some experience in politics,” the former president stated.
