June 12: Why Nigerians must never take democracy for granted – Tinubu
By Emma Ogbuehi
30 years after the June 12, 1993 presidential election presumably won by newspaper mogul, MKO Abiola was annulled by the military administration of General Ibrahim Babangida, the President, Bola Tinubu has urged Nigerians not to trifle with democracy as an accepted form of governance but to preserve it with all that it takes. Tinubu made the remarks in his first nationwide broadcast to Nigerians as an elected president to mark the Democracy Day.
He noted that though democracy comes with different frustrating turns, compared with dictatorship, it remains the best form of government which the people must nurture at all times. He urged Nigerians to jealously guard the practice as a precious jewel. Tinubu recalled all that Nigerians had passed through in the hands of military regimes and all forms of undemocratic contraptions adding that there is no better form of government than democracy.
“The point is that we must never take this democracy for granted. We must forever jealously guard and protect it like a precious jewel. For, a people can never truly appreciate the freedoms and rights democracy guarantees them until they lose it.
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“We have traversed the dark, thorny path of dictatorship before and those who experienced it can readily testify to the unbridgeable gap between the dignity of freedom and the humiliation and degradation of tyranny. True, rancorous debates, interminable wrangling, ceaseless quarrels, bitter electoral contestations may be perceived by some as unattractive features of democracy. But they also testify to its merit and value”.
He enthused that with the recently concluded general election which is the seventh in the cycle of elections in the country, democracy has come to stay.
He argued that, that the polls were intensely contested is in itself positive evidence that democracy is well and alive in our land, adding that the beauty of democracy is that those who win today can lose tomorrow and those who lose today will have an opportunity to compete and win in the next round of elections.
In apparent broadsides to his opponents contesting his victory in the court, Tinubu mocked that “those who cannot endure and accept the pain of defeat in elections do not deserve the joy of victory when it is their turn to triumph”.
He however acknowledged that those who disagree with the outcome of the elections are taking full advantage of the constitutional provisions to seek redress in court and that is one of the reasons why democracy is still the best form of government invented by man.