“Teacher, don’t teach me nonsense:” What is democracy, please
By Ambassador Lilian Onoh
In 1970, shortly after the Civil War, my sister’s secondary school had a temporary English teacher who taught them the immortal nonsense: “I threw the ball and catched it,” being the past tense of the verb “to catch.”
My eleven-year-old sister promptly walked out of the class and ran home to report that the teacher was teaching nonsense, long before Fela’s iconic song.
To cut a long story short, the Principal – a Reverend Sister – investigated, found this to be true and the teacher found that her temporary position had been “catched” by the wind and she could no longer teach eleven-year-olds nonsense.
Let us juxtapose this with the hasty threat by ECOWAS to invade Niger and set the heads of the Military “KOREKT” for daring to remove Bazoum, who Nigeriens generally accepted was not performing, because ECOWAS has still not withdrawn the threat.
But first, let all Nigerians thank God that the Niger Military waited for Bazoum’s cousin to vacate Aso Villa before removing him because the Daura settler would likely not have waited for ECOWAS before running to save his cousin from his military colleagues who copied his December 1983 actions, but with more dignity than he accorded Shagari. Oga Retroactive Death Sentences and international kidnapping and crating humans also thinks he is a “democrat” and wants to teach us about “democracy” for his cousin in Niger.
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Meanwhile, for Gabon, France, the AU, the EU and others likewise demanded the immediate restoration of “democracy” to the Bongo family – leaders since 1967; much like the Eyadema family in Togo (1967 to present) and Paul Biya in Cameroun (1975 to present).
So let us ask these teachers of “Democratic Korektness” a few questions.
If Gabon’s “democracy” must be restored, what are the grounds for reviling the Al-Assad Government in Syria? Or Kim Jong Un’s Government in the DEMOCRATIC People’s Republic of Korea, better known as North Korea, which we all agree gives new meaning to the word “Democratic”.
We have to admit that the Kim family’s version of democracy in North Korea has made much more progress under international sanctions since the 1950s than the Bongo’s family democracy in Gabon since 1967. At least the North Koreans have their own nuclear weapons and routinely terrify their enemies with missile launches that keep the wolves at bay. Gabon’s Bongo family’s Dynastic “democracy” cannot boast of any technological or infrastructural achievements to compete with North Korea. Nor can Nigeria’s democracy, either.
As for the Al-Assad family democracy, which started in 1971, it is indisputable that had it not been for external powers turning Syria into a testing ground for their war games since the Arab Spring, Syria, under the Assad family’s version of democracy, was much more developed than Gabon, Niger, Nigeria, Togo, Cameroun, etc.
If it’s a matter of “human rights”, I daresay that the End-SARs protesters still languishing in jail without trial since October 2020 might argue that Nigeria is behind North Korea.
To the EU, AU, ECOWAS, France and Nigeria in particular, I ask a simple question – would a single country in Europe accept the version of “Democracy” that they have been vocally championing on the African continent? Methinks not.
Didn’t France behead their King and Queen for excesses not close to the unbelievable lavishness of the Bongos? So why does Macron want to enthrone what they gruesomely guillotined on the African Continent?
Africans are lesser human beings deserving an inferior form of democracy?
And by the way, why did all of them not vocally condemn American Democracy when Hilary Clinton won the popular vote but the Electoral College gave victory to Trump? Or do the same during the Gore/Bush Saga?
They gave America the respect of accepting its own constitutional definition of “Democracy” even if the mathematics didn’t fit our understanding of who should win. It hass worked for them for over 200 years.
Members of the British House of Lords are not elected and the peerage system in no way matches any definition of “democracy”. Their national anthem, which is a prayer to God to save their monarch and for the monarch to “long reign over” them, is not any different (democratically speaking) from the North Koreans singing praise for their Supreme Leader, either. But at least they could throw out four Prime Ministers since 2015 either for poor performance, legal infractions or improper conduct. Oh for that day in Nigeria!
Surely we need to redefine this word called Democracy, which seems to shift depending on which country is under scrutiny.
As Nigeria grapples with the fallout from the very opaque 2023 elections, a word of advice to the hasty:
Before we go to war in Niger to restore a democracy we can’t actually claim to have, perhaps we should first try to see if our soldiers can win our internal war with terrorists who control large swathes of our country; or at least secure the release of Leah Sharibu, the Chibok girls and others held by vile deviants instead rescuing cows from rustlers.
Sending our soldiers to Niger is like sending all your Panadol to a neighbour who lost a fake fingernail when you suffer from chronic blinding migraines. And the neighbour is telling you clearly that they are not in pain and don’t want you or your Panadol.
It may be best for the wannabe democracy teachers to be very quiet so as not to draw attention to their deficiencies and inconsistencies, lest the wind blows and “catched” away their positions too.
- Lilian Onoh was Nigeria’s Ambassador to Namibia and former Chargé d’Affaires to Jamaica