As we look forward to a new government when President Muhammadu Buhari must have named his cabinet, it has become necessary, if not vital, to conjure concepts of democracy from near oblivion back into the vision of protagonists in the political process.
The Agora of ancient Greece was the fountainhead of democracy. Aristotle and his student, Plato, examined the General Good of Society in the Agora and deduced that the essence of democracy was a continuing quest for the general good of the greater number. What constituted the general good became a lengthy discourse that brought in a network of principles of leadership and the goals of state and statecraft.
Nothing in human history has defeated the concepts espoused by the Greeks. Nothing, not even Rome’s pretences at democracy, could overtake the sanctity of Greek thought about democracy.
The Romans, however, gave life to Greek concept of democracy in their aphorism “salus populi suprema lex esto”: welfare of the people shall be the supreme law (of governance). It is on this basis that it was enshrined in Greek conduct in leadership selection that only the best must be chosen in positions of leadership. The determination of who is best eventually devolved on the people in general.
The word ‘sacred’ derives from a Latin root-word: sacrus-a-um, holy, or blessed or consecrated or sanctified. Through history, what the majority of people desire is held sacred. Where monarchs have defied the will, such monarchs bite the dust. This means that whatever people will is holy, sacred or blessed or consecrated or sanctified. This informs the strength of Ofo in Igboland or Okpa in Yorubaland. This is the main reason people’s will should not be trifled with. They must be allowed to find expression, and having found expression in one direction, that will should be allowed to prevail. It is a sacred trust people repose on some whom they elect to represent them. Those who are properly elected to represent a people at any level are themselves sacred, and by dint of holding the sacred trust become custodians of the sacred trust of their electorate. This underpins the issue of legitimacy in the electoral process. No one who got into power other than by properly earned choice of the people can be described as keeper of the sacred trust. In reality, above and below they are thieves of the sacred trust and should be treasonable felons of the people’s will. Those who make light of these matters should at this point go their distant way far away from people’s will; for the people’s will is not play matter.
Elections are held to establish the will of a people. Once established, no one may trifle with that will and not be sacrilegious, defiling or irreverent or blasphemous or profane.
This interpretation of the people’s will is vastly lost on contemporary humanity, and it is a howling shame. It is worse in Nigeria. For the sake of money, Nigerians are prepared to say that a leader is an angel across the grain of reality. They are prepared for sizeable fortune to turn white into black. That is why the likes of Ikedi Ohakim seem to gambol with deceit. He has the Nzeribes and Iwuanyanwus singing his praise. And they are supposed to be ‘honourable’. They are allowed access to some funds and are shepherded by a nitwit into a corner in abject debasement of all virtue left in them after years of dedication to vanity.
Their lot is to have vain people in their approach line, and truth shall continually recede from them until they hit the absolutes of dishonesty, vanity and cruelty in theatres beyond the grave. For they scarcely have repair room on this earth plane, even if they were to live till a hundred years. The sacred trust betrayed up to this time shall not be restorable in one life time. They themselves had had spells of dishonesty, vanity and cruelty and they are comfortable that they could recreate their relevance by dancing with the devil if need be.