On Wednesday, the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, Matthew Kukah, said that Nigerian democracy is declining as it no longer reflects “our cultural experiences as a diverse nation.”
News About Nigeria reports that Kukah said this on Wednesday at The Platform Nigeria, a programme by the Lagos-based church Covenant Nation to mark 2024 Democracy Day.
Speaking on the state of democracy in the country, Kukah alleged that Nigeria’s democracy was not founded on the country’s historical, cultural, or anthropological experiences, unlike Europe where principles of democracy were founded on the thinking of several philosophers.
The cleric said, “What is missing in our conversation is that unlike where the principles of democracy were founded on the thinking of several philosophers from Plato, Socrates, Aristotle etc, our democracy has paid very little attention. We have been involved in intellectual conversations about democracy but modern liberal democracy as we understand it today benefitted extensively from the work of people like St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas.
“It is also quite significant that Joe Biden even in his presidential address had to quote St Augustine and it means therefore that it is the teachings and philosophies and theology of some of these scholars that led the foundation to what we call democracy today. Unfortunately, our democracy is in decline, and is in recession precisely because it is evident to us that what we are working with is not something that comes from our own historical, cultural, or even anthropological experiences.”
He further charged the President Bola Tinubu-led federal government to work on delivering the dividends of democracy to Nigerians.
