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Enahoro challenges Nigeria's leaders
By Chukwudi Achife,
Bureau
Chief, Enugu
Elder statesman and National Chairman of the Movement for
National Reformation [MNR], Chief Anthony Enahoro on Thursday challenged
Nigerian leaders to use the present platform to rekindle the hope for a better
tomorrow saying that the nations leaders have failed to establish a true
democracy that would guarantee the people’s future.
Enahoro who delivered a lecture titled "Ideal Politics
and Good Governance" organised by the Diocesan Politics Commission of the
Catholic Church of Enugu, further urged the leadership of the country to evolve
structures that would be operated for the benefit of all Nigerians.
He lamented that in spite of the dreams for a great nation,
the country had thrived under what he described as "nominal
democracy" which had never suited the aspirations of the common man but
rather impoverished him the more, forty years after independence, .
He said , "As young men, my generation dreamed of
independence, democracy and modernisation. We achieved independence. We
accomplished some degree of modernisation, but we have so far failed to
establish democracy. A system is not democratic merely because it is so called.
Mere majority rule is not synonymous with democracy".
Speaking further, he said, "There are minimum
additional requirements, such as constitutional checks on majority rule,
constitutional protection of ethnic, religious and political minorities, human
rights protection, thoroughly independent and effective judiciary,
institutionalisation or at least recognition of opposition. In other words,
nominal democracy is not necessarily substantial or real democracy, and it is
my submission that today we have nominal democracy which is not real or
substantial"
Re-emphasising the need for a national conference that must
change the faulty system which the MNR had championed in the last 12 years, the
former NADECO Chieftain expressed happiness the President Olusegun Obasanjo had
at long last after opposing the conference succumbed to the call to hold a
national dialogue adding however, that the people should be allowed to choose
their representatives to the conference.
He declared, "38 years ago, at the conference which Gen
Yakubu Gowon established for negotiations on the future of Nigeria, I had the
honour of leading what was then the Midwestern State delegation while the late
Eni Njoku led the Igbo delegation. At a point in the negotiations, Njoku said
that he was impressed with my delegattion and he would sell the idea to Odumegwu
Ojukwu as the basis for New Nigeria…
"So far, all constitutional changes in Nigeria have
been imposed on the people from the top and that is one of the causes of the
unconstitutionality that has been the experience of the country.
Today, we are once more at the crossroads and I am a deep
believer in the proposition that the people of Nigeria should through
representatives elected by them for the purpose, return to the conference table
and freely renegotiate the future structure and organs of government of the
country" he added.
In his address, chairman of the occasion, Justice Anthony
Aniagolu [rtd], said that the justification for the existence of government at
all levels was for the welfare of the people over whom they govern and prayed
that the deliberations of the conference bring peace and understanding among
the diverse peoples of the country.
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