Rights activist, Femi Falana (SAN), has said that Nigeria is operating a civilian regime which is far away from democracy.
Falana, who made this statement while talking with newsmen at the recent 2022 Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) conference in Lagos, said the type of democracy in which people are bought with money is not democracy at all. He said democracy according to the Constitution means the maximum participation of the people in their own affairs.
He further said: “Not long ago, delegates were purchased in dollars, and in a couple of States votes were bought with hundreds of millions of naira; that cannot be a democracy.
“Elections were anchored and campaigns were anchored on welfare programs. At that material time, political parties were promising to cancel gigantic taxes and other taxes that were meant to vaporise the people; people were promised free education for their children, access to affordable health and full employment, and so on and so forth. But now, the only cardinal programme of the political class is money; that cannot be democracy but plutocracy”.
Falana noted that some people were arrested in Ekiti and Osun States but have not been prosecuted.
On the 2023 election contestants, Falana said “profound respect to all the political parties but the crises of insecurity is not being addressed, crises of dollarisation is not being addressed”.
