In a judgment delivered by a Canadian judge in an asylum appeal by a Nigerian politician, who was a member of two leading political parties in Nigeria, the court described APC and PDP as terrorist organisations. This decision stemmed from the ways and manners these political parties and some Nigerian politicians have subverted the will of the people and or the sovereignty of Nigerians in our democratic journey since 1999.
As usual, some of the leading political figures from these political parties have descended on the Canadian jurist and started describing the judge as an ignoramus himself. Is the court or the Canadian judge not right?. Given my experience in electoral jurisprudence in Nigeria since 1992 and even given the notoriety of the Nigerian brand of democracy, I think the Canadian jurist was right.
The way most Nigerian politicians behave is more of terrorism than democracy. The activities of the political parties are all in most cases, acts of terrorism in the extreme. Elections are hardly elections. Power does not flow from the choices made by the people. There have always been subversions of the democratic processes through violent elections resulting in state capture and hijacking of state resources, killings, destruction of lives and property, and the subsequent post-electoral decisions of the courts that translate to a travesty. All these are serious international crimes punishable by international law.
Nigerian democracy is deteriorating daily, and the earlier politics is played decently for the good of the people, the better for us. There is nothing ignoramus about the judge. The Nigerian brand of democracy is thuggery and thuggish prone. Electoral robberies have replaced democracy. Those declared winners, in most cases, know they didn’t win their elections. Let us admit our faults and amend our ways. We should stop living in denial of the truth. The fact that INEC declared those who forced themselves on us does not represent the truth that those declared won the elections by democratic means. The politics of force and entitlement has replaced Politics of ideals and issues. State apparatuses are freely used to terrorise people into submission.
Nigerian politicians must at all times be ready to accept truth as distinguished from coloured facts, which in most cases do not represent the truth of the outcome of our selections. Internal democracy is far from the Nigerian brand of democracy. Political parties and politicians in most cases subvert the constitution and the Electoral Act to force their way to power. For once, let our politicians admit that all is not well with our democracy. Those who have put us in this political quagmire and political embarrassment should change their ways. The Canadian judge was right.
Click here to download the judgment.
APC-PDP-terror-document.do_compressed
This ruling is a serious wake-up call—when foreign courts start branding our major parties as violent and undemocratic, it’s a sign that Nigeria’s political rot is now too glaring for the world to ignore.