Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has identified poverty as the greatest enemy of democracy.
Obasanjo, spoke in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital on Monday during a high-level consultation he organised on ‘Rethinking Western Liberal Democracy in Africa’.
The elder statesman, who said it was high time for Africans to be realistic, lamented that poverty would force a hungry person to sell his vote for just N1000.
“When you are hungry, whatever anybody tells you cannot go in. Poverty is a great enemy of democracy. Ignorance or lack of education is a great enemy of democracy. And we seem to be deliberately fomenting poverty and lack of education".
He lamented that the Western liberal democracy being practised in Africa had not really taken human nature and the African situation into full account.
The former chairman, Board of Trustees of the Peoples Democratic Party and presidential candidate of the political party, recalled how in 1998 PDP lost a local government election in Ogun State because he rejected arrangements to bribe the Nigeria Police and personnel of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
“In 1998, we had the first local government election. We had parties, and here in Abeokuta, we met in my office and they came up and said, ‘look, this is money for INEC, money for police.’ At a stage I said, ‘what nonsense! Is the police not being paid, and INEC too?’
“They said ‘that’s how we do it. I said ‘you cannot do that.’ So, they didn’t do that. And of course, we lost all the local governments. We lost all. And then they came to me and said, ‘Baba, you see? If you had allowed us to do it the way we used to do it, we would have won’. And I felt guilty.
“During the next election, which was the State Assembly, I just stayed in my house. I said ‘well, do whatever you want to do, I will not be part of it’. So, I didn’t even go. But, the result was the same. One of the people who got money didn’t even distribute it to where he was supposed to distribute it,” Obasanjo recounted.
Obasanjo said he was not always comfortable with the phrase, ‘Nigerian factor’, when discussing democracy and other issues affecting development.
“When things go wrong, you said the Nigerian factor. The first thing I learnt in politics was this thing called the Nigerian factor.
He also faulted the decisions of the Nigerian judges on the electoral matters, saying that it's unacceptable for three judges to upturn millions of voters' decision during an election.
Only last week, three governors were sacked in separate judgments delivered by judges of the Coury of Appeal.
The affected governors ate Dauda Lawal of Zamfara State, Abba Kabir Yusuf of Kanu and Caleb Mutfwang of Plateau State.
Obasanjo, who described the powers vested in the hands of a few judges as "totally unacceptable " also described the courts decisions as "cathedral pronouncements"
"I believe whatever form of democracy we have or whatever system of government we have, three or four men in the judiciary should not be able to overturn the decisions of millions that have voted", he stated.