How Democracy tried to turn to_ Demon cracy

Nigerian politicians are a funny lot. They enjoy making a ready reference to the American narrative when discussing presidential democracy and its practice in Nigeria. They love visiting the US Congress, and attending all sorts of leadership and training programmes organized by all sorts of bodies and institutions in that country. They revel in mouthing rule of law, and transparency, and accountability, and credible elections, and fairness, and justice – democratic ideals, which have made the United States of America a country of freedom and liberty and equal opportunity. They thrive in writing petitions to the US government alleging that the persecution and repression of opposition elements may endanger democracy in Nigeria. However, between words and action, there exists a deep, wide chasm that has made the Nigerian version of presidential democracy a phony adaptation of US’s. The just concluded presidential nomination primaries of the Democratic Party and the Republican Party in the US boldly highlight what a joke our own narrative has been since 1999. Follow me as I identify some critical issues in the organization of, and presentations at, the Democratic National Convention (DNC) while drawing a parallel with what happened at the presidential convention of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) before the 2015 April polls.