Associate Professor of Political Science at the Lagos State University, Sylvester Odion Akhaine has called on Nigerians and the International communities to save democracy and condemn the authoritarian tide which the nation seems to be delving into under the leadership of President Muhammadu Buhari.
Prof Akhaine said this became necessary following President Buhari’s signage of Executive Order 06, an administrative instrument in his war against corruption in the country.
The executive order in effect places some alleged corrupt Nigerians under watch, denies them access to their doubtful wealth and bars them from travelling out of the country.
Akhaine who believed the executive order is a threat to democracy stressed that, “This order coming against impunitious disregard for court orders and proselytization of a nebulous national security doctrine and in the context of the president’s dictatorial past in which human beings were retroactively executed, and press freedom curtailed by the notorious Decree Number 4, of 1984 which made victims of Tunde Thompson and Nduka Irabor, is an indication that the country is sliding into full-blown dictatorship.”
He called for the rejection of the order as a way to sustain democracy and its freedom.
“Thus, this order must be condemned in its totality and resisted with all vehemence by Nigerians. The point must be stressed that the regime type that Nigerian ruling elites chose in 1999 was a liberal democracy with its accompanying freedoms, namely, freedom of expression, political rights and the rule of law among others.”
He continued, “If the country must survive as a civic nation, not an ethnic nation, which the current administration has reduced the country to, all Nigerians must re-affirm their commitment to the grundnorm, deepen it into a community of socio-economic freedoms.”
Akhaine also mentioned that the order has to do with the second term bid of the president adding that it was targetted at instilling fear in the camp of the opposition.
“It seems to me that the administrative turn to authoritarian tactics by the President has more to do with the politics of the second term—hound opposition forces and instil a culture of fear and railroad itself into office for a second term.”
He urged Patriotic Nigerians and the International Communities to “take practical stems to nip it in the bud and save the burgeoning liberal democratic institutions in the country.
Today, despite its shortcomings, the desire for liberal democracy with fundamental freedoms gave birth to the fourth republic and must be defended.”
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