-
Social Contract In Jean Jacques Rousseau – Implications For Nigerian Democracy
CHAPTER ONE -- [Total Page(s) 4]
Page 3 of 4
-
-
-
1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
The
democratisation process in Nigeria since independence has remained
nascent in every republic; its practices and processes have remained
new, strange and fresh, and in most cases have always ended up in
confusion, frustration and chaos. What has continued to go wrong? Ray
Ekpu succinctly captures the situation in his article the “End Justifies
the Means,†when he said: “…the ingredient standing between Nigeria and
greatness is leadership… As far as politics and leadership are
concerned Nigeria is still a psychiatric case due in part to the
haemorrhage inflicted on it by most of its leaders.â€11 True to fact,
Nigeria’s forty-five years of independence have seen various
administrations, military and civilian, all of which can be described as
having struggled to make Nigerians strangers in their own land.
Worse
still, despite the huge financial resources claimed to have been
expended on the overall administration of the country and the provision
of amenities, the socio-economic and political situation in the country
have deteriorated almost irredeemably. While political office holders
only scramble for public resources, infrastructures are completely
neglected, inflation is galloping, civil servants and pensioners are
owed their entitlements for several months, unemployment has almost
reached unmanageable levels, and poverty remains a menace people must
face.
It is on this backdrop that intelligent observers would agree
that the first forty-five years of our independence have been, even as
S.G Ikoku has put it “a monumental failure.â€12 What we experience now is
the rule of minority instead of the rule of majority, which is the true
principle of democracy. Evidently, Nigeria is not practising any “trueâ€
democracy. At best what we have is “deceptive†democracy. This essay
proposes to tackle, some of these problems.
1.3 PURPOSE OF STUDY
The
researcher was spurred by the words of the Nobel Laureate, Wole
Soyinka; when he said that: ‘the man dies in all who keeps silent in the
face of tyranny.’13 Thus, this work seeks to diagnose the political
arthritis and democratic rheumatism that have bedevilled Nigeria since
independence, and attempt a treatment with the deductions or
implications drawn from the Social Contract of Jean Jacques Rousseau.
CHAPTER ONE -- [Total Page(s) 4]
Page 3 of 4
-
