A prominent legal practitioner, Dr Olisa Agbakoba, SAN, has disparaged the current democratic practice being operated currently, which he tagged ‘Western-styled’, saying it has failed the nation.
Agbakoba, a Senior Partner at Olisa Agbakoba Legal (OAL) Office, insisted that the system, with its winner-takes all models had divided us as a nation.
He noted that Nigeria future lay not in blindly replicating western models but in creatively adapting governance systems that would reflect its historical experience, cultural diversity, and developmental aspirations.
Going forward, Agbakoba mooted the urgent need to develop a new democratic model that draws on indigenous governance traditions, saying that the country’s diverse sociopolitical structure demanded a more context-sensitive approach that deepens local autonomy while encouraging inclusive national power-sharing.
Drawing from foreign democracy models, Agbakoba proposed cooperative federalism, where states could collaborate with the federal government to harness the resources in a win-win situation that incentivises development.
He also suggested consociational democracy, a Belgium, Switzerland, and Lebanon example, which, according to him, offered instructive examples of consociational democracy power-sharing model.
This, he said, was specifically designed for deeply divided societies.
The former president of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) while condemning the current system further expressed regrets that despite more than two decades of democratic experience, the western-styled democracy had not delivered stability, development, or national cohesion that Nigerians desperately needed.
The senior lawyer noted that the western democratic model had faltered in Nigeria for several critical reasons, adding, “its adversarial nature has intensified divisions. It has enabled systemic corruption and elite capture of state institutions.
“Electoral processes are frequently marred by violence and irregularities. Judicial independence is far from perfect. Opposition parties are absolutely weak. The complaint about an impending one party “state” is due to extremely disorganised opposition,”
Nigeria, according to the constitutional lawyer, has oscillated between authoritarian, semi-authoritarian, illiberal, and has never reached liberal democracy.
He stated further: “The economic dimension in democratic failure in Nigeria is linked to our adopted Western capitalist model, where returns on political capital vastly outweigh returns on development”.