No democrat in leadership in Nigeria

The first military coup in Nigeria was in 1966.
The first republic was truncated and some respected gladiators were gruesomely murdered.
In 1979, civil rule was restored but short-lived by another military intervention until 1999 when democracy was restored after the military had wasted our time and stole us blind.
Almost 20 years down the line, Nigeria is yet to start crawling, talkless of walking and far from running.
The politicians are just a little better than heartless armed robbers.
In a lot of sense, many of the players on the political scene are yet to be cured of the military hang over.
A sizeable number of the key players even have garrison mentality.
Ours is a democracy without democrats but plutocrats.
Selfish interests are masqueraded as state interests.
The good of one is sold as the good of all.
In the last few months, we have seen defections upon defections.
Lawmakers, governors etc, abandoned one party to the other and shamelessly defended it as if it were based on sound principles.
The defections and reasons behind them are interesting.
Let me use the example of Ibrahim Shekarau of Kano state, who has returned to APC from PDP.
Shekarau had joined the PDP in 2014 citing “a lack of transparency and accountability” in APC.
Now, he said, “I decided to return to APC for lack of internal democracy in the PDP”.
One wonders if transparency is now practised in APC! The Bukola Sarakis of this world will certainly not agree with Shekarau.
Then there is this other case which makes me further believe we want democracy, but are not ready to be democrats: My heart almost broke when some new breed politicians behave like those they want to replace.
I saw crude deceit when Atiku shed tears because some suspected tricksters bought him ticket to ‘rescue’ Nigeria from Buhari.
So, Atiku loves Nigeria so much to shed tears for it? It is like a case of subsidizing the rich: no, the stupendously rich.
It has nothing to do with the much professed desire to entrench democracy.
There is absolutely no doubt that the Buhari administration has not met our expectations.
Things have definitely changed but slowly.
Another thing that has shown that we run our democracy without democrats is the objection of some APC governors to direct primaries, which will give party members a sense of belonging.
My conclusion is that those governors are simply cowards and afraid that their popularity among party members is not enough to guarantee their lackeys picking the prized tickets including them.
Umar Duguri 07033873327