Steemit Engagement Challenge S11/W4 - How is democracy functioning in your country?

ezunjoshy (65)in Hindwhale Community • 9 months ago (edited)

Many years back, I saw a clip on Youtube which at the time I only thought to be funny and gave no single thought to it. It was an extract from an interview with the guru Rajneesh. In it, he was asked what democracy was and after a while he calmly said with a neutral face the same definition given by Abraham Lincoln (which I had to so learn back when I was in school) that "Democracy is the government of the people, by the people and for the people" and after a short pause, he added; "But the people are retarded"

How is democracy functioning in your country?

Source

I never saw things this way until the just concluded election in my home country Nigeria early this year. There were three prominent presidential candidates. One was a well known drug lord and godfather who controlled the biggest economic state in the country and he is popular for rigging elections. The second was once a vice president who stole billions of dollars in his former regime. He also is the cause of many insurgencies in the country and has been funding instability so as to drive people into electing him. The last candidate who appeared to be a lesser of three evils proved to be the best and even with the given statistics won the election by a huge margin.
But then, unsurprisingly, the official announcements were delayed and figures were being replaced. The funny thing was that these replacements were caught on camera and uploaded on various social media platforms. In the North, people were captured casting their votes even till mid-night and the worse part of it was that minors as young as 7 were not only given voters' card (Something no polling unit would release if you are below 18) but casting votes also.
The painful part was that the election results was announced when everyone was asleep, a time they knew pretty well no one would be awake to cause an insurrection. What my fellow citizens actually forget is that anyone who seek to guide you to the pool to drink (something that is beneficial to you and detrimental to him since he has to stand guard and fight incase anything happens) and still pays you to have him as your guide, has not your interest at heart. And that is where the fault lies. People just want fancy stuff and popularity, most people just want a name to yell and don't understand the intricacies of a government. So in my opinion, Democracy isn't functioning in my country and it probably hasn't since 1960.

Is your country free from any domination ruled?

Source

Since 1999, my country has been free from dictatorship. And though the citizens suffer a great deal at the hands of party politics, there is no nationwide control other than the president. The North however is being run by terrorist groups who are funded by local religious and traditional leaders in the hope that they might blackmail the president and push him out of sit but since its insurrection in 2009 they’ve so far not succeeded.

Is your country self-sufficient in food production?

Far from it. My country was once a major exporter of agricultural produce especially cocoa. But since the discovery of fuel produce in different parts of the country, all attention has been halted from agriculture and most of the consumed goods are imported. Some importers even go as far as attacking farmers and bribing transporters to hike the price of goods produced in the country. There was a time when rice produce was about 700 Naira and often mixed with stone and other substances but the one imported was just 400 and it was without impurities.
The northern part of the country is mostly run and attacked by bandits and farmers are usually threatened and sometimes, their farms are overrun. Because of this, the west engaged in more rigorous farming only to be visited by migrating terrorists. And this is sad. It’s just as though they make so much money off importation that they don’t want to give it up and any government that tries to stop it, they use the media to turn the people against them. I do believe however that if young people in the metropolis are empowered and spaces allocated, there would be a shift.

How is youth employment in your country?

Source

The aggregate population of Nigeria as of a 2020 speculation is over 200 million. It is almost impossible to keep track of everything as most of the past regimes didn’t provide any form of strong data retention agency. Every time a new government from an opposing party comes in power, there is usually a mandatory declaration that every citizen should be registered for this or that. This information gap makes it possible for the manipulation of figures and the retention of power by a select few. The government organizations in my country (though corrupt) try their best to create jobs and even outsource certain contracts just to keep the economy running to young business scattered across the country but then the workers in those organizations keep most of the positions for their unqualified relatives.
My brother and I once applied for a national grant to which we were more than qualified seeing we had very good grades and my grandfather and father was a chieftain. To our surprise, we weren’t emailed the date for screening and neither were the thousands that registered yet a list was released that showed the number of people that passed. The sad thing is that most of those people are children of senators, people who don’t need the money.
The best way now for any youth to earn is by doing vocational jobs like catering, fashion designing, carpentry, welding, trading, blogging and the likes. And in the past few years, online jobs have been even harder to get as most vendors just skip our name once they see you are a Nigerian. It really has not been easy because the big jobs are passed amongst the rich but then if you persist and keep at it, playing your cards right, you’ll one day catch a big break.

What you want your country to be like?

I know very well that the state cannot be perfect, hell my family isn’t…lol. But then I would like loyalty and hard-work to be rewarded. That the excessive favoritism and nepotism that has eaten deep into the core of the nation-state be purged out. I know that once the laws of the majority are followed, a good leader will emerged for my elder brother @ezun1 always says that; ”The government is only a reflection of the people, cause the government is from the people. Change the people and you will change the government.”