Analyst seeks awareness on political education to promote good governance
A foreign affairs analyst, Collins Nweke, has underscored the need for adequate awareness on political education and citizen empowerment to tackle lingering “sit-tight” approach to governance in Africa.
Nweke, in a telephone interview with newsmen on Monday, said “sit-tight” politics was not stability, but a slow-motion state capture.
According to him, the politics of sit-tight in power by some African leaders is an aberration.
”Across Africa, we keep seeing the same tragic pattern; leaders who win one election and then convert the state into a lifetime entitlement. This they do through constitutional manipulation, repression, or dynastic succession.
”From so-called life presidencies, like those of Yoweri Museveni and Paul Biya, to cosmetic term-limit resets and stage-managed elections, the result is identical.
“Institutions are weakened, citizens are dis-empowered and development is delayed.”
The foreign affairs analyst noted that though states’ constitutions provided for term limits but individual leaders manipulate them.
Nweke called for investment on public political education and citizen empowerment to resist such sit-tight tendencies.
”It is more sustainable to build a politically conscious society that instinctively rejects unconstitutional tenure elongation, than to rely solely on constitutional clauses that can be manipulated.
”We have seen this work before; Nigerians through civil society, the media and courageous legislators successfully resisted an alleged third-term agenda under former president Olusegun Obasanjo.
”Strong democracy grows from empowered people, not just from written limits,” he said.
