The human rights lawyer argued that the Western democratic structure imposed on Nigeria by Europeans and Americans is incompatible with the country’s realities

By Titilope Adako

Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Olisa Agbakoba, has declared that the current model of democracy practised in Nigeria is failing, blaming politicians for being more interested in seizing power than building a functional system.

Agbakoba criticised opposition party members who have continued to collapse their structures into the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), insisting that such moves only expose the weakness of the country’s political system.

Speaking on Channels Television’s Politics Today on Monday, he said, “I thought that things would have been a lot better than what we have today. And I’ve looked at it very carefully, and I say something must be wrong, that after, not even 25, let’s go to 1960: so we have had military coups in and out, then finally democracy for over 25 years. Something is fundamentally wrong in a process that is not delivering.”

The human rights lawyer argued that the Western democratic structure imposed on Nigeria by Europeans and Americans is incompatible with the country’s realities.

“In my reflections, and I’ve reflected quite a lot, I just came to a conclusion that it’s time to shed ourselves of this Western model – the Oyibo model… it’s not working,” he said.

He noted that Nigerians are more concerned about a system that delivers basic needs, rather than a political process dominated by defections and power grabs.

Agbakoba, a former president of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), stressed that continuous defections to the ruling APC would not strengthen democracy but rather undermine it.

“If the answer is to keep defecting, that’s not going to help Nigerians because it will not strengthen democracy,” he warned.

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