Princewill Odidi|18 January 2018
Being informed helps you make better decisions including what you eat, how you dress, the public opinions you hold and even how you vote.
Democracy was designed for the people to participate in the choice of governance, that’s why it is popularly described as government of the people for the people and by the people.
However over the years democracy tend to be failing in Africa because the majority of the electorates or those who vote are illiterates who do not understand the issues at stake or understand the consequences of their choices.
This singular act has over the years led to market women, farmers and even children voting the enlightened population. Since the educated and enlightened population are outnumbered, African democracy by default has been producing bad leadership.
To this end we vote in council chairmen, house of assembly members, governors and even presidents who barely understand social and economic issues associated with governance and the effects of policy to economic growth.
The most important factors that drives vote among the illiterate population over the years has been ethnicity, religion and candidates who are benevolent with distribution of money.
We all want to see a better Nigeria, it is no gainsaying, nobody without a post secondary education should be allowed to vote and be voted for.
We copied majority vote system from western democracies, but what we fail to understand is that westerners don’t need to go to school to be enlightened because their society in itself produces enough public education.
We copy, we paste what we copy in our society, we copy wrongly and paste wrongly, if we must copy, then we have to learn to paste correctly. Not all pasted copies produces the same results.
What do the children and local woman below understand about what and who they are voting? PVC makes no meaning if you are always outnumbered by those who barely understand what they are doing with the card. This was not the thinking of the original framers of popular rule. I stand to be corrected.
Princewill Odidi a Political Scientist writes from Atlanta USA.
