The Osun State Governor, Mr. Rauf Aregbesola has alerted Nigerians on the need to defend the current democratic experiment in the country in order for them to lose their legitimate power to decide their fate.
He warned that emerging trends, including the removal of Justice Ayo Salami, and the arraignment of Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu had shown that democracy was being subverted into a system of power that translates into disempowerment for the people.
In a keynote address delivered on his deputy, Otunba Grace Titilayo laoye-Tomori, at the third induction ceremony of the Institute of Public Management, held at the Nigerian Institute of Medical Research, Yaba, Lagos, he declared that it was when the leadership was subjected to election by citizens that they could be free from legitimacy crisis with its attendant consequences, adding that this was the only means by which legitimacy was conferred on the people, who are the real owners of government.
“By subjecting political leadership to election by the masses of the people, it means that the people are politically-empowered.
When this is done in a free, fair and transparent election, the government that emerges is truly derived from the consent of the people. That government is said to have legitimacy”.
He described legitimacy as the first condition of good governance, insisting that any government that failed to derive from the consent of the people was “spiritually misaligned and will never be in a position to deliver good governance”.
Aregbesola explained further that when a group of people rigged elections by offering hefty bribes to the electoral commission, the security agencies, traditional rulers, prominent politicians, the media and judges at the tribunal, governance would simply become a business venture from which the actors hoped to recoup what they expended.
“Therefore, regime protection rather than good governance will be the raison d’être of the leader and that is where the resources of the state will be diverted,” the governor said.
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