BY AMOS DUNIA, ABUJA – Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Yakubu Dogara has called on African countries to invest more in building democracy and its institutions, stressing that parliaments are the hope of saving the people from dictatorship.
Dogara, who stated this when he played host to a parliamentary delegation from Liberia, undertaking a study tour in Nigeria, comprising of members of Joint Committee on Public Accounts, Expenditure and Audit, led by Sen. Henry Yallah, said for democracy to be solid and sound, the institutions must be strong, saying that their failure would always be blamed on the parliaments who fail to rise up in their defence.
According to him; “Democracy as they say is not something that you gain from the ballot box, as a matter of fact, the ballot box sometimes has produced some enemies of democracy, those who have completely discarded the tenets of democracy.
“So, we have to invest more in building democracy and democratic institutions. Where Institutions are strong; democracy itself will be made strong. And to be very candid, parliament are the hope of saving the people from dictatorships.
“Where democracies fail; it is common place to blame it on parliament, it becomes the fault of members of Parliament who are not willing to stand up to principles and be defenders of those democratic Institutions”.
He decried the delicate nature of democratic institutions all over the world thus advocated for the establishment of a body that will be vested with the responsibility of defending democracy against dictatorship.
He further said; “Democracies all over the World are very fragile and that includes even democracies in advanced countries that we regard to have advanced democracies. Even in the United States, we are beginning to see that there is the fight to keep the loyalty with the people rather than to any form of democratic malfunction. Even things that we thought were completely impossible to happen in advanced democracies, we are beginning to see them, like breaches.
“That therefore tells us that we even need to institute a body that may be known as the defenders of democracy, I don’t know how we can go about that, I’m just thinking loudly about some of these issues. But to be candid, even though it is not the best form of government, but this is the best that is known to man. Anybody who doubts this can try dictatorship.
“Those who have lived in a dictatorship will tell you how bad it is. Where the will of an individual is the Law, as a matter of fact you don’t even need the Parliament, in which case all of us will be jobless as it is just the will of an individual that is the Law. It is the will of the individual that is argued out in the courts.”
The Speaker also said a performing budget is needed to sustain democracy and achieve stability, adding that to win citizens’ confidence, government must deliver to the people’s yearnings and expectations, especially in terms of security and welfare.
“A performing budget is needed to sustain even the very idea of the democracy itself, because it has to be a government that delivers to the people in terms of expectations, in terms of security and welfare. When you have few people mismanage the resources belonging to Government; the end result will be that the expectations of the people will be cut off: No quality service, welfare and that obviously will result in distress, and we have seen this distress manifest in so many African countries where the entire process of expenditure, transparency and accountability is a bit opaque”.
Earlier, leader of the delegation and Chairman of Liberian Parliament’s joint Committee on Public Accounts, Expenditure and Audit, Senator Henry Yallah said they were in Nigeria on a study tour with the aim of building capacity as a young democracy.
