How royal is royal.
In ancient Africa, and indeed, in ancient everywhere else, the mornachial government form was one form of government that was practiced by most countries and societies. In one form or the other, most empires had kings, queens, dukes, chiefs... and power remained concentrated in one circle. The. Masses remained the masses and the blue bloods remained just so. Sometimes, maybe by marriage or very rarely by adoption, a plebian might find his/her way into royalty but this was quite rare and even when it does happen, it is admist a lot of rukus.
Royalty is a very subjective term. Because really, there isn't much that makes any royal family different from any normal everyday family. And royalty isn't an automatic guarantee of good leadership qualities. Were this so, kings would not have to enrol their sons in the military to study the art of war and the techniques of guarding their people. What I am saying here is this: At one point in history, people started to see that kings were not really different from them. The idea of devine kingship started to fade. Individual plebians started to make efforts to be economically independent and revolutions started to happen. Somehow, the people had gotten it into their heads that trying other forms of governments was not such a bad idea and this they did. One of the foundation ideas surrounding the creation of America was the need to find a place where people could aspire freely to be what they want without having a king to pay homage and taxes to. The idea was to find a place where everyone would have equal opportunities to grow, expand and achieve their life goals without limitation. With the rise of democracy, a large part of the world embraced it, but not all have been able to actually practice it in all truism.
Fastforward to today, using the Nigerian government as an example, I know that many of us like to believe that nigeria practices a democratic system of government, but really, anyone who has ever bothered to look, really look would know that the nigerian system of government might be presidential, but it is not democratic. I say it is in fact a form of mornachy. You wonder how? Here it is:
The Nigerian government public office position are filled through public votes yes?
The candidates that are presented come from and represent political parties yes?
Ticket to contest for these public offices are often so expensive that the average everyday man with an average job and a reasonable income cannot afford it without either stealing or borrowing from people who he will then owe. Yes?
We have had same persons filling one political office post or the other for as long as thirty years yes?
The average years of tenure for a king in old Nigeria would be right about a minimum of twenty years all things being equal yes?
There is a specific Caucus of people from which leaders and potential leaders are chosen yes? If you have doubts about this, you might want to check two generations of political office holders. Of course there will be exceptions such as maybe the immediate ex president, and a few other people. But really, check out the Yar' adua family, the Obasanjo family, the Shettima family, the Sanusi family... and I'm sure that if we dig just a bit deeper we could come up with hundreds of family names that seem to be recurrent in our political books.
Democracy, when it was concieved was believed to be the government of the people, by the people, for the people. The question is who are the people?
More than sixty percent of Nigerians live below a dollar in a day. And as far as anyone knows, sixty percent is a good majority. By economic classification, the likes of many of the people who lead us today do not qualify as "people". Our present president tried to make a "people" out of himself when he complained about the price of the presidential ticket which was at #22m, but wait, did his wife did or did not wear a #10.7m wrist watch to his inauguration? Would they then qualify as "people?"
Nigeria runs a government based on the ideals of mornachy. Certain families have dictated the fate of the country for quite a while and now, even though we claim that we run a democracy, I hope we know better now.
The main problem that I had with Goodluck Jonathan's attempt to rule. Nigeria again is that I do not see any reason why a single person should rule a country this big for ten years straight. That is just wrong. Especially considering the fact that the people are so dissatisfied with his government. If we wanted to run a mornachical government, well let's get on with it already but please let's just stop lying to ourselves. Just as being of "royal" blood does not guarantee good leadership skills, so it is that just because someone has the money for presidential ticket does not make him a prospective good leader. According to Marx's theory on the structure of society, there are three categories of people in the society: Workers, Peasants and Soldiers. But he seems to have left someone out; Politicians!
The idea of the existence of politics and politicians is not the problem. The idea of making a family business out of politics is the problem. In a few generations, if Nigeria continues exactly the way it is running it's government right now, we will be back to full breed mornarchy and yes, the rich will get even richer, and the poor will get poorer. The gulf between the rich and the poor will get even wider and we will be back to Zero point.
If you want a better Nigeria, if you want to be able to close your eyes in death, knowing that your children are safe from authoritative exploitation through a pseudomornachial system of government, then you better watch out for these "blue" bloods.
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