Aboriginal Democracy Will End Ethnicity, Religious Bigotry, Okotie Insists

Segun James

As religion and ethnicity continue to dominate the campaigns for the 2023 presidential election, a Lagos-based clergyman, Rev Chris Okotie, has declared that ‘Aboriginal Democracy’ would eliminate these divisive tendencies from the national polity, if adopted.

Okotie, who is spearheading a campaign for the restructuring of the federation and the political system in Nigeria, said it is regrettable that despite the complex problems plaguing the country, religion and ethnicity continue to define the political debates in the current electioneering process.

The former presidential candidate of the Fresh Party (FP), while reviewing the process leading to the February 2023 election, said it is preposterous to expect any miracle from the next president who is elected on a faulty political system like it’s being operated now.

He argued that candidates in this election are playing the traditional ethnic and religious card to win the support of the electorate instead of backing the call for a restructured federation, “which would eliminate all the fault lines that compel those jostling for political offices to be shooting tribal and religious arrows to win an election.

“That is why I have said repeatedly that the present transition programme is a journey in futility.”

Okotie explained that only an interim government would be able to midwife the Aboriginal Democracy, “which is really an indigenous, home-grown system of government, suitable for our peculiar cultural, and political circumstances.

He concluded that “we appear not to realise that the apparent inability of the past governments since 1999 to meet the expectations of Nigerians is because of the presidential system we practice, which he said, is an aberration.