Nigeria: Is the Opposition a Serious Alternative? (III)

24 September 2012
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Poverty is the number one threat to any opposition becoming a serious challenger because it replaces ideologies with cash and places price tags on otherwise principled electorates and this situation that makes votes for the highest bidders and some otherwise patriotic election umpires are forced by fatal economic realities to act against their conscience to enthrone a political party they so much hate whether at the federal, State or local government level.

The economy is an important determinant of any democracy. For instance as far back as 1959, one social scientist, Seymour Martin Lipset, posited a direct correlation between the survival of a democracy and economic well being of the people. Two scientists, Adams Przeworski and Fernando Limongi even took a step further; they studied democracies of countries in the world between 1950 and 1990 and they discovered that almost all the nations that have a per capital income of less than $1,500 have a survival rate of only eight years. For those countries with $1,500 to $3,000 per capita, they survived on average for only eighteen years. Of the 32 democratic countries that have per capita above US$ 9000, they studied, they have a combined survival rate of 736 years. Of the 69 democracies that were adjudged poorer, they had casualty rate of 56 percent. Our democracy is threatened basically by endemic poverty, so we should really thank God that Nigeria's democracy is still breathing no matter how too slow or too fast we think the breadth rate is at the moment.

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