You have no items in your shopping cart.
Abstract
The trouble with Nigeria’s liberal democracy has been the subject of many discourses for decades by scholars, writers and political analysts. Having adopted a system of governance that was foreign to the Nigerian people before colonization, this study discovers that the troubles are akin with those identified by Socrates and Plato in ancient Athens and thus gives a robust account of the anti-democratic arguments as written in the Republic. These troubles are: a dysfunctional governance structure, incompetent leadership, an increasing incompetent voter, a dysfunctional education sector, a flawed electoral process and all these have culminated into a kleptokakistocracy in Nigeria. A combination of qualitative, historical and analytical methods was employed in this study. Furthermore, in a bid to solve these issues, this study recommends restructuring and an epistocracy as a panacea to the country’s dysfunctional structure; an exclusive-inclusive electoral college to eradicate the incompetence of voters and sanitize the electoral system; the requirements for leadership must be changed to include degrees in philosophy, economics and history to improve the competence of candidates; and a revamped education system built on moral philosophy, history, vocational skills and logic to sanitize the polity. The study concludes that these changes must not be rapid, but systemic and legislative and violence must only be adopted if met with violence from the government.
