Page 213 - Blooms Schools Yearbook 2019

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DEMOCRACY AS A TOOL FOR PROMOTING
NATIONAL UNITY, PEACE AND STABILITY

NAME: ANABELL MBA
CLASS: JS1
SCHOOL: BLOOMS COLLEGE, KARU.

Democracy can be defined as government by majority rule. A former United States president and
one of the most successful leaders of our time defined democracy as “a government of the people,
for the people and by the people”. In the world today, many countries have turned to democracy as
the best form of government. Our country Nigeria is no exception. Countries have come to realize
that democracy is the best form of government that can meet the people's aspiration and bring about
national unity, peace and stability.

I think Nigeria realized quite early that democracy was the way to go because of the circumstances
of our past history. After the scramble and partitioning of Africa, various ethnic nations were brought
together as one entity in 1914 and given the name Nigeria by the wife of the then Governor- General,
Lord Lugard.

The arrangement continued as a British colony until in 1960 when we got our independence to self
rule. After getting independence from the British, the country adopted a form of democracy based
on the British model. That was the Parliamentary System.

However, the country moved from the Parliamentary System to the now Presidential System of
democracy which is patterned after the American model.

It is important to trace all this history because it will make it easy for anyone to see that we as a nation
have subscribed to democracy for obvious reasons.

One, our existence as a multi- national ethnic nation means we are very diverse in terms of linguistic
differences, culture, food, dressing, vegetation, education and so on.

With a country as diverse as this, if not for democracy, there would be a lot of disaffection among the
people which would set the stage for lack of peace and unity.

Furthermore, in order to ensure peace in our democracy, decisions are taken round the table without
any impositions as was the case during the military era. The National Assembly which remains the
symbol of our democracy has 109 Senators, 360 Representatives. This is to ensure that every
section of the country is well represented. Not only that, the country has agreed on a sharing formula
of the national resources based on population, not necessary by how much a particular geo-political
is able to contribute to the federation account.

Moreover, we have a Federal Character Commission that makes sure that appointments into the
federal civil Service are distributed equally among the states in the federation. In a similar vein,
ministerial appointments are also share in such a way that a minister must come from every state in
Nigeria.

Besides, dealing with communal clashes and other forms of insecurity is done without bias and the
money is taken from our national coffers, not necessarily from the region which is challenged or
experiencing insecurity. All these are only possible in a democracy and it promoted national unity.

Talking about instability, so far Nigeria has enjoyed about 20years of uninterrupted democracy. This
has given the country some form of stability. Projects started by one administration are continued by

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