Former Cross River State governor and presidential candidate of the Peoples Redemption Party (PRP), Donald Duke, has said Nigerians were better off under military rule, arguing that 27 years of civilian administration have failed to deliver meaningful improvements in the lives of citizens.
Duke, who spoke during an interview in Abuja on Saturday said the cost of governance under the current democratic system was not justified by the dividends it had delivered to Nigerians.
“The people today, Sunny, I would tell you that they were better off under the military,” he said. “At least governance was not that expensive.”
The former governor said the performance of Nigeria’s democracy should be assessed primarily by its impact on the welfare of citizens rather than by the mere existence of democratic institutions.
According to him, many of the challenges that confronted the country before the return to civilian rule in 1999 remain unresolved, while some have worsened.
“I’m speaking broadly now. If we focus on the well-being of the people, what we term democracy dividends, how much has been delivered?” he asked.
“We’re still having the same problems we had 27 years ago. It’s getting worse. The number of children out of school has not improved; it’s deteriorating. The healthcare system is not improving; it’s deteriorating.
“Infrastructure deficiency over the last 27 years—are we better off? The question is: are we better off today than we were in 1999? Hardly so. Hardly so.”
Duke listed electricity, unemployment and infrastructure among the longstanding challenges that successive administrations had failed to adequately address.
“The problems that existed before 1999—electrification, unemployment—those things are still there. And I don’t see a structured approach towards dealing with these issues,” he said.
“This is my frustration, because there’s no problem we cannot resolve. We’re not a unique country.
“There are peer reviews you can do. How did you solve this? How did you do that? Are we thinking through our problems?”
The former governor also criticised the state of opposition politics, saying the weakness of opposition parties had contributed to the decline in accountability within the political system.
“The opposition is terribly weakened and self-centred. Democracy is also in danger,” Duke said.
He alleged that electoral outcomes in some cases did not reflect the wishes of voters, resulting in growing public disenchantment and declining participation in elections.
“The results you get from the polls often don’t reflect the views of the people. So there’s a disenchantment with the system, both by the contestants and the public. Most people don’t vote because they believe their votes don’t count,” he said.
Duke argued that when citizens lose confidence in the electoral process, elected officials become less accountable to the people.
“Because your vote doesn’t matter, there’s a tendency to take people for a ride and disregard what is required by the people,” he said.
He went further to question whether Nigeria was practising democracy in the real sense, accusing the legislature and judiciary of failing to effectively check the powers of the executive.
“We don’t have a democracy. We are pretending democracy,” Duke said. “We’re not a democracy. You and I know that.
“And the checks and balances from the National Assembly—you know there’s no check; there’s no balance.”
He cited the 2024 decision by the National Assembly to restore Nigeria’s former national anthem, “Nigeria, We Hail Thee,” as an example of what he described as inadequate legislative scrutiny.
“We changed the national anthem in a week. Nobody was asking questions,” he said.
