Former presidential candidate and founder of Centre for Values in Leadership (CVL), Pat Utomi, on Friday expressed worries about alleged growing incivility and intolerance ahead of the 2023 General Elections.
Utomi, who is also the convener of The BIG-TENT Coalition of Political Parties, Social Movements and Civil Society Organisations for Obi-Datti, raised this concern at a press conference in Lagos, saying that the nation’s democracy was being threatened with a growing situation where opposition parties were denied public facilities to hold rallies in some states ahead of the forthcoming polls.
“The experience of many who understand the essence of democracy and who are participating in current elections suggest a significant level of a collapse of civility, growing fascism and polarisation of the country by politicians unwilling or unable to focus on the issue.
“Since our return to democracy, a consortium of scholars and pollsters from us and across Africa has been polling and surveying attitudes regarding democracy and elections in Africa. They have offered us longitudinal data on the disposition of society to political life.
“Sadly, the data has shown continuously declining confidence in the democratic order in Nigeria.
“This trend may only possibly be reversed by the new excitement of the Obidient Movement which has caused nearly 13 million new voters to register to vote in 2023 in Nigeria,” he said.
Utomi, while further expressing worries, described Nigeria’s democracy as the collapse of civility, saying that a situation where some state actors used public funds to oppress opposition called for the need to save democracy from its enemies.
He recalled that his campaign experience had equally witnessed intimidation of landlords, religious centres and traditional institutions for allowing the opposition to use some of their facilities to hold rallies.
“My experience with the campaign of 2023, though marked by the sense of hope from excitement about the organic push of the Obi/Datti movement is, there has been a drastic decline in civility on the part of many politicians and a crystallisation of cleavage to paint that Nigeria can be getting pushed into a class war that could destabilise our subregion and push us into anarchy.
“It is imperative we move to reduce incivility in our democracy. Our democracy is on a downward slide for some time now. It is important when we see the frightening threats that we speak up. I have seen a frightening threat of intolerance,” he said.
Utomi, a former Director of Lagos Business School, however, called on Nigerians to vote against political parties that intimidated other parties or prevented democracy from working in 2023, saying that there was a need for Nigerian citizens to hold people in public office accountable.
Utomi further recalled that as a presidential candidate in 2007, he visited all states of the federation campaigning without intimidation, describing current happenings as contrast, just as he declared that the experience in Delta had been the most scandalous.
“Unless we can restore our democracy to the rational public conversation or what Waziri Ibrahim would call ‘politics without bitterness’ the polarisation of politics can be the doom of all,” he said.
Decrying a decline in security, Utomi called for decentralisation of the nation’s security, saying that the country could have “multi-layers policing that will make police more effective.”
“Why don’t we have a proper conversation around this instead of name-calling?” he queried.
On economic challenges facing the country, he decried such, describing it as self-inflicting, saying that if the nation moved from consumption to production, the situation of the country would change.
