Professor Pat Utomi
A former presidential candidate and founder of the Centre for Values in Leadership, Professor Pat Utomi, believes political parties are mere apparatuses to doctor the outcomes of elections in Nigeria.
Professor Utomi, who a guest on Channels Television’s special political programme, observed that the country needs a social movement to bring its people into a certain commitment to the political process.
READ ALSO: We’ve Not Had A Democracy In Nigeria – Utomi
“I belong to one and I can tell you we do not have political parties in Nigeria,” he said during the latest episode of Roadmap 2019 with Ladi Akeredolu-Ale on Monday.
“Political parties matter but we have refused to build political parties; what we have done is that we have created machines to rig elections.”
The professor of political economy noted further that Nigerian parties lack certain objectives, including ideas and how to govern a people to achieve a certain goal.
He added that such situation has compounded the problem of oligopoly in party organisation and called on politicians in the country create parties that would encourage citizens’ participation and public engagement.
He also stressed the need to prevent the nation’s political system from falling, noting that Nigeria has yet to practice democracy since the return to civil rule in almost 20 years.
Utomi was worried about the future of the country, saying the present leaders do not seem to have given the youths the needed support to play key roles in the affairs of the country.
“The future frightens me; it frightens me because we’re at the dawn of the fourth industrial revolution. Five years from now, many of us are going to be moving around in driverless cars – there will be essentially machines doing most of the jobs that we are doing today.
“Our country doesn’t seem to even have begun discussing the subject, not to talk of developing a strategy for it and this is what I expect politicians to be doing,” he said.
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