•Kayode Fayemi
As Nigeria celebrated Democracy Day yesterday, a former governor of Ekiti State, Kayode Fayemi, said the country successfully got civilian rule in 1999 but has yet to get real democracy.
He said that while the country got the right to reestablish the citizens’ right to vote for their leaders, efforts must now be made to achieve full democracy.
Fayemi stated this during a Channels Television special June 12 event tagged ‘Nigeria’s Democratic Journey: An Inter-Generational Conversation On Building A Better Nation’.
“What we mustn’t do is to conflate elections with democracy. What we got was to reestablish the right to vote for our leaders into office in 1999, what we are yet to get is real democracy in my view.
“We got civilian rule, we are proudly on the journey — we now have a semi-democracy, but now we don’t have full democracy. The effort that the previous president and now President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has put into it, we all must build on that,” he said.
The former minister said he and other pro-democracy activists operated Radio Kudirat during the struggle for democracy to propagate their activities and other democracy campaigns under the regime of former military dictator, the late Sani Abacha.
Radio Kudirat
But speaking on the programme, he disclosed that he and his colleagues who ran Radio Kudirat were lucky not to be killed by the military government at the time.
He recalled how they took risks operating the radio station without fully realising the enormity of their actions in the face of the military.
He said, “It’s not that we were not afraid or we were aimlessly bold, we just didn’t fully think of the enormity of the threat it constituted beyond wanting to do the right thing.
“I mean, I carried the transmitters of Radio Kudirat on an Air France flight that was destined for Cotonou in the Benin Republic and made a detour to Lagos in the heat of the crisis.
“I could have been picked up on that flight, I would have been history by now as many found themselves to be. During the Oputa Panel Commission, some of the characters that were mandated to eliminate leaders of the struggle came up with their stories.
“So, we shouldn’t make light of what happened and I don’t by any stretch of imagination want to create the impression that we were invincible in what we did, I think some of us are just fortunate that we are still alive. Those who lost their lives were not stupid in what they did, they were following their convictions.”
Fayemi, however, hailed President Tinubu for recognising some of the actors in the democracy struggle yesterday with national awards, but urged that more people, including the Radio Kudirat operators, should also be recognised.
