Steemit Engagement Challenge S11/W4 - How Is Democracy Functioning In Your Country?

Democracy, what comes to your mind when you hear this word, Freedom right? I was taught in high school that Democracy means "Government of the people, for the people and by the people" or you can simply put it as the system of government in which people have the authority to decide who they want to represent them in Government, or who should be their leaders. My country Nigeria is operating this form of government and in this article, I will try and explain how democracy is functioning over here.

Nigeria gain independence on 1st October 1960, in that year it was declared as the fourth biggest democratic country in the world. But a few years after the democratic ideal was fluctuating, the period did not last because military rulers normally come into power through coup d' etat until 1999 whereby our country's modern constitution was enacted and that year's elections were more successful compared to the previous military rulers. That marks an end to the military rule era and it's 24 years now since civil liberties and freedom of speech returned to Nigeria.

Nigeria operate a form of democracy known as representative democracy(presidential democracy), where people hold the power but appointed representatives to exercise and utilise the power for them through an election process. In this system, the elected president is the head of government and the president leads the Executive branch of government, which make up of the president and the ministers. There's separation of power between the Executive, Legislative, and Judiciary. The executive exercises the power while the Legislative is held by the Senate and House of Representatives, these two chambers make the body known as the National Assembly which serves as a check to the executive arm of Government, they bypass the law and the executive will enforce it while the judiciary interpreted the law.

Citizens are enjoying certain rights, and freedom like the right to life, right to education, freedom of worship, movement and speech, right to acquire and own immovable property, freedom from discrimination, right to fair hearing Etc.

In all democracy is fragile in Nigeria and has suffered some setbacks due to inconsistency for example elites have been found to have more power and influence than average citizens and this resulted in a great deal of corruption in Nigerian politics and general life. Nigeria is yet to be fully Democratic.

Nigeria is partly free, yeah not absolutely and this is because there's inconsistency and lack of transparency in elections, there are records of fraudulent elections, violent and other abuses like buying of votes and intimidation during the process. Citizens' political choices remain undermined and impaired and influence power too and international and domestic economic interests. Local domination of either illegal armed groups or military in some regions of the country, and lastly wealthy political sponsors known as "godfathers" do influence the electoral process in Nigeria.

Corruption remains a major challenge to democracy, insecurities and insurgency by Book haram, militants group, kidnapping, and sectarian violence in the middle belt region etc, Makes full democracy hard to achieve in Nigeria. The law enforcement agency and military on many occasions involves in extrajudicial executions, torture or other abuses, civil liberties are undermined by religious and ethnic bias. Women face discrimination and there's frequent harassment and arrests of journalists who cover politically sensitive topics, all this poses a threat to democracy.

No Nigeria is not self-sufficient in food production this is because food prices rise every day and people are hungry and our economic situation is worsened over the years. The rate of food is high too, the cost is of food importation is in trillions of Naira or Billions of dollars. We are experiencing a high rate of inflation, and our food production reduces drastically over the years example the production of wheat drops from 350,000 metric tons to 36,945 MT, which shows a significant drop of 314,000MT.

Bandits have been attacking farmers, not allowing them to plant, they demanded dues from them during the planting period, middle period and when they want to harvest their crops and Even at that if they harvest 10 bags of cereals they have to give them 2 bags. That's how bad the situation is, more than a million farmers could not farm again, same goes with fishing, food prices are skyrocketing, it increases every minute.

Terrible! I mean youths dominated 70% of our population, out of 217 Million estimated population youths are 151 Million and 53.4% of them are unemployed, hmm is this not startling? ~ National bureau of statistics (NBS).
As it stands now Nigeria is one of the highest globally and the situation is steadily worsening.

I would like my country to be a safe place for all citizens, a place where we all enjoyed equal rights, constant electricity supply, good health services and education, adequate security and safety, and decent infrastructure for all to enjoy and thrive. I think this is the true meaning of Democracy, yes it's not about the said government of the people, for the people and by the people, but improving the lives of citizens for the better!

But if you ask me, it will take only God's intervention to achieve all this in my country, because we have all it takes to be the number one in the world, we have vast natural and human resources, but here we are languishing in the last place as one of the poorest in the world for more than half a century now, something has gone badly wrong in my country and only God can rectify them.

Hi @eliany @ninapenda and @shahid2030 join this contest.