The Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, Matthew Kukah, has stated that democracy is struggling in Nigeria because it wasn’t culturally made by the people.
His statement is coming amid celebration of the county’s 25th year of uninterrupted democracy today, in Abuja.
Kukah led this out at The Platform Nigeria, a programme by Lagos-based church, Covenant Nation, to mark the 2024 Democracy Day on Wednesday.
The cleric disclosed that Nigeria’s democracy was not founded on the country’s historical, cultural or anthropological experiences unlike Europe, where it is built by philosophers.
He said: “What is missing in our conversation is that unlike where the principles of democracy were founded on the thinking of several philosophers from Plato, Socrates, Aristotle etc, our democracy has paid very little attention.
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“We have been involved intellectual conversations about democracy but modern liberal democracy as we understand it today benefitted extensively from the work of people like St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas.
“It is also quite significant that Joe Biden even in his presidential address had to quote St Augustine and it means therefore that it is the teachings and philosophies and theology of some of these scholars that led the foundation to what we call democracy today.
“Unfortunately, our democracy is in decline, is in recession precisely because it is evident to us that what we are working with is not something that that come from our own historical, cultural or even anthropological experiences.”
