Kayode Fayemi, former Ekiti State Governor, on Thursday, said the country successfully got civilian rule in 1999 but has yet to get real democracy.
Fayemi emphasised that although the country has regained the right for its citizens to vote for their leaders, there is still a need to strive toward achieving a fully functional democracy.
He made this statement during a special June 12 event aired on Channels Television titled “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 recalled that he and fellow pro-democracy activists operated Radio Kudirat during the struggle for democracy, using it to promote their efforts and other pro-democracy campaigns under the regime of the late military dictator, Sani Abacha.