It’s anomaly to declare candidate with 35% of votes as president – Fayemi

• Fayemi said the challenges facing the nation today cannot be addressed unless the country embraced proportional representation which engenders equity and fairness
• He said such system would ensure that the spoils of elections are shared between contestants

Former Ekiti state governor, Kayode Fayemi, says the style of democracy practiced in Nigeria is an impediment to development.

He said Nigeria needs to come up with an electoral and political arrangements that will foster unity and development in the country, noting that the current system is inimical to the nation’s sovereignty and it’s unsustainable.

Fayemi spoke while delivering his keynote address at a national dialogue organised to celebrate the 60th birthday celebration of the founding National Secretary of Alliance for Democracy and Fellow, Abuja School of Social and Political Thought, Professor Udenta Udenta in Abuja.

He decried what he described as the “winners take all” style of Nigeria’s democracy.

Fayemi said the challenges facing the nation today cannot be addressed unless the country embraced proportional representation which engenders equity and fairness.

He said such system would ensure that the spoils of elections are shared between contestants.

Fayemi said, “Today, I read former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s interview in The Cable saying our liberal democracy is not working and we need to revisit it, and I agree with him. We must move from the political alternatives. I think we are almost on a dead end of that.

“What we need is alternative politics and my own notion of alternative politics is that you can’t have 35 per cent of the vote and take 100 per cent. It won’t work! We must look at proportional representation so that the party that is said to have won 21 per cent of the votes will have 21 per cent of the government. Adversary politics bring division and enmity.

“All political parties in the country agreed and they even put in their manifesto that subsidy must be removed. We all said subsidy must be removed. But we in ACN at the time, in 2012, we know the truth Sir, but it is all politics.

“That is why we must ensure that everybody is a crucial stakeholder by stopping all these. Let the manifesto of PDP, APC and Labour Party, be put on the table and select all those who will pilot the programme from all parties.”