Adeyeye: Those Accusing Tinubu of Driving Nigeria to One-Party State Are Crying Wolf

Yinka Kolawole in Osogbo

The Board Chairman, Nigerian Ports Authority ( NPA), Senator Adedayo Adeyeye has said those accusing President Bola Tinubu of driving Nigeria towards a one-party system, were only crying wolf where there was none.

Speaking at a leadership lecture titled, mentorship: a tool for fostering progressive Democracy at faculty of administration, Obafemi  Awolowo University, Ile- Ife, he contended that crossing from one party to another has always been with Nigeria and one needed to establish a distinction between one party system and one party domination.

Adeyeye, who was also the recipient of the lifetime leadership achievement award of the faculty further reaffirmed that the former was a constitutionally instituted one party rule while the later is the dominance of one party in a multi party environment for a period of time.

He  said in one party system, only one party – the ruling party – could legally exist, whereas a dominant party continues to compete with other parties.

“There is nothing bad with having a dominant party as long as periodic, free, fair and transparent elections are guaranteed.

“Our democracy is not perfect, None is. As Hilary Clinton, former First Lady, Secretary of State and former Presidential Candidate noted, American democracy even after 200 years is still a work in progress.”

He held that while the nation was facing many challenges, including the challenges of insecurity, unemployment, and under employment, inflation, youth restiveness, poverty, tumultuous election processes and a terrible erosion of confidence in the judiciary.

Adeyeye stressed that inspite of all these, the nation has recorded modest achievements for which Nigerians could be proud since the advent of this democratic dispensation.

He was of the view that after 26 years of democracy, the nation has managed to substantially improve her electoral process, saying when it started in 1999 the electoral processes were crude, brutish and totally out of tunes with the ethos of democracy and practices in many advanced democracies.

He, therefore, noted that in the present democratic dispensation, Tinubu stood out as a great example of a mentor, nothing that anyone in the politics of Lagos State came from his political stable.