The Deputy Governor of Plateau State, Professor Sonni Gwanle Tyoden, has expressed optimism the nation’s democracy will succeed despite its shortcoming over the past 20 years.
Tyoden spoke yesterday at a roundtable on political actors and democracy in Nigeria held at the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies, Kuru.
He said despite its imperfections, democracy must not be jettisoned as efforts should rather be made to appraise the shortcomings in order address them.
He said it is in our collective interest as a nation to have discourse that will help in perfecting the democracy, adding that there is need for collective unity between political institutions and political actors.
“While appreciating the critical role institutions such as political parties, the judiciary, and the election management body, INEC, can play in strengthening and deepening our democracy, we cannot run away from the fact that it is the politicians that hold the aces. It is their conducts, disposition and behaviour that determine the ebb and flow of our politics and by extension the fate of our democracy,” he said.
