"Pseudo" comes from the Greek word.which literally means lying, false, unreal, untrue, fake, fraudulent in nature, deceptive in appearance and pretending to be what it is not in all reality. Nigeria as a nation practices this type of democracy that reflects the exact and the complete meanings of this Greek word known as "pseudo".
The term "democracy" comes from the Greek word "dēmokratía" which means the "rule of the people" or "the political power that is derived from or it is coming directly from the people (the voters) in an election. It implies that the true, the total and the collective will of the majority of the voters will determine who is elected or not in an election.
In Nigeria, all our national elections conducted to date from 1960 never reflected the true will of the Nigerian voters except the annulled presidential elections of June 12, 1993 in which the late Chief M.K.O. Abiola won an election for the first time in the political history of elections in Nigeria that truly reflected the supreme will of Nigerians.
"Our political parties in Nigeria primarily practice the selection of aspirants for elective offices instead of the true elections of the aspiring candidates by the actual voters". The same patterns are repeated in the local, the state and the federal elections. Elections are also hijacked to favour the highest bidders, and our elected officials use their power of incumbency and the state machineries to influence elections to their own advantage.
Money is always used as bribes in Nigeria to influence the process and the outcome of elections to the advantage of the "money-bags politicians" from the party politics level to the state organized elections. The state apparatus remains a weapon of war in the hands of public elected officials aganist their political opponents in elections.
Political parties and politicians in Nigeria have used and continued to use the follwing methods to perpetuate electoral fraud in Nigeria. They are: Electorate Fraud, Manipulation of Demography, Vote Buying, Intimidation, Disenfranchisement of Voters, Ballot Stuffing, Misrecording of Votes, Misleading or Confusing Ballot Papers and the Destruction or the Invalidation of Ballot.
Pseudo-Democracy in Nigeria will only continue to benefit the election riggers only at the expense of the Nigerian voters. These types of elections do not reflect the true will, the expectations and the aspirations of the Nigerian electorates. Politicians elected in this manner into public offices are never people-minded, development-oriented and transparent in the daily discharge of the required responsibilities of such offices. Politician elected under this type of political atmosphere are lawless, corrupt and live above the supreme law of the land.
What is going on at the Eagle Square tonight at the PDP presidential primary election is a clear-cut indication of what to expect in the main elections slated for April 2011 in Nigeria. Money, power of incumbency, bribery, vote buying, intimidation of voters and political opponents as well as the political survival of sycophant politicians and elected officials played a major role in the outcome of tonight's PDP presidential primary in Abuja, Nigeria.
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