Nigeria has civilian not democratic government – Robert Clarke

A legal practitioner and a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Robert Clarke on Tuesday said though the country has experienced significant development since when it gained independence from colonial rule, there is still lack of local government presence in most areas.
The 74-year-old lawyer, who joined Channels Television’s breakfast programme, Sunrise Daily via the telephone, said the absence of the local government presence is due to “complete corruption”.
“We need to strengthen every area of governance so that all necessary things can be done to ensure that it is not a civilian government we have but a democratic government,” he said.
“There is the general believe that the representatives we have in Abuja are not elected representatives of the people and that the forms of conducting elections still allows many, many people who should not be in Abuja to be in Abuja.
“And the representative finds out that he doesn’t owe allegiance to the people and the people do not trust him. The problem we have is to strengthen the electoral process so that the people would believe, not only believe, but that they know that they have an influence on their representatives,” Mr Clarke said.