The Deputy President of the Senate, Senator Ike Ekweremadu, has warned that democracy will be highly imperiled and risked transmuting to civilian dictatorship without respect for key institutions of democracy by African leaders.
He decried the widespread coercion of the press, civil society, the judiciary, and parliaments by some African leaders, whom he said had no regard for their oaths of office and constitutional limits of their powers.
Ekweremadu spoke at a lecture entitled ‘African Politics: The Dynamics and Lesson’, which he delivered at the House of Commons, Parliament of the United Kingdom (UK) in London recently.
The former Speaker of the Parliament of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS Parliament) expressed regret that “outside Nigeria, South Africa, and a few others, most African parliaments are largely caged and often reduced to rubber stamps and appendages of the executive”.
He cited the case of Cameroon where the constitution had been severally amended to keep 84 years old President Paul Biya in power since November 1982 and Uganda where the parliament recently voted to remove the constitutional age limit to elongate the tenure of 73 years old President Yoweri Museveni, who has been in office for about 30 years.
