Zoning arrangement and Enugu State governorship

DEMOCRACY which has over the years become the most beautiful bride for humanity largely due to its appeal of a greater good for a greater number of people still suffers from some lacerations in terms of accurate definitions. These lacerations and bruises are basically not due to lapses in the form of government itself but mainly as a result of the humans who practice it.

Even from the times of its cradle in ancient Greece human frailties have dogged it just like other forms of government. At the centre of these bruises on democracies is the struggle for power. In fact, most African states who have come to embrace one form of democracy or the other associate it with elections and their direct translation of the word election reflect this inherent tension.

The Edos who had a very robust monarchy long before the White man came and introduced their own form of governance, call government Arioba which literally means to eat oba.  So, to them, one cannot extricate governance from their revered throne. And when it comes to election they call it ‘Azeh’, meaning to choose.

The tussle for power is in this same power of the people to choose.  For the Hausa, Gwagwar Mayan Zabe typifies the struggles identical with elections. Igbos in South-East of the River Niger refer to election as ndorodoro ochichi which literally means: pull me, I pull you. How apt!

Democracy and elections are indeed to ‘drag’ among the stakeholders. But an age-long debate that has trailed the ‘Government of the people, for the people and by the people’ as defined by Abraham Lincoln is if there is morality in democracy. Political ethics, also known as political morality or public ethics, is the practice of making moral judgements about political actions and political agents.

It covers two areas. The first is the ethics of process – or the ethics of office, which deals with public officials and their methods. The second area is the ethics of policy – or ethics and public policy, which concerns judgments surrounding policies and laws. For a long time the ancients, philosophers, theologians, and political actors have pondered the relationship between the moral realm and the political realm.

Complicating the long debate over the intersection of morality and politics are diverse conceptions of fundamental concepts: the right and the good, justice and equality, personal liberty and public interest. Divisions abound, also, about whether politics should be held to a higher moral standard at all, or whether, instead, pragmatic considerations or realpolitik should be the final word.