KnowDemWell Declares Tinubu Regime a Totalitarian Democracy

Kangmwa GofwenDecember 2, 20242 Mins read108

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A disruptive civic platform, KnowDemWell, has described the political ideology of President Bola Tinubu as a“totalitarian democracy.” The platform, which launched today, profiles Nigerian politicians across all levels of government based on their social, economic, and political backgrounds.

The KnowDemWell platform is described as a “comprehensive, non-partisan, and accurate information hub where you can access and understand the ideological views and policies of politicians and political candidates across all tiers of government in Nigeria.” KnowDemWell also documents, monitors, and compares the campaign promises of politicians to their actual performance in public office. The platform also assigns a verdict of low, medium, or high-performance rating to every politician profiled.

According to the group, totalitarian democracy as a political ideology is “a pseudo-democratic political system where political authority is concentrated in a totalitarian central government, with absolute power often vested in one individual who enforces the monopolisation of state institutions, severe censorship of media and civic space, and directly or indirectly weakens or eliminates opposition to ensure self-perpetuation.” The group’s Founder, the Nigerian author and activist, Raphael Adebayo, confirmed this by stating that “the socio-political-economic events Nigerians have witnessed since Mr. Tinubu forced himself into power have been nothing short of totalitarianism behind a smoke screen of democracy.”

On the KnowDemWell platform, Tinubu’s profile is rated 31.97 per cent, a Low Performance. “We have not manufactured any of the promises and performance indicators used to arrive at our rating. When you check Mr. Tinubu’s profile, you will see that we have rated him based on his performance or implemented policies in relation to his campaign promises,” said Adebayo.

The civic platform also profiled President Tinubu’s academic background, which is marked “disputed” across Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary education levels. Accordingly, the platform records the President’s occupation as a “Full-Time Politician and Political Godfather.”

On the President’s profile, there are nine major corruption scandals recorded, with two convictions related to drug trafficking in the United States and zero convictions for other corruption scandals in Nigeria.

Adebayo explained that the KnowDemWell platform scrutinises the manifesto of politicians and categorises their promises and performance under seven different indices, which include Commitment to Democracy, Human Rights, and Gender Equality; Commitment to Poverty Eradication; Commitment to Ending Corruption in Public Offices and Society; Commitment to Socio-Economic Development and Environmental Protection; Commitment to Education and Social Change; Commitment and Approach to Internal Security and Public Safety; and Commitment and Approach to Peace and Conflict Resolution.

President Tinubu’s profile shows a 24 per cent low-performance score both in the platform’s Commitment to Democracy, Human Rights, and Gender Equality index, as well as the Commitment to Education and Social Change index. In terms of Commitment to Poverty Eradication, Commitment to Ending Corruption in Public Offices and Society, Commitment to Socio-Economic Development and Environmental Protection, as well as Commitment and Approach to Internal Security and Public Safety, President Tinubu scores a low performance of 20 per cent each across the board.

However, the platform scores President Tinubu a 50 per cent medium performance under the Commitment and Approach to Peace and Conflict Resolution index, for the creation of the Ministry of Livestock Development, which was not promised in the President’s manifesto.

According to Adebayo, the KnowDemWell platform is “a critical civic education and public accountability tool that we hope to replicate across all levels of governance in Nigeria and scale in due time across the continent.” He added that one of their goals is to “use the platform to normalise political and electoral consequences for politicians in the country.”

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