LEADERSHIP, NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND THE PEOPLE
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– Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Paper Delivered At House of Parliament, London.
June 2013
I am honoured to be with you in the House of Commons for this is a house of democracy. It can be said that modern representative democracy was born inside these walls. Three and one-quarter centuries ago, England underwent the Glorious Revolution.
The Glorious Revolution was a complex happening, with religious considerations playing as large a role as political factors. The Glorious Revolution permanently shifted the balance of power from the monarch to the elected representatives of the people. In this land, the primacy of the monarchy was altered.
2.Over the years, the power of parliament would progressively grow while that of the monarchy would recede. As long as the breath of freedom does not expire from this earth, this house shall be revered as a symbol of progress and of the battle of the rule of law and individual liberty against the menace of unchecked and arbitrary power.
Today, democracy is the standard. Democracy is the best form of governance because it counters that most dangerous human frailty: the temptation of leaders to accumulate power for the sake of accumulating more power. However, everyone claims to
be democratic but not everyone is faithful to his or her word. Herein lies the rub. Illiberal governments have become adept in exploiting the visible procedural and institutional trappings of democracy without adopting the democratic spirit that gives these procedures and institutions their noble meaning.
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