Prof. Pat Utomi, a political economist, has disclosed how the Election Commission of South Korea used debates to rid the electoral process of corrupt individuals and power-hungry moneybaggers.
According to Prof. Utomi, the moneybags and criminals fled when they realized they couldn’t put up with the demands of public discourse in order to gain public office.
He added that no system could be perpetuated in that way and questioned why Nigeria had decided not to include that in its electoral process.
He said on AIT: “South Korea many many years ago have this same kind challenges that we have with our politics. The Electoral Commission woke up and said look, central to how societies organise her ideas, all these people who are scrambling to get power because they have money or they are crooks and can use criminality, I think the way to stop them is to use debate as a source to elections.
Professor Jega can tell you that because he led a delegation of Nigerian Electoral Commissioners to South Korea and they were told this: Before you can run for any office, you will debate on the street, you will debate in the classrooms, you will debate in the gymnasia, you will debate on television.
The money bags and the criminals ran away from politics in South Korea when they found that they have to apply themselves to be able to get into public office.
But in Nigeria, we’ve chosen not to bring that rigour of how you can govern to the process. And so our political parties have become the den of robbers. And so, anybody through whatever criminal means he can to garnishee power does so. No system can be sustained like that.”
