NASARA JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY

Man’s basic need is his well-being. For this very reason, several political systems: monarchy, dictatorship, military rule, tyranny, democracy, etc., have been tried, tested, and found wanting in one way or the other. But of all these systems, the one less problematic and more promising, regarding the attainment of man’s wellbeing through governance, is democracy. However, this work argues that this “conventional wisdom” about democracy can be challenged if the performance of any republic in Nigeria is critically assessed. It emphasizes the desirability of democracy, but also posits that democracy as practiced in Nigeria has not brought about the much-desired development and progress. Nigeria’s attempt to practice representative democracy in all the republics has been a monumental failure. Ours is a political system whose voice is the voice of democracy and whose hand is the hand of autocracy. This work, thus, is an attempt to diagnose the protracted problems of democracy in Nigeria and attempt a treatment with some deductions drawn from Rousseau’s doctrine of the “General will”. By this, a hermeneutic approach to Rousseau’s doctrine of the general will provides a therapy to democratic practices in Nigeria.

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