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Building The Nigeria of Our Dreams

President Obasanjo's National Address on the Occasion Marking the

Thanksgiving and Democracy Day, May 29,2004

Today marks another critical, but reassuring, milestone in our glorious march towards the consolidation of our democratic enterprise. We have all, at one time or the other, made sacrifices to ensure not just the survival of our dear nation but also the flourishing of democratic ethos and values including good governance, fundamental rights and freedoms, gender equality, positive pluralism, and social justice. Our collective experience has confirmed the fact that democratic constitutional rule is superior and more desirable than any other form of governance. In the process of strengthening and sustaining our democracy therefore, we must maintain constitutionality with responsibility and expedience when there are situations that challenge or undermine the tenets of what we have all strived so hard to attain.

From our experience as well as those of other nations, we know that
democracy is not just about parties, elections, and the sharing or deployment of power. It is about the soul and spirit of a people. Democracy is about liberties, values, collective visions and commitments to the ideals of humanity.

It is about constructing and sustaining enabling environment that promotes respect for human dignity, individual and collective rights, and boundless opportunities for the human spirit. Democracy is about providing hope and courage to the weak and powerless; to the voiceless and marginalized; and to the oppressed and dominated without weakening those with some well- deserved benefits or advantages.

Democracy is about building open, accountable, sensitive and effective democratic institutions and structures; and democracy is certainly about fair competition and exchange. Finally, democracy is, at the heart of it all, people: their welfare and well-being, security, hope, fulfillment, rights, dreams, capacities, engagements, challenges, problems, and of course, solutions.

But along with all these, democracy is also about responsibilities, duties and obligations.

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