I have looked across Nigeria, there are no such thing as rule of law. Perhaps our politicians do not know what it means, where the term emanate from. Rule of law is very essential for the survival of democracy. Rule of Law: A Necessary Accompaniment for Democracy.
The use of arbitrary power is anathema to the rule of law. In democracies, constitutional limits on power require the subjugation of state authority to a country’s laws as established through popular consent and adopted by the people’s representatives as determined in free elections. This is the meaning of the oft- cited phrase “a government of laws, and not of men” (it was originally used in the Constitution of Massachusetts, drafted by John Adams). Under such a system, the rule of law should be supreme to the capricious authority of any individual. The rule of law is the supreme check on political power used against people’s rights. Without the regulation of state power by a system of laws, procedures, and courts, democracy could not survive. And just as the rule of law protects the majority from arbitrary power and tyranny, it must also protect the minority from arbitrary power and the “tyranny of the majority.
In United Kingdom, Albert Venn Dicey is well recognized in this school of thought. He described the rule of law as acting in three ways: ‘the predominance of regular law as opposed to the influence of arbitrary power; equality before the law; and, that constitutional laws are not the source but the consequence of the rights of individuals’.
Without the rule of law, there is likely to be either a dictatorship or mob rule. Some revolutionary thinkers have extolled mob rule, or anarchism, as the highest form of political and social justice. In reality, mob rule has meant violence and political chaos; indeed, it creates the very conditions that give rise to dictatorship, the exercise of arbitrary power, and the wholesale denial of individual rights. It takes a great man to fix this problem in Nigeria and I have looked in, I cant see anyone, so the only option is our youth.