A socio-political commentator, Dr. Raji Bello says Nigeria should be marking Lamentation Day instead of Democracy Day because of the calamities that have befallen the nation since return to civilian rule in 1999.
Bello, who is Chief Consultant Anaesthesiologist at the Federal Medical Centre, Yola, stated this in a Facebook post on Sunday.
Today is Democracy Day in Nigeria, and President Muhammadu Buhari kicked off the celebration with a nationwide broadcast.
However, Bello said there was nothing to celebrate.
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He wrote, “The return of civilian rule in 1999 has brought unprecedented loss, pain, fear, hardship, dislocation, injury and death to millions of Nigerians.
“The country has witnessed bestial violence like it has never seen before – massacres with assault rifles, mass mutilation through bombs, medieval slitting of throats, decapitations and cannibalism.
“There is a near collapse of public education, infrastructure and the economy, while normal life is severely disrupted and permanently restricted by insecurity.
“To have a special day every year to celebrate the arrival of this catastrophe is grotesque, to say the least. What the country needs is not Democracy Day but Lamentation Day.”