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This is a Book that narrates in detail the way democracy is being practiced in Nigeria, the attitude of the Politicians via-a-vis the government organs, the issue of corruption and self-centered or aggrandizement by political leaders and reasons why Nigerian democracy has brought poverty and penury rather than prosperity.
This book addresses various issues that have arisen in the practice of democracy in Nigeria since 1999, focusing on the Obasanjo years (1999-2007). Nigeria's return to democratic rule has been marked by developments such as the implementation of reforms to address perceived economic problems and corruption. The introduction of democracy in the country has also witnessed many challenges, including the difficult relationship between some political chief executives and their deputies; intriguing intergovernmental relations; the rise and resurgence of sub-national groups that pose serious threat to the hegemony of the state; precarious inter-ethnic/inter-sectional relations; attempts to perpetuate the tenure of chief executives through constitutional amendments; and developments in electoral politics and conflicts. The book provides incisive analysis into these issues.
African nations have watched the recent civic dramas of the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street asking if they too will see similar civil society actions in their own countries. Nigeria—Africa’s most populous nation—has long enjoyed one of the continent’s most vibrant civil society spheres, which has been instrumental in political change. Initially viewed as contributing to democracy’s development, however, civil society groups have come under increased scrutiny by scholars and policymakers. Do some civil society groups promote democracy more effectively than others? And if so, which ones, and why? By examining the structure, organizational cultures, and methods of more than one hundred Nigerian civil society groups, Kew finds that the groups that best promote democratic development externally are themselves internally democratic. Specifically, the internally democratic civil society groups build more sustainable coalitions to resist authoritarian rule; support and influence political parties more effectively; articulate and promote public interests in a more negotiable fashion; and, most importantly, inculcate democratic norms in their members, which in turn has important democratizing impacts on national political cultures and institutions. Further, internally democratic groups are better able to resolve ethnic differences and ethnic-based tensions than their undemocratically structured peers. This book is a deeply comprehensive account of Nigerian civil society groups in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Kew blends democratic theory with conflict resolution methodologies to argue that the manner in which groups—and states—manage internal conflicts provides an important gauge as to how democratic their political cultures are. The conclusions will allow donors and policymakers to make strategic decisions in their efforts to build a democratic society in Nigeria and other regions.
An introduction to the politics and society of post-colonial Nigeria, highlighting the key themes of ethnicity, democracy, and development.
The overthrow in January 1966 of Nigeria’s First Republic erased what had been regarded as perhaps the most promising prospect for liberal democracy in post-colonial Africa. Marking the sweeping failure of parliamentary institutions across a continent of new nations, it accelerated the slide into a ghastly civil war. Class, Ethnicity and Democracy is the first scholarly study to analyze the evolution, decay, and failure of Nigeria’s First Republic and to weigh this crucial experience against theories of the conditions for stable democratic government. Rejecting explanations that focus on political culture, political institutions, or ethnic competition and conflict, Larry Diamond identifies the root of Nigeria’s democratic failure in the interrelationship between class, ethnic and state structures. This led the emergent dominant class in each region to mobilize and exploit ethnicity and to trample the democratic process in furious competition for state control, since that control was the primary means for accumulating wealth and consolidating class dominance. Tracing the polarization of conflict and the erosion of legitimacy through five major crises, Diamond presents a new methodology for analyzing the persistence and failure of democracies and points to the relationship between state and society as a crucial determinant of the possibility for liberal democracy.
Nigeria's Stumbling Democracy and its Implications for Africa's Democratic Movement is the first book to recount and analyze Nigeria's controversial general elections of April 2007. Because Nigeria's immense and diverse population of 140 million people and its wealth of natural resources make it a microcosm of Africa, Nigerian politics are an ideal case study and bellwether by which to view and understand African politics and the ongoing democratic experiments on the continent. Ten leading scholars of Nigerian and African politics, variously based in Nigeria, the US, and Europe, contribute original chapters commissioned by Professor Okafor to provide an account at once deep and comprehensive of what went wrong with these disputed presidential, federal, and state elections; together with their implications for the future of the democratic movement, both in Nigeria and in Africa as a whole. Although the 2007 general elections resulted in the first-ever handover of political power from one civilian government to another in the history of Nigeria, by which the two-term Christian president Olusegun Obasanjon was succeeded by a Muslim, Alhaji Musa Yar'Adua, they were condemned by internal and international watchdogs for pervasive vote-rigging, violence, intimidation, and fraud which were, as this book documents, perpetrated by and with the connivance of the nation's security forces. The disappointment of continental hopes that these elections might finally break with Nigeria's history of tainted elections has grave repercussions for the democracy movement not only in Nigeria but throughout Africa-as seen in the knock-on effect upon the disastrous general elections in Kenya later the same year.
Nigeria’s democratisation efforts since attaining political independence from Britain have been tumultuous and have spanned over three successive republics. A persistent bug decimating Nigeria’s democracy and repeatedly leading to military coups has been brazen electoral violence perpetrated by the nation’s political elite. Nigeria's 2019 Democratic Experience analyses and explains what went wrong in Nigeria’s experiment with democracy. Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation and the world’s seventh most populous nation, also contributes 70% of West Africa’s population. She is sub-Saharan Africa’s largest oil producer and has remained Africa’s largest economy by GDP since 2014. The country has hundreds of diverse ethnic nationalities and languages grouped into 36 states (or federating units) and an independent federal capital territory. Though recognized as Africa’s largest democracy, her democratisation process since the 1960s has remained tumultuous with massive electoral violence and political intolerance. This repeatedly compelled the military to intervene in the nation’s political history in the years 1966, 1983 and 1985. It is these developments that provided the motivation for this volume to capture for posterity the conduct of the 2019 General Elections in Nigeria.
There is a paradoxical relationship between democracy and development in Nigeria. In the twenty years of electoral democracy, poverty, inequality, unemployment, underemployment and insecurity have increased. The hopes of citizens that democracy would lead to improved living standards have been dashed. Social justice and inclusive sustainable development have also been elusive. The economy has remained dependent on 2 primary sectors - agriculture and oil - and low value added services.The aspiration that by 2020, Nigeria would become one of the twenty leading economies in the world has not been achieved, the political elite have captured the state for personal gains and unsurprisingly, Nigeria remains one of the most corrupt countries in the world.
In 2015, Nigeria's voters cast out the ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP). Here, A. Carl LeVan traces the political vulnerability of Africa's largest party in the face of elite bargains that facilitated a democratic transition in 1999. These 'pacts' enabled electoral competition but ultimately undermined the party's coherence. LeVan also crucially examines the four critical barriers to Nigeria's democratic consolidation: the terrorism of Boko Haram in the northeast, threats of Igbo secession in the southeast, lingering ethnic resentments and rebellions in the Niger Delta, and farmer-pastoralist conflicts. While the PDP unsuccessfully stoked fears about the opposition's ability to stop Boko Haram's terrorism, the opposition built a winning electoral coalition on economic growth, anti-corruption, and electoral integrity. Drawing on extensive interviews with a number of politicians and generals and civilians and voters, he argues that electoral accountability is essential but insufficient for resolving the representational, distributional, and cultural components of these challenges.
"The country-specific chapters serve to underline the differences between African democracy and liberal democracy, yet some authors are at pains to emphasize that whatever their limitations, African democracies are an advance over what had gone before." -- African Studies Review