4 - Democratic Regression, Political Parties, and the Negation of the Popularity Principle

Summary

The Fourth Republic has been ongoing for more than twenty-two years and the expectation has been that, with longevity, there will be democratic consolidation in the country. The First Republic lasted only five years while the Second Republic had an even shorter life span of just over four years. The received wisdom in Nigeria has been that the military did not allow the first two Republics to mature and they did not even allow the Third Republic to take off. The significance of the longevity of the Fourth Republic is that we can now see and analyse political dynamics and democratic development more clearly.

This chapter argues that the main challenge to democratic development is the political party system which has refused to accept the practice of internal party democracy and remains locked into a logic of serving the interests of godfathers and party barons rather than party members and citizens. The result is that they have for the most part jettisoned the popularity principle that pushes parties to seek for the most popular candidates to enhance their chances of their victory at the polls. We will show that, at its origin, this practice was premised on the prevalence of the culture of electoral fraud which makes nonsense of the vote. The culture has however persisted even when the integrity of the electoral process began to improve in 2011. What then is the pathway for reorienting the political system towards democratic practices?

Political Party Development in Nigeria

The development of political parties in Nigeria dates back to 1923 when the Nigerian National Democratic Party was launched. This followed the establishment of the Nigerian Legislative Council to provide some political space for the participation of indigenes in the colonial system. Franchise was however limited to two cities – Lagos and Calabar. A more vigorous process of party formation was initiated with the formation of the Nigerian Youth Movement in 1938 and the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC) in 1944 under the leadership of Herbert Macaulay. The Action Group (AG) emerged in 1948 while the Northern People's Congress (NPC) was established in 1951.