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Party Registration and the Subversion of Democracy in Nigeria

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 August 2021

Pita Ogaba Agbese
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Extract

Nigeria has had three programs of transition from military to civil rule in the last 13 years. Despite the enormous resources wasted on the first two programs, by Generals Ibrahim Babangida and Sani Abacha, democracy remains a mirage in Nigeria. The demise of the two programs was not just a monumental failure on the part of the two leaders; it also vividly demonstrates the military’s inability to effect a lasting transition to civil rule. In addition, the utter failure of both programs has exposed the political brinkmanship to which the military is prepared to go to subvert democracy. Babangida’s brazen annulment of the June 1993 presidential election and Abacha’s repressive, dictatorial, and corrupt governing style brought Nigeria closer to the edge of the precipice than any other crisis since the civil war of the 1960s.

Type
Part 2: Transition Without Transformation?
Information
African Issues , Volume 27 , Issue 1 , 1999 , pp. 63 - 65
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1999 

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References

Notes

1. Abdulsalm Abubakar (text of the head of state’s national broadcast, Abuja, Nigeria, July 20, 1998).

2. Babangida, Ibrahim, “The Grass-Roots Democratic Party System and the Dawn of a New Socio-Political Order,” in For Their Tomorrow We Gave Our Today: Selected Speeches of IBB (Ibadan: Safari Books, 1991), 5 Google Scholar.

3. Ibrahim, Jibrin, “Political Scientists and the Subversion of Democracy in Nigeria,” in eds., Nzongola-Ntalaja, Georges and Lee, Margaret C., The State and Democracy in Africa (Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press, 1997), 121 Google Scholar.

4. Babangida, For Their Tomorrow, We Gave Our Today, 3.

5. See Nigeria Handbook and Review, 1997 (Lagos: Patike Communications, 1998), 82.

6. Jakande, Lateef, quoted in Agbo, Nats, “Good Bye, Old Brigade,” Newswatch, October 14, 1996, 8 Google Scholar.

7. Ibid., 10.

8. Ibrahim Babangida (address to the National Assembly, Abuja, Nigeria, August 1993).

9. See Nwankwo, Agwuncha Arthur, Nigerians as Outsiders: Military Dictatorship and Nigeria’s Destiny (Enugu: Fourth Dimension Publishers, 1996)Google Scholar.