Sustaining Nigeria Political And Democratic Culture Towards Vision 2020 OLATUNDE SANUSI solatunde@ymail RESEARCH AND STUDIES DEPARTMENT NIGERIAN INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL AFFIARS VICTORIA ISLAND LAGOS AUGUST 2010 1.1 Introduction This paper is about political culture and democracy consolidation in Nigeria. For about fifty years, Nigeria has not been able to attain a stable political culture and democracy due to political corruption and bad leadership. The lesson of experience from other countries is that the so-called miraculous transformation came about as a result of participative political culture. Nigeria, as a nation, has not been able to lay a solid foundation for her future, thereby making meaningful democracy and national development difficult to achieve. Why has genuine political culture and democracy consolidation difficult to achieve in Nigeria? Why is Nigeria as the largest economy in Black Africa weak politically? How can Nigeria use political culture to consolidate on her democracy? These issues require urgent attention. This paper beams a searchlight on necessary factors that deterred Nigeria’s political culture and stable democracy. It then proceeded to suggest solutions toward the attainment of credible political culture and democracy in Nigeria. Nigeria has all it takes to be a great country. It has a population now estimated at about 150 million – clearly one of the most populous 10 countries in the world, one quarter of Sub- Saharan African and one sixth of black race. Given its abundant human and natural resources, Nigeria is potential Africa’s largest economy. Unfortunately, the country was not lucky in the first 50 years of its independence. She has not been able to sustain democracy and good political governance culture. It needs to be underscored, however, that Nigeria is unique in the world as probably the only country with about 350 ethno linguistic nationalities. The political leaders need also to be given due credit for successfully keeping the country together out of the diverse ethnic nationalities. But Nigeria has not achieved much in terms of evolving a political and democratic culture which could have enhanced her national development. Lack of articulate political agenda toward an ideal democracy has been the major problem of Nigeria. There is need to evolve a credible political culture that would allow democracy to flourish. Without this, Nigeria’s dream as one of the 20th leading economy come the year 2020 will be a mirage. 2. An Overview of the Political Problem The greatest thing in the world is not so much where we stand but as in what direction we are moving. Anyone who has closely and passionately followed the trends in Nigeria politics within the past one decade could easily cut the air with a knife. Such social reading presents a benighted country on the perilous precipice of disintegration. Vices of frightening description characterized the nation so unprecedentedly that superior democracies like America gave travel advisory to her citizens wishing to come to Nigeria to be cautious. There was mutual suspicion, ethnic chauvinism expressed through militia groups. There was insecurity of lives and properties as armed robbers and hired killers held the nation hostage. There was strident allegation of marginalization by almost every tribe and everyone with the resultant clamour for equity, fairness and balance in the distribution of power and resources. As if these were not enough, our politicians became turncoat patriots who elevated thuggery to a fine art and few fats from morbid corruption. They imported arms into the country without let or hindrance to undo political opponents. We saw a government that became unwittingly paranoid of the opposition. We saw government officials who flagrantly violated the “due process” imperative in the award of contract. Nigeria political culture is negative, thuggery, electoral fraud, hooliganism and assassination of political opponents. All these negative vices have made evolution of genuine political culture and development of a stable democracy becomes a dream instead of reality in Nigeria.
Posted on: Mon, 08 Jul 2013 21:58:12 +0000
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