A Roadmap for Understanding African Politics

Leadership and Political Integration in Nigeria

Victor Oguejiofor Okafor

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781135529116
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Process
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book examines the impact of post-colonial leadership on political integration in Nigeria, offering an in-depth understanding of the historical and contemporary forces that shape Nigeria's national politics as well as African politics generally. Okafor discusses how Nigeria's pre-colonial and colonial political histories along with contemporary external forces like neo-colonialism, as well as internal social, economic and political structures and developments, have affected emerging post-independence politics in the country. The study climaxes with an Africa-centered theory of political and integrative leadership and then uses it as a prism for analyzing six Nigerian post-independence political leaderships, encompassing Nigeria's First and Second Republics, along with their military interregna. The concluding chapter includes a discussion of the implications of the study for leadership and political integration in Africa in general.

Chapter One

Introduction

Leadership takes place at various levels and units of human existence, ranging from a small group of individuals like a family or a class to a nation or even a group of sovereign nations such as the United Nations. Leadership also occurs in various spheres of life; it could be the social, cultural, economic or political domain. Chinua Achebe observes that leaders are role models whose behavior and mannerisms are emulated by others. This is why, he points out, leaders must be self-disciplined, for if they are not, their indiscipline would exert a ripple effect on their followers.¹

Despite the significant role of political leadership in the fortunes of human societies, students of politics have tended to de-emphasize leadership as a major focus of academic study because of the belief that leaders are not free agents, but subject to sociopolitical and economic forces as well as institutions that determine the political course of events.² Yes, political leaders are constrained by their sociopolitical, economic forces and institutions; but the true leader is one who can adjust the course of events. Otherwise known as transforming leaders, they are visionaries who take definite measures to implement their visions of society. Other kinds of leaders, better known as the transactional, are merely content to maintain society as it is—to transact business as usual. They are simply determined to keep things going.³ “Change” is not a key concept on their agenda.

Political leadership is merely one of various kinds of leadership, and it relates to the conduct of governmental affairs. Thus, political leadership is broader than any other form of leadership. Political leadership is wielded over a variety of subject-matters.⁴ Jean Blondel defines national political leadership as “the power exercised by one or a few individuals to direct members of the nation towards action.”⁵ While this power can be used to control, dominate and subjugate, it can also be used to uplift, improve and develop.⁶ Given this critical potential of political leadership, it deserves to be treated as a vital field of academic enquiry. Blondel sheds some insight on this point: “If leadership is to be harnessed for the common good and for development, … then it is imperative to study leadership in its generality; and it is essential to assess how far, and under what conditions, leadership is likely to be good.”⁷

Notice the reference to ‘conditions’ for good leadership. This is a critical point, for the environment in which a political leadership operates is a significant factor, just as the “qualities” of the leader himself or herself. Major factors that affect the ability of leaders to provide effective leadership include: (1) the personality or personal sources of the power that leaders exercise; (2) the institutional instruments that aid or restrain leaders, (3) the actions of the leaders, and (4) the environment in which these actions occur.⁸ Indeed, an effective means of assessing the real strength of leaders is by studying the environment in which they operated. How did they resolve the problems that they were confronted with? Did they allow themselves to become slaves of their environment? Blondel regrets that such questions have been the least examined aspect of leadership partly because they are methodologically difficult to tackle.⁹

One of the pitfalls of most studies of political leadership is their preoccupation with classifications—with dichotomies and trichotomies which create categories such as liberal vs. authoritarian leaders, democratic vs. autocratic leaders, etc. as if to say that these boundaries do not criss-cross.¹⁰ As Blondel observes, the realities of political leadership are much more complex, and a given political leadership can exhibit liberal and authoritarian traits.¹¹ Hence, he urges scholars of political leadership to move away from their pre-occupation with dichotomies and trichotomies and instead to explore and establish models and methodological techniques that could provide a more realistic picture of the contours of political leadership.¹²

This book examines post-independence political leadership in Nigeria with a focus upon six political leaders, encompassing the First Republic that took off when Nigeria became independent of British colonial rule in 1960 up to the end of the Second Republic in 1983. The leaderships include the military rulership of General Olusegun Obasanjo who, incidentally, is now the civilian president of Nigeria. (The present study does not encompass his record as an elected civilian leader.) The study is more concerned with the philosophical outlook, policies, actions and results of political leadership as well as the environment in which leadership operates than with classifications, dichotomies or trichotomies. Specifically, the study seeks to explore, explain, and comparatively analyze how the environment of political leadership, the philosophical outlook, actions and policies of political leadership furthered or negated political integration in Nigeria since the attainment of independence. Where relevant, the study includes pre-colonial and colonial political developments in its discussions and analyses. Among the questions asked are, what has been the nature of the conduct of governmental affairs in this country? To what extent has national leadership fostered political integration in Nigeria? What case studies of political leadership in Africa might be useful in throwing light on Nigeria’s situation? Thus, the study also includes relevant discussions of case studies of a cross-section of other political leaderships in Africa in their historical unfolding.

Principally, the book seeks to establish the relationship of African political leadership and political integration to the Afrocentric/Africa-centered epistemological paradigm. In other words, how has political leadership in Nigeria been located or centered in the matter of political integration? The leading proponent of the Afrocentric theory and African philosopher and prolific author, Molefi Kete Asante writes that “the Afrocentric enterprise is framed by cosmological, epistemological, axiological, and aesthetic issues.”¹³ Asante posits that “the Afrocentric method pursues a world voice distinctly Africa-centered in relationship to external phenomena.”¹⁴

Among the aims of this study is the determination of the African voice in political leadership in Nigeria in particular and Africa in general. In general, political leadership in Africa has been bedeviled by instability. Political or governmental instability is defined as follows: the condition under which a state is prone to abrupt, unconstitutional, arbitrary and unsystematic changes of government. Conversely, political stability means the existence of a durable, systematic and constitutional mode of governance based on effective institutions and the mandate of the citizens. This implies an institutionalized government based on legitimate rules and regulations derived from law and convention and from equitable and humane social norms. Such a political dispensation is essential for sociopolitical peace and national development.

The book is made up of eight chapters as follows:

1. Chapter One is the introduction, including an articulation of the problem, the philosophy and significance of the study, and the research procedure and methodology.
2. Chapter Two contains a brief discussion of the history of political leadership in Nigeria.
3. Chapter Three contains a review of the literature on political leadership and political integration in Africa in general and Nigeria in particular.
4. Chapter Four, “State Creation: A Tool for Political Integration in Nigeria,” discusses how Nigeria’s post-independence political leadership applied the tool of state-creation in its drive for political integration.
5. Chapter Five consists of an Afrocentric/Africa-centered theory of political and integrative leadership and an analysis of the leaderships of six governments of Nigeria with a view to ascertaining the extent to which each of those leaderships met the constructs of the theory. There are seven constructs in this theory, including four modified structural characteristics adapted from Claude Ake’s theory of political integration. The analyzed leaderships are those of Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, J.T.U. Aguiyi-Ironsi, Yakubu Gowon, Murtala Muhammed, Olusegun Obasanjo (his military record of leadership) and Shehu Shagari.
6. Chapter Six provides a comparative summary of the Afrocentric/Africa-centered analyses of the six Nigerian political leaderships; it discusses the findings and recommendations of the study.
7. Chapter Seven discusses General Ibrahim Babandiga’s scuttling of the June 12, 1993 presidential election. It reveals the extent to which the ill-fated election and the surrounding issues corroborated the findings of this book.
8. Chapter Eight discusses the implications of the study’s findings for African political leadership.

In terms of its research procedure and methodology, the book employs the historical method, using both inductive and deductive approaches. Using the inductive approach, a theory was derived from the study’s general facts, observations and findings. On the deductive side, this theory was then applied to specific cases such as the six Nigerian political leaderships.

The study is based on my first hand experience of Nigerian politics, which encompasses my coverage (as a political reporter and editor of the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria) of a national presidential campaign and my coverage of the proceedings of the House of Representatives (that is, the second chamber of the National Assembly) of the Second Republic, and on documented primary and secondary studies of political leadership and political integration (and related studies and subjects) in Nigeria in particular and Africa in general. The study’s philosophical orientation to data, that is, its methodology, stems from a paradigm that treats Africans as subjects of their own history. Otherwise known as the Afrocentric or Africa-centered paradigm, this is the idea that African ideals and values should be at the center of any analysis involving African culture and behavior. More specifically, “the Afrocentrist seeks to uncover and use codes, paradigms, symbols, motifs, myths, and circles of discussion that reinforce the centrality of African ideals and values as a valid frame of reference for acquiring and examining data.”¹⁵ This approach does not exclude relevant ideas and techniques from other human experiences; however, “such a method appears to go beyond Western history in order to re-valorize the African place in the interpretation of Africans, continental and diasporan.”¹⁶ C. Tsehloane Keto adds that “the Africa-centered paradigm above all represents the quest to define and affirm an African center for philosophizing, a framework for conceptualizing African reality and a paradigm for accumulating knowledge about Africans.”¹⁷

While this book provides a focused analysis of six of the political leaderships of post-independence Nigeria, it provides, as an important background, an overview of pre-colonial political structures such as kingdoms and empires, a review and analysis of the history of the formation of the Nigerian nation state, including the impact of the Great Enslavement on African economic, social and political evolution, as well as the colonial roots of some of the problems that characterize post-colonial leadership in Nigeria in particular and Africa in general. With the exception of necessary cursory references, the book does not deal with state or local governments. (Nigeria is a federation made up of a relatively strong federal government, thirty-six state governments [see Figure 4.1 for a map depicting the thirty-six states of Nigeria] and seven hundred and seventy-four local administrations). The study’s frame of reference embraces civilian and military regimes.

The Nature of Nigeria’s Political Institutions

The nature of Nigeria’s political institutions has varied from time to time. Before colonialism, African political systems and structures held sway in the Kingdoms and empires that were located within this territory. During colonialism, the British ruled through such traditional structures wherever possible (particularly in the Northern section of Nigeria) by superimposing the British style and structure of governance.

The indigenous civilian governments (at the federal and regional levels), which took over from the British in 1960 were modeled after the British-type parliamentary system of governance. The military regimes that followed governed by fusing the roles of the executive and legislative arms of government. Generally, the military governments ruled by decree.

Unlike the First Republic, which was based on the British parliamentary system, the second post-independence civilian administration, which lasted from 1979–1983, was based on a constitution (the 1979 constitution) that was modeled after the American-style presidential system of government.¹⁸

Currently, Nigeria is a multiparty, presidential system of democracy with as many as thirty registered political parties. But one party dominates the political scene at the federal, state and local levels. It’s known as the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). This current civilian administration in Nigeria began in 1999 and is based on the 1999 Constitution, which is a revised version of the 1979 and 1989 editions of Nigeria’s supreme law.

Among other key provisions, the Constitution specifies the Fundamental Objectives and Directive Principles of state. Those objectives and principles establish the general purposes and parameters for the exercise of legislative and executive powers.¹⁹ Generally, government is to be exercised for the security and welfare of the people.

The Constitution provides for three separate but interrelated arms of government—the executive, the legislature and the judiciary—anchored upon a set of checks and balances. The executive branch, headed by the President, who is the chief executive of the nation, implements the laws/ policies of the land; the legislature, which is bicameral,²⁰ makes the law and carries out an “oversig...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Preface
• Chapter One. Introduction
• Chapter Two. Post-Colonial Political Leadership in Nigeria
• Chapter Three. Leadership and Political Integration in Africa: A Literature Review
• Chapter Four. State Creation: A Tool for Political Integration in Nigeria
• Chapter Five. An Afrocentric/Africa-centered Theory of Leadership and Political Integration
• Chapter Six. A Comparative Summary and Recommendations
• Chapter Seven. Babangida’s Scuttling of the June 12, 1993 Presidential Election: A Postscript
• Chapter Eight. Implications for African Political Leadership
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index