Nigeria's Stumbling Democracy and Its Implications for Africa's Democratic Movement
- 208 pages
- English
- PDF
- Available on iOS & Android
Nigeria's Stumbling Democracy and Its Implications for Africa's Democratic Movement
About this book
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.
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Table of contents
- Contents
- Foreword
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- 1 Introduction
- 2 An Overview of Nigeria’s Political History
- 3 Nigeria’s Disputed Elections and the Resulting Leadership Legitimacy Crisis
- 4 Democracy on Sale: The 2007 Nigerian Elections and the Future of the Democratic Movement in Africa
- 5 Dialectics of Patronage Politics and Representative Democracy: The Case of Anambra State of Nigeria
- 6 Is Electronic Voting an Answer to Nigeria’s Electoral Problems?
- 7 The Role of Geographical Zoning in Nigeria’s Democracy
- 8 Nigeria’s 2007 Elections and the Future of Democracy in Africa: An Optimistic View
- 9 Nigeria’s 2007 Elections: A Great Danger for the Future of Democracy in Africa
- 10 Nigeria’s 2007 Elections in Comparative Perspective: Democratic Capitalism and the Crisis of Democracy in Africa
- 11 Democracy and Development in Africa: Important Lessons from African American History
- Index
- About the Editor and Contributors