Democracy in Nigeria

CAN NIGERIA 'S NASCENT DEMOCRACY SURVIVE?
BY
Emmanuel 0. Ojo (Ph.D)
Department of Political Science
University of Ilorin, Nigeria
P. F. Adebayo (Ph.D)
Lebanese Emigration Research Center,
Notre Dame University, Lebanon

ABSTRACT
By May 2009, Nigeria 's nascent democracy should have been a decade. Thus, the thrust of this paper is an in depth analysis of the possibility of sustaining democratic values beyond any sudden reversal. The. paper however, takes a cursory look at the daunting challenges ahead and infers that unless the government increases social expenditure and truncate the current brazen corruption, the hope of democratic consolidation may eventually be a mirage.
Key words: democracy, nascent, corruption, state law and order
INTRODUCTION
As rightly collated by Decalo1, the events in Africa took scholars by surprise, since most doubted Africa could move towards democracy. Even in the mid-1980 's, one argued that by reason of their poverty or the violence of their politics, African states were unlikely to move in a democratic direction.2 Another adding that "to have expected democracy to flourish would have been historical blindness"3, since 'outside the core (industrialized states) democracy is a rarity, support for Tilly 's thesis 'why Europe will not occur again - with a few exceptions, the limits of democratic development in the world may well have been reached4.
However, despite the doubts and skepticisms openly expressed by scholars, Nigeria, like several other African countries, became democratic. On May 29, 1999 Nigeria became a 'democratic ' state. Prior to 1999 political transition, Nigeria was under firm military autocracy and absolutism for close to 29 years (since 1966), when the military made their first incursion into Nigeria 's government and politics, following the collapse of the first republic5. It is vital to note that authoritarian governments were interrupted only by a brief period of civilian rule in the Second Republic

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