Political parties and the prospects of democratic consolidation in Nigeria: 1999 - 2006

Abstract

The existence of vibrant political parties is a sine qua non for democratic consolidation in any polity. In Nigeria’s
First and Second Republics, political parties were regionally based, and their activities led to the collapse of
those experiments. This paper explores an important aspect of Nigeria’s Fourth Republic politics, which is
about the role of the PDP (Peoples Democratic Party) in general and President Olusegun Obasanjo in facilitating
the consolidation of democracy in the country in particular. The study posits that there is a direct relationship
between the character and conduct of a country’s political parties and the degree of democratic consolidation in
that country. The paper argues that seven years into this ‘democratic’ dispensation, Nigeria has not scored high
when placed in the same matrix with countries that are heading towards stable democracy. In attempting a
discourse of this issue, the democratic theory propounded by Joseph Schumpeter was adopted as the
theoretical framework of the study. From this, some research questions were posed that state: is democratic
competition fully at play in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic? Are opposition parties alive to their political
responsibilities in the country? It was argued that the opposition parties in Nigeria which ought to serve as
alternative parties from which the electorate should choose if they so decide, have been strategically weakened
through the overt and covert strategies of the ruling PDP and the lack of total commitment on the part of
politicians to the national course. The paper further argues that more than 90% of the political parties in Nigeria
are fragile entities, hence, have only developed shallow roots in the society, and concludes on the note that
Nigerian political parties have failed in their democratic responsibilities of aggregating social interests,
representing specific constituencies, and serving as intermediaries between state and society.