Political Transition in Nigeria, 1993-2003


Book Description

This is a collection of essays on a remarkable and turbulent period in the political history of Nigeria. Although written between 1999 and 2003, the focus of these essays reached far behind that period to the crises of the annulment of the June 12 1993 Presidential elections and its aftermath. The annulment marked a defining moment whose impact still haunts Nigeria's democratic experiment to date. The essays seek to offer both the general reader and professional an insight onto the issues, currents and trends that defined this watershed decade and its sequel, of which the current political dispensation is a part.







Transition Without End


Book Description

The authors examine the rise and fall of democratic transition and structural adjustment in Nigeria during the eight-year regime of General Ibrahim Babangida (1985-1993), chronicling the country's descent from the promise of reform and renewal to an unprecedented political and economic depression.




Contemporary Nigerian Politics


Book Description

In 2015, Nigeria's voters cast out the ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP). Here, A. Carl LeVan traces the political vulnerability of Africa's largest party in the face of elite bargains that facilitated a democratic transition in 1999. These 'pacts' enabled electoral competition but ultimately undermined the party's coherence. LeVan also crucially examines the four critical barriers to Nigeria's democratic consolidation: the terrorism of Boko Haram in the northeast, threats of Igbo secession in the southeast, lingering ethnic resentments and rebellions in the Niger Delta, and farmer-pastoralist conflicts. While the PDP unsuccessfully stoked fears about the opposition's ability to stop Boko Haram's terrorism, the opposition built a winning electoral coalition on economic growth, anti-corruption, and electoral integrity. Drawing on extensive interviews with a number of politicians and generals and civilians and voters, he argues that electoral accountability is essential but insufficient for resolving the representational, distributional, and cultural components of these challenges.










Transition Politics in Nigeria, 1970-1999


Book Description

A panoramic view of military transition in Nigeria since 1970 by a collection of intellectuals, mainly professors at the University of Lagos, who in one way or another participated in or observed this period of Nigerian politics. Their clear objective is to say never again to military rule, and to anticipate and deflect any possible defence of this kind of regime. The essays contend that what the military call transition to civil rule was rather a phase in which transition programmes were permanently recycled; a dimension of power struggle; and that the military consistently desisted deferring political power to civilians. Additionally they show how military stranglehold has divided a country it claimed to unite, and mindlessly wrecked an economy through expropriation, collusion and pillage. They further demonstrate that the nation was in a more disintegrated and divided state in 1999 than 1996, the federal structure having been deformed in the aftermath of transitions, and the citizens having lost any residual confidence in their country as a nation.




Nigeria's Third Republic


Book Description

This is a timely book on political transition to civil rule in Nigeria. The socio-political and economic ramifications of the transfer of power to an elected civilian administration and the political chaos resulting from the continued uncertainties surrounding the transition program are examined. Some of the topics which are touched upon are the relationship between the state, capital accumulation, democratic forces, the characteristic political manipulation by the military and the attempt to hold on to power despite demand for civilian democratic rule, the problem of military intervention to the question of national integration, and the core problems of Nigerian economic management and the alternatives for effective management of the Nigerian economy in the Third Republic.




Nigeria during the Abacha Years (1993-1998)


Book Description

The autocratic regime of Sani Abacha (1993-1998) stands out as a watershed in the history of independent Nigeria. Nigeria’s darkest years since the civil war resulted from his unrestrained personal rule; very close to the features associated with warlordism. Nepotism, corruption, violation of human rights, procrastination over the implementation of a democratic transition, and the exploitation of ethnic, cultural or religious identities, also resulted in the accumulation of harshly repressed frustrations. In this book, some distinguished scholars, journalists and civil society activists examine this process of democratic recession, and its institutional, sociological, federal and international ramifications. Most of the contributions were originally presented at a seminar organized by the Centre d’Etude d’Afrique Noire (CEAN) in Bordeaux.




Crs Report for Congress


Book Description

On June 8, 1998, General Sani Abacha, the military leader who took power in Nigeria in 1993, died of a reported heart attack and was replaced by General Abdulsalam Abubakar. On July 7, 1998, Moshood Abiola, the believed winner of the 1993 presidential election, also died of a heart attack during a meeting with U.S. officials. General Abubakar released political prisoners and initiated political, economic, and social reforms. He also established a new independent electoral commission and outlined a schedule for elections and transition to civilian rule, pledging to hand over power to an elected civilian government by May 1999. In late February 1999, former military leader General Olusegun Obasanjo was elected president and was sworn in on May 29, 1999. Obasanjo won 62.8% of the votes (18.7 million), while his challenger, Chief Olu Falae received 37.2% of the votes (11.1 million). In the Senate elections, the People's Democratic Party (PDP) won 58% of the votes, the All People's Party (APP) 23%, and the Alliance for Democracy (AD) 19%. In the elections for the House of Representatives, PDP received 59% of the votes, AD 22%, and APP 20%. In mid-April 2003, President Obasanjo was re-elected to a second term, and ...