The main purpose of this paper is to contribute to a better understanding of why African electoral systems should be reformed and how to do so in order to improve the quality of representation, participation, and government effectiveness. We attempt to offer a generic framework, a menu, so to speak, whereby African political parties and […]
Elections have meaning for most people in a democratic context only because they lead to the choice of decision-makers by the majority of citizens. Elections and democracy are therefore inextricably linked. Three major challenges face the future of both in Nigeria as it moves towards the 2007 elections. The first is the will and capacity […]
The 1994 Abuja Treaty Establishing the African Economic Community (AEC) commits African states to eventual Pan African political and economic union – a United States of Africa (USAf). Pan-Africanism’s ultimate goal is twofold: an African federal system with a central authority possessing supranational powers and a unitary community resulting from the merger of sovereign African […]
This paper analyses the role of traditional and modern institutions of governance in contemporary Africa. It examines the traditional institutions in their historical setting and the way in which they negotiated with the modern political arrangements under colonialism and later during the post-independence period. Both the colonial and postcolonial authorities viewed traditional political institutions with […]
This paper argues that democracy can better facilitate and promote development when it is transformed from the institutional level, where it was at the time of transition, to the substantive level, where it is more likely to yield the ‘dividends of democracy’ and become more relevant to the lives of ordinary citizens. This transformative process […]
Between April and May 2003 Nigeria held general elections to elect the country’s President, state governors, and members of legislative houses at both national and state levels. The first election, held on 12 April 2003, was for National Assembly (the federal legislative house) members. This was followed by the presidential and governorship elections on 19 […]
The April 2003 elections in Nigeria, the first civilian administered elections to take place in two decades, were hailed as the largest in African history and are surely a major milestone for both the country and the continent. Although they were marred by serious irregularities they were historic – instead of a military coup, a […]
