PARTY-POLITICS, DEMOCRATIC CONSOLIDATION AND GOOD GOVERNANCE IN NIGERIA

Abstract

This paper titles “Party politics, democratic consolidation and good governance in Nigeria”. The paper was aimed at examining the nature of African politics and governance and specifically Nigeria’s political development looking at the pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial experiences. Again, the paper also attempted to analyse the impacts and consequences of deviation from the actual democratic principles, tenets, traditions and values which underpinned sustainable democracy and democratic consolidation in Nigeria in particular, and Africa in general. The paper used secondary source of data collection that includes published works of scholars and internet source. The study was based on the causal research design that linked development and democratic peace or decay. The paper adopted context dependent and perspective dependent approaches to explain the precarious party politics, democratic consolidation and good governance in Nigeria with reference to prevailing activities of political actors due to their arbitrary selfish and self-serviant prebendalism that characterised Nigeria and African politics. The paper was aimed at exploring the vicious cycles that impede internal party democracy that underscores party politics in Nigeria and further undermines democratic consolidation and good governance characterised in the current political realities in Nigeria. The paper adopted Democratic Peace Theory propounded by Immanuel Kant and further modified by Michael Doyle to explain development, peace and stability in the context of liberal or republican democratic political system of governments. The paper discovered that no effective party-politics, democratic consolidation and good governance would be achieved without realistic development in the context of peace and democratic theory. The paper recommended that human development ought to be given top priority to ensure popular legitimacy and stability despite the existing political realities such as diversities in Nigeria.