The Divergence of Economic Reforms and Democracy in Nigeria.*

By

Chuku Umezurike, PhD

Department of Political Science

University of Nigeria

Nsukka

Being a paper for the 21st World Congress of the International Political Science Association, IPSA, at Santiago, Chile, July 12-16, 2009.

Abstract.

The thesis of this paper is that economic reforms in Nigeria have been shortchanging democracy in the Nigerian society. Three key theoretical constructs form the basis of analysis. The first is that economic reforms have been historically breeding the decline of democratic rights and the shrinking of the democratic space in Nigeria. The second is that there has been a strong incapacitation of economic reforms from resolving political crisis in Nigeria. Third and lastly is that there has been a strong partnership between economic reform protocols and authoritarian regime types in Nigeria. The central objective is the reenactment of the current concern especially in the academic circles about the limited feasibility of democracy in Africa. The study expresses no doubt that economic reforms in Nigeria have been largely informed by the democratic struggles of the Nigerian people. But it notes that these reforms have not been oriented towards their orthochtonous democratic requirements. The key economic reforms identified in the study include: Indigenization and Nigerianization reforms; the Land-Use reforms; reforms of Austerity Measures; reforms of the Structural Adjustment Programme; reforms of Privatization and Commercialization; reforms of Poverty Alleviation, and finally the rest of the reforms embodied in the current National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (NEEDS). But the analysis is focused mainly on Privatization and Commercialization; National Poverty Eradication Programme and NEEDS all of which are not only ongoing but have been constituted as the core economic foundation of Nigeria’s post-Military political rule. The subsections of the study are built on the theoretical constructs provided above.

Key words: Nigeria; Africa; Globalization; Economic Reforms; and Democratization.

Introduction.

The thrust of this paper is to reenact the current concern especially in academic circles on the limited feasibility of democracy in Africa, Nigeria inclusive. This concern has been expressed in the manner in which the forces of globalization have been shortchanging democracy particularly in Africa. In a post-humous publication, Professor Claude Ake, an erstwhile Nigerian political scientist makes a very brilliant provocation of this concern in a book entitled: The Feasibility of Democracy in Africa, published by CODESRIA in 2003. Other related studies in this direction have included: Ake (1991, 1992, 1995, and 2001); Nnoli (ed, 1993); Dinneya (2006); Jega (2007); Umezurike (2006, 2008, 2009).

The major thrust of the present study is to submit that contrary to the long standing prognostications which seem to derive from the Lipset thesis on the positive correlation between democracy and economic development (Lipset, 1981), economic reforms for national development in Nigeria’s post-colony have been reproducing certain generic interactions in which democracy in Nigeria has been shortchanged. The first is that the forces of global development are largely confrontational and antagonistic to the domestic forces of democratization in Nigeria. The second is that even though these domestic forces of democratization induce economic reforms in the country, these reforms have been irreverently reactionary to the democratic forces. The third and final interaction is that the relationships between economic reforms in Nigeria and the forces of global development have been largely supportive and reinforcing.

The present study is focused on the economic reforms of the Fourth Republic popularly referred to as Nigeria’s post-Military, which dates from 1999. The economic reform protocol of this era has been tagged the National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (NEEDS). This was initiated by the Obasanjo regimes of 1999-2003 and 2003-2007, more or less as forms of repackaging of the erstwhile IMF/IBRD enforced Structural Adjustment Programme of the 1980s and 1990s. NEEDS has since been continued by the current President Yar’Adua presidency with appropriate regards to its key components including Privatization and Commercialization; National Poverty Eradication Programme, (NAPEP), and related reforms of the banking and insurance sectors, public bureaucratic institutions amongst others.

In line with the above, the central problem of this paper is that even though economic reforms in Nigeria have been profusely studied, the political dynamics that have impeded the prospectuses of these reforms for democracy and development in Nigeria require more attention especially in the light of the events of the Fourth Republic.

The social significance of the present study is germane enough. In the first place, it illuminates understanding on the undue ‘economistic’ inclinations of most external actors that engineer reforms in Nigeria as in the other developing countries. Evidently, global actors in economic reforms in the developing countries including bilateral creditors and the multilateral institutions have laid quite little emphasis on the role of the state in bringing about development in these countries. State divestiture and all manner of deregulations of the political economy have been the most visible panacea of these external actors.

Years of engagements in these largely ‘economistic’ reforms have however shown the futility of deemphasizing the political dimension. Past economic reforms have failed to achieve even their own stated objectives. Moreover, reforms have been accompanied by unbearable political strictures whose vicious circle

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has driven democracy further apart from the reforming countries. In any case, the failures of the state to address development in Africa in particular have arisen most importantly from its historical circumscriptions by the global forces of development.

The second significance of study is that its emphasis of the centrality of the roles of the domestic forces of democracy in analysis only affirms a simple understanding that reforms cannot succeed outside the people. But these struggles bear credence in the framework of the state which orthodox economic reforms repudiate in the first place. Even more, the more recent economic reforms have generally been weakening this state through unmitigated bouts of deregulations of the political economy, the failures of which will be shown later in the paper. Analysis here lays its prognostications on anchoring developmental ventures on the democratic struggles of the Nigerian people. To put the matter tersely, the solutions to limited democracy still lie in the perpetual pursuit of it with the appropriate expansion of the capacity for democratic governance.

The third significance of emphasizing the political angle to economic reforms here is to be found in its provocation of why economic reforms in developing countries including those of Africa have generally been volatile and contradictory. Again, these two conditions provide the illuminations on the vicious circle of incapacitation of these economic reforms from resolving the democratic impasse of countries such as Nigeria. As the study submits, economic reforms in the developing countries have been largely conduced to the volatility of the free market economy. The problem however is that the compradorial character of the Nigerian political economy has negated the prospectus of a viable bourgeois economy in the country. The ideological obfuscation of orthodox economic reforms has been prevailing against the acceptance of popular struggles for democracy as the panacea. The volatility of the economic reforms in Nigeria’s post-colony has been played out in the poverty of planning and limited consistency in the pursuit of public policies and their implementations.

In addition to the volatility, the economic reforms have themselves purveyed dire contradictions which have ultimately shortchanged successes. The key contradiction identified here is that through these reforms, the political economies of developing countries such as Nigeria are being increasingly alienated from resolving their perennial underdevelopment. Neither are these countries capable of coping with the thrust of global development nor are they capable of resolving the inadequacies of contemporary globalization. They have increasingly become the primary victims of these inadequacies. The suffocation of the domestic forces of democracy in Nigeria has been expanding rather than resolving the contradictions.

The fourth and final significance of study relates to the manner in which the study draws attention to the bleak future of the state form of domination as well as the limited prospectus of human survival in Africa, all of which are receding in consciousness due to the limited reproduction of popular struggles as integral parts of analysis. Moreover, economic reforms now constitute the dominant character of public policies in developing countries such as Nigeria. And yet, orthodox ‘economism’ does not permit these reforms to reproduce popular power.

Some existing literature has contributed immensely in the problematization of this study as well as its methodological injunctions. Because of the contention that Africa has raised to contemporary global development, issues of democracy and development in the African society or parts of it such as Nigeria have attracted a wide spectrum of academic interests. To use Nigeria in studying Africa is also a fair approximation.

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About a fifth of all of African population is in Nigeria, while the country’s human development indices typify the already known African shortfalls in contemporary global development. Located in the west coast of the Atlantic and comprising of several ethnic nationalities, Nigeria, a heavily petroleum dependent economy is to a large extent a miniscule of Africa.

To deal with the divergence of democracy and economic reforms in Nigeria, two representative studies have been selected. The first is: The Feasibility of Democracy in Africa written by the late Professor Claude Ake and published by CODESRIA in 2003. The other is: Dead-End to Nigerian Development: An Investigation on the Social Economic and Political Crisis in Nigeria, edited by Professor Okwudiba Nnoli and also published by CODESRIA in 1993. Notwithstanding their centrality to the review here, these two books have very many related and most times supportive studies some of which have been published after them. These related works have been taken along in the review here.

There has not been a contention as to whether the countries of Africa are underdeveloped. Since the post-Second World War era that the continent became integrated as part of the global South in the now defunct Western Economic System, ideological postulations on African underdevelopment have attained full acceptance. What has raised some contentions is the factor of exploitation of Africa which has historically arisen from the character of its integration to contemporary global development. Social science paradigms on this exist. The major ones include: Modernization theories; Dependencia; and other fragments of neo-Marxist or what can also be described as radical Africanist perspective.

The last tranche began to attain its height as from the 1960s and 1970s when trained African Social Scientists and other Africanists began to emerge. If this radical thrust was not facilitated by political independence which swept through much of Africa in the early 1960s, then the devastating struggles for political freedom which sadly materialized only in ‘flag’ independence certainly made immense contributions. Not too long after, the late President Julius Nyerere partly fraternized with these nascent African Social Thinkers who assembled at the University of Dar es Salaam. Subsequently, the institutionalization process of this brand of thought was made with the establishment of the Council for the Development of Social and Economic Research in Africa (CODESIA) in the 1970s. Amongst others, the two Nigerian political scientists whose works are being reviewed here were prominent parts of these struggles.

Both Ake (2003) and Nnoli (ed. 1993) have been selected for review here for some more generalized reasons. The first is that in dealing with the whole subject of development including economic reforms for national development in Nigeria as in the rest of Africa, these two authors move beyond the boring ‘economism’ of orthodox classical economics which ominously dominate the subject. They have also given the political and ideological dynamics in African development prominent positions in analysis. The second is that their studies on equally related subjects such as ethnicity, national integration, development, democracy and globalization have strongly fertilized intellectual debates on Africa including Nigeria. The third is the cumulative relevance of their earlier studies to the latter ones which have easily provided cohesion and consistency but also a more grounded understanding of the historiography of Africa. The fourth is that their studies have been more analytical and creative thus going beyond the shibboleths of personal opinions. The fifth is that their studies have provided the required balance between the obfuscating Afrophobism of the Modernization theory and the equally boring Afrocentrism of some African thinkers. The sixth and final reason for selection is that their studies have not only demonstrated the fact of their intellectual leadership in Africa but also the relevance of

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their engagements in social activism, all of which have benefited the struggles for democracy and human survival in Africa.

In Ake (2003), the limited feasibility of democracy in Africa is clearly articulated. For the author, this assertion becomes clear when the concept of democracy is properly understood as “popular power” which as he further submits does not necessarily conflate with, even though related to liberal democracy. Invariably, the author is in difficulty with the perchance for discussing and even constructing democracy from the angle of its outcomes rather than its processes. It appears certain from his analysis that the pursuit of democracy from the angle of democratic outcomes rules out the historical experiences of the people which are at the core of genuine democratic construction. Moreover, this mode of conduct has made the democratic agenda rather prescriptive to a large segment of the global community who are supposed to be practicing democracy.

Some relevant quotations of Ake (2003) on this matter are crucial here. According to the author, “ Africa is democratizing in an international context in which there is apparently no allowance for the fact that liberal democracy is a historical product. Similarly, little or no attempt is made to separate the values and principles of democracy or liberal democracy from the particular historical practices which operationalize these values and principles in specific historical settings…One serious danger, which looms large for democratizing Africa, is the daunting task of operationalizing the principles and values of democracy in historical conditions that are markedly different from those of the established liberal democracies.” (Ake, 2003: 30).

In reading Ake (2003) closely, it is important to note that even when emphasis is appropriately paid to the factor of democratization or the processes of democracy, there is also a strong threat that have historically arisen from globalization. As he comments, “in the contemporary world, democracy faces a new and deadly threat from the process of globalization … because globalization is undermining the nation-state and its relevance, leaving its future in doubt…For democracy is ideally articulated in the context of the national organization of political power. (Ake, 2003: 26).

Nonetheless, even though it is acceptable that the processes of globalization have been threats to democracy globally, one would necessarily disagree with Ake that there is also limited feasibility of democracy in the advanced countries of the world. This disagreement is founded on the fact that the resuscitations of democracy have remained an uncompromising project of the bourgeoisie in these advanced countries.

These have been so primarily because the bourgeoisie recognizes that inspite of its economic power, it is still weaker than the other oppressed social ensembles and therefore requires bourgeois democracy for continuous reproduction of the bourgeois order. The two World Wars have after all been fought for this particular reason.

What is important for Africa therefore is that the weakening of the state which has for instance been orchestrated by bouts of orthodox economic reforms of contemporary globalization has created about the greatest threat to democracy in the continent. For the avoidance of doubt, Ake’s inquiry on the limited feasibility of democracy in Africa began with earlier engagements on the problematic of the state in Africa. The relevance of the state for democracy is not in doubt since it is the state that provides the context in which democratic struggles are played out. The limitations on democracy which the state form in Africa superintended especially in response to the orthodoxy of the IMF/IBRDS enforced economic reforms of the

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past thirty years may have accounted for Ake’s engagements on the state debate in Africa. In two incisive publications, one in the International Political Science Review and the other in a book he edited entitled: The Political Economy of Nigeria, (Ake, 1985), Professor Ake was so disturbed about the incapacitations of the state form in Africa that he questioned its existence in the first place. In a response, however, Ibeanu (1993) corrected Ake’s temperament by noting that the state does exist in Africa and has existed for all class societies (see also Saul, 1976; von Freyhold, 1976; Leys, 1981 amongst others).

But the state debate not just in Africa but across the global community has remained a veritable ideological instrument for democratic struggles. Its resuscitations at the end of the cold war have been clear indications of the rising degrees of exploitation and global inequality. David Easton, the famous American political scientist had warned that the state has once more arisen to threaten the political systems after a quarter of a century that it was thought that it had been rubbished (Easton, 1981).

It is important to finally note that the most immediate precursor to Ake’s inquest on the limited feasibility of democracy in Africa came with his engagement on the interface between democracy and development. In an apt forward to the book that resulted from Ake’s fellowship at the Brookings Institution, the President, Michael H. Armcost noted that, “…Africa’s preoccupation with development has had only marginal success. Most Africans are worst off than they were…Many studies have suggested causes for these problems…But Claude Ake believes that political conditions are the greatest obstacle to development” (Ake, 2001: vii).

Emphasis on the political while recognizing economic fundamentalities on questions of development in Africa is clearly evident in the studies of Professor Okwudiba Nnoli. By studying the historiography of national development in Nigeria, Nnoli has been able to integrate quite meaningfully into analysis the incapacitations orchestrated through economic reforms in Nigeria. Of particular importance here is the treatment of the failures of national development in Nigeria particularly in the period of Structural Adjustment Programmes (Nnoli, ed. 1993). This was a follow-up to an earlier edited book in which he had articulated that the capitalist path to Nigerian development was bound to come to a failure (Nnoli, ed., 1981).

Even though this earlier submission tends to be highly voluntaristic and requires adequate recognition of the inchoate development of wage labour, the revolutionary class, the author genuinely provoked critical issues of the struggles for African survival in the era of the cold war. For indeed, the east-west divide offered countries of the global South including those of Africa the context for democratic engagements that asserted their political specificity in global exploitation. For the past two decades that this context no longer exists, the weakening of the political solidarity of the global South is very evident. One of the danger to be expected is that in the face of limited democratic engagements of countries of the global South informed largely by their limited solidarity and choices of affinity, unmitigated crisis of development sometimes played out as debt crisis may still reemerge (Umezurike, 2009). African countries have hardly survived the explosions of this crisis in the 1980s.

In Dead-End to Nigerian Development, (Nnoli, ed., 1993), the imminent collapse of the Nigerian political economy had been analyzed in the failures of petty bourgeois ideology for Nigerian development; the debilating roles of ethnicity in fostering economic crisis and impairment of national development; the decreasing circles of democratic rights; reactionary twists in the class struggles; the deteriorating conditions of

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the Nigerian peasantry; the pauperization of the Nigerian petty bourgeoisie and the deteriorating conditions of Nigerian women. For all social forces in Nigeria therefore SAP was negative for democracy.

In an apt summary, the book editor submitted that “Nigerian development has reached a dead-end precisely because it is not built around the people. It seeks to bypass them. The supremacy of the people in the development process has yielded to the need for foreign capital, foreign exchange, debt rescheduling and guarantee of credit lines. The leaders have become prisoners of accumulated national debt, the whims and caprices of foreign creditors, many of the prescriptions of the IMF and the World Bank, the potential economic stranglehold of a monocultural economy resting on oil, and the stranglehold of the USA as the major purchaser of the nation’s crude oil”. (Nnoli, 1993: 220). Several contributions in Authoritarianism, Democracy and Adjustment: The Politics of Economic Reform in Africa (Gibbon, Bangura and Ofstad, eds, 1992) are made within the same paradigm. The Fourth Republic in Nigeria stylishly tagged the post-Military has yet offered fresh opportunities for a revisit of this same scenario.

1.2 A theoretical perspective on the interactions between Globalization, Economic Reforms and Democracy in Nigeria.

By globalization is meant the processes through which capital has been universalized resulting in higher pressures for boundary-broadening rather than boundary-heightening (see Rosenau, 1997; Asobie, 2001; Umezurike, 2009). Nigeria’s incorporation into the global political economy has been from the onset characterized by the maintenance-dissolution effects which imperialist capitalism produced on the country’s political economy. In the light of the above, Nigeria’s political economy has become predominantly a comprador. Its historic interactions with the forces of global development have been resulting in the recompradorization of its political economy.

Three phases of Nigeria’s interaction with the forces of global development and therefore recompradorization have been identified (Umezurike, 2008). The first phase coincided with the era of mercantilism in which pre-industrial relations prepared the ground rules for its incorporation into the emerging global capitalist political economy. This phase dates as far back as the mid-fifteenth and late eighteenth centuries. “Even though the various countries of Africa including Nigeria did not emerge until the latter part of the nineteenth century, the various parts of the continent that participated in the mercantilist activities of this era did so to the disadvantage of the requisite social processes crucial for development” (Umezurike, 2008: 604).

The second phase of Nigeria’s interactions with global development was that of colonial conquest. “This phase dating from the early eighteenth century to the end of the Second World War, was marked by the attainment of monopoly stage by capitalist relations in Europe and North America…Essentially, African peoples were conquered and subjugated to colonial rule at the same time as it was impossible if not unnecessary to transform their production system…By the end of the Second World War, transnationalism had taken control of the global terrain. Moreover, multilateral agencies including the World Bank IMF and the IMF, had come into existence” (Umezurike, 2008: 604-5).

The third and final phase in the history of global recompradorization of Africa including Nigeria post-dates the Second World War and has been championed particularly by the United States of America. During this

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phase, transnationalism and multilateralism could not transform the production system in Africa but exploited the society resoundingly…Some of the resultant effects have been high debt crisis and mounting political problems including failures of the national project and perpetuating ethnic crises” (Umezurike, 2008: 605).

Nonetheless, it has been generally acknowledged that the failures of democracy in all of Africa including Nigeria have not only resulted from the above trend but have equally accounted for the perpetuation of the crisis of development. Democracy in this paper is taken to represent popular power emerging from the struggles for the advancement of human dignity and overall conditions of existence as are found in the various countries of the world.

The interface of economic reforms to the democratic pursuit in Nigeria is already noted to be at the core of this study. Being the most pervasive character of public policies in Nigeria as in the other developing countries, the focus on economic reforms opens the floodgate for contextualizing the dynamism of democratic struggles that are going on in the country. Moreover, the purse of democracy and the possible courses of societal development are effectively defined through this focus.

In this study, economic reform represents broad government policy on the economy designed primarily but not exclusively at market liberalization. It has also involved variations in those activities related to domestic production; distribution and exchange of goods in relation to internal and external pressures (see Umezurike, 2006). Even though definite historical events underscore the character of economic reforms in Nigeria, specific reforms have actually started from the post-independence era. These reforms have included the following:

• Indigenization and Nigerianization reforms, 1960s, 1972, and 1977.

• Land Use Reforms, 1978.

• Reforms for Poverty Alleviation, 2000-continuing.

• Austerity Measures, 1982-84.

• Privatization and Commercialization Reforms, 1980s, 1990s, and beyond.

• Structural Adjustment Programme 1986-93.

• Reforms embodied in the National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (NEEDS), 2004-continuing.

FIGURE 1: A MODEL OF THE INTERACTIONS BETWEEN GLOBALIZATION, ECONOMIC REFORMS AND DEMOCRACY IN NIGERIA.

This figure provides details of the various components of the forces of globalization, economic reforms and the domestic forces of democratization. The three sets of relationships that have been shown to characterize the interactions are explained below.

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1.2.1. Largely confrontational and antagonistic relationships between the forces of globalization and the domestic forces of democracy in Nigeria.

In all ramifications, there have been largely confrontational and antagonistic interactions between the forces of globalization and the domestic forces of democratization in Nigeria. These forms of interactions have been historical. To begin with, the earlier phases of globalization including in particular mer.cantilism and British colonization created mistrust, mutual confrontation and antagonism with the local peoples of what has emerged as Nigeria.

These modes of interactions have persisted in the contemporary era of globalization. The maintenance-dissolution effects and the subsequent entrenchment of compradorial political economy in the country have ensured the perpetuation of contradictory interactions between prebourgeois and bourgeois practices in the country. While the former have been dominating the Nigerian society, the forces of globalization have been purveying the latter. Capitalist development in Nigeria has persisted in enclave forms portraying strictly speaking the conditions of a comprador.

With regard to the struggles, while the forces of global development have been endangering the nation-state project in Nigeria for the purpose of strengthening transnational development, domestic political rule in the country primarily depends on national integration as a means of addressing the pervasiveness of ethnic and other primordial particularities. In this manner, the Nigerian petty bourgeoisie which has been known to be economically dependent on the foreign bourgeoisie has risen to historically challenge the latter on all fronts. For instance the Nigerian petty bourgeoisie led the nationalist struggles for political independence and had by so doing mobilized the other oppressed social forces in the country including the peasantry, inchoate wage labour and ethnic nationalities. But quite importantly is that even up till date, the Nigerian petty bourgeoisie whose economic foundation has been nourished by the Nigerian state has stood against the vitiation of this state by the forces of globalization.

In addition, the antagonism of the other oppressed social forces in Nigeria to the global agenda of annihilating the nation-state in Nigeria has been a due recognition of their incapacitations in the global struggles outside the nation-state in Nigeria. For in point of fact, the alienation of the Nigerian society in the global ownership of the means of production and distribution of social surpluses have made the state quite useful for the democratic struggles of the oppressed social forces in Nigeria as in much of the underdeveloped world. For instance, despite the assumed benefits of foreign direct investments in contemporary globalism, their practices in Nigeria have witnessed fraudulent practices. Moreover, since the commencement of this type of transnational relations in Nigeria with the Import Substitution Industries that were initiated as far back as the late 1940s, these industries have been manipulating their global engagements to the disadvantage of Nigeria. After over half a century of operations, these industries have failed to advance the level of development of wage labour in the country. As government sources have shown, wage labour in Nigeria has been less than 10% of gainful employment in the country. And yet almost all of wage labour employment is in the Nigerian public sector.

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More devastatingly however is that because of their familiarity with the global investment terrain, foreign direct investment in Nigeria have virtually closed up their production plants since the introduction of the IMF/IBRD sponsored SAP in the 1980s. Since then importation of these goods have displaced their local production. Through this, the development of wage labour, which could ordinarily have assisted the liberalization programmes has been undermined and the overall conditions of living in the country grossly impaired. While foreign aid and loans to Nigeria have been tied to the IMF conditionalities, the mistrust, antagonism and confrontational interactions have been continuing.

1.2.2 Supportive and reinforcing relationships between the forces of globalization and economic reforms in Nigeria.

Three aspects of these supportive and reinforcing relationships are discerned here. The first is that economic reforms in Nigeria have been structured mainly to conduce the domestic economy of Nigeria to conform to the requirements of the forces of globalization. The second related issue is that there have been strong affinities between the unfolding developments in the economic reform protocols and the developments in the global economy. The third and last aspect of the supportive and reinforcing relationships between globalization and economic reforms in Nigeria is that the implementation modalities of these reforms have depended on the forces of globalization.

To begin with the first, inadvertently, the earliest economic reforms and in particular the Indigenization and Nigerianization reforms advanced the emergence of a locally dependent class namely the Nigerian petty bourgeoisie. Even though indigenization had continued beyond 1960s when it was inaugurated in the country, it failed utterly in transforming economic ownership and control of the metropole. Rather than do so, the emergent Nigerian petty bourgeoisie has been driven more to an economic foundation within the state. In the same vein, the era of reforms for state divestiture which has been prevailing up till date has undermined local production in place of pervasive global market, a clear view of compradorialism? Nigeria as the other developing countries has nonetheless remained weak in prevailing global trade relations.

The second aspect of the supportive and reinforcing relationships between globalization and economic reforms in Nigeria as noted above has been the manner in which these reforms have had to conform with global developments in which the country has understandably been shortchanged. For instance, it was the post-Second World War quest of transnationalism and multilateralism that induced the reforms for indigenization and Nigerianization. The thrust of transnationalism at the time was that adequate empowerment for self-rule was more beneficial for global trade and transnational development. This thrust benefited decolonization and the emergence of the local elite in Nigeria. It was also the debt crisis of the developing countries that reproduced the supportive reforms of SAP and the current NEEDS in Nigeria.

The third and last issue here is that even though the failures of economic reforms for national development in Nigeria have been evident, the implementations of these reforms have been at the behest of the forces of globalization. So far, successful external public debt negotiations of Nigeria, a carrot of economic reform implementations have hinged on apriori negotiations with the IMF and the World Bank. In 2005 and 2006, the Paris Club deal of Nigeria was struck on the basis of the ongoing agonizing implementations especially of the deregulations embodied in the NEEDS.

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1.2.3 Inducement and reactionary relationships between economic reforms and the forces of democracy in Nigeria.

This is the last set of relationships indicated in figure 1 above. Unlike the other sets of relationships, there are two reverse directions of the present set as shown by the arrows in the figure. Thus while the forces of democracy in Nigeria produces inducement effects on economic reforms; the latter in the reverse produces reactionary effects on the former.

Despite habouring some contradictions, the democratic struggles of the domestic social forces in Nigeria have been characterized by initial elite demands for incorporation into the global system and the accompanying economic and political empowerment. The second characteristic is the struggles for economic emancipation by the oppressed social forces including the Nigerian peasantry, the inchoate working class and ethnic nationalities.

For the avoidance of doubt, over the years of existence of the Nigerian formation, the political contestations of the entire domestic social forces in the country have not yielded satisfactory results in the democratic practices of political rule in the country. Rather than enhance the capacity for democratic governance, political rule in Nigeria has subsisted in the reverse. The absorbent values for this recalcitrance have included years of militarization of society, elite consensus and ethnic jingoism.

It is in the light of the above that economic reform protocols and their implementations which favour the forces of globalization have irreverently been foisted on the Nigerian population. The most current situation is crucial for illustration here.

At the dawn of the 1990s, the SAP enforced by Nigerian foreign creditors and the Bretton Woods institutions could no longer contain the weight of opposition from the entirety of the Nigerian population. Certain occurrences helped to ensure that these contestations did not result in fundamental address of Nigeria’s underdevelopment and overall exploitation within contemporary global realities. The first was the coming into power of the General Abacha junter regime. Under the Abacha regime, the political class was seriously distressed leading to the call for his continuation in government as a sole presidential candidate in an impending election. When this election could not take place due to the death of General Abacha, another military regime took over and finally handed over to Olusegun Obasanjo, a retired military general and his cohort of retired senior military officers who have ominously dominated the current Nigeria’s Fourth Republic.

The President Obasanjo regime inaugurated the National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (NEEDS) in 2004. The NEEDS which has remained the reform protocol of Nigeria’s Fourth Republic incorporated into its existence the reforms for Privatization and Commercialization which was first introduced in Nigeria in 1988 under the SAP regime. More or less as a quick response to the political contestations against SAP by all social forces in the country, the Obasanjo regime also hurriedly put in place the two anti-poverty programmes namely the Poverty Alleviation Programme (PAP) in 2000 and the National Poverty Eradication Programme (NAPEP) in 2001. Support for these programmes have been energized by the seven point agenda of the current President Yar’ Adua regime.

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As will be shown subsequently in this paper, these reforms have largely failed to address the thrust of the people’s struggles for democracy and development in Nigeria. They have rather been heightening the divergence of democracy and economic reforms in the country.

2. Economic Reforms, Decline of Democratic Rights and Shrinking of Democratic Space in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic.

This section analyzes how certain embodiments in the economic reforms of the Fourth Republic have been leading to the decline of democratic rights and the shrinking of the democratic space in Nigeria. The theoretical section of the paper has already provided adequate explanations on the significant linkages between these reforms and the shortchanging of democracy in Nigeria. Having done so, only specific aspects of these links will be treated subsequently.

Democratic rights are here used interchangeably with human rights. They are conceived as the inalienable entitlements that “attach to all persons equally by virtue of their humanity, irrespective of race, nationality or membership of any particular social group. They specify the minimum conditions for human dignity and tolerable life”. (Mclean and Mcmillan, 2003: 251). There have been three generations of human rights: “The first generation of civil and political rights restricts what others (including the state) may do…(A) second generation of social and economic rights requires active provision…(A) third generation concerns such rights as peace, development and humanitarian assistance” (Mclean and Mcmillan, 2003: 251).

The decline of democratic rights is an accoutrement of the shrinking of the democratic space. In other words, anti-democratic practices that limit democratic rights do at least require repressive political rule which is scheduled for discussion later in this paper. In a generic sense, if the opening for popular power is not narrowed by a repressive political rule, then the prospectus for human or democratic rights abuses ceases to exist in the first place. Nonetheless, specific aspects of this scenario including the impetus for repressive political rule and the outcomes of the shrinking of the democratic space and human rights abuses can only be meaningfully analyzed in the context of concrete experiences of a people. In Nigeria for instance and as will be shown later in this paper, all these led to a condensation of political contestations and violence involving civil society organizations.

The decline of democratic rights in Nigeria has attained its denouements in the regimes of orthodox economic reforms such as those of the Fourth Republic. Before discussing the various segments, it is important to explain briefly why this decline is penchant even though not exclusive to countries such as Nigeria. Fundamentally, the character of the state form of domination in Nigeria is responsible. The state in Nigeria as in the rest of Africa lacks relative autonomy from the contradictory social classes/forces and ensembles in the struggles for domination of society. As a result, this state form utilizes maximum force considered necessary for its social reproduction. Invariably, its desideratum lies in the prospectus of its transformation via democratic struggles which it provides the arena for in the first place. This is contrary to prognostications of orthodox economic reforms which vitiate the state in the underdeveloped countries for two related reasons. The first is that orthodox economic reforms are designed to place this state form more at the services of the forces of global development as against the interest of the domestic forces of democracy. The other is that by vitiating the state, imperialist capitalism rather utilizes this same state form to heighten rigidities in domestic production relations.

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Another fundamental explanation for the ubiquity of human rights abuses in countries such as Nigeria derives from the already known peripheral location of the country in contemporary global political economy. To put the matter tersely, there is a currently a global abuse of human rights in which countries such as Nigeria are victims.

2.1 Declines of Democratic Rights and the Shrinking of the Democratic Space via Deregulations and Desubsidizations.

Perhaps, one of the most visible aspects of the abuse of democratic rights under the aegis of economic reforms in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic is the economic strangulation of the Nigerian population. This trend has arisen mainly from the structural effects of changes in property relations due to privatization and commercialization of public enterprises in Nigeria.

In 1999, the Federal Government of Nigeria continued its journey towards privatization and commercialization of public enterprises by enacting the Public Enterprise (Privatization and Commercialization) Act. This law created the National Council on Privatization as well as the Bureau of Public Enterprise (BPE). This journey had been begun under the SAP regime with the Privatization and Commercialization Decree of 1988 which also had set up the Technical Committee on Privatization and Commercialization (TCPC).

The practices of privatization and commercialization are not entirely new to the world. Chile had introduced privatization in 1974. During the regime of Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, the United Kingdom had implemented rigorous programmes of privatization. The 1990s also witnessed the implementation of privatization programmes in many of the former eastern bloc countries including Russia, Romania and Czechoslovakia among others.

Nigeria’s experiences with privatization and commercialization have however been standing in clear affront with the compradorial character of its political economy, an issue that has been elaborated in the earlier part of this paper. Over the years of implementations, the development of private sector economy has remained quite illusive. On the other, changes have only been mostly felt in the drastic declines in human conditions in the country.

These changes have included unemployment and the widening of the gap between the rich and the poor. Nigeria is already known to be one of the countries where this gap is widest. In 1992-3, the percentage share of income of richest 10% was 31.4 while that of the richest 20% was 49.4. These increased to 40.8 and 55.7 respectively in 1996-7, compared with the share of the poorest 10% and poorest 20% at 1.6 and 4.4 respectively. These pushed the Gini co-efficient index of Nigeria from 45in 1992-3 to 50.6 in 1996-7. While the Gini index which measures the extent to which the distribution of income (or in some cases consumption expenditure) among individuals or households deviates from a perfect inequality of zero, indicates 50.6 for Nigeria, it is 37.8 for India; 37.9 for Jamaica; 37.3 for Mauritania; and 28.9 for Rwanda.

While unemployment in Nigeria is currently put at between 54% to 70%, the US Department of State Reports on Human Rights Practice in 2005 indicates that about 70% of Nigerians live below less than one US dollar per day. When this is stretched to two days per day, it is also noted that the victims jump to as much as 90%. Life expectancy which according to the UNDP (1998) had risen from 40 years in 1960 to 58 years in 1987 dropped drastically to 43.3 years by the period, 2000-2005.Again, the limited extent to which its huge natural

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resources have been reproduced in human development are evident enough in its extremely low ranking in Human Development Index, which stands at 148 out of 173 in 2002 (Igbuzor, 2003: 8).

From the economic angle also, the desubsidizations of public sector enterprises and services including especially petroleum products have spelt woes and have indeed constituted a significant aspect of the depreciation in democratic rights of Nigerians. Starting from the Colonial Welfare Plan in Nigeria (1946-56) which came under the auspices of the Labour in Britain, massive engagements of Nigerian governments in parastatals development began to take place. These received further boost following the boom in petroleum resources (which the petroleum boycott of the Arab countries created) in the early 1970s. But these booms received a burst almost immediately that is as from the mid-1970s when the debt crisis of Nigeria began to emerge.

Foreign creditors and the Bretton Woods institutions as from this mid-1970s began to rally round economic reforms that exacerbated rather than solve the problems of human survival in Nigeria. For instance even though the country’s debt problem at this time hinged mainly on debt bunching of external loans which it had received mainly from the World Bank and Great Britain, creditor agencies still stampeded the Military regime in Nigeria into raising a jumbo loan from the costly Euro-dollar capital market for short-term execution of projects contained in its Third National Development Plan (1975-80).

Economic reforms that accompanied the above developments began to emphasize desubsidizations as accoutrements for privatization and commercialization in Nigeria. As the country’s refineries for instance became desubsidized, the pump prices of petroleum products available to the population skyrocketed spiraling other forms of economic incapacitations and human misery in Nigeria. The price premium motor spirit (PMS) was increased from N0.20k to N20.00 prior to the Obasanjo era, and then N26.00 by January 1, 2002.By 2006, however, the Obasanjo administration had increased the price of PMS to N65.00 representing an increase of 325% within the six year period, 1999 to 2006. Similar increases were recorded for other petroleum products like diesel and kerosene.

The exchange rate of the country’s currency, the naira against the US dollar, has overshot its bounds ever since. From a mere 0.66 naira to the dollar in January 1978 when Nigeria first raised its jumbo loan from the Euro-dollar capital market, it has a present official rate of 150 naira to the dollar. As at today, the parallel market exchanges at about 185 naira to the dollar. The effects of high exchange rates have been felt at every facet of life in the country especially because domestic consumption in Nigeria depends so much on foreign imports.

Related to the desubsidizations have been the significant declines in the overall social welfare responsibilities of political rule in Nigeria. Even though series of economic reforms have favoured state divestiture for the maximum development of private sector economy in the country, the latter has been illusive due to the compradorial character of the Nigerian political economy. This twist of circumstances have been inducing exponential growth in poverty levels at the same time as the poverty eradication programmes have been failing in the face of political regimes that have been more adept to political repressions and human rights abuses.

Currently, political regimes of Nigeria’s Fourth Republic have found it difficult to pay its public sector dominant work force its minimum wage of about N11,000 (US$0.073). These regimes have also persistently

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failed to implement agreements which have been reached on collective bargaining in the past years especially those of 2002 and 2003. The failures of dialogue in resolving trade disputes have left the terrain open to the same forms of intimidation of workers by security agents.

Two other key areas of human rights abuses which have thrived in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic have included series of maiming, intimidation and murder in the Niger Delta as well as the grueling activities of the largely ill-trained private security outfits currently rampant in the country. Extrajudicial execution, torture and destruction of property tend character the nature of management of the Niger Delta crisis in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic. An issue that will be visited later in this paper, the Niger Delta crisis has been fundamentally resistance of the people of that area over the characteristic manner in which Nigeria’s petroleum-dependent economy has contributed to irreverently to environmental degradation and declined economy of the people. Transnational oil conglomerates have been collaborating with the Nigerian governments to wrought mayhem on the people of the Niger Delta.

Since the era of economic reforms characterized by deregulations, the use of private security probably as a solution to the inefficiencies of the Nigerian security system has been thriving. The Fourth Republic has witnessed the height of this practices. A number of these outfits acting under the guise of informal policing are known in the country as vigilante groups.

2.2 Implications for the limited feasibility of democracy in the Fourth Republic.

As can be seen from the above, orthodox economic reforms provide higher threats to all the domestic forces of democracy in Nigeria. For the avoidance of doubt, these reforms do not lead to the development of domestic bourgeois production relations as such given that this has been circumscribed by the maintenance-dissolution effects that had been historically produced on prebourgeois relations in the country as in much of Africa. Rather, these market reforms have been expanding the exploitative roles of the global market. Since the era of the SAP till date in Nigeria, the importation of all manner of commodities in Nigeria has displaced local manufacture of these commodities and yet the prices of these products are falling largely outside the reach of the average Nigerians.

Again, state divestiture under the aegis of orthodox economic reforms has not meant strictly speaking the weakening of the Nigerian state in place of more robust private sector economy. What it has meant is that the state is empowered even more for superintending these exploitative trends of the global market. How else can it be given the already known weakness of Nigeria in the contemporary global trade.

It is this new assignment of the state that has been effectively resisted by the domestic forces of democracy in Nigeria. Even though the Nigerian state has been known to place centrally to the economy and thus suffocating the prospectus of civil society development, this has been much more exacerbated under the regimes of orthodox economic reforms. Indeed, it is this trend of events that Olayode (2007) commented upon under the SAP regime. According to him, “The resurgence of civil society as a result of contradictions linked to globalization lay at the heart of the political turbulence across Africa in the last decade of the twentieth century, as various groups struggled to survive economic hardship and diminishing resources, assert their rights and demand democratic reforms. Pro-democracy civil society movements - human rights groups, market women, religious leaders, ethnic organizations, workers and student movements – largely championed these

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struggles… The crusade for democratization and human rights protection in Nigeria coincided with the breakdown of the economic and social fabric of society as a result of the failure of the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP), which was introduced in 1986” (Olayode, 2007: 128). This has also been in agreement with the contention of Mustapha (1993) who submitted that, “though the impact of the restriction on democratic rights is felt in all spheres of society, it is more pronounced in the relations between the state and organized sections of civil society” (Mustapha, 1993: 79).

As the subsequent sections of this paper will show, events of the Fourth Republic have underscored adequate shortchanging of the domestic forces of democracy in Nigeria by global development under the regimes of orthodox economic reforms. This has been visible in the unmitigated crisis of the state, pervasive political conflicts and violence in the face of the threat of one party rule and overall declines in the capacity for democratic governance in the country. The militarization of the Nigerian society is still ongoing.

3. Economic Reforms and the Incapacitation of the Nigerian State from resolving Political Conflicts/Violence in the Fourth Republic.

The task of this section is to explore how specific aspects of economic reforms in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic have been weakening the capacity of the Nigerian state from resolving political crisis. Political crisis is here seen as the contradictions which the state is engulfed in as a principal mode of domination of society. Being a principal mode of domination of society, the state has a generic tendency of being in crisis. But unlike the sphere of production relations or the economy, the state and the ideological spheres have the added task of not only providing modes of domination but also been at the core of the resolutions of these crises including also their own crisis. It is this historic context or arena that the state provides for the resolution of social contradictions including also its own crisis that makes it to reconstitute this crisis as political conflicts. As political conflicts, parties to social contradictions at the political realm are identifiable for the purposes of their resolutions.

The pertinent issue is that the Nigerian state in the same character as the state in the underdeveloped countries of the world has been historically incapacitated from effectively and efficiently resolving its own contradictions at the same level as the state in the advanced countries of the world. This accounts for the fact that even thought every state form of domination is inevitably bound in crisis, the state such as that of Nigeria is irredeemably crisis-ridden. As has been shown in the theoretical section of the paper, the constraints are engendered by the forces of global development. Accordingly, orthodox economic reforms in Nigeria have been compounding this incapacitation of the state from resolving political crisis.

The current crisis of the state in Nigeria has appeared in two principal forms namely, ethno-religious conflicts and violence in the various parts of the country; as well as political violence in the Niger Delta area. The specific thrust of this section therefore involves analysis of how the deregulations evident in privatization and commercialization and other related reforms as well as poverty eradication programme in the Fourth Republic have contributed to the incapacitation of the Nigerian state from resolving these two characters of its crisis.

Strong arguments have been posited against orthodox economic reforms spearheaded by the privatization and commercialization of public enterprises on the grounds that these reforms habour significant undercurrent for

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conflicts in the country. For instance, it has been noted that “privatization is anti-labour and will always lead to unemployment. In addition, privatization is always anti-poor. It is clear that in most cases, privatization particularly of public utilities like road, electricity, water, etc will always lead to increase in prices. Meanwhile, it has been documented that whenever user fees are introduced in the provision of social services, the utilization by the rich increases while utilization by the poor decreases” (Igbuzor, 2003: 7). As will be analyzed later in this section, the poverty eradication programme of the Fourth Republic has not contributed meaningfully to the resolutions of political conflicts in the country.

Nigeria’s Fourth Republic has been replete with political conflicts and violence the rudiments of which have been shown above. In 1999, three prominent ethno-religious conflicts namely the Warri communal clash in Delta State; the ethno-religious violence in Shagamu, Ogun State involving the Odua Peoples Congress and Hausa traders which took place in two separate incidents: November 18, 1999 and November, 25, 1999. But in 2000, a total of 21 such conflict took place. Despite the fact that the trend of intractability in these conflicts have continued, what is crucial to appreciate is the extent to which violent political struggles in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic have necessarily shortchanged democracy. Under the Obasanjo presidency, a state of emergency had been declared in Plateau, one of the 36 state-tier governments in the country which also ensured the removal of the elected state governor. For the avoidance of doubt, these characteristically violent political conflicts have still continued till date.

The Niger Delta region from where Nigeria’s crude petroleum is produced is also engulfed in deep violence completing full circle of what Professor Okwudiba Nnoli in a revision of his book (Nnoli, 2008) summarized as: ethnic violence: the latest stage of ethnic politics in Nigeria. Much of the current violence is not only insinuated by the obnoxious roles of the Nigerian state but have actually been meted out by its security agencies. Highly radicalized militants are now parading all of the Niger Delta region. Their victims are no longer state security outfits but also private individuals (both local and foreign). Kidnapping for ransom payments has become the order of the day in Nigeria.

The links between the protocols of the NEEDS economic reforms and the persistent weakening of the Nigerian state in resolving the current trends of political conflicts and violence in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic can be discerned from three factors namely: limited mobilizational character of the NEEDS; the weakening of political institutions under the spell of economic deregulations as well as the further disorientation of the Nigerian political economy under the NEEDS regime (Umezurike, 2009: 10).

3.1 Limited Mobilizational Character of the National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (NEEDS).

NEEDS reform protocol has failed to serve as a tool for the resolutions of political conflicts and violence in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic due to its limited mobilizational character. Even though inaugurated in 2004, NEEDS has had to incorporated existing reform packages including Privatization and Commercialization, and the National Poverty Eradication Programme (NAPEP) into its fold. Ostensibly the incorporation of all these in the fold of NEEDS was designed to make the reforms of the Fourth Republic homegrown.

But through this incorporation, NEEDS and its associated reforms have become unwieldy. Moreover, there have been contradictions between its various aspects including in particular privatization and

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commercialization on the one hand and the government-centred reforms for poverty eradication. Thus while the state is apparently divesting it is at the same time investing massively in the same character of public ventures which it holds responsible for the current crisis.

In addition, the poverty eradication programme had been hurriedly put forward in 2000 as the Poverty Alleviation Programme and later repackaged in 2001 as NAPEP only in response to the imminent collapse of the Nigerian political economy occasioned by the erstwhile Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP). Both PAP and NAPEP have been mere anecdotes to the resumption of the liberalization programmes in NEEDS. They have lacked appropriate planning and integration to the developmental thrust of Nigerian people. The implementation agencies of NAPEP despite being diverse have little lateral interconnections neither with each other nor even with the thrust of private sector development. These agencies have been rather structured with heavy horizontal linkages with the central government in Nigeria. Accordingly, massive expenditure of public funds that have attended the programme has held little prospects for long term and short term alleviation of poverty in the country and mobilization of the poor and vulnerable.

NEEDS has not also allowed for the effective mobilization of the Nigerian people via politics. For even though there has been a partial deregulation of the political environment resulting in the registration of over fifty political parties, only one party has maintained fraudulent electoral dominance to the tune of over 70% over three elections in the Fourth Republic. Rather than make for meaningful resolutions of political conflicts and violence, both the poverty eradication programmes and partisanship in the Fourth Republic have been contributing to the contrary.

3.2 Institutional incapacitation.

Apart from political parties, the other institutions for the resolution of political conflicts and violence in Nigeria are currently been effectively undermined under the NEEDS regime. These institutions include public bureaucracies and other related governmental and quasi-governmental agencies in the country. The incapacitation has manifested in a number of forms. The first is in the ominous processes of re-bureaucratization of political governance with limited democratic prospectus. Persistent re-bureaucratization is characteristic of petty bourgeois governance which has been given credence in Nigeria in three principal forms. First is the mechanistic thrust of democratization which results in the bloating of public bureaucracies such as tiers of government and extra-governmental agencies. The second is a form of resistance of the petty bourgeoisie itself against its limited expression in the economy which deregulations even further in the first place. The third and last is the thrust of creating higher impetus for the security of a state where democracy is highly tenuous. Security threats have equally attained highest propensity under deregulations of the economy.

The second form of incapacitation has been in the manner in which efficiency norms have been absent in public institutions despite the accoutrements of administrative reforms to the deregulations. This is primarily because there has been a wrong conflation of deregulations with democratic prospectus, the latter been a prerequisite for higher efficiency norms of public institutions. The thrust of public governance under the various bouts of deregulations in Nigeria including the NEEDS has tangentially suffered from this assumption. For in reality, deregulations have in the reverse undermined the environment for democracy in the country.

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These two forms of incapacitations identified above have resulted in two characteristic limitations on the institutional roles to the resolutions of social conflicts under the NEEDS regime in Nigeria. The first is the militarization of governance and public policy in Nigeria’s post-Military while the second is the higher impairment of local governance in the country. These implications are evident enough in the higher militarization of the Niger-Delta crisis which has certainly become much more ramified since the era of deregulations; higher authoritarian tendencies in the resolutions of ethno-religious conflicts in the country which have also been much more visible since the deregulations; persisting low objectivity and neutrality of public institutions for democratic governance including the electoral management institutions; and quite importantly, the limited democratic impetus generated in the current decentralized governance despite its avowed centrality to the agenda of the deregulations.

3.3 Further Disorientation of the Nigerian Political Economy under the NEEDS regime.

First and foremost, through the injection of the NEEDS, metropolitan capital has been exercising higher control of the domestic political economy resulting in the heightening of the contradictions between it and in particular the Nigerian petty bourgeoisie. This explains why the latter has become highly unwilling to oblige the democratic requirements of the former. The implications have been the thrust of irreverent authoritarian political rule amongst other vices of petty bourgeois political rule.

Second, the democratic prospectuses of the dominant domestic peasant production relations have been hampered by two contradictory realities. The first is that the liberalization of the political economy as is clearly orchestrated by the NEEDS has predisposed greater despoliation of peasant production relations. But at the same time as this is done, the massive reproduction of the Nigerian petty bourgeoisie has meant more favourable reproduction of these same peasant production relations to the disadvantage of the already tenuously developed wage labour.

Third and relatedly, the twists of the above contradictions especially in the light of the limitations on the development of wage labour and the requisite consciousness for democratic development purveys in full circles the negations of NEEDS and other related liberalization programmes for democratic prospectus in Nigeria as in much of Africa. The challenges of breaking this circle remain quite daunting.

4. Economic Reforms and the fostering of Authoritarian Political Rule in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic.

This section submits that the Fourth Republic in Nigeria has haboured authoritarian political rule (in the sense of governments with tendencies for unquestionable conducts) that can be defined in two forms. The first is the decline in partisanship with an accompanying limitation on electoral credibility. The other is the abundance of public policies with limited democratic credentials. The conditions for the latter have been set by government emasculation of civil society and heavy abuses of human rights which had formed parts of earlier discussions in this paper.

Before embarking on the analysis of these two issues raised above, it is important to comment on the manner in which the well studied authoritative tendencies of political rule in Nigeria under the SAP regime have been continued in this era of NEEDS. This comment is important for the purposes of situating more concretely and

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appropriately the limited democratic prospectus of the Fourth Republic inspite of three rounds of regime transfers through the electoral process.

In an analysis of authoritarian rule and democracy in the era of the economic reforms that preceded NEEDS, Bangura (1992) noted that there are three processes which appear to be central to democratic transitions from authoritarian military and one-party regime: “the demilitarization of social and political life; the liberalization of civil society; and the democratization of the rules governing political and economic competition” (Bangura, 1992: 40-41). Elaborating further, the author notes that “ The first concerns the supremacy and regulation of civilian political authority; the second, the democratization of the state apparatus and the relative freedom of civil organizations; and the third, the capacity to democratically manage conflicts in civil and political society and economic practices” (Bangura, 1992: 41).

4.1 The Decline of Partisanship and the shortchanging of Politics as Authoritarian Trends in the Fourth Republic.

The contention of this study is that the absence of the military so far in the political governance of Nigeria’s Fourth Republic hardly undermines the significant militarization that has been going on over the era. The militarization of society has gone alongside the decline of partisanship and the accompanying limitations on electoral credibility. For the avoidance of doubt, politics including partisanship are at the core of democracy and the latter can hardly be objectivized in the absence of the former. And yet all indications point to the decline of political partisanship and electoral credibility in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic.

To begin with, in contrary to the partial deregulations of the political environment which resulted in the registration of over fifty political parties in the country, only one political party namely the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has maintained over 70% electoral offices in the country’s Fourth Republic. This has been so for the past three elections in the country within the era. Out of these registered political parties only eleven of them representing 22% have had any electoral positions at all. Out of the eleven, only two others namely the All Nigerian Peoples Party (ANPP) and the Action Congress (AC) have representations of 11.58% and 9.10% respectively while the PDP has 72.98% electoral offices in the latest (2007) General Elections in Nigeria. For the three General Elections, 1999, 2003 and 2007, the PDP has taken the presidential office. In the 2007 General Elections, it took a total of 28 (out of a total of 36) Governorship offices, 87 (out of a total of109) Senators, 261 (out of a total of 360) Federal House of Representatives and 714 (out of a total of 990) State Houses of Assembly positions thus leaving quite paltry positions for only a few of the other parties.

From the above, it is clear that political opposition in the Fourth Republic has been significantly hampered. Moreover, the victories of the PDP have not been on the strength of its popularity amongst the Nigerian electorate. Rather, the spate of electoral fraud has been so high that the current President, Alhaji Umar Yar’ Adua has had to admit that he was elected through a faulty process. The President has since set up an electoral reform committee to address the anomaly. His predicament is however pathetic as he needs to first curb the overbearing roles of his party, the PDP.

The shortchanging of partisanship in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic and its implications for authoritarian political rule are certainly quite insidious. Gradual progression towards one-party system looms quite large. This is so because none of the other parties seem poised to raise formidable opposition to the party-in-government. Some

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coercive measures are also part of the game. For instance intimidations and political assassinations have taken a great toll in Nigeria over the era of the Fourth Republic.

In an exploratory study of political assassinations in Nigeria, Igbafe and Offiong (2007) observed that “The Fourth Republic alone accounts for the highest cases of political assassinations in history. A statistical look at the Fourth Republic alone reveals that it accounts for more than those of the first-three republics put together. At least an average of seven assassinations is recorded each year” (Igbafe and Offiong, 2007: 14).

But the most disturbing trend about political assassinations in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic is that in the same manner as the era of the General Sani Abacha orgy which was characterized by high profile serial killings, none of the cases has been fully investigated by the security agencies nor even the judiciary. It is on the basis of this that these security agencies have often been assumed to be in the know of the assassinations. During the Abacha regime, the level of intimidation that the assassinations occasioned must have compelled the leadership of the five registered political parties at the time to collectively propose General Abacha, a reigning military head of state as the sole presidential candidate in the elections which his sudden death prevented him from running. There is therefore no doubt that these assassinations are increasingly compelling key political actors of the Fourth Republic into some form of apathy.

4.2 The Limited Democratic Credentials of Public Policies as Authoritarian Trends in the Fourth Republic.

The limited democratic credentials of public policies is the second and last mode of defining the growing authoritarian trends in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic. Generally, “the process through which public policy is conceived, formulated and implemented is one of the most important processes of governance and development…Its importance lies in the fact that it serves as the political, legal and administrative context and framework within which functionaries of government…and the organs of governance…interact with a myriad of non-governmental stakeholders, synthesize ideas on how to satisfy identified needs and aspirations of citizens, convert these into executable policies, and mobilize resources to provide goods, products and services aimed at addressing these identified needs and aspirations, as efficiently and effectively as possible” (Jega, 2007: 96).

Inspite of their limited electoral and partisanship records, political regimes of Nigeria’s Fourth Republic have all the more been asphyxiating their democratic credentials through public policies that have been isolating them from the people. Two very important areas of these policies include the persistent use of sedition charges against the media and the policies that have been designed to disrupt organized labour movement in the country. Reflectively, Amucheazi and Onwuasoanya submitted that “the frequency with which sedition charges have been filed in the Fourth Republic perhaps reflects the uncertainty surrounding its continued application in Nigeria” (Amucheazi and Onwuasoanya, 2008: 256). This trend is even exacerbated by the refusal of these regimes to formally promulgate into law the Freedom of Information Bill for a decade now.

As Amucheazi and Onwuasoanya (2008) further elaborated, “the Freedom of Information Bill has generated much debates in the Fourth Republic from its first introduction in the House of Representatives in July 1999 to its final approval in both Houses of the National Assembly in February 2007 down to its reluctance, and eventual refusal of former President Obasanjo to ascent to the Bill” (Amucheazi and Onwuasoanya, 2007:

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259). The frustration of this Bill has given the Governments of the Fourth Republic the leeway to persistently invoke sedition charges against the media in particular and the generality of Nigerians whose rights to access to information and divulging of such information are been undermined.

While jettisoning the Freedom of Information Bill, a very unpopular legislation namely,: The Trade Union Amendment Act of 2005 whose sole aim was to destroy the strength of the Nigerian Labour Congress was brought into being. Understandably, “In the Fourth Republic, the Nigerian Labour Congress enjoyed popular legitimacy and used this to advantage in resisting several government decisions…The successes of the Congress prompted the government to seek means of diluting its influence” (Amucheazi and Onwuasoanya, 2008: 270).

Conclusion.

By focusing on the Fourth Republic in Nigeria, this paper reenacted the current concern so far expressed mainly in the academic circles about the limited feasibility of democracy in Africa. An aspect of this concern which formed the core of the paper is that economic reforms for national development have rather been posing danger to democracy. This concern has been in contradiction with the Lipset thesis which has held that economic development has a positive correlation with democracy. Even though this thesis addressed the conditions of developed countries, it has somewhat acted as the basis of prognostications on democratic constructions in various parts of the world including Africa.

The most current concern about the limited feasibility of democracy in Nigeria as in the rest of Africa became mostly instigated by the failures of externally induced economic reforms including especially the Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAP) of the 1980s and 1990s to build democracy and development in African countries. In Nigeria for instance, SAP had to be formally jettisoned at the instance of an imminent collapse of the country’s political economy at the dawn of the 1990s.

Since 1999, a new economic reform agenda involving the repackaging of previously implemented programmes for privatization and commercialization and the enunciation of a poverty eradication programme came into being. These reforms became encapsulated in 2004 and christened the National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (NEEDS). Even though the poverty eradication programme had been hurriedly put in place and the NEEDS document has lacked the requisite plans of action for mobilizing Nigerians for sustainable development, political rule in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic has necessarily stuck to them.

This paper analyzed the limited prospectuses of these reforms in engendering democracy and development in Nigeria from three angles. The first is that the reforms have been shortchanging democratic rights of Nigerians and shrinking the democratic space in the country. The second is that the reforms have been incapacitating the Nigerian state from resolving political conflicts and violence in the country. The third and final submission is that these reforms have been leading to the growth in authoritarian political rule in the country.

Given the acknowledged connections between the forces of globalization and the incapacitations in democracy and development in Africa, this paper is concluded by noting that harping on the pros and cons of globalization may not be as important to human survival in Africa today as the urgent need to subject all forms

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of global developments in the countries of Africa to the democratic requirements of African peoples. Moreover, solution to the absence of democracy lies in the persistent pursuit of it.

*This paper is part of an ongoing research entitled: State and Economy in Nigeria: A Study of Democracy and Economic Reforms in the Fourth Republic. Undertaken solely by the author of this paper, the survey aspect of the research is currently being conducted.

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