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Ethnic Identity, Democratization, and the Future of the African State: Lessons from Nigeria

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 May 2016

Dauda Abubakar
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Extract

The issues of ethnicity and democratization and the prospects for development in postcolonial Africa have long preoccupied scholars. When most African countries gained independence from the colonialists in the 1960s, the ruling elites who inherited state power insisted that Africa could not afford the luxury of democracy because of its potential for exacerbating ethnic pluralism and political conflict, which would be detrimental to the more pertinent projects of development and integration/nation building. The ideology of development and national integration in postcolonial Africa thus became the justification for one-party rule, autocracy, and military dictatorship.

Type
Research Article
Information
African Issues , Volume 29 , Issue 1-2 , 2001 , pp. 31 - 36
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2001 

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References

Notes

1. For a sampling of these debates, see Rothchild, Donald and Chazan, Naomi (ed.), The Precarious Balance: State and Society in Africa (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1988)Google Scholar; Joseph, Richard (ed.), State, Conflict, and Democracy in Africa (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1999)Google Scholar; and Young, Crawford, “Patterns of Social Conflict: State, Class and Ethnicity,” Daedalus 3, no. 2 (1982)Google Scholar.

2. For more on the magnitude of Africa’s indebtedness and the adjustment reforms, see Adekanye, J.B., “Structural Adjustment, Democratization and Rising Ethnic Tensions in Africa,” Development and Change 26, no. 2 (1995): 355–374 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3. The notion of collapsed states as articulated by Zartman became more glaring during the genocidal crises in Rwanda, Somalia, and Liberia in the 1990s. For details, see Zartman, I.W. (ed.), Collapsed States: The Disintegration and Restoration of Legitimate Authority (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For Ake, the crisis is symptomatic of the failure of the postcolonial state and leadership to take democracy and development seriously. See Ake, Claude, Democracy and Development in Africa (Washington, D.C: The Brookings Institution, 1996)Google Scholar.

4. For more on the retreat of communities from the public realm into primordial identities, see Adekanye, , “Structural Adjustment, Democratization and Rising Ethnic Tensions in Africa;” and Olukoshi, A.O. and Laakso, L. make a similar argument in their Challenges to the Nation-State in Africa (Uppsala: Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, 1995)Google Scholar.

5. See Joseph (ed.), State, Conflict, and Democracy in Africa.

6. Ake, Claude, Democratization of Disempowerment (Lagos: Malthouse, 1994)Google Scholar.

7. An emerging phenomenon in the crises of the African state is mineral-related conflicts in which warlords and autocratic rulers have been engaged in violence for the control of both political power and mineral wealth (e.g., diamonds in Sierra Leone and Liberia; copper, cobalt, and diamonds in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo; diamonds in Angola; etc.).

8. In spite of the democratic openings and the resurgence of the Huntingtonian “Third Wave” in Africa, the persistence of conflicts along primordial lines in polities such as Nigeria, Kenya, and Côte d’Ivoire portend dangers ahead.

9. Crawford Young, “The Third Wave of Democratization in Africa: Ambiguities and Contradictions,” in State, Conflict, and Democracy in Africa, ed. Joseph. In addition to the processes of constitutional engineering and the politics of inclusion, Africa needs leaders with vision that could ensure transparency and accountability in governance.

10. Olukoshi and Laakso, Challenges to the Nation-State, p. 31.

11. Olukoshi and Laakso, p. 31.

12. Young, “Patterns of Social Conflicts,” pp. 7–98.

13. Olukoshi and Laakso, Challenges to the Nation-State, p. 31.

14. For details, see Okudiba Nnoli, “Ethnic Conflicts and Democratization in Africa” (paper presented at 8th General Assembly, CODESRIA, Dakar, Senegal, June 26–July 2).

15. Nigeria’s traumatic experience of prolonged military autocracy, especially under Generals Babangida and Abacha, witnessed not only the pillaging of oil resources, but also the abuse of human rights and the privatization of the state.

16. Lewis, Peter, “From Prebendalism to Predation: The Political Economy of Decline in Nigeria,” Journal of Modern African Studies 34, no. 1 (1996): 79–103 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17. Ihonvbere, Julius, “Are Things Falling Apart? The Military and the Crisis of Democratization in Nigeria,” Journal of Modern African Studies 34, no. 1 (1996): 1–33 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18. For details on the complexities of the National Question in Nigeria, see Suberu, R., Ethnic Minority Conflicts and Governance in Nigeria (Ibadan: Spectrum Books, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Beckettand, P.A. and Young, C. (ed.), Dilemmas of Democracy in Nigeria (Rochester, N.Y.: University of Rochester Press, 1997)Google Scholar; and Osaghae, E., “The Ogoni Uprising: Oil Polities, Minority Agitation and the Future of the Nigerian State,” African Affairs 94 (1995): 325–344 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19. Agitation for the convocation of a Sovereign National Conference, which gathered momentum during the epoch of military autocracy especially 1985–1998, remains a critical dimension of Nigeria’s problematic failure to bring together the various nationalities in an open forum for debate on the future of the nation-building project within a balanced federal framework. That failure will certainly exacerbate communal crises in the polity, thereby undermining the process of democratic consolidation.

20. A.O. Olukoshi, “Towards an Enduring Economic Foundation for Democratic Federalism and De-Centralization in Africa: Some Notes” (paper presented at the International Conference on “New Directions in Federalism in Africa,” African Centre for Democratic Governance, Abuja, Nigeria, March 15–17, 1999).

21. Ake, Democracy and Development in Africa, pp. 132–134.