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Retrospects and Prospects of Political Stability in Nigeria

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 May 2014

Celestine O. Bassey
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Extract

Among the Laws that rule human societies, there is one which seems to be more precise and clear than all others. If men are to remain civilized, or to become so, the art of associating together must grow and improve in the same ratio in which the equality of conditions is increased.

Tocqueville (1955: 118)

A purely contemporary view of any problem is necessarily a limited and even distorted view. Every situation has its roots in the past… the past survives into the present; the present is indeed the past undergoing modifications.

Phillipson and Adebo (1954: 49)

The elusive and aggravating problem of instituting a viable political order based on effective, legitimate and authoritative government in Nigeria has no doubt become in recent times one of the most pressing and fundamental preoccupations of its decision-makers and the public alike, as the ongoing political debate attests. This paper represents essentially an attempt to analyze and comprehend the social dynamics that generate the persistent syndrome of political instability in Nigeria, and on that basis to hazard a conjecture about the future of the Nigerian state from past and current trends, as this might be shaped by systematic challenges.

Stated differently, the primary objective of the present analysis (in terms of its explanatory and projective dimensions) is in response to the intriguing question of why a state once considered a “showpiece of decolonizing Africa” could then manage to “plummet from such an apogee of grace” (Kirk-Greene, 1976: 7) and come perilously close first to collapse, then to constitutional chaos and a bloody civil war, and finally to a rapid interchange between civilian and military regimes.

Type
Articles
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 32 , Issue 1 , April 1989 , pp. 97 - 114
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1995

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