EXAMINE THE DIMENSION AND STRUCTURE OF NIGERIA GEO-POLITICAL ZONES IN THE CONTEXT OF POWER SHARING FROM 2011 TO 2015 (original) (raw)

The Role of Political Parties in Democratic Stability in Nigeria

2015

The paper argue that, political parties are essential features of democratic stability in societies for the fact that, they formulate political policy agenda, select candidates conduct election campaigns and monitors the works of their elected representatives. Party’s serves as a link between citizens and government, consolidates development through a welldefined economic programme. They also provide leadership training to members and generate national awareness and help to galvanize opinion in time of national referendum. For parties to effectively and efficiently perform the above functions, they have to meet certain criteria such as autonomy, complexity and coherence. Parties should also be able to develop and maintain a strong party organization with depth and breadth necessary for the operations and the degree of institutionalization of the party as indicated by its historical roots, longevity, survival and continuing supports. In the Nigerian case, the paper argues that, prope...

INTRA-PARTY CONFLICT AS THE ROOT CAUSE OF POLITICAL INSTABILITY IN NIGERIA A CASE STUDY OF PEOPLE’S DEMOCRATIC PARTY (PDP) (2007-2011)

Elite Project Writers, 2019

Party system is one of the essential tools for democracy. Amongst all democracies in the world, conflict is inevitable. As it reveals, conflict results whenever two or more persons seek to possess the same object or occupy the same position and play incompatible means of achieving their purposes. It has been observed that political parties in Nigeria have failed at their major function of consolidating democracy. The lack of internal (intra-party) democracies in a party has been sighted as one of the contributing factors to the political instability in Nigeria, making this research examine intra party conflicts within the People’s Democratic Party. The study is a qualitative and quantitative research that employed stratified sampling technique with a sample size of 165 people. It used both secondary and primary data and the primary data was gotten from the administration of 165 copies of the questionnaires. The questionnaire was designed to answer research questions analyzed in the study. This study made use group theory in its theoretical frame work and outlined a number of intra-party conflicts that occurred in the People’s Democratic Party. The study found that intra-party conflicts within the PDP have indeed escalated a couple of times and this has affected the party and eventually had impact on Nigeria’s democratic system. The inability to resolve her conflicts is liable to result in war and tend to abuse the democracy which may lead to lack of political will and electoral participation by the electorates therefore losing the interest of its electorates (Nigerians) due to its conflicts. Based on the findings, the study recommends that political parties must entrench internal democracy within their internal structure and workings. Also, members of the party should be treated with equity and fairness and political parties should employ dialogue in resolving conflicts between its members.

POLITICAL PARTIES AND INTER-PARTY CONFLICTS IN NIGERIA

Seminar On Government and Civilisation (SOGOCII), 2015

Since the return of multi-party democratic governance in 1999, Nigeria has continued to grapple with the problem of national unity, such that she can be described as nation with tripod stand, made up of three blocks, the North, the West and the East that are in a perpetual state of wobble (Ogundiya, 2011). While inter-party conflicts are commonly inevitable in every democratic set up with political party formations, due either to different political ideologies and principles, numbers of such political parties and such relationships that exist within or between them, the functions that political parties play are very crucial in democratic sustenance (Tyoden, 2013). This paper closely portrays the struggles that are contained towards the interparty and conflict that influence the development of democracy in Nigeria since the dawn of the fourth republic in 1999 and hence suggests that, to promote democracy and its consolidation in Nigeria there must be peace and an atmosphere of tolerance, harmonious coexistence and mutual trust among political parties. Such factors as concentration of power at the centre, identity crisis, corruption, social and economic inequality, poverty and hunger, lack of party discipline and tolerance, lack of clear ideologies, money bag politics, use of unguarded and foul languages at campaign grounds, etc, should be a thing of the past if the Nigerian democracy will be stable and consolidated upon.

POLITICAL PARTIES AND DEMOCRATIC PROCESS: A STUDY OF THE NIGERIAN FOURTH REPUBLIC

Nigerian Educational Digest(NED), 2023

Of course, partism is agreeably one of the salient features of democracy, but it seems to constitute an impediment to democratization in the Nigerian political context. Nigeria had inconsistently practiced party politics alongside federalism to the detriment of the nationalistic ethnics upon which the state itself was founded. The issue now is that partism which ought to foster a virile democracy is in reality a constraint. Premised on this background, this paper examines the role of political parties in democratic process. The aim is to identify the constitutional roles political parties are expected to play in Nigerian democracy with particular reference to the ongoing fourth republic. A qualitative method that uses consultation with literature as a means of data gathering was adopted for the study. The paper x-rays the conventional roles of political parties in democracy. It argues that political parties are forerunners to democracy and for a society to practice democracy based on western philosophy, it must be fully involved in party politics. The paper observes that Nigerian politicians have reduced political parties to paper tigers thereby becoming threat to national unity. Be it as it may, the findings of this paper have similarly noted that party politics is fundamentally a part of democratic values and indeed, democracy based on western model cannot function without the existence of political parties. It therefore recommended that Nigerians must as a matter of urgency develop a new political culture towards partisan politics and Government should not place high premium on remuneration for the people going there to serve, otherwise, coming to serve will always be seen as a do or die affair.

Political Parties and Internal Party Democracy in Nigeria

Abraham Lincoln's classical definition of democracy during his Gettysburg address of 1863, as A “government of the people, by the people, for the people” (Remy, 1994: 31-34), is still very relevant today and political parties, as political institutions, are very key to the success and sustenance of democracy. For the purposes of this paper, a useful definition of democracy is that given by Seward (2004) when he stated that “democracy is a political system in which citizens themselves have an equally effective input into the making of binding collective decisions”. This they do through the instrument of political parties. Since the onset of the Fourth republic in 1999, Nigeria has adopted multi-party system in which the number of political parties in existence continued to increase, standing at sixty four up till after the 2011 general elections; twenty-seven following the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC)'s deregistration of some of the parties in 2013 (Liebowitz and Ibrahim, (2013: 74-78) and more recently, as a result of the merger of three and a half parties, there are now 24 political parties in Nigeria.

The Dynamics of Managing Political Parties in Nigeria

2018

Despite all the challenges since the return to democratic rule in 1999 after a prolonged military rule, democracy is being consolidated in Nigeria. The six successive elections, the peaceful transfer of power from one civilian regime to another, and power alternation at the national level in the 2015 election are indications of democratic progress amidst the fragility of the institutional foundations of democracy, especially the political parties and the party system. Elections remain contentious amidst troubling attitudes and behaviours of the mainstream political elite which often poses a challenge to democratic consolidation in Nigeria. Political parties are not only an indispensable component of democracy but also central to the survival of a political system. Deepening democracy goes beyond conducting elections to building strong institutional foundations, including the rule of law, constitutionalism, strong media and civil society, and, perhaps most importantly, political parties. The significant role political parties play especially in mobilizing citizens, aggregating interests, recruiting candidates, developing policy proposals, coordinating governments, and making them accountable in democracy, cannot be overemphasized. Despite their shortcomings, functional political parties remain the link between government and society and the cornerstone of representative democracy.