Government of Ghana - Wikipedia
Its regularly scheduled flights link Lagos and 15 of the 19 state capitals. The history of Nigeria prior to the beginnings of British administration is not well documented. This too was gradually extended inland and became the Niger Coast political units with local (or native) chiefs at the lowest rungs of the hierarchy. So he became both a political as well as a religious leader. [It] was accepted and that gave birth to the Christian Association of Nigeria, or CAN.8 .. of Jos, claimed to have 'designed the coat-of-arms with the assistance of a Jos artist. .. Since the inception of this Administration there has been a lively debate in the . This paper examines the administration of national integration in Nigeria. Nigerian Poverty ratio against State Population .. The political history of Nigeria indicates the fact tha t between the civil Democratic Government and the In addition, the states' Coat of Arms, which g ave a semblance of autonomy, was abolished.
Electors were enumerated and registered, candidates nominated, and security arranged. Parties set organisation machinery in motion, issued manifestoes, and even signed pledges ensuring non-interference in the campaigns of rival parties [but] In place of these provisions others, designed to give grater assurance of success at the polls, were adopted.
Thuggery a term used by Nigerians to describe beatings and killings and rigging another term meaning illegal alteration of administrative procedures to influence the election outcome became favoured methods through which the parties gained and maintained support.
The result of all this was a sweeping victory for the NPC in the north and the NNDP in the west, with the results for other parties badly affected by threatened electoral boycotts and by the tactics of the winning parties.
Inwith a new coalition in power federally, patronage shifted from incumbents of positions in federal institutions to those who had earned favour with the new leadership.
The big losers in the reshuffle seem to have been Ibos who, with the loss of coalition status by the NCNC, lost federal government patronage. Since the NPC controlled the north and the NNDP the west, opposition parties looked forward to the regional election in the Western Region, hoping that the Action Group, which had lost ground to the NNDP in the election, would regain control of the west, thus counteracting the NNA strength in the federal parliament. This was not, however, to eventuate.
The campaign was the most violent in Nigerian politics so far; and the election itself, which took place in Octoberwas openly rigged by the NNDP. Candidates were prevented from filing their nominations, local government police and thugs kept political opponents from the polls, ballot boxes were stuffed with extra ballot papers and when all else failed, NNDP candidates were declared elected by the regional radio station in contests that went against them.
The outcome was popularly regarded as unjust and illegitimate and the AG refused to recognise the result. Widespread rioting ensued, from October to Januaryand the conditions of disorder permitted gangs of party thugs or brigands purporting to be party members, to rob, loot, burn and kill. In the eyes of many Nigerians, politics had become irredeemably corrupt and there seemed no way out of the political morass into which the country had drifted over the preceding three years.
The big losers in the political infighting of the period had been the NCNC which represented the majority of Ibos and the AG which claimed to represent a majority of the Yoruba.
The Action Group was under siege in the Western Region and in some disarray, with violence escalating. Among the Yoruba, the immediate reaction to the violent change of government was one of relief at the elimination of the hated government of Akintola.
In November, with the regional elections resulting in widespread violence and fraud, they completed plans for the overthrow of civilian government and the establishment of interim military rule. Arthur Nwankwo spells out his view of the situation: On 15 January Nigeria's postcolonial experiment with democracy ended when soldiers struck, killing some politicians, sacking the civilian government, and imposing military rule.
Several factors were responsible for the collapse of Nigeria's First Republic, but among the most crucial was Regionalism, with its attendant ethnic dominance of each of the three regional governments It was the violent rivalry for power among the politicians, coupled with massive corruption, brazen injustice and political and religious intolerance which brought about the demise of the First Republic.
As the leader of the first coup put it: Neither myself nor any of the other lads was in the least interested in governing the country-we are soldiers and not politicians We were going to make civilians of proven honesty and efficiency who would be thoroughly handpicked to do all the governing. Given the historical relationships between the groups in Nigeria, and the lack of a sense of national identity amongst most people, the presumption by the planners of independence that the federal government would dominate the political scene seems naive indeed.
As Isawa Elaigwu puts it: They violated the constitution with reckless abandon.
Politicians, in making their exit from the political arena, extracted no sympathy tears from Nigerians. They had prostituted political power, adulterated the political process, and bastardised the rules of politics. As politics was drastically transformed from a game into a battle, the political stadium was grossly polluted Coup leaders could clearly be identified with these disadvantaged groups, and the consequences of the coup seemed to favour them.
Even if the coup was planned with the best of intentions, its outcome looked patently to the other ethnic groups, particularly in the North and West, like an lbo conspiracy. Secondly, but more importantly, the victims were virtually all non-lbo, even though the lbo political leaders However, matters grew even worse when the dust of the January coup settled and General lronsi eventually took over Even in the North where there was scepticism, the attitude was that of wait-and-see rather than of outright hostility.
Unfortunately, lronsi wasted this goodwill and in this he was not helped by the post-coup actions and words of his fellow lbos who in public places in Northern towns jeered at and taunted the people of the Northern Region for their losses.
To consolidate his own position he also promoted a large number of Ibos to high rank in the military. Northerners and those westerners who supported the NNDP saw the abolition of the federal system as an attempt by the east to grab control of the whole country to their advantage. This seemed to be corroborated by the promotion of Ibos through the military ranks.
Consequently, rioting erupted in both the north and west over the next six months, aimed mainly at Ibo populations in those regions. This resulted in increasing numbers of Ibos migrating back to the east to escape the escalating hostility. In JulyYakubu Gowon led a successful counter-coup against the military leadership. Ironsi and numbers of his Ibo officers were killed and hostility toward Ibos spread throughout Nigeria. For the next three months, military leaders were more concerned with establishing power within the military than with governing the country, and the rioting of the pre-coup period 'degenerated into mass killings of Ibos in September ' Oyediranp.
Finally, Gowon, who was regarded by many as representing northern interests, emerged as head of state, to the dismay of Ibos, and the scene was set for civil war. This unacceptability of Gowon as the head of state However, it eventually became a factor in its own right; Gowon was seen as a symbol of 'Northern domination' which in turn was considered as a threat to the very existence of Ibos.
For the Ibos therefore the solution to this crisis lay not merely in removing Gowon but in breaking up the country and allowing the Ibos a separate existence. Besides, by rescuing some of the minority groups from majority group domination, state creation strengthened minority faith in the national unit.
And by reducing the size of the constituent units of the federation, state creation reduced the capacity of large and majority groups to challenge the centre. Such a reduced capacity can also rationally induce the people of those units to look up to the centre as a more realistic hope for protection. As Onyeozirip. At the same time, it gave more effective voice to minorities whose interests had been swamped by the political machinations of the major groups through the preceding six years.
Unfortunately, since Gowon was seen as representing northern interests, the new military leadership was as unacceptable to the east as the displaced leadership had been to the north. When Gowon announced that the eastern region was to be divided into three separate states, easterners saw this as an attempt to dismember the east and destroy its political effectiveness. Within a month, the country was plunged into a bitter and bloody three-year civil war.
Unlike many of the internal conflicts in postcolonial nations of the period, the Nigerian war could scarcely be seen as a confrontation between capitalism and communism.
The central government and the military leadership which displaced it were strongly supportive of Western interests and received support from the major Western nations. On the other hand, the Ibo had long been regarded as the most 'educated' and Westernised of Nigerians, those who were strongly orientated toward private enterprise and capitalism and amongst the most successful business leaders in Africa. Many people, and particularly a large part of the Western press, identified with them in their struggle for independence and readily supported the war effort.
So both parties were given arms and other forms of support by Western interests. The May-September killing of Ibos made the Nigerian case difficult to understand not only for the Western press but also their readers. Moreover there was a generalised sympathy for the Ibos arising from the belief that they were the Jews of Africa and certainly the most Westernised Africans. The Nigerian military increased its size twenty-fold during the war, giving it a far stronger hold on the country after the war than it had before.
The leadership gained wide approval for the restraint it showed in victory, providing it with a sense of legitimacy amongst Nigerians and in international forums.
Over the next five years, however, Gowon governed Nigeria in an increasingly autocratic manner. States were governed by military governors who, in the words of Martin Dent: They provoked great unpopularity among the populations of their states and anger and jealousy among their colleagues in the services Gowon seems to have had an inexplicable timidity in dealing with them, and to have feared that they might gang up on him if he swept them out of office.
His failure to deal with the blatant corruption of his military governors made many people suspect that he was as guilty as they. This escalating corruption was accompanied by mounting economic problems which seem, in part, to have been due to unwise decisions made by the leadership at both regional and federal levels. Despite problems of corruption and an apparent unwillingness to move the country back toward civilian rule, Gowon's term seems to have been characterised by an attempt to secure efficient local administration.
The effect of this was to move the country back to pre-independence forms of administration, with district officers responsible to state authorities overseeing area councils, and states directly responsible to the central administration.
Above all, in the wake of the civil war, a new emphasis was placed on the need for a strong and efficient defence force. As the Second National Development Plan spelt out: As Elaigwu suggests, by the time Gowon was deposed, 'he had successfully centralised the political system.
No state was in a position to secede any longer' Elaigwup. InGowon announced that the military would remain in control indefinitely, not returning the country to civilian rule.
This was strongly resented in many quarters and was to be a major contributing factor to his downfall the following year.
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Although the leadership was military, this did not entirely insulate it from public scrutiny and criticism. As the Nigerian experience has shown over the years, military rule needs to take account of civilian opinion if it is to minimise opposition.
Since members of the military hierarchy are strongly connected to the various ethnic and clan-based communities of the country, leaders respond to pressures placed on them by non-military groups. At the end of Julywhile Gowon was out of the country, the military staged a coup and Murtala Mohammed replaced him as head of state. Mohammed quickly responded to the main criticisms of the Gowon regime. The military governors of the states were replaced by military personnel of lower ranks and less power, with all but three of them appointed to states outside their regions of origin, and with their term of office considerably shortened; all officers of the rank of general were removed from their positions; a date 'not later than October 1st ' was set for new elections and a return to civilian rule; a committee was appointed to examine the need for reform of the state organisation of ; a fifty-member constitutional committee was appointed with responsibility for drafting a new constitution to be ready for the next elections; and work was started on the reorganisation of local authorities.
All this in the first six months of the new administration. Mohammed was assassinated in February and General Obasanjo took over as head of state, maintaining the initiatives of his predecessor. In Septemberthe new constitution was promulgated, modelled on the US constitution.
It broke with the Westminster parliamentary system and instituted an American-style presidential system with an elected president of Nigeria and elected governors of each of the states. Legislatures were to be elected at the state level, with two houses, a senate and a house of representatives, at the federal level.
Having found that the Westminster system did not work in Nigeria, another Western model was to be used for the next attempt at civilian rule in Nigeria. The number of states was also increased from twelve to nineteen, in an attempt. Political parties were also required to have certain characteristics before they could be registered for the elections. The range of requirements was detailed and aimed at ensuring that politics could not devolve into competition for power between major regions Beckett However, despite all efforts, three major parties emerged from the elections with voting profiles which all-too-closely echoed those of the early s.
The stage was set for all the political manoeuvring of the first democratic period. As Beckett says, bythe economy was in disarray and: The public's sense of economic disorder was heightened by a rapidly growing public awareness of a level of corruption, especially on the part of many of the elected officials and their allies in the large-scale business sector, that, in terms of scale, was without Nigerian precedent. In earlythe military once again took control of the country: Interestingly, despite the participation by so many in the democratic electoral processes just four months earlier, scarcely a voice was raised against the suspension of the Second Republic.
To the contrary, there was every evidence of public rejoicing at the overthrow of the Shagari regime. And there was evidence as well of anger directed against the corruption, violence and mismanagement that was now said to have been the essence of Second Republic' democracy'. It seems that for violence and intimidation to be lessened in political life in countries where such competition inevitably divides people into competing ethnic and clan communities, Western-style electioneering needs to be minimised, for it is in the lead-up to elections that the problems arise, and in the aftermath of elections that recriminations lead to rioting and bloodshed directed against rival communities.
What military rule has offered in Nigeria is political leadership without the initial party competition which is inherent in Western democratic politics.
Of course, there has been competition for position during military rule, as the coups and counter-coups have demonstrated throughout Nigerian postcolonial experience, but that competition has been constrained and channelled through the military. It does not result in open competition between ethnic and clan groups, each jockeying for power in a world where those who hold power gain access to wealth which can be passed to their supporters.
The competition between ethnic communities shifts from electioneering to political manoeuvring within the military hierarchy. Any military head of state who wishes to secure his hold on power needs to recognise and negotiate with leaders of important regional and ethnic groups.
- Political experiences in Nigeria
- Relationship between politics and administration in Pacific island governmental systems
- Federal government of Nigeria
As Ironsi and Gowon both found, control of the military, without acceptance from the range of pressure groups in the country, will, almost inevitably, lead to leadership challenges and attempted coups. The upshot becomes a balancing of interests within the military and civilian bureaucratic hierarchies reflecting those pressures. Those leaders, in turn, need to shore up their support within their own groups through ensuring that a variety of forms of 'favour' flow to their supporters.
Nnoli describes the situation as it developed in Nigeria during periods of both democratic and military government: Most Nigerians have come to believe that unless their 'own men' are in government they are unable to secure those socio-economic amenities that are disbursed by the government.
Hence, governmental decisions about the siting of industries, the building of roads, award of scholarships, and appointments to positions in the public services, are closely examined in terms of their benefits to the various ethnic groups in the country. In fact, there has emerged a crop of 'ethnic watchers' who devote much of their time and energy to assessing the differential benefits of the various groups from any government project.
InIbrahim Babangida organised a bloodless coup which displaced the existing military leadership with his own supporters. He faced two pressing problems.
First, as a military leader, it was assumed that he was an interim head of state with a prime responsibility to reorganise the political landscape to ensure more effective civilian government. Having done so, he would organise national elections and return the country to democracy. In December he started the process.
As Larry Diamond describes: Babangida effectively inaugurated the transition back to civilian, democratic rule.
His rhetoric was blunt and incisive, like countless pronouncements from former military regimes, in identifying 'the main contributors to our political instability' -political intolerance, economic mismanagement, electoral fraud and violence, abuse of power, 'crass opportunism' and corruption. He was no less accurate in noting the 'social chaos, cynicism, apathy and total disaffection of the general citizenry from the political leadership and processes' which those abuses generated.
Although politicians were condemned as corrupt, Babangida, in fact, brought trials for corruption to a halt and freed those who had been arrested by the previous military leadership. This, given the patron-client nature of politics in the nation, is scarcely surprising.
To set a precedent which could only rebound on oneself is hardly wise. As in most Third World countries, the dividing line between political and economic activity is very blurred.
As Terisa Turner described economic activity in Nigeria in the s: The relationship between foreign businessmen and local actors from the national private and public sectors is called a 'commercial triangle' in this study, because it involves three parties to a buying or selling transaction.
These parties are first, the businessman who represents the multinational corporation; second, the local middleman from the national private sector; and third, the state official who assists the foreign businessman in gaining access to the local market If a contract materialises, the state official is usually rewarded with a payment arranged by the go-between or middleman. Very often these Nigerian 'economic leaders' appear to own and control major economic enterprises without, in fact, having any real authority within them see Robison for a discussion of similar arrangements within Indonesia.
As Biersteker explains, 'Several foreign executives commented that they deliberately have "no management role by their board of directors'"p. Their role, of course, is not to manage day-to-day business activities, nor to formulate company policy, but to ensure an ongoing positive relationship between the company and relevant politicians and bureaucrats. Inevitably, there is a positive, affirming relationship between these major wealth holders and political and administrative leaders.
Both benefit from the patronial relationships between them. Since those holding political power are, by definition, closely involved with such wealth holders, it is less than rational for politicians to institute stringent legal proceedings against them, even if those being prosecuted belong to other patron-client networks.
Babangida was well aware of these matters when he moved to close proceedings against those accused of corruption in the civilian government. However, having freed those accused of corruption, Babangida then banned all politicians who had been involved in the Second Republic from to from holding political office or engaging in party political activity.
He later extended this ban to all those who had held military or government posts and had been convicted of misconduct, and all those who currently held high positions in either the military establishment or in government.
As Diamond says, 'The blanket ban effectively excluded every Nigerian who had ever played a prominent role in party politics' Diamondp. These measures were repealed in Then, infaced with very similar electoral problems to those encountered in previous Nigerian elections, Babangida decided to reorganise party politics in a way c which is reminiscent of the reorganisation undertaken in Indonesia in see ch.
The military government would, itself, create two parties: Since the early s, Nigeria has had one broad plane of cleavage that cuts across ethnicity, uniting more 'progressive' forces north and south against a loose, northern-based coalition of conservatives and certain ethnic minorities By forcing all the existing parties and politicians to join the SDP or NRC on an equal footing, the government's fiat may have facilitated the reformation of these two coalitions without the violence and with less of the bribery than would otherwise have occurred.
It also became possible for new leaders to emerge from 'the grassroots' in the successive elections that took place at the ward, local, state and federal levels during the first half of Babangida's aim seems to have been to strengthen local governments at the expense of state governments, decentralising political decision making and reducing the power of political centres other than at the federal level. As part of the move towards full civilian government, state governors and legislative bodies were elected during and This returned the thirty states to civilian rule, but left the military in federal control.
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In Junea federal election was held to elect a federal president. The new organisation of the country into two political parties greatly reduced the violence and rigging of previous elections, so that the new elections were hailed in many quarters as the fairest in Nigerian history.
However, whereas Indonesian leaders have managed to control the electoral process by tying both the armed forces and civil service to their party organisation and controlling the leadership and philosophy of the opposition parties see ch.
The consequence seems to have been that the victor in the federal election, Moshood Abiola, was not the one preferred by the leadership. Babangida was, therefore, left with the choice of either accepting the election result and losing control of government, or of declaring the election results null and void. A court challenge to this move resulted in a ruling which declared the interim government illegal. This was accompanied by widespread economically-based strikes through the country. In NovemberSani Abacha led a military takeover of the interim government.
He immediately moved to reimpose firm military control of the country. He replaced the elected state governors with military appointees, disbanded the elected state and federal legislative bodies and banned all political activity within the country. This coup, unlike those in prior Nigerian history, was not to ensure a return to civilian rule, but an attempt to perpetuate military control.
It has, therefore, faced mounting opposition from the very forces which, in prior coups, supported military takeover as the only means of combating political corruption and ensuring that new civilian leaders ruled in the best interests of the nation.
The second pressing problem faced by Babangida when he assumed office in was that of pending economic chaos. The constitutional framework for the legal system is provided by the Constitution of Nigeria. English Lawwhich is derived from its colonial past with Britain; Common lawcase law development since colonial independence; Customary lawwhich is derived from indigenous traditional norms and practices; Sharia lawlaw used in some states in the northern region.
There is a judicial branchwith the Supreme Court regarded as the highest court of the Nation. Legislation as a source of Nigerian law[ edit ] The two fundamental sources of Nigerian law through legislation are  1 Acts of British parliament, popularly referred to as statutes of general application.
There were other sources which though subsumed in Nigerian legislations were distinctly imported into the Nigerian legal systems. They are called the criminal and penal codes of Nigeria. Nigerian statutes as sources of Nigerian law[ edit ] Nigerian legislation may be classified as follows. The colonial era untilpost independence legislationthe military era The post independence legislation [ edit ] The grant of independence to Nigeria was a milestone in the political history of the country.
This period witnessed the consolidation of political gains made during the colonial era. Politicians genuinely focused their lapses in the polity.
It achieved for herself a republican status by shaking off the last vestiges of colonial authority.