Abstract
The presidential election of 28 March 2015 that brought Mohammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress to power in Nigeria was an historic one: it terminated the 16-year rule of the People’s Democratic Party and, for the first time in the nation’s history, an opposition candidate dislodged a sitting president through the ballot box. Arguably, the ‘change’ mantra – the campaign slogan of the APC – was one of the magic wands that led to this unprecedented disruption of the political status quo in the country. According to the APC, the ‘change’ mantra was to strengthen democracy and revolutionize the Nigerian socio-economic and political space by engendering a radical and clean break with the past. This paper assesses President Mohammadu Buhari’s administration vis-à-vis the APC’s ‘change’ mantra and argues that except for some selective feeble attempts at fighting corruption, no significant affirmative change occurred in Nigeria. The paper argues further that more than his democratically elected predecessors, Mohammadu Buhari and his party, through the instrumentality of state institutions and the structural frame, captured the state and ‘conquered’ the other arms of government. The paper outlines some of the instances and consequences of this ‘capture’ and concludes that militocracy virtually took over Nigeria’s democratic space. Data for the study is obtained from primary and secondary sources and analysed with the aid of the historical method - simple descriptive analysis and collation of historical data.
Presenters
Emmanuel OjoProfessor, History and International Studies, Ekiti State University, Ado Ekiti, Ekiti State, Nigeria
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
Civic, Political, and Community Studies
KEYWORDS
NIGERIA, ELECTION, GOVERNANCE,CORRUPTION
