Nigeria is not a democracy. Its continual description as one is a reportorial error and a commonly held fallacy. This error arises from the inaccurate definition of democracy in terms of electioneering rituals. It is not a question of a particular national style or of a Nigerian "home-grown" variant of democracy; the extant model simply fails all the tests of democratic definition. If Nigeria is not a democracy, then what is it? At worst, one might say with some reason that Nigeria is a kakistocracy – a failing state with a dysfunctional system designed to promote the emergence of the worst breed as leaders. At best, Nigeria is merely in a post-military era.


Nigeria's post-military era is characterized by the following: an authoritarian model of leadership of the sort exemplified by former president Olusegun Obasanjo and the twisted versions that abound at the gubernatorial level. An absence of real political parties that are ideological camps as against the oligarchic coalitions of personality cults whose only goal is power as an end in itself. Selections rather than elections are the norm. The candidates at various levels are simply anointed by robber-barons and godfathers in return for direct channels for plundering the public treasury. Most of the so-called opposition parties were created to facilitate the ambitions of one politician. The national elections themselves were not a contest of ideas but of cash, brigandage and who could rig the most. In the end, the party with the most access to state resources and the greater number of self-serving oligarchs won.


Because of fundamental inequities in power-sharing and other inequalities in the federation, dubious and undemocratic contraptions such as zoning are used to maintain the balance of power between the various sectors of the polity fragmented by unimaginative politicians whether between north and south; Christians and Muslims or Majority ethnic groups and minorities. In effect, Nigerian elections guided as they are by considerations other than merit, do not produce the best people for public office. When the issues of geography, ethnicity and religion become benchmarks for elective office, then elections cannot be said to be free and fair. Contraptions like zoning (and federal character and quota system) have made the public square a circus of mediocrity, and are responsible for the dangerous devaluation of governance and our public institutions.

Nairalanders, is Nigeria a democratic state?