Pero creo, que siendo este hombre imprudente y temerario, no

The theory and Problem of democratic politics in multi-ethnic Nigeria:

Studies on “Ethnic Mindset” and democratic politics in a ‘multi-ethnic society’ as represented by Horowitz (2000), Geertz (1965), Ted Gurr (1999, 2003), Lijphart (1977, 1999), Powell Jr, (1982), Gboyega (1997), Agbaje/Diamond/Onwudiwe (2004), Mbaku/Ihonvbere (2006), Lewis (1965), Ihonvbere/Shaw (1998), Schwarz Jr. (1965), Ejiogu(2004), Chazan (1993), Birch(2007), Grugel(2002), Whitehead(2002), Berg-Schlosser(2007), and Kersting/Cronqvist(2005), as well as Goodin/Tilly(2006), have been conducted through different arguments, and from diverse theoretical angles.

These studies consist of those that were carried out by scholars who pride themselves as modernised scholars and also others who projected their argument on different territories of political studies, and chiefly on the prism of liberal, neo-liberal, and radical view points. Those who pride their works on the basis of modernity have tended to emphasise socio-economic factors “and the rise in corruption” (Diamond/

Chazan 1999: 3) in their explanation of democratic governance in “divided Nigeria”.

On the one hand, Horowitz (2000), Geertz (1965) and Lijphart (1999) stressed the importance of modern political institutional structures recognising the many differences that existed between people in a divided political environment so as to enable democratic stability in such society to prevail. On the other hand, both also insisted that ‘ethnic intolerance leads to political decay’ and as such breeds political instability in society. Their analytical positions implies then that political order in a divided society such like Nigeria would have to depend in large part on a non-bias relationship among the aspiring ethnic nationalities to further development of political institutions, create chances for effective mobilisation of new political actors into politics. When Horowitz applies his argument to what he calls the “ethnic groups in conflict”, his position implied also that the prevalence of political instability in them stems from “ranking or non-ranking status and the different political experiences derived not only from the colonial experience, but through each individual group traditional institutions” (Horowitz 2000).

Both Horowitz and Lijphart believe that the absence of broad participation of citizens in politics helps to predispose the people in the ‘divided society’ to low democratic performance.

Arthur Lewis (1965) is one Euro-Africanist whose “Sub-Saharan Africa oriented”

perspective on the problem of democratic governance in the West African sub-region is worth a review. He concluded that the West African states are both vertically and horizontally divided (Lewis: 1965-19). According to him, some people ranked vertically higher than others, and horizontally in the sense that some groups are marked off from each other by tribe, language, habitation, and many other division which cause group solidarity (Lewis: 1965). But chances are that the more or less indigenous societies, each with an independent political philosophy as well as with large gulf of inter-social mindset tried to accommodate the differences that existed between them, the more the political environment could become precarious. But the various tribal peoples that constitute Africa’s most populous foreign created political enclaves survived to a minimal extent through sets of values, norms and structures as left behind by the departing masters. Though, the created environments existed and still exist side by side, and thrived within the same political scenario, but the existence does not translate into political unity, and stability, but rather it is that of sheer accommodation and tolerance. However, some of the political values, and norms, are all embedded in the political structures of the colonial power and which was massively transferred to a section of post-colonial Nigeria as legacies.

Furthermore, one cannot be wrong to describe Contemporary African societies as classless or arrangements of two sets of characters, norms, and structures, the “new”

and the “residual”. Lewis argues that, it is therefore, the “classless character of contemporary African societies that reflect on the political scene of the various sub-Saharan African tribes. (Lewis 1965). Scholars such as Schwarz and Zartman (1986), O’Donnell (1978), Falola and Ihonvbere (1985), Gboyega (1997) who write from a different perspective have also theorised on the subject. Some of these radical opinions emphasise the role of classes, the dynamics of their incessant struggle, and centre-periphery issues in their own explanations. Arguing about the Nigerian state and its inhabitants, Gboyega contended that political instability in the unitary national state that Nigeria was carved into was a result of political miscalculation and greed

on the part of the political elite after the departing of the British from Nigeria. This stems from the inability of its ‘leaders’ to take control over other classes in the struggle “to create a viable and stable democratic etiquette in the social formation of the country” (Zartman/Gboyega 1997: 158-164).

When applied further to the Nigerian state, both the ancient in the mould of Plato, Aristotle and other classical scholars and the present or better still, those who described themselves as modernists accounts of democratic politics are found wanting especially on the ground that they tend to ignore the necessity to address the historical roots and anthropological importance of the ensuing tense relationship between the established Nigerian state and the three major nationalities that served as Pillars in the construction of it, even though they had no say in its construction proper.

Questions on why the political rivalry involving the Igbo, Yoruba and Hausa-Fulani emerged, how the rivalry that emerged is sustained by each group, and what the political class in the country is doing to reduce or control the tense political relationship associated to issues raised, and how the issues even survive colonialism and persist in the post-colonial era need be asked and addressed. The neglect of these salient and fundamental questions to an extent established why Falola and Ihonvbere (1985), and Badru (1998) all classified the nationalities in the ‘Nigerian’

state as mere relics of history whose continued existence hinder the rise of a viable bourgeois hegemony in the country’s “social formation” (Falola and Ihonvbere 1985:

234). Even after he extensively established that the history of party politics in the

‘Nigerian’ state, is one in which individual tribal affiliation, powerful backers and not political parties played dominant roles in the selection of candidates, “determine whether an individual could be elected into any political office, or not”, Oghosa E.

Osaghae (2003: 54). Osaghae argued further that the resilience of the nationalities is a mere function of the failure of the national state “to respond satisfactorily” to their well being (Osaghae 2003: 57).

Certain accounts of democratic politics in Africa raised some of the central issues involved in this study. Callaghy (1984: 32) for instance, links democracy and Good Governance in post-colonial Africa to “the absence of organised political leadership

and the consequent search for it”. Unfortunately, he leaves one to hibernate in a bid to discover what could be responsible for the absence of those two factors; that is

“organised political leadership and the consequent search for it”. In their respective studies conducted from the realist perspective too, Lewis (1965), Lisa Anderson (1986, 1987), Lijphart (1997) all believe that the weakness of Africa’s states, and their

“precarious links” (Chazan 1993: 68) to the diverse groups that constitute the larger society, are factors that contribute to low political performance in African states that tried to democratise. But from Horowitz’s (2000) point of view, one can add that the problem is derived from the competition for legitimacy and dominance between Nigeria’s nationalities and the diverse components of her larger society.

Some studies on democratic politics in contemporary African states do not adequately consider the part played by the European’s through the disruption of African peoples, and their subsequent effort in state building in Africa, which produced legacies that are lopsided and which in turn contributed to the low administrative performance (Ejiogu 2004). However, in the case of the ‘Nigerian’

state, blame for the persistence of low democratic performance in her body politic is often hinged on a flawed federal structure (Kirk-Green 1971), and an imperfect constitutional arrangement that failed to address the political strains (Whitaker 1981).

Richard Sklar (1965) and B. J. Dudley (1966) attribute the problem to an imbalance in education and economic development. Larry Diamond (1988: 16) attributes it to

“tribalism and regionalism” in the country.

The problem of democratic success in Nigeria is well beyond education and economic imbalance as both Sklar (1965) and Duddley (1966) want to argue. Both Scholars failed to realise that the nationalities have no known relation or line of communication before the arrival of the British, and the subsequent amalgamation of 1914. They also failed to realise that each of the tribal or nationalities developed at different pace during the regional structure of governance in the country. It is not politically correct to use imbalance in education as basis of measure for the low democratic performance in Nigeria. The argument by Diamond that tribal and regional sentiments are largely responsible for the political inconsistencies in Nigeria cannot be far from the truth.

But Diamond did not elaborate more on why he believed so. Indeed a disturbing catalyst to the political stress exhibited by the nationalities stems from the fact that they belong to a different political world. The political development as was noticed in the three nations before the emergence of the colonial power in their various regions bears different characteristics. It is not enough to mention tribal and regional sentiment as causal effect without going further to dissect the features inherent in their tribal claims. However, that the people see themselves as Igbo, Yoruba, and Hausa-Fulani did not tell anybody anything that justifies the mention of these perceived factors by Diamond. There is the absence of detailed fact on how tribal and regional sentiments undermine the progress of democratic governance in Nigeria.

Both Scholars failed to establish how tribal and regional sentiments contributed negatively or positively in the democratic process in Nigeria. Lewis (1965:19) established a case as to the problem of most Sub-Saharan African States, of which Nigeria is one of them.

In each of the cases mentioned above, Democracy and Good Governance is viewed strictly as the presence of a stable, organised, responsible deployment and dispensing of scarce resources for the good of the people within a society by an elected government. But alluding that democracy portends everything amount to leaving the public with the political assumption that the national state enjoyed democratic stability from 1999 to 2011. That definition of democratic performance is indeed the justification given for the studies reviewed above and others similar to them which present the Nigerian state as a given legacy.

We can argue that the literature reviewed so far stresses only ‘traditional variables’

that is, ‘traits of governmental structure’, ‘the social environment of governments’ or

‘somewhat rigid mixture of the two’ as the determinants or foundation for democratic performance or the absence of same in a polity. As we have argued earlier, this tendency to classify the “non-political parts of the fundamental points of polities between the three contending ethnic nationalities as independent variables. However in studies that made effort to attempt in probing the root causes for low performance of democracy in the country has hardly fulfilled that quest adequately.

It is the candid view of this study that Horowitz (2000) theoretical framework, which he based on Ranking and Non-Ranking theory, is a tool that clears the path for a departure from this norm in this type of social research. By locating the determinants of a stable Democracy and Good governance, and precisely through those aspects of non-democratic view points that could be considered specifically on their “political”

traits, in the sense that the three ethnic nationalities belong to different political worlds, or through their non corresponding internal relations, which also show that each is enveloped by divergent philosophy of human identity.

The framework fills a void in the study of Democracy and Good Governance in a society divided through an internalised ethnic mindset, by serving as an appropriate tool for conducting studies in such societies. Horowitz’s framework is capable of illuminating the effort to explain Ethnic Mindset in polities of all kinds. The reason for that is because of how it could be applied to research situations to ensure that “the crucial x-variable would be one that involves both government and society simultaneously, not each separately. In this vein, one would argue that, the stability of any democratic society, and perhaps other polities, might be held to depend on the degree of cooperation between the tribal or ethnic groups within such society and the established governmental structure.

Indeed, democratic stability, not minding differences in ethnic political philosophy, is one out of the several possible roles that “cooperation between ethnic nationalities and established governmental structure” can guarantee. Cooperation serves as a backbone, and as well as a potential mediating and higher-order variable in the preservation of democracy and good governance, and also in checkmating the negative influence of ethnic mindset on governmental performance in polities.

Horowitz (2000) framework is partly validated by the deliberate manner in which it is steeped in sound ethnological as well as sociological tenets. The argument that men are able effectively to carry-out political responsibilities, if their ready acquired norms and behaviour substantially equip them for such task and, if the norms and practices required by their concurrent social responsibilities do not create hiccups or painful ambivalences as well as contradictions with their political ones.

The derivative hypotheses in the framework are such that they relate “ranking patterns to the cooperation and stability of a society’s administrative structure”.

(Horowitz 2000: 22-29). It implies that “ranking between contending tribal or ethnic groups and cooperation among them in political decision making process are the two principal factors affecting democratic politics in divided societies. Hence the following hypothetical postulations which said that: “High performance by a government requires compromise between the contending tribal groups and inconsonance with the established governmental structures; and high democratic performance requires consonance among the elements of the various fundamental issues in a society, can be said to connect to the situation under review. The consequence of lack of compromise between the contending factors and lack of consonance in relation to those vital organs in the state authority will certainly result to very low performance in Good Governance by a government in any aspiring democratic society like Nigeria.