As many systems of military and autocratic rule came under challenge in Africa, Nigeria lost its leadership position in a democratizing era with the collapse of the Second Republic, 1979-1983. Four military heads-of-state followed. One of the most hopeful transitional experiments in Africa, conducted under General Ibrahim Babangida, 1985-1993, ended...
In this article, a Nigerian military system of governance is explicated. It was the dominant mode of governance in Nigeria until civilian rule was restored in 1999, initially under a former military ruler. Starting from the first military coup in January 1966, Nigeria experienced over 33 years of this system,...
This paper was written at the midway point in the governing of Nigeria by a paradoxical individual, Ibrahim Babangida. It should provoke further studies of his 8-year rule, 1985-1993, that seemed transformative during much of this period but ended in disarray and disappointment. The ideological orientation of the Nigerian economy;...
A long-running wager took place between the Babangida regime (1985-1993) and Nigerian civic, professional and political groups that the former would honor its commitment to usher in a Third Republic via free and fair elections. The June 12, 1993 elections were as free, fair and competently administered as could be...
When this testimony was given, there was still hope that Ibrahim Babangida would transfer the presidency to the elected Moshood Abiola before he left office on August 27, 1993. In that way, Nigeria would join the wave of post-Cold War democratizing nations. I had earlier called for a “transition in...
More than taking Nigeria back into the “dismal tunnel” of military rule, after seizing power in November 1993, Sani Abacha raced through the playbook he knew as a senior member of Babangida’s junta. Like Babangida, he pushed back the announced date for the return to civilian rule, launched an exercise...
This revised version of a paper presented at a conference at M.I.T. on State, Conflict, and Democracy in 1997 pulled together key dimensions of a Nigeria that had drifted far from constitutional and democratic governance. State and society had become increasingly criminalized; the educational system and other social sectors were...
This opinion piece, written by two long-term students of Nigerian politics, proposed a different course to the one taken following the death in mid-1998 of a military tyrant and the elected president he had imprisoned. It called for the creation of a caretaker national government of respected civilians that would...
This is the text of a public address at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs delivered soon after the inauguration of Nigeria’s Fourth Republic. It identified several priorities after fifteen and a half years of military government. The country’s eroded legislative, judicial, and other state institutions needed to be rebuilt...