Ethnic Politics and Party Development in Nigeria

Abstract

The conventional wisdom that democracy progress is contingent on cleavages within ethnicity, and not between ethnicities, characterises the study of democracy in multi-ethnic states. As a consequence, we have lost sight of the usefulness of ethnic politics in the analysis of democracy development in divided societies. Using an historical-comparative approach, this article attempts to recover ethno-nationalism as a useful category for explaining party development. It examines party development from 1960-2015 in Nigeria to demonstrate how ethno-nationalism presses forward competitive party politics. The article concludes that an alternative could be ethno-nationalism laid the foundation for the progression towards ‘party government’ which is the predominant institutional form of contemporary democracy.