Politics And Corruption Trend In Nigeria’s Democracy: Assessment Of President Muhammadu Buhari Anti-Graft Regime, 2015-2018

Abstract

From inception, the history of the Nigerian state as a political entity has evidentially been a bewildering mixture of governance nightmare, administrative flaws, leadership ineptitude, political insincerity, fracture in democratic process, policy abortion or discontinuity, internal uproar, of course and most disheartening is public resource mismanagement. The combination of the above forces gave the Nigerian state her present coloration and character. Commencing the fourth republic from 1999-2015 under the political and administrative captainship of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), with strong evidences, there was high level of looting and misappropriation of  public treasuries along with outright lack of political dedication to untie the country from the apron string of poverty, unemployment, hunger and inequality. Remarkably, politics of do-or-die was the popular philosophy during this political epoch. Amidst these challenges and statehood difficulties, the government of President Muhammadu Buhari was officially birthed, precisely on 29^th May, 2015. This nascent government emerged with the promise of sweeping out mismanagement, restructuring political institutions and personnel and putting the Nigerian state on the right development track on the platform of accountability, transparency, and sound administrative ethics through the vehicle of anti-corruption administration. This paper is a bold attempt to assess the presence or absence of democratic parameter and ingredients such as freeness, fairness, objectivity, non-partisanship and mass participatory nature of the on-going anti-graft regime of President Muhammadu Buhari so as to make vital recommendation on how to achieve a better anti-corruption administration that is rooted in the culture of democracy