Abstract
On 27 February 1999, Nigerians went to the polls to choose a new president. Former military Head of State (1976–79) and retired army General Olusegun Obasanjo, of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), defeated Chief Olu Falae, the joint candidate of the Alliance for Democracy (AD) and the All People’s Party (APP) to emerge victorious. Obasanjo’s election was the culmination of a series of elections put in place by General Abubakar, who succeeded General Sanni Abacha, following his sudden death on 8 June 1998, apparently from a nocturnal heart attack. The news of Abacha’s death was received internationally with relief. In Nigeria it was welcomed with bizarre celebrations, as thousands of Nigerians poured into the streets of its major cities to jubilate over this most welcome demise of their ruler. In the Muslim city of Ilorin in central Nigeria the crowd of celebrants was estimated at about 10 000. Anyone familiar with the turn of events in Nigeria since 1993 was not surprised at this response.
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Notes
Civil society in this chapter is defined as “the realm of organized social life that is voluntary, self-generating, [largely] self-supporting, autonomous from the state, and bound by a legal order or set of shared rules … it involves citizens acting collectively in a public sphere …[as] an intermediary entity, standing between the private sphere and the state.” Larry Diamond, “Rethinking Civil Society: Toward Democratic Consolidation,” Journal of Democracy, 5, 3 (July 1994), 5.
See also N. Chazan, “Africa’s Democratic Challenge: Strengthening Civil Society and the State,” World Policy Journal, 9 (Spring 1992), 279–308.
On popular culture see C. Mukerji and M. Schudson (eds), Rethinking Popular Culture: Contemporary Perspectives in Cultural Studies (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1991), pp. 1–55,
and the interesting introductory essay by Karin Barber, “Popular Arts in Africa,” Africa, 30, 3 (September 1987), 1–78.
For more on the historical origins and development of Nigeria as a political entity see Funso Afolayan, “Nigeria: a Political Entity and a Society,” in Paul A. Beckett and Crawford Young (eds), Dilemmas of Democracy in Nigeria (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 1997), pp. 45–64.
On the failure of Nigeria’s First Republic see R. L. Sklar, Nigerian Political Parties: Power in an Emergent Nation (Princeton, NY: Princeton University Press, 1963)
and L. Diamond, Ethnicity and Democracy in Nigeria (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1988).
On the collapse of the Second Republic see T. Falola and J. Ihonvbere, The Rise and Fall of Nigeria’s Second Republic, 1979–1983 (London: Zed Books, 1985)
and R. A. Joseph, Democracy and Prebendal Politics in Nigeria: The Rise and Fall of the Second Republic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).
F. J. Ramsay, Africa: Global Studies (Guilford, CT: Duskin/McGraw-Hill, 1993, 1997), pp. 54–7.
See also World Bank, Nigeria Structural Adjustment Program: Policies, Implementation, and Impact (Washington, DC: World Bank, 1994).
For these statistics from the Federal Ministry of Health, Lagos, 1990, see Deji Popoola, “Nigeria: Consequences for Health,” in Aderanti Adepoju (ed.), The Impact of Structural Adjustment on the Population of Africa (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, for the United Nations Population Fund, 1993), pp. 93–6.
For instance, one of the 1989 riots was provoked by reports in some Nigerian newspapers that a United States-based magazine, Ebony, had named Babangida as one of the richest African rulers. Fifty-five people died in the riot. See Larry Diamond, “Nigeria’s Third Quest for Democracy,” Current History, 90 (May 1991), 203.
Julius Ihonvbere, “A Critical Evaluation of the 1990 Failed Coup in Nigeria,” Journal of Modern African Studies, 29, 4 (December) 1991, 601–26.
Tell, 26 April 1993, p. 21. For an explanation of the election crisis and the problem of ethnicity see C. S. Whitaker, The Politics of Tradition: Continuity and Change in Northern Nigeria, 1946–66 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970).
On the establishment of the Civil Liberty Organization see C. Nwanko, “The Civil Liberty Organization and the Struggle for Human Rights and Democracy in Nigeria,” in L. Diamond, The Democratic Revolution: Struggles for Freedom and Pluralism in the Developing World (New York: Freedom House, 1992), pp. 105–23.
M. Bratton, “Civil Society and Political Transition in Africa,” in J. W. Herbeson, D. Rothchild and N. Chazan (eds), Civil Society and the State in Africa (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1994), p. 64.
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Afolayan, F. (2000). Structural Adjustment, Military Dictatorship, Civil Society, and the Struggle for Democracy in Nigeria. In: Kleinberg, R.B., Clark, J.A. (eds) Economic Liberalization, Democratization and Civil Society in the Developing World. International Political Economy Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-62818-6_7
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