PRACTICE OF DEMOCRACY IN NIGERIA: CHALLENGES AND PROSPECTS

Abstract

Democracy as a system of government is an age long phenomenon that originated from ancient Greek. In the contemporary world over, experience showed democratic governance was popularly adopted in preference to any other system of government, probably because, it centres mainly on the people and gave room for adoption of fundamental human rights in its Constitution and the practice of the rule of law. Nigeria was not an exception to this practice; however the democratic governance in Nigeria is faced with series of challenges that prohibited the realization of the dividends and prospects despite the enormous human and material resources. This work was therefore set out to look at the challenges and prospects of democracy in Nigeria with an intent to proffer solutions to the challenges where necessary, in order to realize the prospects of democracy as we found in advanced countries like the United States of America, the United Kingdom and some developing African countries like Ghana and South Africa. The work adopted doctrinal methodology and relied on primary and secondary sources of information to drive home the points. The study among other things discovered that faulty constitution, bad government, corruption, insecurity, youth unemployment, poor adherence to the rule of law, human rights abuse, among other things were the major challenges to the prospects of democracy in Nigeria. The work thus recommended that restructuring the polity through a new Constitution, election of a good leadership through free and fair election, serious sanctions to corruption, well equipped and competent security agencies to tackle insecurity, tackling unemployment of youths and rendering listening ear to their problems, effective adherence to the rule of law and effective checks on human rights abuses and establishing stronger democratic institutions, would go long way to enhancing the dividends and prospects of democracy.