POLITICAL BANDITRY IN THE NIGERIAN DEMOCRACY: ITS EFFECTS TOWARDS NATION BUILDING IN NIGERIA

Abstract

The art of nation building involves a lot of processes in the life of any nation, these processes normally start from independence to the building of political stability in any country. These processes include formation and building of strong institutions and pillars of democracy. It is believed that the problem of Nigeria in the art of nation building is the problem of leadership, but it goes beyond leadership because there are causes of that bad leadership. One will immediately ask, does it mean, that Nigeria as a nation lacks citizens who can lead the country properly? The problem of Nigerian democracy ranges from different aspects of her pillars or institutions of democracy being inefficiently built and managed by the Nigerian government since the creation of Nigeria as a nation. These inefficiencies metamorphosed into different kinds of problem which is bedeviling Nigeria as a nation as of today. Hence, no single leader in any administration can single-handedly revert the bad situation of governance in Nigeria. This paper, therefore, examines the negative roles that political banditry has played and still playing in Nigerian nation-building toward sustainable democracy. This paper adopted the philosophical approach to study and analyze the contemporary challenges and consequences which political banditry has pushed Nigerian democracy into. This research argued and suggested that without meaningful reforms in all areas of Nigeria's political institutions and the upholding of hard work, political banditry will continue to be a scourge on Nigerian democracy.