Nigeria and ‘Negotiated Elections’: Examining the Impact of Rotational Presidency on Peace, the National Question, and Development

Abstract

Nigeria is a country consistently tilting towards one violent situation or another. Since its independence in 1960, Nigeria has witnessed numerous ethnoreligious conflicts that have threatened its corporate existence. For example, age-long feelings of relative deprivation by certain sections of the country, have given rise to the continuous reference to a need to address the national question: a phenomenon that describes the aggregation of concerns by the different nationalities on how they can or should cohabit in the same federation. However, elections, and the entire electoral process, often serve as precipitates of ethnoreligious conflicts in Nigeria. Aside from the tensions that always sprout about who becomes what, there is a more prominent challenge of where the candidate comes from. Thus, elections in Nigeria often get reduced to geographical linings of candidates, rather than their competence or political ideology. This is often festered by the need to provide opportunities for all geographical sections of the country to produce the President, thus giving rise to the idea of a rotational presidency as a negotiated approach. The article examined the rotational presidency, vis-à-vis its implication for inclusiveness, peace, the national question, and development in Nigeria. The study utilised historical materials, elite theory, and the consociational model of power sharing to explore how the political activities towards elections have shifted the attention of the populace away from the pedigree and the leadership potentials of the aspirants/candidates to their ethnic and religious backgrounds. The study suggests how good leaders can emerge without jettisoning inclusiveness.