Political Culture, Leadership Crisis and Development Challenge in Nigeria: A Critical Analysis

Abstract

The challenge of leadership and development in Nigeria and a number of countries in Africa over the past several decades of independence has been a matter of tremendous public concern to which a great deal of scholarly efforts had been devoted. The situation has led many potentially great countries like Nigeria to be counted among some of the worst places in the world because of endemic poverty, unemployment, diseases and insecurity that ravage a large segment of the population. Efforts at interpreting the social forces propelling the pervasive poor quality leadership and development problems afflicting most parts of Africa, with special reference to Nigeria, tend to emphasize factors like colonialism, ethnic diversities, military interventions and multicultural realities. This paper argues that the emergence of these factors as sources of sociopolitical destabilization and development quagmire in Nigeria represents the consequences of the underlying political culture that evolved in the course of the country’s political development. Thus, the paper is an attempt to situate the challenge of poor quality leadership and its associated development challenge in Nigeria within the context of the prevailing political culture which tends to promote particularistic tendencies. The paper adopted Parson’s social system theory vis-à-vis pattern variables to provide theoretical elucidation, and drew attention to certain categorical imperativesthat can inspire the evolution of transformational political culture with social responsibility, transparency, accountability, ethics, discipline, fairness and collective interest as its essential ingredients.