Followership Imperative of Good Governance: Reflections on Nigeria’s ‘Second Chance’ at Democratization

Abstract

This paper examines the role of followership in democratization vis-à-vis good governance in Nigeria. The Nigerian Fourth Republic is burdened by followership deficit. The near under-emphasis of the role of followership in the democratization process in both formal and informal discourses with regards to Nigeria is disturbing. Democracy is a game of number and the only system of government that allows the masses to contract government. In fact, the followers in any democratic society remain the largest bloc. And on the basis of this numerical supremacy to leaders, they wield (or are supposed, in the Nigeria’s example, to wield) a lot of power in determining/constituting leadership, molding and shaping leadership, checkmating leadership and thereby stemming the tide of bad governance. The paper discovered that a whole lot of challenges, though surmountable, exist in the way of critical exercise of followership. However, the paper attempts a paradigm shift from seemingly unending scholastic debates on leadership as though such would bring good governance that has eluded the largest black nation in the world to solution-specific examination of curious, active, critical, interrogative and participatory followership as the harbinger of good governance.

Key words: Followership, democratization, Nigeria, good governance and development