Democracy and Development: An Appraisal of Nigeria's Position in the Democracy Index

Abstract

This paper looks at the Nigeria's position on the democratic index with the objective of finding out whether twelve years of democratic rule has qualified Nigeria to be regarded as a democracy in the comity of nations. The method used was the democracy index with a weighted average based on the answers to 60 questions. The questions are grouped into five different categories which are electoral process and pluralism, civil liberties, functioning of government, political participation and political culture. The five categories as listed in the report are then averaged to find the democracy index for the country. We however found out that, Nigeria is still an authoritarian regime and not yet a democracy as claimed. Even though some formal institutions exist, it has little substance. We therefore recommend that, the citizens should not expect significant developments or dividend of democracy until Nigeria becomes a democracy.