Throughout the last 10 years, Nigeria and Kenya have been partly free. Corruption is the greatest indicator among both for the lack of democracy. In Nigeria, corruption stems from the problem with oil, it leads to political violence, repression and unchecked government power. In Kenya, corruption arises from economic interests, causing political instability and hindering development. In addition to that, both experience electoral corruption. Conversely, civil societies active participation in the government propels each country towards a “thicker” democracy. Even though Nigeria and Kenya are thin democracies, their high levels of corruption in their government inhibits their ability of becoming free democracies.
While both Kenya and Nigeria are partly free, historically, Kenya 's freedom score is lower than Nigeria 's. High levels of corruption are prevalent in both Nigeria and Kenya, however, the oil curse in Nigeria further stimulates corruption which impairs their countries democracy. Nigeria’s economy is the second largest in Africa and it continues to grow by 6% a year. This growth is dominated by the production of oil. Oil accounts for more than 98% of export revenues. Oil wealth is the main source of corruption in Nigeria, it encompasses political violence, and repression (Nigeria Freedom House). Diamond accounts that among the 23 countries dominated by oil today, none of them are democracies, he claims that democracy can begin to mature only when oil declines in a
There are few nation-states that one could point to as being truly “corruption-free” (Denmark hosts the most corruption-free gov’t according to Transparency International’s 2014 Corruption Perceptions Index). However, this is a trait that holds back the growth of the whole of society, weakening the disadvantaged and emboldening the powerful. As Transparency International goes on to state:
oil in Nigeria. Nigeria’s large supply of high quality crude oil helped Shell climb to the top,
corruption” (Welsh and Woods, 2007, xi-xii). While the requirements do not explicitly state that these countries which have stable and effective government institutions need to be democratic, the features of governments who meet the requirements of governments giving aid (these requirements are often
In recent times, a lot of countries in Africa practice a federal system of government where a mandated person is elected and in power for four years, but will not leave power because of corruption and oppression, making it difficult to create a room for a change. Most presidents will remain in power for decade’s threatening its people, oppressing and creating division amongst its citizens, thus democracy is abused. Most times, the president of 80% of countries in Africa, divert funds for its state and country into their own personal accounts, leaving people to die of
The Republic of Niger, a poor, landlocked country, located in the heart of Sub-Saharan West Africa. Niger has seen its fair share of change throughout the decades; moving away from the control of the French Parliament in 1960, Niger formally declared its independence. Despite this bold act of independence, Niger would not see its first steps towards democracy until the early 1990’s, when they held their first open election as a free state. However, even with the empowerment of the people in a democratic government, Niger has seen itself nearly torn apart as a result constant coups, that have occurred as recently as 2010. Such instability has led to incredulous amounts of corruption and poverty, within the Niger government. This lack of stability and constant turnover in government, has been a driving factor behind the lack of resources available for education in Niger.
Nigeria’s democracy has struggled and has a grim future due to the high social and religious turmoil. The relations of the inter-elite has no evidence to show that it is conducive to democracy; France in the late 1800s was ruled by the elite and the king and the peasant class was what brought the uprising of the route towards democracy. For these reasons and many more the conditions stated above are not as relevant to the establishment of a democracy as external influences of a democratized country onto a non-democratized country. Before using specific country case studies we must first define what is a democracy. According to Mark Kesselman, Joel Krieger and William A. Joseph a true democracy has all of the following: political accountability, political competition, political freedom and political equality.
The Nigerian economy has quite the surplus of natural resources they offer the potential for economic growth. “Crude oil accounted for over 95% of exports and over 65% of government revenue in 2004;” Nigeria is number eight in the world's exporter for oil. But agriculture still is a big part in the basic economic activity for the Nigerians.
Nigeria is an Agricultural and oil rich nation but characterised by Political instability, corruption, poor
Nigeria is Africa’s leading producer of oil and the seventh largest producer of crude oil in the world, and equally endowed with other numerous natural resources. But rather than utilizing its resources for maximum development, the country is unfortunately bedevilled with how to efficiently and effectively distribute oil revenues in an equitable manner. The revenue allocation phenomenon in Nigeria is basically the issue of distribution of national (resources) revenue, mobilized by the central federal government. And as far as the revenue allocation debacle is concerned, the haggling is between those who bake the national cake (major contributors to national revenue) and those at the helm of affairs to allocate it. There
This paired with poor law enforcement yields an impossibly hard to get rid of corruption. In Kenya, political corruption has grown rampant. People, who are supposed to be representing the interests of their constituency, instead take money from the constituents to keep their representative positions.
The Federal Republic of Nigeria, known as Nigeria, is located on the African continent and borders on the south the Gulf of Guinea, on the east Cameroon, on the northeast Chad, Niger on the north, and Benin on the west.
Corruption can be defined as the use of entrusted power to accumulate public wealthy for personal benefit. Corruption is not peculiar to any country, continent or state; it is sure a global issue which is an endemic to all government all over the world. However, corruption is prevalent in the Niger delta region of Nigeria; public officers in this oil producing state of Nigeria are corrupt. Consequently, it has defied the Niger delta from developing politically and economically which has left the states reputation in a mess. Radicalization of youths, abject poverty and -political instability are the three leading effects of corruption in the Niger delta region of Nigeria.
Evidence suggests that Nigeria’s poor oil management is due to institutional and governance reasons rather than economic mismanagement alone, and corruption and the rentier nature of the state are important part of the issue; Watts (2008) categorizes Nigeria as a “rentier petrostate”. Sala-i-Martin and Subraiman (2016) main argument in their study is that the country’s mediocre long run economic performance are due to oil waste and corruption, rather than the Dutch disease effect. Natural resources lead to rent-seeking or what they call “the voracity effect”, and more than oil itself it is poor institutional quality in the country which contributed to poor economic performance with an estimation of 0.5 percent lower
Democracy has been familiarized as being the essential goal of any political institution. A government system modeled of the people, by the people and for the people is a highly attractive concept to most developing states that suffer from governments that still control the lives of its citizens. However, such states struggle to enable the process of formally consolidating their government. That is to say, despite many developing nations adapting the idea of democracy, they still face challenges that prevent them from being recognized as a democratic state. In fact, very few “new democratic” nations are believed to have a strong and secure system, leaving others to be viewed as only “condemned’” to remain democratic” while they “muddle through as ‘unconsolidated democracies’” (Diamond, 1997, p. 47). Where societies expected a state with increased individual liberty, protection from abuse of power, new economic and political opportunities, they instead encountered a poorly institutionalized regime lacking traits of good governance. A variety of arguments are provided to explain why such nations struggle to mirror the western states in the promotion of democracy. Of these many issues, political corruption is deemed to be a leading cause to why democratic consolidation remains elusive in most developing countries. Corruption plays a staggering role in stalling democratic consolidation in a number of ways. High levels of corruption are evidently associated with
In a village far away, there once lived a girl whose alias was Eira. Eira appeared to be commended by many others, but had yet to discover a gentleman that would dote her as much as she will dote him. Until one day her life took a turn for the preponderant.