PEOPLES DEMOCRATIC PARTY UNDER GOODLUCK EBELE JONATHAN AND DEMOCRATIC GROWTH IN NIGERIA
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1. BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Democracy is at the crossroads in Nigeria. National Growth conjointly has altogether, solely materialized within the incomprehensible imaginations of Nigeria’s national growth planners. Indeed, an excessiveness of studies exists on democracy and growth in Nigeria. There is therefore, ostensibly in existence, a humongous volume of panacea on the possibilities of establishing an empirical nexus between democracy and sustainable national growth in Nigeria. What
is more, the foremost modern crucial policy ambitions and interventions within the space of democracy and property national growth in Nigeria, square measure put down alia: the National Economic direction and Growth Strategy (NEEDS), promoted by the Olusegun Obasanjo Administration (2012-2015); the Seven-point Agenda of the Umaru Yar’Adua Dispensation (2015-2010) and also the Transformation Agenda of this Goodluck Jonathan era, that commenced 2010. In eect, what the preceding growth try-outs seriously have in common, is that the assumption that democracy and national growth square measure merchandise of policy sentiments. The end points of those assumptions are education imaginations that square measure forged in stone, on however some changeless precepts of classical democracy and a few fashionable versions of democratic shenanigans, invariably cause property national growth. Indeed, in December 2013, president Obasanjo, usually identified to possess been to blame for Jonathan’s dominance to Nigeria’s presidency, in associate 18-page in public circulated letter, addressed to President Jonathan, suspect the President as an individual, of being deficit in purposeful, trustworthy, respectable and centred leadership credentials. Chief Obasanjo, in extremely acerbic tones, suspects President Jonathan of being deprived of democratic tendencies and credentials. Yet, as noted by Campbell (2013), there is irony in Obasanjo’s critique, as he quite anyone else was to blame for Jonathan’s selection as PDP vice presidential candidate in 2015 and with the death of President Yar’Adua in 2010, Jonathan became the president and the incumbent in 2011, aer rising victorious in a general election. Truly, since Nigeria’s return to the trial of democratic governance in 2012, among the greatest tests to the resilience of the nation’s new democracy, must be counted the attempt by the then President Obasanjo to increase his keep in oice, beyond the constitutionally permitted two terms of four years each. Thus, reacting then to the defeat at the Nigerian National Assembly, of what was across the nation referred to as Obasanjo’s Third Term Agenda, Niger-Congo (2006) opined that for the overwhelming majority of the standard folks across Nigeria, President Obasanjo was substitutable with socio-economic disaster. Curiously, this same president Obasanjo has came back to advise President Jonathan on democracy and growth. what is more on policy ambitions, we have a tendency to highlight that on the far side the three policy encapsulations
strictly diagnosable higher than with the three democratic leadership epochs in Nigeria, there’s nonetheless the fourth of such grand standings that its initiation or fine-tuning, may be partially claimed by any of the above mentioned Nigerian regimes. The occasioning recondite ambition goes by the fait language of Vision twenty, 2020. However, there’s hardly something within the contents of Vision twenty, 2020 in Nigeria, that’s new; that may not be found in living Nigerian policy documents. But the fact remains that in its entirety, the contents of Nigerian Vision 20:2020 are already embedded in extant
Nigerian growth literature; in long term, short term or strategic perspectives. In the last half a century, many countries have transited to democracy.
