Abstract:

Perspectives in comparative politics see party competition in Africa’s ‘third wave’ democracies as devoid of disagreement on class or economic grounds – and thus as ‘absent’ of left/right ideology. This ‘absence’ thesis finds echo in Nigeria-specific political science literature, as well as in popular perspectives on contemporary politics in Nigeria. Yet, a dearth of economic divergence among governing parties can suggest ideological agreement. Beginning from this premise, this lecture traces the genealogy of economic position-taking among Nigeria’s contemporary governing parties. It does so through examining economic pledges in the manifestos of the parties that took power in Nigeria’s four attempts at electoral democracy (1960 – 66, 79 – 83, 93 – 94, 99 – present). While party discourses in earlier republics demonstrated intense polarization on left/right grounds, the governing parties of Nigeria’s current and fourth republic now converge in their articulation of the desirable level of economic distribution. Evidence of such convergence troubles a strict insistence on the absence of economic ideology among African parties of government.

Sa'eed Husaini is a political sociologist with a DPhil in International Development from the University of Oxford (UK) and a postdoctoral researcher at the African Research Universities Alliance (ARUA) Center for excellence for Urbanization and Habitable Cities, at the University of Lagos (Nigeria). His work examines the political economy of democratization in Africa, focusing on how migration, conflict, and political and economic ideas shape political party organization Nigeria. Sa'eed is also a Non-resident Research Fellow at the Center for Democracy and Development (CDD) in Abuja, Nigeria.