DEMOCRACY AND THE CHALLENGES OF NATIONAL INTEGRATION IN NIGERIA’S FOURTH REPUBLIC

Abstract

This study discusses democracy and the challenges of national integration in Nigeria. Since the inception of democracy in Nigeria’s fourth republic, Nigerian governments, past and present, have made serious efforts to propagate policies and programmes that are geared towards national integration. This study examines democracy and national integration in Nigeria and also investigates the challenges of national integration in Nigeria. This study adopts secondary sources of data collection, from books and other documentary materials, especially internet materials. Therefore, the theory of integration is adopted as the theoretical framework of analysis. The study opines that practice of democracy failed to deliver dividends of democracy to Nigerians, due to ethnicity, corruption, bad leadership, insecurity, poverty, weak institutions, executive impunity has all become the features of democracy in our current dispensation, be that as it may, national integration is been threatened. This study recommends that achieving national integration in a democratic set up, is dependent on escaping the challenges of ethnicity, corruption, bad political leadership, weak institutions and others. Nigeria must therefore settle for true federalism and good leadership devoid of any bias and sentiments to enhance democracy and national integration to a desirable level. It concludes that to claim the victory for an integrated Nigeria, the people must lead the vanguard of change and that for the continued existence of Nigeria to be guaranteed consensual agreement must be reached by its diverse ethnic nationalities.