Democratisation, democracy and socio-legal aspects of political parties in Nigeria

law and democracy

Abstract

There is a cordial interaction among the three-some regimes of ‘democratization,’ ‘democracy’ and ‘socio-legal’ aspects of political parties in Nigeria. A political party is a legitimate association of free men and women who congregate and agglomerate for the purpose of wrestling power through the ballot box and forming the government in a democratic state. Democratisation as a matter of fact, is the harbinger of democracy which is a form of government. Democracy is about developing the political culture or specific behavioural norms that protect individual and group rights in a political process. Significantly, democracy is that form of government in which the sovereign power resides in and is exercised by the whole body of free citizens directly or indirectly through a system of representation as distinguished from monarchy, aristocracy or oligarchy. Consequent on the foregoing, the authors argued that a political party must exhibit if not all, but some of the three-some regimes of democratisation, democracy and socio-legal ingredients as well as check the dominance of godfathers in order to be viable and command the compliance of members. The paper therefore concluded that certain challenges such as the effect of godfatherism on democratisation as well as internal democracy operated to hamper the smooth running of the socio-legal aspect of good governance in the entirety of the Nigerian political space.