Federalist Deliberative Democracy in Nigeria: Challenges and Prospects

Abstract

Simply defined as a ‘conception of democratic politics in which decisions and policies are justified in a process of discussion among free and equal citizens or their accountable representatives’ (Gutman and Thompson, 2000, p. 161), deliberative democracy is now widely considered to be one of the leading models of democracy (Held, 2006). However, while engaging in various forms of deliberative democracy has increased in some countries since the 1990s, contributions to, and even the feasibility of, deliberative democracy in divided (multicultural) societies have as yet been studied and contested very little (Dryzek, 2005; O’Flynn 2006), especially in ethnically and religiously divided countries like Nigeria. To this end, the present chapter seeks to make a modest contribution to the literature on deliberative democracy in divided societies with specific reference to Nigeria, the world’s most populous black country. It argues that Nigeria’s ethnic and religious diversity and its federal political system demand a decentralized deliberative democratic model where state actors, institutions and citizens can interact effectively. The potential challenges facing deliberative democracy in Nigeria, not to mention the prospects for it and the very relevance of federalist deliberative democracy to the country, are analyzed within the context of Nigeria’s federal democratic framework. The chapter maintains that although Nigeria faces a myriad of challenges with respect to the possibility of engaging deliberative democracy, prospects abound for formulating various deliberative processes and incorporating them into its polity.