A review of The Open Sore of a Continent: A Personal Narrative of the Nigerian Crisis, by Wole Soyinka.
About the Author
Richard Joseph is John Evans Professor of International History and Politics at Northwestern University. He is the author of Democracy and Prebendal Politics in Nigeria (1987; reissued 2014). He is writing books on post-1975 Nigerian politics and society; and on governance, development, and the state in Africa.
The election cycle concluding in the spring of 2003 was a guarded success. High hurdles to better governance and democratic consolidation remain, but Nigerians can now face them with greater…
The failure of the elections has been partly mitigated by the hope of judicial review of electoral malfeasance, the stabilizing ingenuity of ethno-regional power-sharing, and renewed national discussions of electoral…
Election officials made strides toward secure voter identification, and a two-party system appears to be emerging, but the 2019 elections revealed continuing problems with vote-buying and violence.