Nigerian Political Leaders: Visions, Actions, And Legacies

Nigerian Political Leaders is a collection of comprehensive and well-researched essays on selected political leaders, both civilian and military written by notable scholars. While many leaders have ruled Nigeria since 1960, not all have made significant contributions to good governance and nation building. Because of leadership challenges, the search for sustainable democracy and political stability has been quite elusive. These problems have been compounded by the vastness of the country as well as its multi-ethnic composition, religious divide, and the recurrent intervention of the military in politics. Thus, the result has been an unending difficulty in establishing a workable political schema for an enduring unity. Given the series of political and religious disturbances, civil war, economic meltdown, plundering of national resources, and frequent change of government, are Nigerians as a people simply ungovernable or is poor governance the result of the failure of leadership? These are some of the questions that this book addresses.