ABSTRACT
After three decades of authoritarian rule and a general preoccupation with issues of economic development, scholarly attention has now underscored the significance of democratic participation and governance in African states. This shift in scholarly discussions of African politics generally emphasises the interaction between major global forces and internal political and constitutional developments in the evolving struggle for democracy. In Nigeria, the interconnections between class, professional and communal factors on the one hand, and the ambiguities and uncertainties of globalisation on the other, have had serious implications for the conceptualisation of structures of society and the advancement of popular democracy. For the first time since independence, the notion of democracy transcended the elaborate constitutional manoeuvres dominated by an ethnoregional political class. Despite a carefully managed transition programme preoccupied primarily with mediating political and economic conflicts among major ethnic constituencies, a vibrant democratic movement has, since the late 1980s, articulated the pressing economic and political concerns of Nigeria’s complex and varied structures of society.
