Democratic Theory and the Crisis of Representation in Post-Colonial African States: The Nigerian Experience

This study contributes to democratic theory by developing an original account of the crisis of political representation in post-colonial African states, using the Nigerian experience as the primary site of theoretical development while drawing on comparative evidence from Ghana, Kenya, and Senegal. Democratic theory as developed in its dominant Western liberal tradition assumes conditions of consolidated statehood, individualised citizenship, and civic nationalism that are not met in post-colonial African contexts where political community is constituted through ethnic, regional, and religious identities embedded in pre-colonial and colonial institutional legacies. Drawing on post-colonial political theory, the African political thought tradition, and the comparative democratic theory literature, the study argues that existing theories of representation fail to account for the distinctive representational logic of post-colonial African democracies, where ethnic and regional bloc representation serves as the primary organising principle of political legitimacy. The study develops an original theoretical contribution designated the post-colonial representational bargain framework, which reconceptualises democratic legitimacy in African multiethnic states as deriving from the perceived fairness of power-sharing arrangements among ethnic and regional collectivities rather than from individual voting rights alone. The framework is grounded empirically through in-depth analysis of Nigeria's rotational presidency system, federal character implementation, and the politics of vice-presidential selection, drawing on elite interview research and constitutional analysis. The study makes original contributions to democratic theory, African political thought, and comparative constitutionalism. Keywords: democratic theory, representation, post-colonial Africa, Nigeria, post-colonial representational bargain