Politics

By Seye Bassir

• Title: How to Win Elections in Africa
  
• Author: Chude Jideonwo with Adebola Williams
• Publisher: Kamsi Farafina
• Number of pages: 280
• Year of publication: 2017
• Category: Politics

How does one win elections in Africa? A humorous answer to this question might be that you do not. Chude Jideonwo in his book, How to Win Elections in Africa, writes that the African continent is ‘mostly defined by dictatorship’, despite an ‘exceptionally high number of elections’ having held in recent years. A good extension of this point would be that several recent elections across Africa have been flawed or have been smokescreens to create false legitimacy for undemocratic governments. More…

By Tunji Olalere 

• Title: Class, Ethnicity and Democracy in Nigeria: The Failure of the First Republic
  
• Author: Larry Diamond
• Publisher: Nigeria Next Quarter
• Number of pages: 376
• Year of publication: 2015
• Category: Politics

‘If all moral and material advantages depend on those who hold power, there is no baseness that will not be resorted to in order to please them; just as there is no act of chicanery or violence that will not be resorted to in order to attain power’ – Gaetano Mosca, The Ruling Class.

The story of Nigeria is one of the great tragedies of the 20th century. Captured in verse, in plays and prose, polemics and paintings, it has intrigued generation after generation of thinkers and players how a geographically endowed country, with one of the richest deposits of natural and human resources, has stumbled from misfortune to disaster, from self-mutilation to near-annihilation, and continues to totter on, swaying from the intoxication of empty vainglory, on a path of under-achievement. More…

By Jumoke Verissimo

• Title: With My Head above the Parapet: An Insider Account of the ANC in Power
• Author: Ben Turok
• Publisher: Jacana Media (Pty) Ltd
• Number of pages: 214
• Year of publication: 2014
• Category: Politics

‘But there is no room for sentimentality in politics and I am in no mood to put a rosy gloss on where we are now’ (p 11).

This quote from the ‘Introduction’ in Ben Turok’s book, With My Head above the Parapet: An Insider Account of the ANC in Power, prepares the reader for an insightful procedure on the economy and politics of the ANC in power, based on the experience of a veteran and active member of the party. More…