Nigeria: The state of democracy

West Africa’s oil-rich giant is convulsed over the president’s plans to run for a third term in office. Ron Singer maps the debates among political and civil-society activists who are asking if Nigerians can escape from the legacy of “one-man democracy”. As citizens prepare to return to the polls in 2007, Nigeria’s future hangs in the balance. A current initiative to change the constitution so that President Olusegun Obasanjo could run for a third term threatens to turn the nation into another of those familiar African one-man “democracies”, such as Uganda, ruled for twenty years now by Yoweri Museveni. Alternately, the initiative could plunge Nigeria into chaos.