PARTY POLITICS, ELECTORAL PROCESS AND TRANSITIONAL DEMOCRACY: A COMPRATIVE STUDY OF NIGERIA AND GHANA UNDER FOURTH REPUBLIC

Abstract

Ghana and Nigeria are two countries in the West African sub-region that share significant historical similarities like British colonialism, nationalism, economic crisis, prolonged military rule, multi-party democracy and are in their fourth republics. With the global democratization process, Ghana and Nigeria successfully made the transition to civil rule in 1992 and 1999 respectively and are rated differently on the democratization scale. While the former is rated high, the latter is rated low in comparative ranking within the same period of democratization. This paper sets out to assess party politics and electoral processes in transitional democracies: A comparative study of Nigeria and Ghana under fourth republic. The paper adopts secondary source and adopts structural functional theory for its analysis. Also, the paper finds that in Ghana the virtue of the Electoral Commission Act of 1992, the chairman and members of the Commission are appointed by the president but are accountable to the parliament, whereas in Nigeria chief Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) chairman is also appointed by the president subject to senate approval but the ruling party and the president have great influence on the chairman as well as the conduct of the elections. The paper recommends that efforts should be made as much as practicable to make elections less hostile and crisis prone. It is absolutely necessary for the government to ensure that political leaders emerge through democratic procedures in every round of elections.