POLITICAL PARTIES AND NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN NIGERIA

PROBLEMS AND PROSPECTS

Abstract

Political parties and democracy all over the globe play a vital role in the development of society. This is because they create room for people participating and representing their followers in the modern day democracy. It is also view that political parties recruits and present political leaders during elections in order to represent their interest. However, political parties and democracy in Nigeria are weak severally in discharging their functions and responsibilities toward national development. Perhaps this is not unconnected with prolong military rule and frequent disengagement of political parties and democracy in Nigeria. These political parties and democracy instead of strengthening the core values of national development rather a bottleneck to growth and development in Nigeria. The paper examine the functions and evolution of political parties and democracy in Nigeria as well as major problems confronting them. The paper will adopts the structural functional theory to explain how political parties and democracy failed in performing their functions and responsibilities. Primary/secondary data will be adopted for this study. Adopted for these study the findings also revealed that there is poor economic stability, corruption, lack of good governance, insecurity, inflation, lack of accountability, and transparency among others social vices. The paper will also asses the performances of political parties in Nigeria and it’s attendants problems. The paper recommends in order to achieve development in Nigeria.