Over the last decades, the most striking changes made by the World Bank and other development institutions are their commitments to improve the quality of governance and most importantly fighting corruption and focusing more on the developing Countries. Driven by case studies that developmental deficiencies in the developing Countries are due to the crisis of governance (see- Khan, 2002); As a result of this, good governance and democracy became a very comparative and embracing ideal admired by most Countries in the World, and has grown rapidly to become a major concern in analysis of what is missing in Countries struggling for economic and political development- the developing Countries (Nigeria).

A study of Africa's current strides towards democracy, good governance and the interposition of the civil society in the process. The authors identify and delineates the phases of these processes and examine key theoretical and methodological issues of the governance project. Also includes analysis of hitherto neglected issues such as gender, pastoralism, ethnicity, constitutionalism, local governance, the economy and the African Union. Reviews six country case studies on progress so far: Botswana, Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, Zambia and Ethiopia.

Since its independence from Britain in 1960, Nigeria has emerged as Africa's second largest economy and one of the biggest producers of oil in the world. Despite its economic success, however, there are deep divisions among its two hundred and fifty ethnic groups. Centered around three of the dominant themes of Nigeria's post-colonial narrative - ethnicity, democracy and governance, this is an accessible and comprehensive introduction to the history and events that have shaped these three areas. World-renowned expert in Nigerian history, Toyin Falola shows us how the British laid the foundations of modern Nigeria, with colonialism breading competition for resources and power and the widening cleavages between the Hausa-Fulani, Yoruba, and Igbo ethnic groups that had been forced together under British rule, the choice of federalism as a political system, and the religious and political pluralism that have shaped its institutions and practices. Using an examination of the outcomes of this history, manifested in hunger, violence, poverty, human rights violations, threats of secession and corruption, where power and resources are used to reproduce underdevelopment, Falola offers insights and recommendations for the future of policy and the potential for intervention in the country.

The overthrow in January 1966 of Nigeria’s First Republic erased what had been regarded as perhaps the most promising prospect for liberal democracy in post-colonial Africa. Marking the sweeping failure of parliamentary institutions across a continent of new nations, it accelerated the slide into a ghastly civil war. Class, Ethnicity and Democracy is the first scholarly study to analyze the evolution, decay, and failure of Nigeria’s First Republic and to weigh this crucial experience against theories of the conditions for stable democratic government. Rejecting explanations that focus on political culture, political institutions, or ethnic competition and conflict, Larry Diamond identifies the root of Nigeria’s democratic failure in the interrelationship between class, ethnic and state structures. This led the emergent dominant class in each region to mobilize and exploit ethnicity and to trample the democratic process in furious competition for state control, since that control was the primary means for accumulating wealth and consolidating class dominance. Tracing the polarization of conflict and the erosion of legitimacy through five major crises, Diamond presents a new methodology for analyzing the persistence and failure of democracies and points to the relationship between state and society as a crucial determinant of the possibility for liberal democracy.