Rotational Presidency by Anthony A. AkinolaReview by: Enoch N. OrlukarakaThe Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 34, No. 3 (Sep., 1996), pp. 542-543Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/161395 .

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542 REVIEWS

flowering of at least the rudiments of a new civil society (independent newspapers and magazines, and non-governmental groups dedicated to a wide variety of purposes), along with a civilian government at least marginally responsive to popular opinion, will enable the desert nation to move forward and avoid the 'misfortunes, bad calls, erroneous evaluations of the country's situation, and mismanagement' (p. 89) that characterised the I978-92 period of military rule. And finally, beyond the monograph's intelligent and balanced analysis, its extensive appendices and data base ensure that it will not only serve as a readable analysis of Mauritania and its history and problems, but also stand the test of time as a significant work of reference.

ANTHONY G. PAZZANITA

44 Oakridge Road, Wellesley Hills, Massachusetts 02i8i

Rotational Presidency by ANTHONY A. AKINOLA

Ibadan, Spectrum Books, I996, distributed by African Books Collective, Oxford. Pp. 79. /6.75/$1I2.50 paperback.

Anthony Akinola's premise is that Nigeria should be compartmentalized into identifiable regional groupings for the purpose of rotating the office of President of the 'nation'. The bedrock of his argument is that 'zoning' constitutes a way of overcoming the cleavages of ethnicity, regionalism, and religious bickering, so that each of the component units is provided with the opportunity of producing the Head of State. There is no doubt that the coups and counter-coups by the military, the civil war of I967-70, and the unresolved crisis over the annulment of the presidential elections ofJune I993, can be partly, if not primarily, explained by the growing competition for leadership among antagonistic groups in a severely divided post-colonial state. Similarly, ethnic-based political parties, as well as a series of calls for separation or confederation by frustrated leaders, have helped to exacerbate recurrent tensions in inter-ethnic relations.

Rotational Presidency offers an analysis of the most important political developments to have taken place in Nigeria since independence in order to explain the failed attempts to pattern democratic institutions on both the British parliamentary system and the American presidential variety. The latter can only be understood in light of that nation's history, and whilst the inhabitants 'admire strong leadership, their hatred for authoritarianism grew out of their colonial experience with the British monarchy'. Akinola goes on to claim in his introductory essay that although America is as heterogeneous as Nigeria, it possesses a unique 'inter-mixture of groups', and hence such concepts as 'black vote', 'white vote', 'Italian-American vote', and 'Irish- American vote' help to explain the 'parochial nature of American politics' (p. I 2). He makes the interesting point that the strength of ethnicity in the US has tended to be concealed because of the dispersed nature of its ethnic population.

Akinola's latest publication contains 20 of the short articles that enabled his views and campaigns to reach 'every nook and cranny of Nigeria through

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REVIEWS 543

diverse newspapers and magazines' (p. viii). As argued in i988:

We must be prepared to innovate ... The American presidential system, which is still complex to us, did not become a masterpiece suddenly... The founding fathers of America did not contemplate the ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious heterogeneity of 2oth century Nigeria while designing their political arrangement (p. 34).

Yet it is pertinent to remind ourselves that the Americans possess what is almost certainly the strongest economy in the world today, and that this acts as a veritable unifying factor - a grave omission on the part of Akinola, for it must be emphasised that merely possessing a good government can hardly engender a stable polity in the absence of a favourable economic climate. Accepting the fact, as the author puts it, that 'Nigeria is a segmented society, with the ethnic groups having their own exclusive territories' (p. I 2), does not detract from the validity of the proposition that there would have been less emphasis on such cleavages if both urban and rural areas throughout the whole country had been enjoying what is now known as 'sustainable development'. Were not ethnic tendencies at their lowest during the I970s? and was not this decade characterized by abundant resources and a highly buoyant economy?

The author's campaign for a 'home-grown' model of democracy started with 'Towards the Third Republic: zoning revisited', in The Guardian (Lagos), 7 June i 985, and was followed up by his now famous pamphlet, The Search for a Nigerian Political System (London, I 986). But the Political Bureau created that year by Ibrahim Babangida's regime did not seriously consider his initial suggestions, and it was not until eight years later that Akinola's perseverance was at last rewarded when the Constitutional Conference called by President Sani Abacha in I 994 decided to adopt 'rotational presidency' as the operational basis for the next civilian administration. When Justice Adolphus Karibi Whyte, the chairman, described the principle of rotation as 'the alchemy of our political instability', this was the clearest vindication yet of Akinola's contribution to the ongoing debate on the future direction of the Nigerian state.

Rotational Presidency is an important addition to the literature on constitutional democracy in Nigeria, not least since it does provide, as claimed in the publisher's blurb, 'the intellectual arguments and theoretical justification for this novel idea'. Yet it cannot be assumed that the booklet offers the most radical thinking on the socio-political and economic difficulties facing the 'giant' of Africa. Nigeria is a multi-ethnic and multi-religious state with differing cultures and beliefs. The peculiar features of this heterogeneous state cobbled together by the British colonial administration suggest that the solution to the problem of accommodation and peaceful co-existence does not lie in the imposition of a foreign political system. Readers of Akinola's essays must therefore endeavour to understand them in the context of Nigeria's idiosyncratic circumstances.

ENOCH N. ORLUKARAKA

Royal Holloway College, University of London, Egham, Surrey

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