“The Giant of Africa” and “Africa’s Success Story”: a Comparative Study of Democracy in Nigeria and Botswana

Nigeria and Botswana are famous for their sobriquets – while the former is often regarded as the ‘giant of Africa’; the latter is renowned as ‘Africa’s success story’, ‘African miracle’ and ‘Africa’s bastion of democracy’. This paper examines the fortunes of democracy in both countries with particular reference to the delivery of socio-economic and political goods. We argue that the delivery of socio-economic goods to Nigerians is almost exactly nil and that the country’s hybrid and militician democracy is a tragedy. On the other hand, we argue that although comparatively it still delivers substantial democratic gains, Botswana’s once ‘pure’ democracy is regressing particularly with regard to perpetual one party rule, ‘presidential strongman’ and growing inequality among others. We conclude that demographically and in ‘big brotherliness’, Nigeria qualifies as the ‘giant of Africa’ but with reference to qualitative governance, socio-economic development, functional institutions and delivery of the gains of democracy, Nigeria is a crippled giant and an eminent member of the committee of ‘failed democracies’. Its democratic regression in some core areas notwithstanding, relative to the ‘giant of Africa’ and other African states, Botswana still tolerably qualifies as ‘Africa’s success story’. The study relied on documentary data subjected to internal and external criticisms as well as textual and contextual analysis.