Foreign Democratic Assistance and Democratic Consolidation in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic

Foreign democratic assistance is a strand of foreign policy adopted by governments and international organisations seeking to support the spread of democracy as a political system. While Nigeria has been one of the major recipients of this assistance, running into hundreds of billions of dollars and other non-monetary measures in 1999-2019, her democratic elections have failed to deliver increased stability and development. This raises the question as to what extent Nigeria’s democratic experience since 1999 is a reflection of the objectives of foreign democratic assistance to her. Highlighting the issue will allow policymakers and academics to accept that the flawed general elections since 1999 have continued to threaten Nigeria's fragile democratic experiment as a result of election irregularities rather than a lack of foreign democratic assistance. In achieving this, the study relied on content analysis, using personal observations and secondary sources. The realistic theory of change propounded by Anderson and a modification of Carol’s (1972) change model theory were used as the framework of analysis. The data was analysed qualitatively. With tables and simple percentages, it shows that despite the quantum of democratic assistance to Nigeria between 1999 and 2019, her political development has remained gloomy. Although the level of assistance may not be high enough to improve the entire electoral process in Nigeria, it has made an impact in those specific areas that the assistance is directed at. It also shows that Nigeria’s effort towards democratic consolidation is still not a reflection of the objective (s) of FDA because her electoral integrity is still threatened by many factors, such as the attitude of political leaders, electoral corruption, and so on. However, the study recommends that in order for FDA to be successful, the political elite's value orientation must change; the war on corruption must be pursued with vigour; government at all levels must be serious and pay more attention to the problem of poverty; and there must be greater harmonisation and alignment of national policies.