The Futility of Nigeria’s Flirtation with American Politico-Systemic Model: The Imperative of Political Culture

Abstract

This paper focuses on the politico-cultural explanation for the failure of Nigeria to replicate and sustain the American political type democratic system. It looked as such variables as their history, culture, religion, and political culture itself as its units of analysis. Our aim and objective, is to demonstrate that, like revolution, political systems are outgrowths of political and socio-cultural experiences of peoples, and thus may not be sustainably imported or transferred from one country to another. The work is purely comparative, and descriptively analytical. Data for its development were generated from secondary qualitative sources. It concludes that there are multi-pronged factorial disparities in Nigeria’s political evolution vis-à-vis the America’s, most of which have both historic and politico-cultural nexus. It therefore suggests that Nigeria should look inwards to appreciate its unique history and culture for enduring political model than flirting unsustainably with the American political systemic model which, itself, provides an explanation for its sustenance and relative stability.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n3p229