Democratization under Military Tutelage: Crisis and Consensus in the Nigerian 1979 Elections

The building of the Second Republic required a military government, which had been deeply engaged in shaping the Federation over almost fifteen years, performing as an impartial umpire in the electoral choice of its successors. This complex process is dissected in this article together with an analysis of the relative strengths of the five competing parties and their electoral performance. The significant role of personalities, persistent ethnic and other sectional constituencies, and the re-emergence of familiar party alliances, showed how much the civilian politicians had to contend with after a long period of exclusion from power