Adebayo Olukoshi

Adebayo Olukoshi (born 1958) is a Nigerian political scientist, scholar of governance, and development expert. He has served as; Director of the United Nations African Institute for Economic Development and Planning (IDEP), Regional Director for Africa and West Asia at the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA), Distinguished Professor at the Wits School of Governance, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. His work focuses on democracy, governance, development, African political economy, and international relations. Quotes First and foremost, in both Ethiopia and Sudan, using them as illustrative examples of the overall situation in Africa, it seems to me that we are at the present time confronted with the challenge of building new energies behind the quest for continued democratic governance on the continent in the face of a resurgent authoritarianism around the world and across the continent. I am saying this in terms of my own sense of periodization of the contemporary transition to democratic governance on the continent. Let’s recall that the first wave of that transitional process began in the early 1990s when citizens took to the streets of the Republic of Benin against a long ruling dictatorship which had held sway for many decades and which effectively monopolized unaccountable power. Those demonstrations symbolized, as it were, the beginning of the end of military and single party rule on the continent. Adebayo interview response to the question 'Recent events in Sudan and Ethiopia have raised eyebrows internationally due to the current levels of violence. Both countries were praised just two years ago as very promising political transitions in the continent. How do you assess the current unstable situation in both contexts? Looking at the African continent at the time, in places like Zambia, the slogan “the hour has come” captured the imagination of the electorate and brought an end to the long rule of Kenneth Kaunda and the United National Independence Party, which he presided over. We have seen election management bodies come from there, asserting their autonomy and independence from partisan political forces, including the kinds of untoward influences which incumbents might want to exercise on them. One of the best examples celebrated in the 1990s was the Ghana Electoral Commission and its celebrated pioneer Chair, Afari Gyan. We saw an acceptance of and respect for term limitation in which presidents who served two successive terms stepped down voluntarily and without fuss from power at the end of their second term. For the first time, ruling parties defeated at the polls were replaced by opposition parties on the basis of agreed rules of electoral competition. Some countries had their first ever civilian to civilian transition during this period. I can cite many other examples, but these processes of reform and change also began to slow down and stall as we entered into the new millennium. The process of democratic deceleration and even reversal which we have seen has been accompanied by what I might call a complex of discontents. Adebayo interview response to the question 'What examples from this historical context would you highlight?' Discontents have played out at different levels. Democratic political transitions didn’t seem to have been full of motion but have not been consistently and universally accompanied by significant changes in the substance of power, politics and policy. Beyond the initial jubilation around the voting in of new faces, new political parties, respect for constitutional term limits, media freedom and licensing of civil society organizations to operate freely, the key concerns of social and economic livelihood and advancement have proved to be far more elusive. So although basic civil liberties and rights already enshrined in the new constitutions were largely respected for a period of time, there was a certain hollowness about politics that soon translated into an electoral fatigue. Adebayo interview response to the question 'So what hasn’t worked in recent years?' “Democratic political transitions didn’t seem to have been full of motion but have not been consistently and universally accompanied by significant changes in the substance of power, politics and policy” Adebayo interview response to the question 'So what hasn’t worked in recent years?' By the end of 2010, term limitations had been expunged from the constitutions, of a growing number of countries and incumbents were beginning to promote what has been described as a new presidentialism in which power is basically appropriated and concentrated in the presidency, reminiscent of the old “big man” dictatorships that we had during the period of single party and military rule. In the early phase of the transition from authoritarianism, and despite their imperfections, there was a general feeling that the first wave of elections that took place generally reflected the choice of the citizenry. A decade or so after, we have begun to see investments by political elites in the manipulation and rigging of elections in the classic ways in which we knew such political malpractices in the past. Adebayo interview response to the question 'Attempts to amend term limits seem to be at the center of the dispute, but what are the structural issues to be understood?' External links PANAFRICAN BILINGUAL ADEBAYO OLUKOSHI Category:1958 births Category:Living people Category:Academics from Nigeria Category:Political scientists from Nigeria Category:Economists from Nigeria