AFRICA’S DEVELOPMENT PROJECT AND THE POLITICAL ANTIGEN

That Africa’s effort at achieving development has yielded very meagre result is not surprising; the truth is that pre- and post-independence development effort has been largely challenged by a myriad of problems, chief of which is elite power politics. By its character, the African state has remained statist, with the major, and indeed only preoccupation of the colonialist and the post-independence nationalist-cum-elite being power ascription. In the deep immersion in power pursuit, development was hardly or scarcely in the agenda of the African state, irrespective of the era: colonial or post-independence. This study contends that although much has been said in the polemics, the role of the elite power struggle in the underdevelopment of Africa remains inexhaustively explored. Given the historical and qualitative nature of the study, much reliance is placed on descriptive research design. Modernization and elite theoretical foundations provide useful insights into the imperative of “transiting” Africa to the modern status of the West. From the plethora of literature and analysis, key among the findings include: first, that colonial administrations focused on self-serving power grabbing activities, to the prejudice of development; second, even the successor-African nationalists retained the statist character of the colonial administration; and third, development was hardly listed in the agenda either by the colonialists or African elite. In conclusion, the discontent and pervasive frustration of the marginalised Africans through the statist oppression of the ruling faction of the elite gave rise to aggravation of the operating centrifugal forces. The end-product was massive resentment and emergence of violent protests, reinforced by military interventions in' politics, in post-independence African countries, from the 1960s, as exemplified by the Nigerian situation. The suggested remedy is for African elite to “restructure” their elite political or power appetite.