Africa’s Crisis of Democracy

KANO, Nigeria, April 22 - Nigeria's troubled presidential election, which came under fire on Sunday from local and international observers and was rejected by two leading opposition candidates, represents a significant setback for democracy in sub-Saharan Africa at a time when voters in countries across the continent are becoming more disillusioned with the way democracy is practiced.

Skip to next paragraph Enlarge This Image Christoph Bangert for The New York Times

Voters in Nigeria lined up for hours on Saturday, long after the polls were supposed to start. There are wide accusations of ballot rigging in favor of the ruling PDP party. More Photos »

Multimedia Photographs Elections in Nigeria Enlarge This Image Christoph Bangert for The New York Times

Mr. Adhama used to employ 330 workers in the 1980s, but now he has just 24 employees as he tries to restart his business. More Photos >

Analysts said the Nigerian vote was the starkest example of a worrying trend - even as African countries hold more elections, many of their citizens are steadily losing confidence in their democracies.

"The picture in Africa is really mixed," said Peter Lewis, director of the African Studies program at Johns Hopkins University, who was among the researchers who conducted the Afrobarometer survey of African public opinion. "Some countries have vibrant political scenes, while other countries go through the routine of elections but governance doesn't seem to improve."

African voters are losing patience with faulty elections that often exclude popular candidates and are marred by serious irregularities, according to the Afrobarometer survey, published last year, which sampled voters in 18 countries, based on interviews with 1,200 to 2,400 people per country. While 6 in 10 Africans said democracy was preferable to any other form of government, according to the survey, satisfaction with democracy dipped to 45 percent from 58 percent in 2001.

The threat to Nigeria's fragile democracy was underscored on Sunday by government officials, who dropped dark hints warning of a possible coup attempt, and said election critics were welcoming a military putsch by inciting violence.

Twenty-five candidates vied to replace the departing president in the Saturday vote, the first time in Nigeria's history that power will be transferred between two civilian administrations. But the election was marred by chaos, violence and fraud. Results are not expected until Monday at the earliest.

Election officials gave themselves high marks on Sunday for the handling of the polls, but their comments were in sharp contrast to assessments of international observers. Madeleine K. Albright, the former secretary of state, who observed the election for the National Democratic Institute, said that "in a number of places and in a number of ways, the election process failed the Nigerian people." The International Republican Institute said that the election fell "below acceptable standards."

Such observations represent a stunning turnabout for Nigeria, Africa's most populous and second richest country, and reflect the deep frustrations of millions of Nigerians. In 2000, in the euphoric aftermath of Nigeria's transition from a long spell of military rule to democracy, 84 percent of Nigerians said that they were satisfied with democracy as practiced in Nigeria, according to the Afrobarometer survey.

By 2005 that number had plummeted to 25 percent, lower than all the countries surveyed save Zimbabwe. Almost 70 percent of Nigerians did not believe elections would allow them to remove objectionable leaders, the survey found.

Freedom House, an organization that monitors the spread of democracy and free speech, said in a report last year that the overall trends for African democracy were mixed. "Sub-Saharan Africa in 2006 presents at the same time some of the most promising examples of new democracies," the report said. It also has "some of the most disheartening examples of political stagnation, democratic backsliding, and state failure."

For every successful election, like those held this year in once-troubled countries like Mauritania and Democratic Republic of Congo, there have been elections in countries that seemed on the road to consolidating democracy but then swerved, like Gambia, Uganda, Ethiopia and Zambia. There are also countries that hold regular elections, but they are so flawed they cannot really be called democratic, like those in Guinea, Zimbabwe and Gabon.

In 1976, according to Freedom House, just three countries in Africa were listed as "free," while the vast majority, 25, were "not free." Thirty years later, the not-free category had shrunk to 14 states, and the bulk of Africa now falls into the "partly free" category.

In the middle of that group is Nigeria, a nation of 140 million people divided among 250 ethnic groups and two major religions, Islam and Christianity, all of whom live in a space twice the size of California. It is rich in oil, exporting about two million barrels a day, but the riches that oil brings have not translated into meaningful development.

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