DEEPENING DEMOCRACY IN THE NIGERIAN STATE: THE HUMAN CAPITAL DIMENSION

Abstract

Democracy as a system of government is critically framed on both hope and purposeful action. In other words, the concept of democracy is essentially predicated on a publicly manifestable power of the people to make things happen. The concept is thus hooked to the hope that the power of the people would make things happen. Furthermore, the power of the people, which is embedded in democracy, also entails an allusion to the concept of human capital. Hence, when this power is impaired, democracy is devoid of deep content and the position of human capital becomes questionable. In this study, we have focused on the Nigerian state to examine the relationships among these variables. We have interrogated the nature of the relationship between the depth of democracy in the Nigerian state and the national human capital position. We found a weak linkage. We have consequently highlighted the role of education in human capital formation. The study recommends that as the educational system in any troubled democracy, aims at producing professionals in engineering, medicine, accountancy and different societal areas, it must as an imperative also, aim at the formation of human capital, for political purposes in generic terms and in particularities, for the deepening of the democratic processes in the given problematic country.