Democratization and the Re-Emergence of Military Governments In West Africa

Democracy, based on multi-party politics, has been the system of government practiced in West African States, immediately after gaining their respective independences from their former colonial masters. However, in the course of the democratic journey, the region’s immediate political leaders started to drift from the known democratic tenets, hence came in, the authoritarianism in the form of single party system and later militarism, culminating in the emergence of the Second Democratic Project in Africa in the 1990s. The objective of this study is to proof that, the post independence negative behaviors of the First Post Independence Political Leaders in West Africa, is a reflection of the contemporary negative behaviors of the various Political Leaders in the twentieth and twenty first centuries. The study made use of secondary sources of data and some other specific published materials such as books, journals, magazines and newspapers, which clearly showed that the negative behaviours of the West African Political Leaders were inherited from the first post independence leaders. The study therefore recommended that in order to prevent military coups against democratically elected governments in West Africa, the Early Warning signs pointing to the disenchantment of the citizens in any democratically elected governments in West Africa should be tackled immediately by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the African Union (AU). Key words: West Africa, Military Government and Democratic Government