The Role of Trust in Sustainable Party Democracy in Nigeria

Abstract

This seminar paper focused on the role of Trust in sustainable party democracy in Nigeria. Political trust can have a major impact on democratic politics by affecting political participation, institutional effectiveness, and policy choices. Given the significance of political trust for the functioning of democracy, it is important to know how Trust influence the way citizens relate with political actors and institutions changes over time. This paper argued that political trust begets socio-economic development. It conclude that notwithstanding the system of government, political trust has an overbearing influence on leadership, economics and consequently socio-economic development and that economic development is attained through a rigorous process of purposeful and issue based politics that is trustworthy. Regrettable, the paper argued that in Nigeria and other third world countries like Africa, politics has failed to engender economic development because it failed to produce political trust and good leadership; hence the system encouraged personalization of government and governance. This in turn paved way for unprecedented height of terror, impunity, irresponsibility, endemic corruption and unimaginable use of force aided and occasioned by long period of colonization and military rule. The paper therefore come to conclusion that Africa governments needs to provide true leadership and play politics of substance in the interest of economic and all round development. Essentially, the paper relied on secondary sources of data and demand and supply theory of trust as it methodology.