Party ideology in Nigeria's Four Republics: a case of right-wing convergence

Do Nigerian political parties take left/right ideological positions? Perspectives in comparative politics see party competition in Africa's ‘third wave’ democracies as devoid of disagreement on class or economic grounds – and thus as ‘absent’ of left/right ideology. Yet, a dearth of disagreement among governing parties can also suggest ideological agreement or ‘convergence’. This article maps the development of the left/right cleavage in Nigeria's party system, examining the evolution of economic pledges in the manifestos of parties that took power across Nigeria's four attempts at electoral democracy. It finds that relative to the deeper levels of economic disagreement voiced in earlier periods, the governing parties of Nigeria's Fourth Republic are now largely unanimous in the enunciation of their economic visions. Evidence of such convergence troubles a strict insistence on either the polarisation or ‘absence’ of economic ideology among governing parties in Africa's largest electoral democracy.