Nigeria’s Critical Election, 2011,is one of most detailed, informative and refreshingly original and coherent edited books on Nigeria in recent years. Written bythe gurus of Nigerian political studies and the emergent new stars in the Nigerian political science establishment, the essays analyze different dimensions of how and why Nigeria’s 2011 general elections was a watershed and a trigger to future political events. The contributors painstakingly dissect the power-shift that occurred without Northern consent, the purveyor of decline of Northern hegemony and the ascendancy of the South; the role of the South-South in this feat; and the fair weather politics in the states (Abia, Imo, Bayelsa, Kwara, even Lagos).

The nature and implications of fair weather politics receive a fine analytic comb: the kaleidoscopic alliances of former antagonists against former friends that depict Imo and Abia politicians as mere rent seekers and their politics as serious speculative ‘business’; the implosion of the PDP in Bayelsa and elsewhere; the destruction of entrenched Godfather structures and relationships epitomized by the biological father versus biological son versus biological sister in Kwara state; the demonstration of people power in the electoral defeats of once revered political heavyweights in Ogun State PDP; and the post-election violence in some Northern states, including intensified Boko Haram insurgency. Also under the microscope is the emergent electoral map of Nigeria, not really new but one in which the voter is actually the ultimate cartographer : south-south as a single party PDP zone, South-West as ACN zone with Labor’s finger in the pie; South-East a bitter two-party PDP and APGA zone, though in alliance at the Federal level. The North-West is now a single party zone, thanks to the defection in Kebbi and the construction of a New PDP in Sokoto. The North-Central Zone is also a single party zone with the routing of the ANPP in Kano State. The North-East is a two party zone in which Borno and Yobe States have held out against the PDP since the restoration of ‘democratic’ governance in May 1999.

Ayoade and Akinsanya point out in their discerning conclusion that these changes have heightened the debate about the contradiction in the structure of governance in the country and the despondency that is silently creating an ominous disquiet in the land and may result in a deafening bang in 2015. They advise the political class to retreat to the path of political rectitude so that ‘this house’ of three sixty-five windows may not fall. Nigeria’s Critical Election 2011, is a compelling must-read for anyone—student, expert, practitioner, the general reader—who seeks insight into the earth-shaking transformations quietly occurring in Nigeria.

Olatunde Ojo, University of Port Harcourt