Julius Nyerere of Tanzania regarded traditional African democracy as a constant quest for consensus through discussion. ‘The elders sat under a tree and talked until they agreed.’ This was government by discussion; it was also government by consensus. Those two principles could best be modernised through the establishment of the one-party state.

But while each traditional African society might indeed have been best served by a single party, what would best serve a collection of traditional societies now enclosed into a single post-colonial state? The Ibo, the Yoruba and the Hausa separately might have been best served by the one-party principle in their own individual societies. But now that all three were enclosed in a single post-colonial Nigeria, would they not be best served by a multi-party plurality? These dilemmas have yet to be resolved in the vortex of post-colonial contradictions.