Positions of Security and the Security of Position: Bureaucratic Prebendalism Inside the State

Abstract

Richard Joseph’s concept of prebendalism was developed as an explanatory framework for the patterns and practices of electoral politics in Nigeria’s Second Republic (1979–1983). Yet, as Joseph notes (1987), it predates that period, and has equally persisted after. I contend that the explanatory power of the theory is not limited to electoral politics; it also provides a useful blueprint that can be adapted to our understandings of bureaucratic politics and institutional procedure. After all, 29 of Nigeria’s 51 years of postindependence life, and all of its preceding 46 years as an amalgamated colony, have been spent under nonelectoral regimes, where politics took place largely as internal bureaucratic procedures of particular institutions (primarily the military and civil service, but also others such as the police). That is a much longer period spent in the mode of bureaucratic politics than in electoral rule. Given this, it is hardly surprising that a great premium has arisen on being placed inside the state in order to better influence it. This applies both in the crude sense of accessing public goods, and in the more subtle influences that can be exercised over the course of public events and the nature of public institutions.