'Lai Olurode than their leaders were prepared. Neither the military nor the civilian nor even both combined were able to meet the rising and revolutionary aspirations of the people. The ordinary folks prefer democratic good governance. As can be seen in Table 1, African economies; Kenya, Cameroon, Gambia, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria and others have very low index indicating that generally healthy life style, education and descent standard of living are not what many have. This development is not surprising as the core values and world views of the diverse people of Africa have not subscribed to the essential elements of the rule of law, good democratic governance and social justice. A recent study 1 by experts on proverbs and world views of Nigeria's diverse ethnic groups confirms that these are supportive of Nigeria's democratization efforts and that they are mutually reinforcing. This compatibility can only explain why generally in Africa, democratization has become a catchphrase of a sort. The argument of a leading scholar on the subject, Lewis (2006:9) is a compelling one. According to him, Few recent changes around the world have been more significant than the global spread of democratic governance. We recall that in 1974, just 39 countries in 1 See a study on values and proverbs from selected Nigerian languages supportive of democratic practices commissioned by the Board of the Electoral Institute under the sponsorship of the Independent National Electoral Commission(INEC) 2013. The study highlights how indigenous proverbs and Nigeria's diverse world views are supportive of democratic practices and consultations. The proverbs that the study highlighted included those that support elections(representation), fair hearing(justice and fairness), secret balloting, consensus building and preference aggregation. Proverbs and world views from 12 of Nigeria's numerous languages across the geopolitical zones were involved in the survey. 6 Introduction: Electoral Reforms and Election Security the world over were ruled by constitutional government that had held regular, competitive elections. Today, nearly 120 governments are electoral democracies. This large group accounts for 60 per cent of the world's people. Among the 48 countries in Africa South of the Sahara, as late as 1990, 44 were ruled by military governments or single-party regimes; today, there are at least 20 electoral democracies in the region, along with many others that have made significant gains in political freedom and pluralism. The push for political and electoral reforms from; first, colonial and apartheid regimes to independence; and second, from military dictatorship to one-party regimes and now to multiparty democracies had been from sources both internal and external to Africa. The challenge however had been the failure to realize the broad theoretical expectation that democracy will promote development. This had been the experience of most countries in the north. The modernization theory holds that the experiences of the western countries can be replicated in the less developed parts of the world once the economic and political institutions are transported there. Of Africa's population, a little over one billion people, at least close to 70% or more are under democratic rule. However, HDIs remain appalling, poverty is still as excruciating as it was before, slums are growing rapidly, many still die young, youth unemployment is high, maternal mortality remains one of the highest in the world and the money culture is deep. In some of the countries, judicial corruption 2 is widespread but generally, media 2 A retired justice of the Court of Appeal, Honourable Justice Issa Salami bared his mind on judicial corruption in Nigeria and how justice is lobbied for. He alleged that some judges and retired senior judges practise as consultants in fixing judgements. See The Punch, 9th April, 2014. 7