L. V. GEVELING Doctor of Political Science Nigeria Keywords:, general elections, quasi-democracy Presidential elections were held in Nigeria in April 2011. The new head of state is Goodluck Jonathan, who previously served as Vice President and Acting President of the country. The elections were held in a relatively calm environment, but led to a weakening of the position of the ruling People's Democratic Party, thereby exacerbating internal political contradictions. The first decade of the new century confirmed the well - known truth that the political reality of Nigeria is a kind of "magic crystal" in which you can see the social future of many countries in sub-Saharan Africa. In Nigeria, chimeras are often transformed into genuine phenomena of public life, and shaky trends turn into full-fledged political processes. This quality is particularly important in the context of growing political instability and unstable development of the countries of the region, and indeed the entire Afro-Asian world. Another characteristic of modern Nigeria is its ability to combine seemingly incompatible vectors of political development and mutually exclusive social entities. That is why the path taken by this country is difficult to assess using scientific methods that have been developed to analyze the countries of Western Europe or, say, East Asia. The 50-year history of Nigeria is a kaleidoscope of events that reflected the process of the fall of British colonialism and the establishment of some semblance of the Westminster model of state and legal structure, military coups and counter-coups, ethnic, religious and class conflicts, the vicissitudes of the 30-month civil war, the spread of local forms of autocracy and quasi-democracy. Nigeria's political life has been dominated by military regimes that have shaped the course of national development for almost three decades, as well as four Republics* led by civilian leaders. At the same time, one of the most significant events in t ... Read more