page_title: Nigeria
section_title: Democratisation and Fourth Republic (1999–present)
hierarchical_section_title: Nigeria / History / Democratisation and Fourth Republic (1999–present)
caption_attribution_description: English: The Official Portrait of the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, President Muhammadu Buhari taken by Bayo Omoboriowo
context_page_description: Nigeria, officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a sovereign country located in West Africa bordering Niger in the north, Chad in the northeast, Cameroon in the east, and Benin in the west. Its southern coast is on the Gulf of Guinea in the Atlantic Ocean. Nigeria is a federal republic comprising 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory, where the capital, Abuja, is located.
  Nigeria has been home to a number of ancient and indigenous pre-colonial states and kingdoms over the millennia. The modern state originated from British colonial rule beginning in the 19th century, and took its present territorial shape with the merging of the Southern Nigeria Protectorate and Northern Nigeria Protectorate in 1914 by Lord Frederick Lugard. The British set up administrative and legal structures while practicing indirect rule through traditional chiefdoms; Nigeria became a formally independent federation on October 1, 1960. It experienced a civil war from 1967 to 1970.
context_section_description: On 29 May 1999, Abubakar transferred power to the winner of the 1999 presidential election, former military ruler General Olusegun Obasanjo as the second democratically elected civilian President of Nigeria heralding the beginning of the Fourth Nigerian Republic. This ended almost 33 years of military rule from 1966 until 1999, excluding the short-lived second republic (between 1979 and 1983) by military dictators who seized power in coups d'état and counter-coups during the Nigerian military juntas of 1966–1979 and 1983–1999.
  Although the elections that brought Obasanjo to power in the 1999 presidential election and for a second term in the 2003 presidential election were condemned as unfree and unfair, Nigeria has shown marked improvements in attempts to tackle government corruption and hasten development. Ethnic violence for control over the oil-producing Niger Delta region and an insurgency in the North-East are some of the issues facing the country. Umaru Yar'Adua of the People's Democratic Party came into power in the general election of 2007. The international community, which had been observing Nigerian elections to encourage a free and fair process, condemned this one as being severely flawed. The then-president, Olusegun Obasanjo, acknowledged fraud and other electoral "lapses" but said the result reflected opinion polls. In a national television address in 2007, he added that if Nigerians did not like the victory of his handpicked successor, they would have an opportunity to vote again in four years. Yar'Adua died on 5 May 2010.  Goodluck Jonathan was sworn in as Yar'Adua's, becoming the 14th Head of State. Goodluck Jonathan served as acting president of Nigeria until 16 April 2011, when a new presidential election in Nigeria was conducted. He went on to win the elections, with the international media reporting the elections as having run smoothly with relatively little violence or voter fraud, in contrast to previous elections.
  Ahead of the general election of 2015, a merger of the three biggest opposition parties – the Action Congress of Nigeria(ACN), the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), a faction of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) and the new PDP (nPDP), a faction of serving governors of the then ruling People's Democratic Party – formed the All Progressives Congress (APC). In the 2015 presidential election, former military head of state General Muhammadu Buhari, leader of the CPC faction of the APC – who had previously contested in the 2003, 2007, and 2011 presidential elections as the APC presidential candidate defeated incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan of the People's Democratic Party (PDP) by over two million votes, ending the party's sixteen year rule in the country, and marking the first time in the history of Nigeria that an incumbent president lost to an opposition candidate. Observers generally praised the election as being fair. Jonathan was generally praised for conceding defeat and limiting the risk of unrest. In the 2019 presidential election, Muhammadu Buhari was re-elected for a second term in office defeating his closet rival Atiku Abubakar.
caption: Muhammadu Buhari is currently serving as President of Nigeria, since 2015.
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