The world is watching to see whether Nigeria will succeed in its current third experiment with representative democracy, which was launched in 1999. This book examines the impact of post-colonial political leadership on political integration in Nigeria. After reviewing Nigeria's pre-colonial and colonial political histories, the book discusses how those histories, along with contemporary external forces like neo-colonialism as well as internal social, economic and political structures and developments have affected emerging post-independence politics in that country. The study climaxes with an Afro centric/Africa-centered theory of political and integrative leadership and then uses it as a prism for analyzing six Nigerian post-independence political leaderships, encompassing Nigeria's First and Second Republics, along with their military interregna. The concluding chapter includes a discussion of the implications of the study for leadership and political integration in Africa in general. This book offers anin-depth understanding of the historical and contemporary forces that shape the ebb and flow of Nigeria's national politics as well as African politics more generally.