This book examines the impact of post-colonial leadership on political integration in Nigeria, offering an in-depth understanding of the historical and contemporary forces that shape Nigeria's national politics as well as African politics generally. The world is watching to see whether Nigeria will succeed in its current third experiment with representative democracy, which was launched in 1999. After reviewing Nigeria's pre-colonial and colonial political histories, "A Roadmap for Understanding African Politics" 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 Africa-centred theory of political and integrative leadership and then uses it as a prism for analysing 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.