This study examined democracy and sustainable development in Cross River State from 1999 – 2020. Given this, three research questions and objectives were raised to guide the study. The paper adopted Marxian Dialectical Materialism and Lipset’s theory of economic development and democracy. The descriptive survey was used as the study research design. The sample size for the study was 400, derived through Taro Yameni formula. The purposive, simple random, chain-referral sampling technique, etc were adopted. Both questionnaire and in-depth interview were used as instruments for data collection. Again, mean and standard deviation as well as content analysis were used for data analysis. Findings of the study revealed that the failure of the democracy to ensure sustainable development in Cross River State was as a result of the nature of political culture, poor resource management, low participation of the people in policy formulations and implementations, and Leaders are only representing the interest of their political parties/themselves and not the need of the people. The study recommends that since development is human centered, and that the falling human capacity development indeed affects the level of literacy due to existence of poor educational facilities, absence of model schools to mitigate gaps in human capacity deficiency syndrome, and rising school enrolment could not match existing infrastructure in the state. There should be a deliberate policy by government to invest a reasonable portion (25%) of its annual budget on education, skills development of future generation that will contribute to development in the state.