Contesting the Nigerian State

Contesting the Nigerian State
Author: M. Okome
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 329
Release: 2013-07-03
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1137324538

In public choice theory, the received wisdom has long been that self-organization is an impediment to collective action, whether via the tragedy of the commons or a Hobbesian scenario in which self-interest produces social conflict rather than cooperation. Yet as this fascinating collection shows, self-organization and state-society relations have been much more complicated in the context of contemporary Nigerian politics. Given the absence or unwillingness of the Nigerian state to provide essential services, entire communities have had to band together to repair roads, build health centers, and maintain public utilities, all from levies. The successes, failures, and ongoing challenges faced by Nigerian society provide valuable insights into the state's capacity, its relationship with civil society, and the social, economic, and political well-being of its citizens.

Contemporary Nigerian Politics

Contemporary Nigerian Politics
Author: A. Carl LeVan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 303
Release: 2019-01-17
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1108569218

In 2015, Nigeria's voters cast out the ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP). Here, A. Carl LeVan traces the political vulnerability of Africa's largest party in the face of elite bargains that facilitated a democratic transition in 1999. These 'pacts' enabled electoral competition but ultimately undermined the party's coherence. LeVan also crucially examines the four critical barriers to Nigeria's democratic consolidation: the terrorism of Boko Haram in the northeast, threats of Igbo secession in the southeast, lingering ethnic resentments and rebellions in the Niger Delta, and farmer-pastoralist conflicts. While the PDP unsuccessfully stoked fears about the opposition's ability to stop Boko Haram's terrorism, the opposition built a winning electoral coalition on economic growth, anti-corruption, and electoral integrity. Drawing on extensive interviews with a number of politicians and generals and civilians and voters, he argues that electoral accountability is essential but insufficient for resolving the representational, distributional, and cultural components of these challenges.

How to Rig an Election

How to Rig an Election
Author: Nic Cheeseman
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 343
Release: 2024-07-23
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0300280831

An engrossing analysis of the pseudo-democratic methods employed by despots around the world to retain control Contrary to what is commonly believed, authoritarian leaders who agree to hold elections are generally able to remain in power longer than autocrats who refuse to allow the populace to vote. In this engaging and provocative book, Nic Cheeseman and Brian Klaas expose the limitations of national elections as a means of promoting democratization, and reveal the six essential strategies that dictators use to undermine the electoral process in order to guarantee victory for themselves. Based on their firsthand experiences as election watchers and their hundreds of interviews with presidents, prime ministers, diplomats, election officials, and conspirators, Cheeseman and Klaas document instances of election rigging from Argentina to Zimbabwe, including notable examples from Brazil, India, Nigeria, Russia, and the United States—touching on the 2016 election. This eye-opening study offers a sobering overview of corrupted professional politics, while providing fertile intellectual ground for the development of new solutions for protecting democracy from authoritarian subversion.

Democracy and Prebendal Politics in Nigeria

Democracy and Prebendal Politics in Nigeria
Author: Richard A. Joseph
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 251
Release: 2014-02-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107633532

Originally published in 1987, this book examines the relationship between the pattern of party formation in Nigeria and a mode of social, political and economic behaviour Richard Joseph terms 'prebendalism'. He demonstrates the centrality in the Nigerian polity of the struggle to control and exploit public office and argues that state power is usually viewed by Nigerians as an array of prebends, the appropriation of which provides access to the state treasury and to control over remunerative licenses and contracts. In addition, the abiding desire for a democratic political system is frustrated by the deepening of ethnic, linguistic and regional identities. By exploring the ways in which individuals at all social levels contribute to the maintenance of these practices, the book provides an analysis of the impediments to constitutional democracy that is also relevant to the study of other nations.

Contesting Development

Contesting Development
Author: Philip McMichael
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2010-02-17
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1135172714

At a time when the development promise is increasingly in question, with dwindling social gains, the vision of modernity is losing its legitimacy and coherence. This moment is observable through the lens of critical struggles of those who experience disempowerment, displacement and development contradictions. In this book, case studies serve as an effective means of teaching key concepts and theories in the sociology of development. This collection of cases, all original, never previously published and with framing essays by Phillip McMichael, has been written with this purpose in mind. An important additional feature is that the book as a whole reveals the limiting assumptions of development and suggests alternate conditions of possibility for social existence in the world today. In that sense, the book pushes the boundaries of "thinking about development" and makes an important theoretical contribution to the literature.

Nigeria and the Nation-State

Nigeria and the Nation-State
Author: John Campbell
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 287
Release: 2024-08-13
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1538197812

Nigeria, despite being the African country of greatest strategic importance to the U.S., remains poorly understood. John Campbell explains why Nigeria is so important to understand in a world of jihadi extremism, corruption, oil conflict, and communal violence. The revised edition provides updates through the recent presidential election.

Challenging the Secular State

Challenging the Secular State
Author: Arskal Salim
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2008-09-30
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 082483237X

Challenging the Secular State examines Muslim efforts to incorporate shari’a (religious law) into modern Indonesia’s legal system from the time of independence in 1945 to the present. The author argues that attempts to formally implement shari’a in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim state, have always been marked by tensions between the political aspirations of proponents and opponents of shari’a and by resistance from the national government. As a result, although pro-shari’a movements have made significant progress in recent years, shari’a remains tightly confined within Indonesia’s secular legal system. The author first places developments in Indonesia within a broad historical and geographic context, offering a provocative analysis of the Ottoman empire’s millet system and thoughtful comparisons of different approaches to pro-shari’a movements in other Muslim countries (Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan). He then describes early aspirations for the formal implementation of shari’a in Indonesia in the context of modern understandings of religious law as conflicting with the idea of the nation-state. Later chapters explore the efforts of Islamic parties in Indonesia to include shari’a in national law. Salim offers a detailed analysis of debates over the constitution and possible amendments to it concerning the obligation of Indonesian Muslims to follow Islamic law. A study of the Zakat Law illustrates the complicated relationship between the religious duties of Muslim citizens and the nonreligious character of the modern nation-state. Chapters look at how Islamization has deepened with the enactment of the Zakat Law and demonstrate the incongruities that have emerged from its implementation. The efforts of local Muslims to apply shari’a in particular regions are also discussed. Attempts at the Islamization of laws in Aceh are especially significant because it is the only province in Indonesia that has been allowed to move toward a shari’a-based system. The book concludes with a review of the profound conflicts and tensions found in the motivations behind Islamization.

Challenging the State in Africa

Challenging the State in Africa
Author: Godwin Onuoha
Publisher: LIT Verlag Münster
Total Pages: 211
Release: 2011
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 3643901003

This thesis examines the 'Igbo Question' and emergent forms of Igbo 'self-determination' in contemporary Nigeria. It does this within the context of contested citizenship, ethnic identity politics and the unresolved crisis of state ownership and legitimacy, which all feeds into the 'National Question' in the Nigerian public space. The thesis proceeds from a theoretical standpoint that places the 'Igbo Question' within the framework of the 'tri-polar' power struggle and competition among the three major ethnic groups in Nigeria. Based on a prior idea of statehood which is rooted in the aborted secessionist attempts of the Igbo ethnic group from the Nigerian state between 1967 and 1970, and drawing on the case of an Igbo ethno-nationalist separatist movement in Nigeria, known as the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), this thesis focuses on the use of 'territory' and 'space' as components of the 'repertoires of contention' in the quest for political change, sovereignty and self-determination. This provides the context in which 'claims' and 'counter-claims' of security, territoriality and sovereignty are enacted. While the thesis draws substantially on various forms of group and sub-national rights which have been identified and studied in international law, political philosophy and social science literature generally, it transcends these debates, but focuses more on the actual processes of appropriating, interpreting and applying these rights and laws against the state in specific contexts. The analysis of the 'Igbo Question' draws on issues and perspectives surrounding the salience, construction, mobilization and politicization of ethnic identity, and the dynamics of its deployment and use in national politics, coupled with the diverse struggles, contentions and conflicts inherent in it. The research provides an innovative and empirically grounded insight into the processes of 'juridification' of self-determination rights for groups within the nationstate in Africa; the dynamics, constraints and possibilities inherent in the mobilization of these rights and laws; the emancipatory potentials or transformative ends of these rights and laws; and the role of violence in nation-building processes in Africa.

The Causes of Instability in Nigeria and Implications for the United States

The Causes of Instability in Nigeria and Implications for the United States
Author: Clarence J. Bouchat
Publisher: Army War College Press
Total Pages: 136
Release: 2013
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

The political economy problems of Nigeria, the root cause for ethnic, religious, political and economic strife, can be in part addressed indirectly through focused contributions by the U.S. military, especially if regionally aligned units are more thoroughly employed.

Failed State 2030

Failed State 2030
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2011
Genre: Failed states
ISBN: 9781585662036

" This monograph describes how a failed state in 2030 may impact the United States and the global economy. It also identifies critical capabilities and technologies the US Air Force should have to respond to a failed state, especially one of vital interest to the United States and one on the cusp of a civil war. Nation-states can fail for a myriad of reasons: cultural or religious conflict, a broken social contract between the government and the governed, a catastrophic natural disaster, financial collapse, war and so forth. Nigeria with its vast oil wealth, large population, and strategic position in Africa and the global economy can, if it fails disproportionately affect the United States and the global economy. Nigeria, like many nations in Africa, gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1960. It is the most populous country in Africa and will have nearly 250 million people by 2030. In its relatively short modern history, Nigeria has survived five military coups as well as separatist and religious wars, is mired in an active armed insurgency, is suffering from disastrous ecological conditions in its Niger Delta region, and is fighting one of the modern world's worst legacies of political and economic corruption. A nation with more than 350 ethnic groups, 250 languages, and three distinct religious affiliations--Christian, Islamic, and animist Nigeria's 135 million people today are anything but homogenous. Of Nigeria's 36 states, 12 are Islamic and under the strong and growing influence of the Sokoto caliphate. While religious and ethnic violence are commonplace, the federal government has managed to strike a tenuous balance among the disparate religious and ethnic factions. With such demographics, Nigeria's failure would be akin to a piece of fine china dropped on a tile floor--it would simply shatter into potentially hundreds of pieces."--DTIC abstract.