The evolution of democratic politics and current security challenges in Nigeria: retrospect and prospect

This paper analyzes the evolution of democratic politics and continuing lack of success in entrenching liberal democracy in Nigeria. By examining the underlying causes of Nigeria’s purported slowness or imperviousness to the revival of effective democracy, the paper hopes to identify pertinent security challenges that have coalesced to impede her path to political stability and development.Copyright Information: http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/issn/1741-9166/"author can archive pre-print [and] can archive post-print[after] 18 month embargo for SSH journalsonInstitutional or Subject RepositoryPublisher's version/PDF cann

Armed groups, armed proliferation, and the amnesty program in the Niger Delta, Nigeria

The plunder of the Niger Delta has turned full circle as crude oil has taken the place of palm oil, but the dramatis personae remain unchanged: a predatory government bent on extracting the last drop of blood from the richly endowed Niger Delta, and a courageous people determined to resist. This paper locates the armed conflict in the oil-rich Niger Delta within the context of unrealised expectations and consequent frustration and aggression on the part of the oil-bearing communities. The thesis of the paper argues that while small arms proliferation are not directly the cause of conflict in the volatile region, their stockpiles fuel wars and sustain violence. The paper makes the submission that the more people accept that arms are necessary for survival and economic progress, the more insecurity thrives and drives a self-perpetuating cycle: an internal arms race. The collapse of the social contract between the state and its citizenry has a hand in this perpetuation and is, therefore, instructive

The internationalisation of an internal resistance ethnic minority conflicts and the politics of exclusion in the Niger Delta.

Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2011.While a lot of ink has been spilled and numerous papers devoted to the variegated causes of the Niger Delta conflict, what has been conspicuously moot in the literature is their integration into a sufficient explanatory system to facilitate the intelligibility of empirical data and support effective policy intervention. Also, while writers have investigated the internal dimensions of the conflict, little systematic attention has been paid to its international dimensions. The study proposes to fill these gaps in existing literature through a two-level analysis of the Niger Delta Conflict: (1) internal (2) international. The internal level is anchored on a four-dimensional explanation which argues that political and economic factors are the root causes of the Niger Delta conflict, with environmental and social-security factors as the proximate causes. At the international level, the study probes the role of the international community in the moderation of the Niger Delta conflict and concludes with an appraisal of the extent to which the internationalisation of the conflict engendered both attitudinal and policy shifts on the parts of key players. Problematising the usefulness of majoritarian democracy for resource starved plural societies, the study canvasses, inter alia, the implementation of consociational mechanisms in the Nigerian political process as a more effective way of mitigating the seething cauldron of conflicts in the Niger Delta, and promoting inter-ethnic equity and amity in Nigeria as a whole

NO RETREAT, NO SURRENDER: UNDERSTANDING THE RELIGIOUS TERRORISM OF BOKO HARAM IN NIGERIA

Boko Haram, a radical Islamist group from northeastern Nigeria, has caused severe destruction in Nigeria since 2009. The threat posed by the extremist group has been described by the present Nigerian President as worse than that of Nigeria's civil war in the 1960s. A major drawback in the Boko Haram literature to date is that much effort has been spent to remedy the problem in lieu of understanding it. This paper attempts to bridge this important gap in existing literaure by exploring the role of religion as a force of mobilisation as well as an identity marker in Nigeria, and showing how the practice and perception of religion are implicated in the ongoing terrorism of Boko Haram. In addition, the paper draws on the relative deprivation theory to understand why Boko Haram rebels and to argue that religion is not always a sufficient reason for explaining the onset of religious terrorism

The Ongoing Campaign of Terror in Nigeria: Boko Haram versus the State

Boko Haram remains arguably the biggest problem confronting Nigeria today, with consequences going beyond security into the political and socio-economic aspects of governance. This Islamist group from northeastern Nigeria has killed at least 3,500 people since 2009 when it first launched its Islamic insurgency to wrest power from the Nigerian government and create an Islamic state under the supreme law of sharia. The group’s active gnawing at the religious, ethnic, and regional fault-lines of Nigeria not only threatens the country’s peace and unity, but holds serious transnational implications. The objective of this paper is to answer three fundamental questions about the extremist group: Who is Boko Haram? Why does the group rebel? How has the Nigerian State responded? The paper also touches on Boko Haram’s growing connection to transnational terrorist groups like al-Qaeda and al-Shabaab as a form of survival strategy

Frontiers of urban Survival

The vast corpus of works on corruption in Africa focuses almost exclusively on âgrand corruptionâ and political elites (so-called âBig Menâ), and hardly on âeveryday corruptionâ and ordinary actors. When everyday corruption appears in the literature, it is frequently explained away as petty and/or normal â something expected and accepted. In this study, I take issue with this predominant narrative, couched in an equally dominant but narrow Weberian notion of corruption. Grounding corruption in the micro-politics of urban public transport in Lagos, Nigeriaâs commercial capital and Africaâs largest city, I argue that ordinary actors detest the corruption that they encounter daily. At the same time, their power(lessness) in the face of its banality compels them to constantly devise tactics to find a way around it or to make it productive for their ends. Structured into six chapters, the study begins by probing the popular imagination, discourse, and spatiality of corruption. It then shows how corruption is embedded in routine socio-economic relations, how it conditions ordinary lives and social livelihoods, and how everyday actors encounter it, exploit it, resist it, or become its victims each day. The study required eight months of ethnographic fieldwork grounded on the routine experiences and lifeworlds of road transport workers in Lagos, Nigeria. My direct experience of the âsurroundsâ of these urban actors, the âjunctionsâ that constitute the spatial hinge of violent extortion and complicity, and routine participation in the omnipresent 'danfos' (commercial minibus-taxis) enabled access to a sense of how this complex system works