Is Election a Disadvantage? Nigerian Local Councils and Security Provision

Deepening democracy through local elections is a major aim of decentralisation. But do elections always work to strengthen the relationship between local politicians and citizens, or can they set elected officials up for failure? This article examines security provisioning by local governments in Nigeria, understanding that some local governments are elected, while others are appointed by state governors. Our hypothesis was that elected local councils should be better rated than those that are appointed. By looking at local government areas that differ mainly in terms of whether their council is elected or appointed, we found that local elections are not enough singly to build strong connections between democratically elected local politicians and citizens. Democratic decentralisation in the context of limited financial resources, and limited autonomy vis-à-vis state governors and political bosses, can set elected governments up for failure to the extent that they are viewed as worse performers than their appointed counterparts

Research 2 Course (R2): Session 1 Pre-online Transcript: Ayobami Ojebode explores comparative case studies (Transcript)

[R2-TV06] Ojebode defines and describes different types of comparative case studies (descriptive or causal).UK Ai

African Onomastics and Politics: a Demystification of Àbíkú Names in Femi Osofisan's Who's Afraid of Solarin?

Àbíkú names in Femi Osofisan's Who's Afraid of Solarin require reconsideration, given their onomastic (literary) significance which provides a foray into the cyclic trend of Nigerian politics. In this respect, the Yoruba myth is exploited as an instrument of blending sociocultural, literary, and political contexts through naming. To achieve this objective, this study, therefore, explores two (2) charactonyms in the selected text using Onomastic Semiosis. Besides, an oral interview was conducted with an expert in the Yoruba culture to buttress the character analysis through a crossdisciplinary approach to name, orature, culture, politics, and religion from a Nigerian context. The thrust of the work is to establish that underdevelopment in Nigeria is an outcome of recycling of political leaders

Nigerian Mass Media and Cultural Status Inequalities: a Study Among Minority Ethnic Groups

What the mass media do to the cultures of peoples has been an object to which much scholarly and policy attention has been devoted. In Africa, the media have been called upon to be active agents in nation building, cultural integration and development. However, as they attempt to perform these functions, the media elevate the cultural practices of some groups above those of others thereby creating cultural status inequalities. In this study, we attempted to explore the extent to which this was true in the Nigerian situation. Working among six minority ethnic groups and on data sourced through four different methods, we discovered that there is wide cultural status inequalities fostered by the mass media. The media devote minute attention to the minority groups. Only 23% of print and 6.3% of broadcast content analysed were devoted to the over 350 minority groups in Nigeria. Of this negligible coverage, 69% was negative coverage. About 81% of our respondents had never seen their language written in a newspaper; over 65% had not heard their language spoken on television. Almost all of their festivals and cultural activities are not covered by television or newspaper or news magazines whereas those of the majority groups are. Unlike the majority groups, in most cases, the minorities are invisible in the content of the media except when they do something negative. Our respondents felt marginalized over this. They affirmed a link between their invisibility and other forms of inequalities. The study recommends policy directions that can help redress the wide cultural status inequalities. Keywords: Cultures, Inequalities, Mass media, Minority Ethnic group