RECONCILING THE TWO WEST AFRICAS: MANAGING ETHNIC AND LINGUAL DIVERSITY FOR REGIONAL INTEGRATION

In international politics, language is core in inter-state trust and relationship, and the West African region (or sub-region), which is multi-ethnic, culturally plural and bi- or multilingual in imported languages, may never evolve an integrated region if the diversity is not converted from source of disconnections to source of connections. At best, West Africans have regarded themselves as precolonial kinsmen but post-colonial strangers as a result of the factor of language barriers created in the years of colonial rule. The Yoruba, Ewe, Ashante, Mende, Temne and many more had similarities of languages and cultures and led a regular life of communal conflict and cooperation until the arrival of the French, English, Portuguese and Germans, who established sharp misunderstandings and divisions along the lines of European lingua franca. From a participation- observation experience and perspective, and having consulted literature and government records on futile integration efforts, the study, adopting a functionalist model for analysis, submits that the differences have led to alienation among West Africans since independence, and ECOWAS, despite its spirited commitment to regional integration by the protocol on free movement across the borders, has faced brick-walls from human and social forces engendered by language barriers. This paper looks beyond the artificial linguistic barriers inherent in the bilingual or multilingual character of West Africa, by exploring the richness of the linguistic diversity to advance the cause of regional integration. The paper strongly advocates that local languages spoken across most of the West African states such as Hausa, Mandingo, Peul and Yoruba be taught in primary and secondary schools, while ECOWAS leaders should agree on making English, French and Portuguese compulsory in all secondary schools and higher institutions in their respective countries. These will help demystify and dismantle the artificial linguistic barriers created by the accident of colonialism and make the formal and informal instruments, including ECOWAS towards integration, more functional

Interrogating Nigeria's International Role Conceptions in an Age of Global Climate Change

Nigeria's foreign policy from independence has been proactively African. This implies that Nigeria imposes on itself the burden of committing its resources to salvaging Africa socioeconomically and politically. While this has come under vigorous scrutiny and sharp criticisms because of its huge cost for national development; Nigeria's African and international roles have tended to be a functionaNst one, which has not really changed and been reviewed to meet new global and African challenges. In the face· of a global climate change with Africa at the receiving end, what would be Nigeria's roles? The traditional roles of Nigeria have been in the area of economic and financial help and combating of regional security issues. However, the current climate 'war' appears io be more destructive than the usual conflict, hunger and diseases: The paper scrutinizes. Nigeria's national environmental policy and the foreign policy role conceptions, to see the content and context of Nigeria's panacea and roles in the struggle to check global warming. Using the National Role Conception methodological, theoretical and conceptual approaches, the paper examines the nation's own peculiar climate problems (from the Delta to Lagos and the Savanmih) and how it takes the local context to the global theater

POLICING AND NIGERIA’S NATIONAL SECURITY: IMPLICATIONS FOR NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, (1999-2016)

This paper examined the prominent role played by the Nigeria police in the security of life and properties and how this affects the development of the society. Its principal focus is on the fact that security is the major determinant of development of any society. It ramified the concepts of policing, national security and national development, how they are intertwined and connected them to the Nigerian society. The structural functionalism theory was the theory employed to explain how the structure of the police force affects the proper functioning of the state. The study relied predominantly on secondary data, newspapers, textbooks, journals and internet sources were consulted. The paper observed the causes of the national security challenges in Nigeria such as corruption, injustice, poverty, decayed and collapsed infrastructure, and socio-religious crises. Furthermore, it examined the correlations between all these causes of insecurity and the crises of underdevelopment in Nigeria particularly in the area of abject poverty, unemployment, lack of functional industries, low foreign investment, diversion of public funds, youth restiveness, religious and social violence. It evaluates the issues raised and concluded that there is a strong link between the crises of insecurity and underdevelopment, and that by maintaining law and order, the police will succeed at fostering national development. The paper recommended the proactive intervention of the government in providing for the needs of the people, the provision of adequate equipment and funds for the Nigeria police to ensure their effectiveness, religious tolerance, patriotism and citizens participation should be encouraged, and an enabling environment should be provided for the sustained entrepreneurial development

Nigeria's Foreign Policy and Codification of National Interest: A Prescriptive Analysis

Nigeria has an ambitious foreign policy but an ambiguous, unscripted, not well defined and inconsistent national interest. Aside the fact that this is not good for a country that pursues an ambitious external agenda and incongruent with its stature in global politics; it also makes the concept and reality of national interest susceptible to personalized interpretations, manipulations and distortions by the different political regimes. In other words, national interest becomes different strokes for different folks, depending on how each perceives and wishes it. Like every other sovereign country of the world, Nigeria's national interests have been largely determined and defined by the various leaderships that have over the years ruled the country. This paper builds its argument on the premise that a country's national interest is pivotal to its foreign policy and national development. Using the National Interest Theory (NRT) for a historical-descriptive discourse, the underlying issues found include the fact that in the case of Nigeria, as vital as the concept is both to the existence of a nation and as a source for the analysis of foreign policy behaviour of states, national interest has been subject to exploitation. Successive leadership of the country has hidden under the cover of national interest to perpetuate their individual interests. The probability for carrying out such acts is very high because Nigeria's national interest lacks proper codification and documentation. This paper thus makes a case for the codification and documentation of Nigeria's national interest. It does not suggest what the "interests" should be, but argues for intelligible national interest for direction, focus and attention to topmost priorities in the country's external relations

FOREIGN POLICY MAKING AND IMPLEMENTATION UNDER OLUSEGUN OBASANJO'S ADMINISTRATION (1999-2007)

This paper examines Nigeria's foreign policy making and implementation under Olusegun Obasanjo'scivilian administration. Therefore, th is work interrogateshow Obasanjo's administration formulated and implemented Nigeria's foreign policy. To successfully accomplish this task, both primary and secondary data were collected. Interviews conducted with principal actors and secondary data obtained from books, journals, magazines, bulletins, newspapers and government records were analysed to achieve the objectives of the study.Among other findings, the study observed that there were structures put in place for Nigeria's foreign policy making processes under Obasanjo's c ivilian rule. It is important to note also, that the actual foreign policies formulated were dictated primarily by Obasanjo's personality and executive leadership decisions. The paperthereforc recommends, among others, that strong institutions should be put in place to facilitate foreign policy _ making and execution, and there should be standard operational procedures in foreign policy making and execution that would strengthen institutions and limit personalities

The alternative theory of state-minded protest texts in the music of democratic Nigeria:

This paper centres on an alternative discourse of popular music culture in re-democratized Nigeria. Whereas much work has been done on state-minded protest music in Nigeria, studies have been reticent in appreciating the works of Fela's son, Femi; particularly within a framework of re-democratized Nigeria's equivalent of Fela's works which constituted a major alternative voice through military-ruled Nigeria. The paper is an attempt to make up this lacuna along the lines of Chris Atton’s 2006 alternative media theory. The analysis of the alternative media theory is complemented by an analysis of the texts of selected state-minded protest works from two crossover popular musicians – Blackface and Mr Raw – of re-democratized Nigeria, both of whose state-minded protest works have hitherto been unexplored by the academe