“联邦特征”原则与尼日利亚民族国家构建

尼日利亚民族国家构建的困境源于英国殖民统治的影响和独立运动的缺陷,民族宗教问题及外部影响又给其添加不少变数,使得地方民族主义比民族一体化在尼日利亚更有市场。"联邦特征"原则作为消除地方民族主义、促进民族统一的一项基本原则对主体民族"三足鼎立"、少数民族众多的尼日利亚有诸多积极意义,其核心思想以宪法条文或不成文规定的形式影响着尼日利亚的政治发展,在某些方面推动着民族国家构建。由于该原则的缺陷和民族国家构建自身的复杂性,其有效性有待实践的进一步检验,尼日利亚民族国家构建亦需其他力量的推动。     

Under-development in practice: Nigeria and the enduring problem of corruption

Nigeria's abundant natural resource endowments should earn the country's bragging rights as the “Giant of Africa”. Instead, 52 years of corrupt practices among the often recycled ruling elites in post-independence Nigeria have crippled this giant and turned what should be one of the country's strongest assets – its vast oil wealth – into a curse. This article critically examines the concerns for corruption as an enduring obstacle to Nigeria's development writ large. After providing a historical trajectory of corrupt practices in Nigeria from the mid-1980s to the present, it discusses some of the recent corruption scandals in the country, in particular the issues surrounding the US$6.8 billion that was drained from Nigeria between 2009 and 2012 in the fuel subsidy scam. The conclusion makes a case for the reworking of a pervasive system in Nigeria that “pardons” corruption and “recycles” corrupt rulers.     

African solutions to African problems and the Ebola virus disease in Nigeria

Africa grapples with the world's most serious public health crisis, but this article shows that there are public health solutions that work in the African setting. When the Ebola virus disease outbreak was announced in Nigeria in July 2014, some public health specialists worried that an apocalyptic outbreak would sweep through the vast slums of Lagos. The words “Ebola” and “Lagos” in the same sentence were viewed as a dangerous combination, due to the large population of Lagos and the inefficient health care system in the city. Contrary to this view, the outbreak of Ebola virus disease was successfully contained in Nigeria. This article focuses on the factors that were responsible for this success. It examines strategies developed within Nigeria that help to ensure the successful containment of the disease. The paper identifies lessons that can be learnt by other countries from the Nigerian experience.     

The U.S. press and political change in the Third World: The coverage of military coups

One of the chief features of the Third World is how often regimes change. These regime changes have many implications both for internal political stability in the Third World and in the relationships between the Third World and the superpowers. In the United States, it is generally the media that inform the American people about these changes and their implications for the United States. This paper analyzes the coverage of the two most recent military coups in Nigeria by the U.S. press.

Our analysis indicates that if a government that is supportive of American interests is overthrown, and the personalities and policies of the new leaders are not readily apparent to the press, the change is greeted with hostilities by the U.S. press. However, as soon as it becomes apparent that the new regime will not threaten the economic and political interests of the United States, the press rallies behind the new regime and begins to proclaim it as a savior. The press lamented the overthrow of Shagari's government and proclaimed the coup a setback for democracy in Africa. However, within a few weeks of this judgement, the coup that overthrew President Shagari was hailed as necessary for the political stability and economic prosperity of Nigeria. When the military government that seized power from Shagari was itself thrown out of office in a military coup, the new regime was welcomed by the press. We also found the U.S. press utilizes a biased and distorted framework in its coverage of political events in the Third World. The framework used in the Nigerian case asserts that all economic and political crises emanate from tribalism, corruption, and the criminal tendencies of Nigerians. We argue in this paper that this perspective, which informs the coverage of political events in Nigeria by the U.S. press, does not allow it to present valid and truthful explanations of political changes in Nigeria. We also argue that this shallow coverage is done deliberately so as to obscure the reality of political struggles in Nigeria. We assert that it is in the interests of both the Nigerian ruling class and international capitalism to attribute economic and political crises in Nigeria to tribalism, corruption, and nepotism.     

United we stand: labour unions and human rights NGOs in the democratisation process in Nigeria

Human rights NGOs were the vanguard of the struggle for democratisation in Nigeria, but they had to forge alliances with labour unions and other groups to galvanise this process effectively. This paper explores the alliances between labour unions and NGOs in the struggle against military dictatorship in Nigeria to analyse how horizontal relationships have fared in exchanges within civil society. It argues that the exigencies of sustained political struggle throw up conflicts over issues of participation, accountability, and egalitarianism that in turn promote social capital within civil society by mitigating hierarchically structured and asymmetrical patterns of exchange among its members.     

Preventive action and conflict mitigation in Nigeria’s 2015 elections

Prior to the 2015 Nigerian general elections, there were concerns that the fierce political contest would lead to electoral violence in the country. However, the elections were conducted peacefully, with fewer disputes and election-related deaths than previous elections. This study accounts for the fall in the level of electoral violence in Nigeria and discusses the lessons that Nigeria’s experience presents. It argues that the avoidance of destructive electoral disputes in Nigeria was the result of preventive action taken by the country’s electoral commission, civil society groups, and development partners. The specific preventive actions taken include innovations in election administration aimed at enhancing electoral transparency and credibility, election security measures such as early warning and peace messaging, and preventive diplomacy urging the main candidates and the political elite to embrace peace. The key lesson that can be drawn from Nigeria’s experience is that a well thought out conflict prevention strategy should be an integral part of electoral governance, especially in countries with a high risk of electoral violence.     

An analysis of well-being in urban Nigeria

Improving the well-being of Nigerians is the aim of Nigeria Vision 20:2020, the key development policy document in Nigeria. However, as well-being is an emerging and contested concept, this article explores how the well-being of urban citizens is understood in Nigeria, and identifies key trends affecting urban well-being as expressed by a selection of strategic elite stakeholders in Nigerian society. These included senior civil servants and politicians, and various senior members of civil society groups and academia. The analysis also reveals characteristics underpinning policies for urban well-being.     

Counting the development costs of the conflict in North-Eastern Nigeria: the economic impact of the Boko Haram-led insurgency

Nigeria presents an important case for examining the interaction between economic emergence and (in)security on account of the Boko Haram-led insurgency. This paper interrogates long-standing theoretical assumptions about the economic consequences of violent conflict in such a complex space. It analyses the cost of North-East Nigeria’s conflict on development by considering its impact on the economy at the national and subnational levels. Generalised assumptions about the ways through which conflict affects development appear to hold in some regards but not in others. Evidence suggests some disruption in fiscal adjustments at the macro level, trade and investment as well as agricultural production and commerce within the North-East but less so with regard to economic growth and foreign direct investment flows at the national level. The paper finds evidence of a dichotomy in terms of the impact of the conflict on the national and subnational economy. There is a high degree of containment of the repercussions of the conflict at the subnational level. However, there remains a degree of interconnectedness across these strata that are influenced by both domestic and international political economy dynamics.     

Islamic radicalisation and violent extremism in Nigeria

This article examines the issues underlining Islamic radicalisation and violence in Nigeria, a phenomenon whose latest manifestation through the activities of the Jamā'atu Ahlis Sunnah Lādda'awatih wal-Jihad (widely known as Boko Haram), has attracted considerable concern. It traces the evolution of the phenomenon and identifies the key issues that have explained its pattern of expression. The paper advances three main arguments: first, that Islamic radicalisation and its link to violence in Nigeria is, contrary to the often-held opinion, a phenomenon that transcends socio-economic deprivation and the mutual suspicion that underlines inter-group relations in the country, but also extends to a string of external considerations that intertwine with religion and identity in Nigeria; second, that there are aspects of the country's historical past, including the link with colonialism, that explain aspects of Islamic radicalisation and violence; and third, that greater clarity will come into the understanding of the Boko Haram phenomenon when considered against the background of the country's radicalisation history.     

The Effects of Oil Production and Ethnic Representation on Violent Conflict in Nigeria: A Mixed-Methods Approach

A large qualitative literature on violent conflict in Nigeria has identified the importance of oil production and ethnicity as salient factors in understanding violence, especially in the oil-rich Niger Delta. This resonates with the broader literature on natural resources, ethnic exclusion, and conflict. This article advances existing research by providing the first highly disaggregated statistical analysis of oil, ethnicity, and violence for Nigerian Local Government Areas (LGAs). We test whether oil production in a weak state environment, and local groups’ access to governmental power, affect the level of violence in Nigeria. We employ unique disaggregated data on violent conflict events, proprietary data on oil production, and newly collected information on local ethnic groups’ access to the federal government for 774 LGAs. We find strong evidence that LGAs with oil infrastructure experience significantly more violence than others, while access to the federal government significantly reduces violence. We complement these findings with a qualitative investigation of violent conflicts in Nigeria.     

尼日利亚农业现状及中尼农业合作研究

农业是中国的基础和优势产业,其发展一直受到极大关注。改革开放30多年来,中国粮食等主要农产品综合生产能力得到显著提高,粮食产量屡创新高,中国有比较丰富的农业技术和管理经验。尼日利亚拥有丰富的农业资源和巨大的市场,但由于农业结构单一,生产水平低下,在农业种植业方面偏向经济作物,近年来农业发展相对缓慢,至今粮食不能自给。中国和尼日利亚在农业领域具有巨大的合作潜力,中尼农业合作不仅有利于解决尼粮食短缺问题,而且还有利于中国农业走向非洲,利用两种资源,面向两个市场,促进自身发展。     

中国企业投资尼日利亚：机遇、风险及应对建议

尼日利亚2011年大选尘埃落定，现任总统古德勒克·乔纳森谋求连任成功，实现了政权顺利过渡，其投资环境进入一个相对稳定和利好的时期。新形势下，中国企业投资尼日利亚既迎来良好机遇，又面临一些重大挑战，总体上来说机遇大于挑战，所谓“风高浪险，水深有鱼”。中国企业宜在做好充分调研的基础上，趁机新增或扩大对尼日利亚投资，以尽早站稳脚跟，扩大市场。     

Conflict mitigation in Nigeria: the strategic conflict assessment

This article focuses on the methodology and objectives of the Strategic Conflict Assessment (SCA), the fieldwork for which was concluded in Nigeria in September 2002. It analyses its achievements, the lessons that it provides for the conflict-resolution community, and what might be gained by applying Edward Azar's notion of protracted social conflict (PSC) to the SCA.     

Developing terrorism coverage: variances in news framing of the January 2015 attacks in Paris and Borno

Written news coverage of an event influences public perception and understanding of that event. Through agenda setting and news framing, journalists control the importance and substance of readers’ beliefs about the event. While existing research has been conducted on the relationship between media coverage and the geographic location of the country an event took place in, there is limited understanding of this relationship in terms of terrorist events. Utilising an agenda-setting theory and news framing theory lens to compare news coverage of the January 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, France, and Borno, Nigeria revealed significant variances in the overall coverage, headline style and discourse usage based on the event. In particular, the American news coverage positively framed France through detailed, sympathetic coverage and negatively framed Nigeria by overgeneralising and placing blame. Determining the origin and impacts of these variances is integral to forming a more comprehensive understanding of international terrorism and the most effective ways to combat it.     

The Discourse of Tattoo Consumption among Female Youth in Nigeria

Abstract

Among female youth in Nigeria, especially those living in Abuja, Nigeria’s Federal Capital Territory (FCT), and its environs, skin design or tattooing has become a trendy social ritual in reinventing the notion of the “self” or perceived personhood, according to some subjective relevance. The body, or the skin in particular, has become a site for cultural (re)production and interpretation of meaning and a symbolic resource for embodied social capital and individual agency. This article interrogates the practice of tattooing among these youth: its motivations, semiotic interpretations, and perception. It illuminates how female tattoos have helped to create a conceptual dialogue between the biological (objective) body and the social (subjective) body. The study is conceptually rooted in African feminist thoughts and postmodern perspectives about the (female) body which view it as a text that can be written, rewritten and interpreted in powerful ways through a cultural lens. The results indicate that female tattoos are symbolic investments that represent fashion, self-expression, individuality, social change and sexual agency. Fundamentally, the aesthetic and artistic female body is deployed to reconstruct postmodern female identity while protesting the mainstream stereotyped representation of women especially in a male-dominated conservative society like Nigeria.     

Gunning for security governance in a resource-rich African state? Interrogating militarisation in a democratic Nigeria

ABSTRACT

This article examines the socio-historical factors that underpin the political sociology of militarism in Nigeria. In spite of subscribing to a democratic constitution and several regional mechanisms that advance democratic values, security governance in Nigeria has been marked by the increasing use of military force in responding to perceived threats posed by armed militias in the oil-rich Niger Delta. I argue that the securitisation of oil is fuels militarisation, facilitated by local, national and international actors. The turn to democratisation and changing conceptions of security have reinforced rather than reined in militarism, which results in a competitive and often violent politics between national, local and global security and military actors over access to and control of oil resources. These dynamics also result in dangerous socio-economic and political consequences for Niger Delta communities.     

Oil Communities and Political Violence: The Case of Ethnic Ijaws in Nigeria's Delta Region

The popular expectation that the oil-rich but underdeveloped Niger Delta of Nigeria would become more stable and less volatile with the inauguration of civilian democratic rule has proved erroneous. This development calls for a fundamental rethinking of existing assumptions about community-based anomie and the political violence embarked upon by nascent community-based movements in the region. This is particularly true regarding the struggle by Ijaw ethnic oil communities against environmental degradation, socio-economic and cultural strangulation, and political marginalization by the Nigerian state and multinational oil companies. Much of the existing literature has focused on the high-profile Ogoni struggles to the neglect of those embarked upon by the Ijaws, reputed to be the fourth largest ethnic group in Nigeria and spread over six states along the country's Atlantic seaboard.     

An endogenous empowerment strategy: a case-study of Nigerian women

In Nigeria women's empowerment is essential to improving their standard of living and protecting their right to participate fully in development. More effective strategies are needed for women to participate in decision making. There are both static and dynamic aspects of the concept of empowerment. The former may lead to exogenous power strategies, while the latter may lead to endogenous empowerment facilitated by the dynamic concept that regards empowerment as a bottom-up process that develops the capacity of individuals. This process can be accomplished in six stages that encompass awareness, skills and capacity assessment, capacity-building and skills development, participation and greater control in decision-making, action for change, and evaluation. Nigeria needs an endogenous empowerment strategy for women's effective participation within organizations that is based on the tenet that women can only protect their interests through effective participation in their organizations and that highlights awareness-building, skills-acquisition and capacity-building, and changing discriminatory norms. External agents can not empower women but can foster conditions conducive to self-empowerment.     

How projects rise and fall: the lifecycle of a dietary modernisation scheme

How do projects grow? How do they fail? What accounts for their changing fortunes? This paper uses the archives of a 1970s modernisation scheme to explore the life cycle of a long-running project, concerning the production of leaf protein in Nigeria. It argues that archives can be very useful for understanding success and failure, and encourages practitioners to take an interest in the story of past projects, even those that failed. Drawing on Actor-Network Theory, it argues that alliances are key to understanding project lifecycles, suggesting that practitioners focus on strengthening local relationships, rather than seeking answers in universal management templates.     

Organising the Boycott,Divestment and Sanctions movement: the case of the ‘We Divest’ campaign

In this article, I critically analyse the case of the We Divest campaign as an example of a divestment initiative of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement to highlight aspects of how the movement works, particularly through its organisational structure and processes. The campaign targets TIAA-CREF, one of the largest retirement fund providers in the US, to divest funds currently held in a number of companies the campaign has identified as profiting from Israel’s violations of international law. In examining the case I determine certain organisational characteristics of the movement, i.e. networked, decentralised, grassroots, horizontal and border-crossing. By identifying certain aspects of the movement’s infrastructure through an investigation into the We Divest campaign, I argue that the organisational structure and processes identified in the case study suggest that the movement represents a new and different way of challenging Israel.