Your search for: subjects:"Nigeria Politics And Government 1993"

To understand Africa, you have to understand Nigeria, and few Americans understand Nigeria better than Karl Maier. In the tradition of Philip Gourevitch's betselling We Regret to Inform You... and Redmond O'Hanlon's No Mercy, This House Has Fallen is a bracing, disturbing, evocative report on the ...

To understand Africa, you have to understand Nigeria, and few Americans understand Nigeria better than Karl Maier. In the tradition of Philip Gourevitch's betselling We Regret to Inform You... and Redmond O'Hanlon's No Mercy, This House Has Fallen is a bracing, disturbing, evocative report on the state of Africa's most populous, potentially richest, and most dangerously dysfunctional nation.

Each year, with depressing consistency, Nigeria is declared the most corrupt state in the entire world. A nation into which billions of dollars of oil money flow, Nigeria's per capita income has dramatically fallen in the past two decades. All of the money has been stolen by elites. Also stolen has been democracy. Nigeria's leaders tend to elect themselves, often with the help of a gun. Military coup follows military coup. A rare democratic election is often merely a prelude to the next seizure of power by a general who wants greater access to the state's rapidly depleted vaults. A country of rising ethnic tensions and falling standards of living, Nigeria is a bellwether for Africa. And yet some think it is on the verge of utter collapse, a collapse that could overshadow even the massacres in Rwanda.

A brilliant piece of reportage and travel writing, this book looks into the Nigerian abyss and comes away with insight, profound conclusions, and even some hope.

This study documents a crucial dimension of the resistance of Nigerian civil society to a repressive and monumentally corrupt military state in the late 1980s and 1990s in Nigeria. Employing a neo-Gramscian theoretical framework, the study relates how a section of the media defied censorship laws ...

This study documents a crucial dimension of the resistance of Nigerian civil society to a repressive and monumentally corrupt military state in the late 1980s and 1990s in Nigeria. Employing a neo-Gramscian theoretical framework, the study relates how a section of the media defied censorship laws, outright bans, incarceration and the assassination of opposition figures, to prosecute the struggle for democracy. It captures the tensions and contradictions between a pliant section of the media, which sought to legitimize the state and a critical section of the same media, which in alliance with radical civil society, invented rebellious outlets to carry on the struggle against dictatorship. The study seeks to make fresh departures by documenting not only the role of the national media in the throes of democratic struggle, but that of the international media whose role was influential in the years studied. Finally the report offers empirical proof of the mechanisms by which a vibrant civil society can curb the ravages of a predatory state in an African country.

The democratic opening presented by Nigeria's successful transition to civil rule (June 1998 to May 1999) unleashed a host of hitherto repressed or dormant political forces. Unfortunately, it has become increasingly difficult to differentiate between genuine demands by these forces on the state and ...

The democratic opening presented by Nigeria's successful transition to civil rule (June 1998 to May 1999) unleashed a host of hitherto repressed or dormant political forces. Unfortunately, it has become increasingly difficult to differentiate between genuine demands by these forces on the state and outright criminality and mayhem. Post-transition Nigeria is experiencing the proliferation of ethnic militia movements purportedly representing, and seeking to protect, their ethnic interests in a country, which appears incapable of providing the basic welfare needs of its citizens.It is against the background of collective disenchantment with the Nigerian state, and the resurgence of ethnic identity politics that this research interrogates the growing challenge posed by ethnic militias to the Nigerian democracy project. The central thesis is that the over-centralization of power in Nigeria's federal practice and the failure of post-transitional politics in genuinely addressing the "National Question," has resulted in the emergence of ethnic militias as a specific response to state incapacity. The short- and long-term threats posed by this development to Nigeria's fragile democracy are real, and justify the call for a National Conference that will comprehensively address the demands of the ethnic nationalities.