Research & Publications

This paper examines the impact of social media on African politics focusing on how these platforms have influenced political discourse, citizen engagement, and government responsibility and accountability.

The Gulf of Guinea (GoG) which links some states of Western and Central Africa is highly endowed with aquatic wealth such as crude oil, natural gas and many other resources. It has remained one of the sources of revenue for the states within the region, (Tsuwa, 2023). The centrality of the Gulf of Guinea to the economic development of the affected states is in line with international consideration that coastal states have sovereignty on their territorial waters.

There is no doubt, Nigeria, a country of multifarious ethnic nationalities, grapples with the problem of harmonious coexistence among her peoples. Internecine skirmishes are recorded among the ethnicities along the lines of their diverse beliefs, hopes and aspirations; political upheavals and resource control are always feature in the daily endeavours of the people and government; the Federal Character question is always raised, observed orjettisoned. All these lead to frosty relations among the various ethnic groups of the country.

This paper seeks to examine the conduct of local government elections' in Nigeria by states' Independent Electoral Commissions. The paper purposively choose the 3rd June, 2017 local government council elections' conducted by the Benue State Independent Electoral Commission (BSIEC). The data for this paper is obtained from both primary and secondary sources.

People today have an urge - an impatient urge to participate in the events and process that shape their lives. And that impatience brings many dangers and opportunities. It can dissolve into anarchy, ethnic violence or social disintegration. But if properly nurtured in a responsive national and global framework, it can also become a source of tremendous vitality and innovation for the creation of new and more just societies (UNDP 1993:1) The above quote emphasize that limited political participation can contribute to the emergence of violent conflicts in the society. А democratic polity, we are well aware imbues in the people the right to demand that political power be rested to those who create it and to whom it belongs and private ownership of political power be abolished

The Tiv people have long engaged in both mutually beneficial and conflictual relationship with other ethnic nationalities along their borders. Most of the peaceful and mutual relations between Tiv and other groups in the Benue Valley, such as intermarriages, cultural and traditional exchange, business and commerce, and political and military alliance, have continued up to date.

The efforts made by the federal and state governments to curtail the spread of coronavirus in Nigeria such as lockdown, indoor policy and the ban on inter-state movement created a lot of hardship to businesses and households. These challenges necessitated the distribution of palliatives to businesses and households that were most affected by the pandemic. The dissatisfaction and lamentations that followed the distribution palliative of palliatives by government agencies and ministry made the study of examine distribution in the country very imperative, The study was designed to the template used by government agencles to distribute Covid-19 palliatives and the politics of deciding the beneficiaries.

The West African sub-region is under deluge of armed attacks by transhumant nomadic Fulani herdsmen in their struggle with sedentary farmers over scarce natural resources like land, water and pasture. Although, there has been conflict between herders and farmers from time immemorial in the region and beyond.

One of the major obstacles to peace, security and sustainable development in Nigeria is the presence and continued proliferation of Small Arms and Light Weapons. This study examines arms proliferation, national security and sustainable development in Nigeria.

Every nation irrespective of its level of development has come to accept the importance of foreign relations. States through the instrumentality of bilateral and multilateral agreements ought to achieve certain fundamental objectives which are beneficial to their citizenry. Nigeria's foreign policy is also geared towards achieving this goal. Through the adoption of rational choice theory as well as extensive review of literatures and qualitative analysis of data, the paper discovered that, from independence to date, Nigeria's external relations has been characterized by a focus on the fundamental principles and objectives of African unity, peaceful settlement of disputes, non-alignment and regional economic co-operation and development.

In liberal democracy, the element of choice is democracy. This element is achievable through the electoral process. one of the key tenets of Thus, elections serve as avenue for concrete expression of the citizen's right to choose and participation in democratic governance. Based on this premise, this paper investigated the role of Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) in electoral process in Benue State particularly in the 2019 general elections.

Migration is not a new occurrence, there are historical evidence proving that people have always had migratory lifestyles. There is enough evidence that people have moved from faraway places to inhabit new areas. For example, migrants from Asia ended up in North and South America over a period of time, via a land bridge over the Berlin Strait. There have been several bulk movements of people in the history of humans, all of which were caused by specific events during their times. (eschooltoday.com).However, there has been an upsurge in the movement of persons from less developed countries to the developed ones in recent time.

This paper investigates Nigeria's 2015 Elections and the change revolution. The deprivation theory was used as theoretical underpinning.The paper takes a historic excursion into the elections, party politics and the military intervention in Nigeria's democracy from the pre- independence era to the contemporary President Jonathan era. The paper revealed that since 1959, the common perception has been that Nigeria had not had a civilian President who actually chose to become one

The electoral process in Nigeria as in many developing democracies of the world has been fraught with several challenges ranging from personnel to operations and logistics. These challenges have resulted in irregularities in the Nigerian electoral process thereby undermining the conduct of free, fair and credible elections. The recently concluded 2019 General Election was not spared these challenges or the consequent questionable and contested outcomes of the election in many parts of the country.

The historicity of nation states shows that, at the heart of their socio economic, political and cultural development lays leadership vibrancy that is determined by a leadership that is accountable, visionary and focused. This leadership not only emancipates its citizenry from the shackles of poverty and marginalisation but also mobilises its resources to galvanise development for the welfare of the people. In Africa, nationalist leaders like Nelson Mandela, Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere, Patrice Lumumba and even military leaders like Murtala Mohammed amongst others have also fought socio-economic not only for the political liberation of their countries but also for their development.

Nigeria gained flagship independence which was commemorated on the 1stOctober 1960 and since then, the country at different times passed through several processes of reorganisation especially with regards to its system of government and structural arrangement.

The primary duty of any government is the protection of national interest, security of its people, maintenance of peace and the protection of the territorial integrity of the nation. Security therefore, becomes the core duty of the government. This is basically because security affects not only the attainment of human aspirations, but also the fundamental issue of national interest and integrity. It is only in a secured atmosphere that individuals within the state can engage in meaningful and productive activities to meet their needs. Similarly, it is only under such a situation that the state can mobilise its human and material resources for meaningful national development.

Politics in a nutshell can be described as a process where people collectively decide the means and strategy of not only recruiting their leadership but also distributing the resources within their society. There are different strategies people or groups adopt to gain political positions which gives them access to play major roles in the distribution of societal resources.

The Nigerian financial section has witnessed a lot of reforms in its quest to stimulate development. This paper is to investigate the workings of the electronic payment system in facilitating transactions in Nigeria. This paper using empirical evidence and analyzing it with the use of the pare to chart analysis reverts that, there are payment challenges in areas like ATM cash dispensing error, online transfer fraud and issues of network availability with the Eps. The paper therefore recommends that education should be giving to users, financials managers should provide infrastructure for effective implementation of the programme for efficient service delivery.

This paper interrogates the impact of election fraud on political stability in Nigeria's Fourth Republic. The paper adopted secondary means of data collection for the study. Liberal theory of democracy was adopted for analysis. The paper argued that political instability in Nigeria since 1999 to date is as a result of lack of free, fair and credible elections. Credible, free and fair elections can help in consolidating democratic values, promote human rights and security. But fraudulent elections promote political instability corruption and conflict in the polity.

Africa as a continent has been bedeviled with conflicts with their consequences. The causality conflicts have continued to change in their forms and content depending on the parties to the conflicts and their interest(s). Resolving these conflicts has constituted a great challenge to the continent hence the adoption of collective security architecture by the African Union to resolving these conflicts. This paper examines the African Union's Collective Security Architecture to see if it has achieved its goal of preventing and resolving conflicts and ensuring peace on the continent.

Globally, internal conflicts of different sorts have remained the most devastating incidence destabilizing growth and development especially in developing societies. In Africa, majority of the internal conflicts that have exacerbated retrogression on the continent usually tend to arise as a result of many factors ranging from the external influences on the state, prevailing poor governance and autocratic leadership, challenge of state formation, prebendalism, ethnicity, socio- economic and religious dynamics that shape political calculations and resource contestations. Thus, while we are not oblivious of the fact that the aforementioned challenges, to some extent, manifest in some other continents of the world, mismanagement and misapplication of same for individualistic purposes in Africa has deteriorated security conditions in most of the states in Africa.

Nigeria, with a population of about 150 million people, is vast in mineral resources. The huge population, no doubt, should be accorded with high potentials for human resources. In human capital development, education is essential. Education is the cultivation of the entire individual including intellectual, character and psychomotor development. It is the human resources of any nation, rather than its physical capital and material resources, which ultimately determines the character and pace of its economic and social development.

Malaysia is now one ofthe emerging economies in the world with a prospect of joining the league of developed/industrialized nations in the nearest future. This is a great feat forthe country that was far behind Nigeria in the 70s in terms of economic development. This article examines the Malaysian industrial development strategy and lessons worth emulating by Nigeria for her growth and development options. The article used secondary data and the data was analyzed based on arguments of the Developmental State framework.

The politics of migration and identity has over the years created -stereotype allies, adversaries, historical accounts of migration and subsequently conflicts and violent struggles over the control of political, traditional and economic resources between the various ethnic nationalities in Takum local government of Taraba State. The paper examines this phenomenon using the inter-elite competition thesis of conflict theory.

This paper investigates the nature and character of religious conflicts in Northern Nigeria with a focus on the relevance of interfaith engagements in resolving them. Using primary and secondary data and analyzing it within the arguments of pluralism, the paper discovered that, the fear of domination, the politicization of religion, bad governance and the citizenship questions are central to the conflicts in the area.

Democracy to us means the power of the citizens to decide who rules them and how they are ruled. This implies that democracy guarantees the rights of men, women, youths and adults in a society irrespective of their sex and status in the society to participate in the decision making process. To expand the frontiers of our discussion about democracy, we consider the submission of Soludo (2005:28) who views democracy as a form of civilian-led governance in which all citizens have fundamentally equal rights, votes and privileges; where citizens enjoy liberty and freedom; where the ultimate legitimacy of actions, choice, appropriations, and decisions rest with the citizens' supreme or through their representatives elected by ballot.

This paper examines the inexorable Interplay between democracy and development in Africa. Data was collected through secondary sources. The paper locates the endemic nature of underdevelopment in the absurd; being eminent due to the negativity in the process and nature of democracy which creates weak and incompetent institutions and mechanisms.

The growth of modern democratic practice centers on political parties, which stand out as organized platforms for the articulation of aspirations and canvassing for the electoral votes. A political system is an important institutional component of all liberal democracies and electoral processes. It is through political parties that candidates are produce, the parameters on the issues and agenda within which elections are conducted is set, it is within this context that elected officials are also expected to perform certain duties and obligations from one election to the other. It is important to stress that political parties carried out their activities within the ambit of electoral laws as specified by the electoral body. How

This study investigates the efficacy of the United Nations (UN) Security Council in maintaining international peace and security within its legal framework. The study adopted secondary data in gathering materials and analyzed through content analysis rooted on logical inductions. The major finding of this study is that the UNSC has limited its capacity to maintain global peace as its veto powers are limited to 5 permanent members.

The Middle Belt diverse and it emerged out of agitations to delink itself from the perceived domineering disposition of the northern oligarchy which it was linked to by the colonialist. This region became of its diversity and other intervening factors has witness alot of insecurity. This paper examines this and discovers that illiteracy, farmers/teachers relations alineation, do or die politics agmonst others have been responsible for the high level of insecurity in the region. The paper therefore, recommends for the establishment of joint education scheme, funding of security agencies agmonst others as solution to the insecurity problem in the Middle Belt.

Abstract In today's modernized and globalizing world, new technologies have increased and improved orthodox medicine and care. While the rest of the world is improving and developing modern strategies for modern heath care, the Tiv people and by extension majority of African societies are reverting back to traditional healing practices and methods.

This paper discusses the origins, dominance and impact of the Bretton Woods institutions on Post-Colonial African states. The central argument of this paper is that, post-colonial African economic crises is blamed on the stagnating roles played by the IMF and World Bank in entrenching economic crises in Africa. This is achieved through direct involvement of these institutions in the affairs of African states such as imposition to power of puppet to leadership positions who could help carry out their policies, ruthless sponsorship of coup d'état to destabilize African governments that refuse to embrace their policies.

The centrality of the Legislature in the governance equation of the fourth republic is obviously not in doubt. Chapter 5(v)¹, gives credence and full life to the centrality of the Legislature in the democratic governance of the country both at center and in the component units. The legislature is empowered by the constitution to make laws for peace, order and good governance of the Federation and on any other matter in the exclusive, concurrent and residual legislative lists.

The Middle Belt region of Nigeria is highly heterogeneous in nature both in terms of culture, identity and religion. This region in recent times has witnessed a plethora of violence in recent times especially between farmers and herders with devastating consequences on the socio-economic and politico cultural composition of the area. This paper investigates this phenomenon using secondary sources of data collection and analyzing same within the arguments of the political economy approach and discovers that, the need for grazing land by the herders for the economic interest to tender for their cattle and the farmers desire to use their land for farming activities which is their main occupation of the people of the area has become the major causality factor of the persistent farmers/herders conflicts in the area.

Critical to every liberal democratic formation is the idea of periodic free, fair and credible elections that are conducted by a neutral umpire. According to Collier (2010), elections are the institutional technology of any democracy. They have the potential to make government both more accountable and more legitimate. According to Ibrahim and Ibeanu (2009), elections are the bedrock of any democratic process.

This paper examines the impact of the global economic meltdown on the Nigerian society considering the fact that, the Nigerian economy is a peripheral one that is not completely integrated into the world capitalist system. The paper discovers that, while developed economies that depended on the financial sector were melting as a result of the shocks on the stock market and mortgage lending, the Nigerian economy which depends solely on oil demands witnesses rather an increase in its revenue base due to the higher demand for oil during the period.

Democracy has become a contentious issue in Africa and Nigeria in particular. This is because of the nature and character of democracy in these societies. The struggle for political offices has in many cases crippled the major tenets of participatory democracy as the people's right to vote and be voted for are crippled.

This paper investigates the impact of globalization on Nigeria's economic performance from 1985 to 2011. The advocates of globalization are of the opinion that it can bring about rapid development through industrialization. This paper utilizes secondary data and presenting them in tables relied on the arguments of dependency theory to critically analyze the impact of globalization on Nigeria's' economic performance.

The creation of the Nigerian state just as in many other African countries has remained one of the most controversial legacies of colonial rule in Nigerian. Many autonomous nationalities were fused together without consideration to their ethnic, socio-cultural and political configurations and consent. The arrangement has remained and has created a lot of suspicion, tension and in most cases outright conflict on religious, political and ethnic lines. This paper examines this problematic and discovers among other issues that, apart from the destructive legacies of colonial rule and the politics of capitalist neo-colonialism in Africa, many years of military autocracy and repression have also helped in deconstructing the tenets of democracy to institute militarized ideologies of personal and dynastic rule, corruption, dictatorship and the suppression of the citizens especially the minority groups and opposition political parties.