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ISSN : ISSN: 1998-4936 (Print) ISSN: 2075-6534 (Online)
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Given the nature of Affrika: Journal of Politics, Economics and Society (JPES) as a multidisciplinary journal, committed to the publication of constructive articles on the range of issues that affect Africa and African people world-wide, its present issue contains submissions on various facets of life with regard to the African continent. Affrika particularly seeks to feature articles that focus on the interplay of African politics, economics, and societies, with a view to producing knowledge for the social reinvention and development of Africa. Pursuant to such a laudable commitment the articles contained in the present issue of the journal may be characterised as a reflection of the Africanist position as they engage in a critical and constructive fashion with the continent’s development challenges.
The articles featured in present issue are loosely related along the foci of the journal as reflected in its title namely politics, economy and society, and may therefore be so categorized. The issue comprises a total of eight articles contributed by scholars and researchers domiciled in various African universities and Research Institutes. A panoramic look at the various subjects addressed in those scholarly contributions makes possible a convenient situation of their foci within two broad areas namely politics and society, in specific African contexts.
In the first category belong Ilufoye Ogundiya’s Corruption and Political Instability in Nigeria: A Post-Mortem Interrogation of the First and Second Republics, Waziri Adisa’s Colonialism and the Military: A Discourse on the History of Judicial Corruption in Nigeria, Oladele Idowu’s Communication and Language: The Fundamental Tools in Conflicts Resolution Jideofor Adibe’s The Role of the Media in Nation-Building in Nigeria, and Ahmad Rufai’s Boko Haram: A Conceptual-Theoretical Framework for Understanding Religious Extremism in Nigeria. As regards Jimoh Amzat and Ali Abdullahi’s Youth and Political Change in Nigeria: Historical Note and Critical Discourse, Irene Pogoson’s Re-Traditionalization, Competition or Aided Warfare? Interrogating the Drivers of Western and Local Fashion among Female Students in Selected Nigerian Universities, and Aifheli Mukhadakhomu’s Increasing Housing Beneficiaries Involvement: A Lesson from the Cuban Community Architecture Programme, they are studies that may be situated in specific aspects of life in the African society.
In his article, Corruption and Political Instability in Nigeria: A Post-Mortem Interrogation of the First and Second Republics, Ilufoye Ogundiya’s thesis is that corruption was one of the major factors which were instrumental to the truncation of Nigeria’s past democratic experiments and paved way for the collapse of the First and Second Republics. He associates some of the challenges of the Third Republic and what he describes as “current endemic instability and wave of democratic reversal” with corruption in its various forms especially the misuse of political power and influence for personal aggrandizement and group benefits. The paper makes an interesting read as it demonstrates the interconnectedness of Nigeria’s past political experience to its present state. The author seems at his best where he identifies public office holders indicted over corruption in the First and Second Republics and provides details of the specific amounts involved, as well as of their jail terms. The highest point of the paper is the author’s analysis on the implication of such an experience to the present dispensation.
The centrality of the concept of corruption marks the meeting point of Ogundiya’s contribution and Waziri Adisa’s article, Colonialism and the Military: A Discourse on the History of Judicial Corruption in Nigeria, which exposes the nature of executive recklessness that impaired the independence of the Judiciary in post-colonial Nigeria. The article engages critically with the concept of corruption and the challenges associated with its measurement. The author proves impressive in his analysis on the colonial and post-colonial history of judicial corruption in Nigeria, as well as of the military and the infiltration of corruption into the judiciary. More interesting than all that is the author’s critical analysis on the various dimensions of judicial corruption in post-colonial Nigeria and its consequences. The possible remedies proposed by the article constitute a significant portion of its contribution to scholarship.
Oladele Idowu’s paper, entitled Communication and Language: The Fundamental Tools in Conflicts Resolution, beams its searchlight on issues of communication and language, in connection with governance and conflict resolution. He articulates the integral nature of good communication to the realization of a credible governance and effective conflict resolution arrangement. He analyses various levels of communication, calls for a renewal of interest in communication and language for conflict resolution, offers a practical approach to language and communication in conflict resolution and also analyses some of the technicalities involved in decision-making for language adoption in conflict resolution operations. The paper’s contribution lies in its articulation of guiding principles that may be relied upon in formulating communication and language policy for the practice of conflict resolution.
Jideofor Adibe’s article, The Role of the Media in Nation-Building in Nigeria casts a critical look at the various ways in which the nature and structure of the Nigerian society influence media operations and practices and how the impact of such influence is felt in nation-building in the country. The author engages scholarly with the central concepts of the paper, analyses the traditional role of the media in mature democracies and underscores the impact of the media on Nigeria’s nation-building processes, and the implications of such impact for the country. The author exposes the potential of the media to contribute to the widening of social distance among Nigerians and promote hate-speech and group-think by facilitating the people’s uniqueness through the instrumentality of media ownership in the multi-ethnic country, essentially by state governments. The author also demonstrates most impressively that “the media’s ability to undermine the nation-building process is constrained by such countervailing elements as the existence of media watchdogs, the party loyalty of the media owners, as well as by the competition and commercialism that often influence media practices in the country”.
The last article in this category is Saheed Ahmad’s Boko Haram: A Conceptual-Theoretical Framework for Understanding Religious Extremism, which examines conceptual and theoretical underpinnings for research in religious extremism in Nigeria, with a focus on the Boko Haram Movement. The paper engages actively with the concept of extremism and related ones in the context of religion and offers an analysis of various theories that have the potential to aid both meaningful understanding and systematic conduct of research on religious extremism. In sum, the paper maybe aptly described as having attempted to address the challenge of conceptualizing and theorizing for research in religious extremism in Nigeria, with special attention to the Boko Haram Movement.
In Jimoh Amzat and Ali Abdullahi’s Youth and Political Change in Nigeria: Historical Note and Critical Discourse, the readers are treated to an examination of the history of youth involvement in political change and the challenges youths are facing within Nigerian socio-political space. The authors identify a tri-level of political change: micro, meso and macro, and argue that the Nigerian youths have played important roles in the country’s political space, especially in the struggle for independence from colonialists and immediate post-independence political formulations. The authors underscore the challenges faced by the Nigerian youths, from the 1980s, and trace such challenges to the weakness of the Nigeria state. Although the article appreciates the need for economic emancipation, it does not equivocate in submitting that the prospective political agenda of Nigerian youth should be on socio-political transformation through democratic channels.
Irene Pogoson’s article, Re-Traditionalization, Competition or Aided Warfare? Interrogating the Drivers of Western and Local Fashion among Female Students in Selected Nigerian Universities, exposes how Nigerian universities have come to represent a place where Western and traditional fashions coexist. He argues that the manifestations of the interaction between the two traditions are multiple (in terms of competition, acculturation, collaborations and even conflict), and identifies factors such as globalization, government, university authorities, the media, individuals, and religious groups have increasingly, as serving as drivers for such interactions. The paper examines the contestations between the two traditional fashions in terms of re-traditionalisation, competition and/or aided warfare among female students of two public Nigerian Universities: University of Lagos and University of Ibadan, and two private universities, Babcock and Covenant, with a focus on two interrelated questions namely What are the representations of these factors (drivers) in Nigerian universities? and, to what extent is the contestation between Western and local fashion on university campuses in Nigeria determined or influenced by these drivers? The strength of this paper lies in the author’s systematic attention to the two questions.
The last article in the present issue is Aifheli Mukhadakhomu’s Increasing Housing Beneficiaries Involvement: A Lesson from the Cuban Community Architecture Programme, which views the allocation and provision of housing as one of the greatest service delivery problems in South Africa. The author acknowledges the significant progress recorded by the new democratic government in addressing various service delivery challenges in under-serviced areas since 1994, but insists that much is still desired in the face of many housing problems that still exist. The author analyses the South African state-driven housing paradigm and highlights its strengths and deficiencies before offering the Cuban Community Architecture Programme (CAP), as a practical model that could be replicated for better results.
The strength of the present issue of Affrika does not lie only in the virtually panoramic coverage of various aspects of the African life that were subjected to examination. Similarly, its strength does not lie only in the diverse nature of the African universities and institutions that are represented in the articles peer reviewed and recommended for publication. Infact, its strength does not lie in the sophisticated scholarship of the contributors who painstakingly effected amendments recommended by their anonymous reviewers in various rounds of the review process. The strength of the present issue rather lies in the appreciable outcome of the totality of efforts made by authors, peer reviewers, editors, and the publishers, all of whom should be applauded for their excellent job.
Welcome to December 2016 Issue of Affrika: Journal of Politics, Economics and Society (JPES)!
Editor-in-Chief:
Prof. Ufo Uzodike
Editor: