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Table of Contents :
Editorial Note
Victor Ojakorotu 9
The emergence of democratic waves in African societies prompted critical efforts to rehabilitate Africa and her people, who had previously been marginalised by the colonial administration. Despite the reclamation of independence, prejudice against the black identity still prevails, and today, it manifests as colourism—discrimination against persons with dark skin tones, usually among people of the same racial identity. This paper, which employed a qualitative exploratory design, aimed to explore the impacts of colourism on Africanism. It argues that colourism is a brainchild of colonialism that rears its ugly head in the democratic period. Questionnaires were administered to ten purposively sampled female students at the University of X. Data were further presented and analysed through thematic content analysis to authenticate and conclude that the predominance of colourism, among other things, handicaps African development as it engenders maladies that invalidate Africanism such as skin whitening, hair straightening, Negrophobia, xenophobia, and racism. The aforementioned phenomena devalue Africanism and deter the democratic mission of harmonising Africa and promoting oneness, equality, human rights, and Ubuntu. The paper recommends that a variety of mechanisms, such as advertisements, campaigns, scholarly lectures, and conferences, be employed to revive the aboriginal characteristics of Africanism, such as the black identity, and re-conscientise the world about their value.
Within the African Renaissance narratives, the African Union Development Agency - NEPAD (AUDA-NEPAD) was established in 2019 to accelerate Africa’s developmental projects. The article thus interrogates the role of AUDA-NEPAD in creating the required opportunities for socio-economic development. Through desktop research of both secondary and primary sources of data, the study employs the radical political economy framework for analysis. The article historicises the conceptualisation of Pan-Africanism and provides a critical analysis of AUDA-NEPAD’s mandate and efforts within the context of Pan-Africanism. Indeed, the desire for the unity and emancipation of Africa has created pseudo-anti-imperial sentiments among African socio-political elites. While the leaders have been rhetorical about their ‘rejection’ of the imperial legacy in Africa, they have, consciously or unconsciously, sustained neo-imperialism by reinforcing aid dependency within the AUDA-NEPAD developmental framework. African elites have struggled to demarcate between cooperation and dependency. This has impeded their capacity to ‘own’ these developmental projects and the capability to raise the consciousness of Africans for economic sustainability.
Through the re-established interest in good governance, the development programme is shifting concentration in a country's development measures by drawing attention to key inquiries like “appropriate governance structures, values, and the overall direction of the society”. The scholarly discourse on local governance in South Africa is loaded with instances of ineffective administrations. Thus, developmental local governments ought to have fitting “structures, values, and strategic direction” that are community-oriented. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the complexities of administration in South African local government, specifically, Capricorn District. First, the paper discusses the meaning and implication of the existence of a local government sphere in a democratic environment. Secondly, the paper likewise stresses the challenges that exist in the local government structure, which impact negatively on the development of municipalities. Thereafter, the paper will make recommendations on the improvement of municipalities. The paper will use the exploratory qualitative method.
This paper examines how the ugly state of decay in Nigeria caused by elite complicity in the non-egalitarian structures occasioned violence and anarchy in the Nigerian State. The study adopted structural functionalism theory and content analysis and observed that following the embedded discriminatory tendencies of the Nigerian people, Nigerians are constitutionally and non-constitutionally discriminated against. Even the constitutionally enshrined ‘Federal Character’ issue is a clear mark of discrimination. In the pretense of imitating the American Affirmative Action principle of redressing the plight of the less privileged in the society, Nigerian constitution began to restrict rights of her citizens based on tribe and ethnicity in the name of federal character. Based on these observations, the article calls for urgent constitutional change to ensure a functional federalism in Nigeria. This will encourage perfect administrative and fiscal autonomy of the federating units that will be paying agreed tax to the center, while the central government will be controlling the military and foreign policy.
This article provides a comparative analysis of how the application of nativism has been employed by former President Jacob Zuma and his faction in the African National Congress (ANC) and Zimbabwe’s African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) to hold on to power in their respective domains in South Africa and Zimbabwe. The article reports on the findings obtained through the analysis of the nativist discourse by participants in rural Zimbabwe and South Africa. The study analysed the data of twenty participants who reside in the rural Mhondoro-Mubaira constituency in the Chegutu district of the Mashonaland West province of Zimbabwe, which is one of the strong support bases of ZANU-PF. The study also analysed responses from twenty participants who lived in the Ngcobo local district of the Chris Hani rural district of the Eastern Cape province of South Africa, which is one of the ANC’s strongholds. The aim was to explore whether responses in rural South Africa differed from those in rural Zimbabwe and, if so, how. We argue that both the Zuma-led faction in the ANC and ZANU-PF exploited historical factors related to the oppression that black people endured under white minority rule. On the other hand, we established that historical land injustices caused by apartheid and colonial rule and the calls for redressing the injustices of the past led to the politics of nativism. Notably, the oppressive treatment under apartheid and colonialism is still fresh in the minds of the older generation. However, the article also noted that ZANU-PF’s nativist discourse was party-driven, whereas in the ANC, it was Zuma and his faction in the ANC who adopted the politics of nativism.
Democracy as a system of government is articulated and reinforced by the majority of people, whose opinions and decisions matter in the polity, as well as the few minorities, who also air their views. The integration of e-governance in a democratic setting is pertinent since it is a sine qua non for understanding government policy actions, initiatives, and the active participation of the citizenry, whose ideas, opinions, and suggestions are necessary for a better society. The complex nature of society could as well necessitate the urgent need for participatory democracy through the use of ICT-driven gadgets. This participation is required to ensure inclusive governance at all levels in any country around the globe. Meanwhile, despite the logic of this assertion, it fails to acknowledge the essence of good governance structure, which has become a recipe for democracy. This informs us that the semi-active participation of citizens in Nigerian politics has little to do with the adoption of e-governance, rather than the failure of political leaders to embrace stable democratic principles. Therefore, the major challenge in this analysis is that e-governance cannot be a surrogate for participatory democracy, but a good governance scheme, which would be integrated/entrenched in a democratic tenet.
The constitution is essential to the effective implementation of all legal and political systems. To this end, a constitution must be accompanied by legitimacy, a system of belief in which constituent units of a political system accept that a constitution is justified and therefore authorized. This article critically addresses the issue of constitutionalism and constitutional legitimacy deficit in post-1991 Ethiopia by analszing the making process and textual contents of the FDRE constitution. The study was conducted based on a qualitative approach, where the constitutional minutes, political parties’ programs, journal articles, and the content of the FDRE constitution were used as sources of data. The existing literatures concur on the illegitimacy of the living constitution, and subsequently, on the fact that Ethiopia lacks a constitutional system. However, there are contradictory views on how to rectify the problem, partly because of different explanations on the cause of the constitutional legitimacy deficit: some call for the immediate suspension of the constitution in favour of negotiating a new one; others resort to constitutional amendment; still others propose strict observance of the provisions of the existing constitution. This drives the need to learn more about the FDRE constitution-making process and the content of the final ratified document in order to understand how the role and motivations of constitutional designers interacted with the country's previous socio-political context to undermine the legitimacy of the constitution and, as a result, stymie the development of constitutionalism in the country. The study illustrates the constitution’s severe lack of legitimacy, which altered constitutionalism in post-1991 Ethiopia.
Politics and administration are inextricably linked in government. As a model, the Weberian dichotomy implied that policies were developed by politicians and implemented by civil servants, with a rigorous division of tasks and no overlap in functions. The public administration reforms that have occurred in recent decades, particularly under the New Public Management and Post-New Public Management paradigms, have had an impact on the landscape of politico-administrative relations. It is evident that dealing with the interface between politico-administrative poses significant challenges for South African local government. Political meddling in administrative matters and as strained relations between key political and administrative officials in municipalities appear to be the norm. The paper explores the impact of good governance on the political-administrative interface. The article seeks to establish the effects of political interference on good governance and service delivery. The paper adopted a qualitative methodology using the desktop approach to review existing literature, such as journals, books and legislation. The study relied heavily on secondary sources for data collection to achieve its overall goal. The study will contribute to the existing theoretical and empirical literature as well as in the public administration domain with reference to the political-administrative interface. The main findings are the African National Congress cadre deployment policies, which have resulted in a variety of governance and service delivery challenges that have negatively affected municipal performance. Secondly, the study revealed that political interference creates a fuzzy dividing line between political and administrative duties. The study uncovered the global, regional, and South African contexts of politics and administrative interfaces. The study recommends a separation of powers that will ensure a clear structural division of authority between elected and administrative officials to eliminate or minimise undue political influences on public administration as well as potential conflicts.
This paper investigated the disposition and leadership approach to corruption and anti-corruption agenda in Nigeria during Goodluck Jonathan and Muhammadu Buhari civilian administrations. The adopted theoretical framework is leadership personality approach while a comparative research design was utilised. Data were collected from primary and secondary sources. Primary data were collected through Key Informant Interviews (KIIs). In all, twelve KIIs were conducted with different categories of people from civil society organisations, media personnel, scholars, and retired officials of the Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission (ICPC). Secondary data were obtained from the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD), the Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CSLAC) and the Transparency International’s (TI) Corruption Perception Index. Also, books, newspapers, journals, internet source were used. Findings revealed that Jonathan’s approach to corruption lacked lustre while Buhari’s was mild. In terms of disposition, Jonathan was tolerant towards corruption while Buhari’s disposition was intolerant but still condoned it like Jonathan. Factors accounted for differences in their depositions to corruption and anti-corruption agenda are background of the leaders, party ideology and implementation of inherited measures while similarities in their dispositions are related to party politics, lack of political will and serious minded prosecution. The paper concluded that the approaches employed in combating corruption was whittled down by the dispositions of the two civilian presidents. It is recommended among others that intra-party favoritism should be separated from anti-corruption agenda in Nigeria.
This paper evaluated UNICEF’s Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) programme in Nigeria with an emphasis on the successes achieved, challenges encountered, and prospects to build on, with a special focus on Anambra State. This evaluation became pertinent given the report on WATER AIDS, which found that 67% of Nigerians lack access to basic sanitation, which has been linked to the prevalence of diarrhea cholera, typhoid and other deadly diseases, especially among children and women. This study employed descriptive survey and documentary research designs and utilised both primary and secondary methods of data collection. Data were analysed using the descriptive analytical method, and the study was founded on the theory of change. The study found that WASH Programme has improved access to safe drinking water in Anambra state, improved awareness and consciousness of hand-washing practice and aided in the elimination of open defecation. Some challenges to the WASH programme encountered include inadequate funding and poor maintenance of hygiene facilities. As a result, we recommend corporate synergic funding to sustain the achieved results, and an inbuilt maintenance and sustainability plan and massive sensitisation exercises by the local governments concerned.
This paper assesses the impact of the Performance Management System (PMS) on employee performance in the Ngaka Modiri Molema District Municipality (NMMDM). A quantitative research approach was adopted, in which 200 participants were sampled from a population of 693 employees. A closed-ended questionnaire was used to collect primary data, and descriptive statistics was used to analyse the data. The study results reveal that the main challenge that affects employee performance is the lack of proper training for managers and supervisors in implementing the PMS. The study further recommends that training for senior managers and supervisors be made mandatory, and that refresher courses be held on an annual basis to assist senior managers and employees in improving system implementation.
Too often, researchers are more concerned with the methodology of their study and the report. Several aspects of their research are relegated to hygienic factors supporting the solutions to the research problem. Challenges experienced in the course of data collection receive little attention. This paper is a “narrative and reflective description” of problems experienced by a qualitative researcher while conducting a study of contentious politics in the relationship between International Nongovernmental Organisations (INGOs) and an authoritarian state. Nine challenges are described, namely; the sensitivity of the study, the challenges of field access and its preservation, knowledge deficiency claims, tricky interview venues, absentee participants, data insecurity, methodological challenges, and ethical challenges. In each of these, they describe the lessons learned.
Governments exist for the welfare and security of their citizens. It is critical to put in place good institutions and infrastructure in order to play these roles. The study focuses on transportation, electricity, water, sanitation, and health infrastructure. These are to be for the benefit of the citizens and as catalysts for investment, which will boost economic growth and development. However, reality portrays weak infrastructure in Nigeria. This study relied on historical data from reports and academic articles. This study seeks to ascertain the level of citizens’ participation in the provision of infrastructure in Nigeria. The findings show that, apart from corruption, fiscal imbalance, and other factors, low participation of citizens in state affairs affects the efficacy of infrastructure. The study will be situated within systems and neo-patrimonial theories. It suggests how to boost the citizens-leadership relationship.
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