State Fragility, State Formation, and Human Security in Nigeria

by Okome, Mojúbàolú Olúfúnké

• ISBN13: 9781137006776
• ISBN10: 1137006773
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2013-04-18
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

The democratic transition processes in Africa since the 1990s have carried great hopes and expectations about 'civil society' and ambivalence about the state. This book explores the complex interactions between state fragility, self-help, and self organization in Nigeria. Nigeria's associational life is highly developed and multifaceted, reaching far beyond 'civil society organizations' (CSOs) or non-governmental organizations (NGOs). There is a 'third sector' within civil society that encompasses a spectrum extending from community-based forms of self-help to ethnic or religious representation, and even militias. Some self organization formations have narrow, pragmatic aims. Others have an explicit socio-cultural or political agenda. Many respond to, and cope with consequences of the Nigerian state's inability to deliver services and provide functioning regulatory frameworks. Examining and analyzing the emergence of broader forms of civil society, the book considers its roots, dynamics and successes, but also pinpoints its costs, ambivalences, and contradictions. Despite strong traditions of self-organization in Nigeria, many pressure groups, organizations defending rights, independent policy consultants and other structures known as 'civil society organizations' are also dependent on foreign aid. The book contributes to deliberations on the relationship between state and civil society in Nigeria, Africa, and globally.

Author Biography

Mojúbàolú Olúfúnké Okome is Professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College, CUNY, USA and past Women's Studies Program Director as well as past Deputy Chair for Graduate Studies in the Department of Political Science at Brooklyn College. She is also past President of the African Studies Research and Forum. In 2000, Mojubaolu was one of three co-chairs of the New York State delegation to the National Summit on Africa, and led the second-largest delegation to the Summit in Washington, DC. She co-edited with Olufemi Vaughan, Transnational Africa and Globalization and West African Migrations: Transnational and Global Pathways in a New Century (2012) and authored A Sapped Democracy: The Political Economy of the Structural Adjustment Program and the Political Transition in Nigeria, 1983-1993 (1998), as well as various journal articles and book chapters in the areas of her research interests. She is the founder and Editor of the online peer reviewed journal ÌrÌnkèrindò: a Journal of African Migration and co-founder and until Spring 2010, one of three Co-editors of Jenda: Journal of African Culture and Women Studies.

Table of Contents

1. State Failure, Civil Society, and 'Uncivil Society': Concepts and Outline 
2. Cooperative Investment and Credit societies in Southwest Nigeria 
3. From 'Area-Boyism' to 'Junctions and Bases': Social Order and Violence in Lagos Island 
4. State Failure and the Niger Delta 
5. Radical Ethnic Actors and Militias 
6. Conflict Management and Peace-Building Capacities of State and Non-State Actors 
7. Gendered States: State Failure, Gender, and the Women's Rights Movement 
8. Women in 'Traditional' / Local-Level Governance
9. Local Government and Community Self-Help Organisations 
10. Contradictions in the Public Sphere: The Media 
11. Churches as a (Failed?) Alternative