Governance and Security in Nigeria's Fourth Republic: (Routledge Studies in Peace, Conflict and Security in Africa)

This book explores the link between the nature of governance and various dimensions of security in Nigeria since the beginning of the fourth republic in 1999. The book begins by laying out the expectations of governance following the restoration of democratic rule. Failure to meet these expectations of governance over the subsequent 25 years has led to resistance to authority structures and privileged groups, who, in turn, in their effort at defending their positions, employ coercion that has endangered the security of Nigeria. This book is different from some previously published books in the field because it engages Nigeria’s security challenges in their abstract and concrete forms and connects governance indicators with security (or insecurity), taking a cue from key themes in state-society and intergroup relations. This book juxtaposes different governance indicators against various dimensions of security, including physical, economic, food and so on, in order to assess whether there is a correlation between the quality of governance in Nigeria and the country’s diverse security challenges. At a time of increasing conflict in Nigeria, this book’s analysis will be valuable for researchers across Political Science, History, Security Studies, Law and African Studies.

Table of Contents:
1. Governance and Security in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic: Introduction 2. An Outline of Security Thought and Its Implications for Nigeria 3. Securitization Drivers of Biafra Agitations 4. Civil Society’s Image of Ethnic Grievance 5. Governance and Security of Nigerians in Diaspora, 1999-2022 6. President Buhari’s Border Closure Policy and Nigeria’s External Relations 7. Governance of Land Use, Anthropocene Inequality and Human Security in Nigeria’s Niger Delta 8. Implications of Rural Banditry in Northern Nigeria for Women’s Livelihood 9. A Critique of 'Not Too Young to Run' Act 2018 for Elective Offices and Participation in Governance 10. Governing from the Grassroots: Women and Political Security in Nigeria 11. Policing During Covid-19 Lockdown and Human Rights in Nigeria 12. The Agatu Farmers and Fulani Herders Conflict: Implications for Food Security in Benue South Area of Nigeria

About the Author :
V. Adefemi Isumonah is a professor and former Head of Department of Political Science at the University of Ibadan. He earned his doctorate degree in Political Science from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria in 1998 after obtaining Master of Science from the same institution. In 1997, he earned Postgraduate Diploma through a fellowship in Conflict Resolution from Uppsala University, Sweden. He is a recipient of several academic awards and fellowships and author of numerous scholarly book chapters and journal articles on governance and political economy of Africa. He co-authored Confronting Islamist Terrorism in Africa: The Cases of Nigeria and Kenya (2019) and Federal Presence in Nigeria: The Sung and Unsung Basis for Ethnic Grievance (2009). He is the author of “Land Tenure, Migration, Citizenship and Communal Conflicts in Africa” in Nationalism and Ethnic Politics on cultural theory of nationality and citizenship. His recent works are “Political Development Narrative of Africa’s Physical Space: The Case of Nigeria,” in Journal of Territorial and Maritime Studies (JTMS), and “The Nigerian Illustration of Under-Developmental Democracy,” in Timothy Scarnecchia & Corrado Tornimbeni (eds.) Democracy and Development in Sub-Saharan Africa from the 1990s to the 2020s: An Historical Challenge, James Currey. Nathaniel Umukoro is a professor of International Affairs, Conflict, Peace and Strategic Studies in the Department of Political Science and Dean, College of Postgraduate Studies, Western Delta University, Nigeria. He had his undergraduate education at the University of Benin and postgraduate Studies at the University of Ibadan, both in Nigeria. During his postgraduate research, he was a fellow of the Next Generation Social Sciences in Africa Unit of the Social Science Research Council, New York. In addition to his postgraduate studies, he received additional training in Education in Emergencies (2017), Peace Education and Transitional Justice (2015) from the Georg Eckert Institute, Germany; Development and Inequality in the Global South from Brown University, USA (2010) and Mixed-method Research Course from the Partnership for African Social and Governance Research, Nairobi, Kenya, in collaboration with the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, UK (2011-2012). He has over 100 publications, including 22 articles published in journals indexed by Scopus and Web of Science. Nathaniel Umukoro served as fellow of the Social Science Research Council, New York from 2013 to 2015, Humboldt fellow at the University of Bayreuth, Germany in 2022, Senior Research Fellow at Point Alpha Research Institute, Germany in 2023, Senior Fellow at the University of Bonn, Germany in 2024, and Senior Fellow at the Leibniz-Institut für Länderkunde (IfL), Leipzig, Germany, in 2025.