About the Book
Nigeria is a bellwether, in an enormous continent, endowed with natural resources and human capital, whose development and greatness have been marred by political instability since gaining home-rule from Britain in 1960. The contemporary political, economic, and social quandaries that have stultified Nigeria’s growth project flows from difficulties in cultivating patriotic leaders with pluck to enact efficacious policies that will catapult the country to greater heights developmentally. Nigeria in the Fourth Republic: Confronting the Contemporary Political, Economic, and Social Dilemmas, edited by E. Ike Udogu, examines some of the vital issues responsible for the current political malaise and recommends strategies for exculpating the country from her current political quagmires. The contributors to this book argue, inter alia, for the avoidance of false starts reminiscent of the military interventions that aborted the democracy project and advocates the enactment of effective policies to supersede decision dictated by politics. This volume proposes national healthcare strategies to address the country’s healthcare needs and for dialogue to extinguish combustible inter-religious conflicts. The book recommends ways to assuage police highway malfeasance and explains why human rights observance is critical to further national cohesion while creating space for the subalterns to have their voices heard in discourses on how to advance peaceful coexistence.
Table of Contents:
Foreword
A. B. Assensoh and Yvette M. Alex-Assensoh
Preface
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations and Acronyms
1.General Introduction
E. Ike Udogu
2.False Starts and Missed Opportunities in Nigerian Politics
George K. Kieh, Jr.
3.Public Policy and Economic Development in Nigeria
Kelechi A. Kalu
4.Strategic Reforms to Resuscitate the Nigerian Healthcare System
Philip C. Aka and Joseph A. Balogun
5.Christian-Muslim Conflict in Post-Civil War Nigeria: Prelude to the Fourth Republic
Olufemi Vaughan
6.The Nigerian Police Highway Corrupt Practices: Strategies to Curb the Transgression
Bennett A. Odunsi
7.Subaltern Voices and Implications for Nigerian Politics in the Fourth Republic: A Theoretical and Conceptual Analysis
Samuel Zalanga
8.Human Rights Conundrums in the Fourth Republic: A Search for Solution
E. Ike Udogu
Bibliography
About the Author :
E. Ike Udogu is faculty fellow and professor of African, comparative, and international politics at Appalachian State University.
Review :
Nigeria in the Fourth Republic: Confronting the Contemporary Political, Economic, and Social Dilemma,which was initiated and edited by distinguished Professor E. Ike Udogu to honor one of the best activists, engaged social scientists, and a nationally committed politician in Nigeria, a dedicated representative from Edo State, Honorable Professor Julius O. Ihonvbere, is a truly powerful book. This is an encyclopedic, a multidisciplinary, a philosophically profound, a nationally sound policy-framed book with distinguished and seasoned contributing scholars to address critical issues about the national question, the nature of the state formation, policy and permanency of the Nigerian crisis, faulty leadership, corruption, ethnic and religious conflicts and deteriorating health, social and economic conditions. All these combined negative factors have been paralyzing the stability and the progress of Nigeria, despite its oil-based capital and an important demographic portion of its able intellectuals.
This enriched analytical volume, which focuses on the Nigerian 4th Republic politics, embodies its claimed paradigmatic positive shifts and nationally examined policy within framework of good governance, pragmatism of liberal democracy, the Nigerian model, is a brilliantly well-articulated, well-thought, and a factually and historically based publication with strongly imagined solutions. It is a highly and urgently recommended reading for those who govern, Nigerian people, and the African and Nigerian intellectuals and entrepreneurs who are interested in deeply understanding what went wrong in the formation of the Nigerian federal state with its authoritarianism, and what is to be done.
The possible and potential salvation by creating a transformative leadership in Nigeria is a dialectically and structurally constructed argument, persuasively relevant and ideologically progressive, which every enlightened mind with intellectual curiosity and policymakers should possess, read, and adopt in their works, courses, and policy platforms. There is a lot to learn from the deep side of the Nigerian leadership, intellectuals, politics, history, and its ‘corky’ federalism. Intellectually, researchers will find this immense contribution from critical social scientists a gratifying reading.
Nigeria in The Fourth Republic will be [an] asset for undergraduate and graduate students as well researchers and, indeed, the avid readers, who are very much interested in Nigeria’s economic, political, and social history. [R]eaders are rewarded with [an] excellent book on Nigeria, Africa’s most populous and oil rich nation. Therefore, the Editor as well as the contributors to the edited volume...deserve unlimited praise for their hard work, which will go a long way to contribute to the vast number of existing books and impressive scholarly research on the country, which attained its independence from British colonial rule in 1960.
