Suchergebnisse

SUMMARY
Africa has massive potential for a vibrant 'Blue Economy': 70% of the countries in the continent have territorial coastlines and extensive kilometres of exclusive economic zones (EEZs) in the sea that are still largely untapped for economic development. This analysis on sub-Saharan Africa's positioning in the new framework of the Blue Economy, as well as the defining bottlenecks of maritime insecurity and weak governance, finds that Africa's coastal states lack financial and technological capacity to harvest ocean assets, and are plagued by the corrupt tendencies of the political elite. There is a need to deploy strategic use of the states' advantageous maritime resources for more locally beneficial development.

Nigeria, the world's most populous black nation, faces a major crisis in its federal structure and democratic experience. Despite the allusion to democratic governance of the country, the political class, especially elected state governors, and the bureaucratic elite have turned autocratic, refusing to obey the Constitution which demands compulsory elections into the local government administration, siphoning the statutory allocation to the councils from the Federation Account, generating instability in the polity, and arresting the socioeconomic development at the grassroots. This paper puts in perspective the legitimacy crisis and elite conspiracy in the local government council administration, which has spread rural poverty and discontentment among the citizenry, and recommends concrete steps to arrest the calamitous drift.Keywords: Nigeria, constitution, democracy, development, elite, legitimacy, local government LOCAL

In the developed countries, the military is identified largely for their role in the defence of the country from external aggression and helping out with internal security when the need arises. On the contrary, in a number of developing countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America, when the military is mentioned, their traditional defence and internal security functions get obscured in their political role. For a thirty-year period (1966 – 1999), Nigeria was in this category of countries where the military have combined their constitutional role of defence of the country with that of political governance. While the participation of the military in governance has substantially fizzled out world wide, their impact on the socio-economic and political evolution of the countries concerned have been enormous. This paper critically examines the local government system in Nigeria midwifed by the military in the three decades of their rule; the initial emphasis on efficiency-oriented administration at the local level, the effort which culminated in the 1976 local government reform and the issue of whether the military can serve as modernizers in developing countries. DOI:10.5901/mjss.2013.v4n13p15

The title of the paper is concise, unambiguous but very broad. This is because the issue of insecurity permeates all aspects of human endeavor and serves as a fundamental panacea to any societyes growth and development. More so, it is tied to every societyes social, political, economic and cultural growth. Consequently, the paper addresses the fundamental issue of the \management of insecurity. and its impact on national growth and development by taking a paradoxical perspective of the Nigerian context within the globalized world. Thus, in all entirety, the issue of security is now becoming a policy mantra to every existing nation.

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