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In Humor, Silence, and Civil Society in Nigeria, Ebenezer Obadare offers an innovative perspective on the idea and reality of civil society. Mobilizing a wide range of concepts and insights from political science, African studies, sociology, cultural studies, media studies, anthropology, communications theory, and international development, Obadare develops a notion of civil society that radically departs from the literature's axiomatic focus on voluntary civic associations and focuses instead on more informal strategies of resistance, such as humor and silence. Compellingly argued, Humor, Silence, and Civil Society in Nigeria raises provocative questions on a topic of keen importance for students, scholars, and policymakers. Ebenezer Obadare is associate professorof sociology at the University of Kansas. He is coeditor of Civic Agency in Africa: Arts of Resistance in the 21st Century (James Currey, 2014)

This volume brings together the most up to date analyses of civil society in Africa from the best scholars and researchers working on the subject. Being the first of its kind, it casts a panoramic look at the African continent, drawing out persisting, if often under-communicated, variations in regional discourses. In a majority of notionally 'global' studies, Africa has received marginal attention, a marginality often highlighted by the usual token chapter. Filling a critical hiatus, the Handbook of Civil Society in Africa takes Africa, African developments, and African perspectives very seriously and worthy of academic interrogation in their own right. It offers a critical, clear-sighted perspective on civil society in Africa, and positions African discourses within the framework of important regional and global debates. It promises to be an invaluable reference work for researchers and practitioners working in the fields of civil society, nonprofit studies, development studies, volunteerism, civic service, and African studies. Endorsements: "This volume signposts a critical turning point in the renewed engagement with the theory and practice of civil society in Africa. Moving from traditional concerns with disquisitions on the appropriateness and possibility of the existence and vibrancy of the idea of civil society on the continent, the volume approaches the forms, contents, and features of the actually existing civil society in Africa from thematic, regional, and national angles. It demonstrates clearly the extent to which core intellectual work on civil society in Africa has largely moved from concerns with cultural reductionism to a nuanced examination of the complexities of (formal, non-formal, organizational, non-organizational, traditional, newer, usual, unusual) engagements, detailing the extent to which, over time, civil society as a concept has been indigenized, appropriated and adapted in the terrains of politics, society, economy, culture and new technologies on the continent. In all this, the book accomplishes the near-impossible. Without sacrificing the vigour, rigor and freshness of the often unpredictable fruits of up-to-date research into regional and national differences that crop up in the documentation of Africa's multiple realities and discourses, the volume weaves together a rich tapestry of the historical, theoretical and practical dimensions of an expanding civil society sector, and accompanying growth in popular d ...

This study explores the service-citizenship nexus in Nigeria, using the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) programme as an empirical backdrop. It attempts to understand the relationship between civic service and citizenship on the one hand, and it examines the question as to whether youth service promotes a sense of citizenship and patriotism on the other. In the relevant studies on service and sociology, the assumption that service is antecedent to, and impacts positively on citizenship, is taken for granted. However, conclusions from this study call for an urgent rethinking of this wisdom. Using data from open-ended interviews, questionnaires and focus group discussions, the study traces the ways in which political dynamics in Nigeria have affected the implementation of the NYSC programme. The study articulates allegiance to national ideals as an essential foundation for creating and nurturing citizenship. Although it upholds the potential of national service as a tool for national integration, this research cautions against unalloyed faith in its presumed agency, arguing that the limitations imposed by the prevailing socio-political ecology should not be ignored.

Once highly regarded as centers of excellence, Nigerian universities now uniformly occupy the basement of most global university rankings. At the same time, the nation's academia is all but shorn of the social prestige that previously attached to it. This essay argues that neither the specific degradation of the professoriate, nor the broader crisis of higher education, can be understood without attention to the crisis of the postcolonial Nigerian state. Accordingly, restorative strategies must take into account the historicity of the crisis, and its insertion into a whirlpool of national, regional, and global forces.

Exploding in October 2020 and reverberating internationally, protests against police brutality under the hashtag #EndSARS exposed enduring patterns and emergent trends in Nigerian politics and society. This article examines various elements of the protests to advance hypotheses about the culture of social media, the weakening of old forms of solidarity, and the rise of a new generation of activists steeped in new rules and technologies of civic engagement. #EndSARS marks the possible ascent of an inorganic civil society with profound implications for Nigerian democracy.

[T]he more distant the experience of military rule, the greater has been society's reconciliation to the reality of democracy as the only game in town.

Corruption and other problems still plague Africa's most populous nation, but one sign of tenuous progress is the diminished appeal of military rule as a corrective to unruly politics.

Muhammadu Buhari, who made bold promises to clean up the political system and put the economy on a firmer footing, has dashed high expectations with his directionless leadership.

[There] appears to be a generally more assertive public sphere, with an ebullience strikingly in excess of the technological resources at its disposal. Seventh in a series on public spheres around the world.