Suchergebnisse

Although peace operations have been a major instrument of Nigeria's foreign policy continentally and globally, this study analyzed the country's peace campaigns in Liberia under president Olusegun Obasanjo. The paper observed inter alia that Obasanjo's peace efforts in Liberia were influenced by his recognition of Nigeria as a leading actor in the stabilization efforts in the region. While there were some encumbrances, Nigeria's peace campaigns in Liberia were successful as revealed by the data sources. Nigeria's major accomplishments included the eventual signing of a comprehensive peace agreement in 2003 that brought an end to the carnage in the country, offer of asylum to Taylor, and the 2005 post-conflict elections. These accomplishments could be attributed to President Obasanjo's gravitas and Nigeria's well-oiled diplomatic machinery in the West African sub-region. To arrive at this conclusion, the paper adopted the secondary data sources and interview technique for the purpose of data collection, and descriptive thematic analysis.

Ojo's edited book accommodates brilliant essays that focus analytically on the hurdles to Nigeria's democratization process. The book takes the readers into an interesting, but academically cogent, theme, Nigeria's democratization process: the odds and socio-politically expedient coping strategies. The foreword, excellently written by a Nigerian professor of political science, J. A.A. Ayoade, will no doubt ignite readers' interest in the book. Apart from projecting Nigeria as a continental and global force, which necessarily elicits great enthusiasm from democracy observers locally and internationally, it also, precisely and concisely, chronicles Nigeria's tortuous march to democratization. In the preface of this twenty-five chapter book, divided into six sections, the editor presents the question that the book seeks to answer, 'how can the current democratic experiment be sustained in a country that was marked by predominantly military rule in the post-colonial era?' (p. ix). This work is very important given the fact that previous hopes for a stable democracy have been monumentally squandered. The editor also performs a fabulous job by providing a succinct recapitulation of each chapter in the book.

Nigeria is one of the world's most endowed nations, with abundant human and natural resources. These resources are located in all the states of the federation and exist in commercial quantities (see Ajibewa, 2006:261). The proceeds from these resources have been disproportionately distributed to the disadvantage of the poor population while through the paraphernalia of the presidium of government, the allocation of resources has been done to generously favour the ruling and business elites as well as their cronies. This situation has given rise to the grave issue of inequality in the country. The availability of these resources notwithstanding, Nigeria is still underdeveloped; a condition that has largely been blamed on corruption. Therefore, in the case of Nigeria, there appears to be an intricate relationship between corruption, inequality and poverty. However, the universal application of this hypothesis will be a subject of further research.