Encountering the Nigerian State

Transcription

1 Encountering the Nigerian State

2 Africa Connects Garth Myers (University of Kansas) and Martin J. Murray (University of Michigan), Series Editors This scholarly series stands at the intersection of globalization and development studies, examining the social, political, and economic effects of these processes on the African continent. For advocates and critics alike, globalization and development are inescapable facts of life that define the parameters of social action not just in Africa but throughout the world. Yet while academic debates and policy discussions careen between praise and criticism, too little attention is given to how these processes actually operate in African settings. Rather than simply reacting to the mainstream scholarly literature, books in this series seek to creatively engage with contemporary debates as a way of developing new perspectives that establish and analyze the linkages between globalization and development. Published by Palgrave Macmillan: Encountering the Nigerian State Edited by Wale Adebanwi and Ebenezer Obadare, 2010 Zambia, Mining, and Neoliberalism: Boom and Bust on the Globalized Copperbelt Edited by Alastair Fraser and Miles Larmer (forthcoming)

3 Encountering the Nigerian State Edited by Wale Adebanwi and Ebenezer Obadare

4 ENCOUNTERING THE NIGERIAN STATE Copyright Wale Adebanwi and Ebenezer Obadare, Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition All rights reserved. First published in 2010 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN in the United States a division of St. Martin s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number , of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave and Macmillan are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN ISBN (ebook) DOI / Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Encountering the Nigerian State / edited by Wale Adebanwi & Ebenezer Obadare. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN Nigeria Politics and government Nigeria Politics and government 2007 I. Obadare, Ebenezer. II. Adebanwi, Wale. JQ3030.E dc A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: July

5 For Adigun Agbaje, Teacher, Mentor, Friend.

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7 Contents Acknowledgments Notes on Contributors ix xi Introduction: Excess and Abjection in the Study of the African State 1 Ebenezer Obadare and Wale Adebanwi 1 Deconstructing Oluwole : Political Economy at the Margins of the State 29 Olawale Ismail 2 The Spatial Economy of Abjection: The Evacuation of Maroko Slum in Nigeria 55 Sheriff Folarin 3 Rotten English : Excremental Politics and Literary Witnessing 79 Sarah L. Lincoln 4 The Perils of Protest: State Repression and Student Mobilization in Nigeria 99 Bukola Akintola 5 Vocalizing Rage: Deconstructing the Language of Antistate Forces 123 Azeez Olusola Olaniyan 6 The Subaltern Encounters the State: OPC-State Relations Omobolaji Olarinmoye 7 The State as Undertaker: Power and Insurgent Media in Nigeria 155 Ayo Olukotun

8 viii Contents 8 From Corporatist Power to Abjection: Labor and State Control in Nigeria 177 Emmanuel Remi Aiyede 9 When the State Kills: Political Assassinations in Abacha s Nigeria 199 Isaac Olawale Albert 10 The Sharia Challenge: Revisiting the Travails of the Secular State 217 Rotimi Suberu 11 Koma: A Glimpse of Life at the Edges of the State 243 Muhammad Kabir Isa Index 255

9 Acknowledgments This book was originally conceived as a festschrift for Professor Adigun Agbaje, then the Dean of Social Sciences, and now the Deputy Vice Chancellor (academic) of Nigeria s premier university, the University of Ibadan, when he clocked 50 in Agbaje, one of Nigeria s most engaging scholars and social scientists, has been our mentor and has largely influenced our academic lives. He has played the same role to many members of our generation and remains influential among members of his own generation of Nigerian social scientists. As is normally the case with this sort of endeavor, many of the contributors did not meet the initial deadline. The editors themselves suffered all sorts of distractions along the way, not least the battle to conclude our doctoral programs at the University of Cambridge and the London School of Economics, respectively. But we soldiered on. First, we had thought that we might end up with a festschrift much later in the year than the month of the target birthday. When we missed the year, we decided to explore other target dates. When that failed, we decided to put the project in the cooler for a while. It was revived in 2008 after we both relocated to the United States. Because we had a thematic focus, it was easy to resurrect the project even though it was already too late for the festschrift. However, in the intervening period, some of our original contributors had sought and found alternative outlets for their contributions. A few others could not meet the new deadline, while some chapters had to be dropped because of their incongruity with the volume s problematic. It is against this specific background that we wish to thank the contributors to the volume who kept the faith for four years and endured the drudgery of the revisions. We thank our senior colleagues, Professors Rotimi Suberu, Olawale Albert and Ayo Olukotun, and our other colleagues, Drs. Bukola Akintola, Wale Ismail, Azeez Olaniyan, Remi Aiyede, Omobolaji Olarinmoye, and Sheriff Folarin and Mohammed Isa. Dr. Sarah Lincoln was invited to contribute to the volume only in We thank her for obliging us.

10 x Acknowledgments We also thank our editor at Palgrave Macmillan, Luba Ostashevsky, and her assistant, Laura Lancaster, for their prompt responses to our numerous queries and for generally responding stoically to our endless importuning. Putting this volume together would have been impossible without the sacrifices of our wives and children, who continue to suffer our frequent absences from their lives, even when, for all practical purposes, we are at home. We thank Temitope and Liberty (Wale s wife and daughter) and Oluwakemi and Justice and Ayotunde (Ebenezer s wife and sons). This volume is dedicated to Professor Adigun Agbaje, one of the men (and women) who have shaped the foundations of our burgeoning academic careers and who will always remain our teacher and friend.

11 Notes on Contributors Wale Adebanwi is Assistant Professor of African American and African Studies at the University of California, Davis, United States. He holds two doctorate degrees, the first in Political Science from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, and the other in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom. A MacArthur Foundation Research and Writing grant awardee, Adebanwi has published essays in peer-reviewed journals such as Citizenship Studies, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Journal of Historical Sociology, Journal of African History, Journal of Modern African Studies, and Review of African Political Economy. Emmanuel Remi Aiyede (PhD) is the Director of Postgraduate Affairs in the Department of Political Science, University of Ibadan, Nigeria, and a Senior Researcher on the Religion and Corruption component of the Religion and Development Project of the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom. His most recent work is The Political Economy of Fiscal Federalism and the Dilemma of Constructing a Developmental State in Nigeria, International Political Science Review (2009). Bukola Akintola is a Lecturer in the Department of Political Science at the University of Ibadan. She has conducted research on civil society, corruption, and political violence in Nigeria. She is the author of Politics by Elimination: Implications of Political Violence on Nigeria s Nascent Democracy, NA Quarterly Journal (NAQJ), 2, 4 (December 2006). Isaac Olawale Albert is a Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at the Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan, where he established a graduate course in Peace Studies in He is currently at the University of Ilorin as the Foundation Director of the institution s Centre for Peace and Strategic Studies. He is a Fellow/Board Member of the Society for Peace Studies and Practice (SPSP), a Regional Board Member of the West African Network for Peacebuilding (Accra, Ghana) and has published extensively on issues relating to peace and conflict processes in Africa. Sheriff Folarin teaches political science and international relations at Covenant University, Ota, Nigeria. He has published in the areas of Foreign Policy and Diplomatic History.

12 xii Notes on Contributors Muhammad Kabir Isa is a PhD candidate of Political Science at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria, where he has taught in the Department of Local Government and Development Studies since September He is a member of the UNESCO-MOST Ethno-Net Africa. Olawale Ismail is at Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) working on the Military Expenditure, and Security and Governance in Africa projects. His recent publications include Postwar Regimes and State Reconstruction in Liberia and Sierra Leone, CODESRIA (2009), West Africa and the Global Dynamics of Postconflict Reconstruction and Peacebuilding, Nordiska Working Paper Series 41 (200); and The Dialectics of Junctions and Bases: Youth, Livelihoods and the Crises of Order in Downtown Lagos, Security Dialogue, 40, 5. Sarah L. Lincoln is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Mississippi, where she teaches postcolonial and global literature, world cinema and critical theory. A graduate of Duke University (PhD, 2008), she works on economics, ecology, and literature in contemporary Africa and the global South. Her book project, Oikopoeisis: Postcolonial Literature and the Art of Survival, traces the emergence of an economical aesthetic in contemporary fiction and film, showing how artists from the global South critically indict the culture of consumerism they see eroding anticolonial ideals, articulating instead a hungry aesthetic and ethic inspired by the model of recycling. Ebenezer Obadare is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, United States. He holds a PhD in Social Policy from the London School of Economics and Political Science, where he received the Department of Social Policy s Richard Titmuss Best PhD Thesis Prize (2005). A MacArthur Foundation Research and Writing grant awardee, Dr. Obadare s articles on civil society, religiosity, youth, and the state in Africa have appeared in leading Africanist journals, including African Affairs, The Journal of Modern African Studies, Politique Africaine, African Identities, Africa Development, and Review of African Political Economy. In 2008, Dr. Obadare was honored as a Virginia and Derrick Sherman Emerging Scholar by the Department of History at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. He is the author of Africa Between the Old and the New: The Strange Persistence of the Postcolonial State (UNCW, 2008). Azeez Olusola Olaniyan holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria and teaches Political Science at the University of Ado Ekiti, Nigeria. Omobolaji Olarinmoye (PhD Ibadan) is programs coordinator, SEPHIS, in the office of the Executive Secretary, CODESRIA Secretariat, Dakar,

13 Notes on Contributors xiii Senegal. He is also Programs Manager, Training, Grants and Fellowship program, CODESRIA. His areas of specialization are Comparative Politics, African Politics, Research Methodology, Development Studies and Peacekeeping/Postconflict peace building. He is the author of Ethics and Accountability in Nigerian Public Service: A Historical Review, Journal of Public Administration and Policy Research (2009). Ayo Olukotun is Professor of Political Communication at Lead City University, Ibadan, Nigeria. Rotimi Suberu currently teaches politics and international relations at Bennington College, Vermont. Earlier, he taught political science at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. He is the author of Federalism and Ethnic Conflict in Nigeria (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2001), among numerous other publications on Nigerian government and politics. He has won fellowships and visiting positions from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the United States Institute of Peace, University of Oxford, the University of Pennsylvania, and Northwestern University.