Academic literature on the topic 'Niger – Politics and government – 1993-'

Niger Delta comprises of the South-South states, Ondo state from the South west, Imo and Abia States from the South East region of Nigeria. Despite the huge mineral resources that the region generates and the driving force to the national economy, the region remains in abject poverty, youth unemployment, poor infrastructure and high level insecurity. This paper investigates the role of NDDC, successes and challenges in the development of Niger Delta region. The Marxist instrumentalist theory was adopted as the theoretical framework of analysis. Documentary method was adopted as the method of data collection and content analysis was employed as the method of analysis. The paper found out that the federal government has created several interventionist bodies which include the Niger Delta Development Board (NDDB) (1958), the Oil Minerals Producing and Development Commission (OMPADEC) (1992), the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) (2000) and the most recent, Ministry of Niger Delta (2008). In spite of this various interventionist bodies, the region is still far underdeveloped with little or nothing on ground compared to what is being exploited from the region. As an oil producing region, it ought to enjoy massive infrastructural development, job creation, empowerment programs and peaceful society, among others. However, this paper is of the view that a lot still needs to be done, as the region is retrogressing speedily instead of progressing in regards to the core indices of development. This paper also found out that corruption has eaten deep into the affair of NDDC. There is also a report of a cabal who hijacks contracts and sells it to contractors that end up doing low standard jobs not in line with the bill of quantities or not doing at all. The paper recommends total restructuring of Ministry of Niger Delta and NDDC in area of staff posting and review of organogram of the board. There should be a think-tank team of individuals with reputable character both from government and representatives of the people, towards listing out the needs of the people according to preference. A review of projects done and the ones ongoing across the Niger Delta oil producing states with the contractors involved to see if it is in line with the bill of quantities, any contractor found wanting should face the full wrath of the law.
 Keywords: Restructuring, Development, Niger Delta, Corruption, Oil Politics

A prominent explanation of the resource–conflict relationship suggests that natural resources finance rebellion by permitting rebel leaders the opportunity to purchase weapons, fighters, and local support. The bunkering of oil in the Niger Delta by quasi-criminal syndicates is an example of how the black-market selling of stolen oil may help finance anti-state groups. More systematic assessments have also shown that the risk and duration of conflict increases in the proximity of oil and diamond deposits. Yet despite the emphasis on rebel resource extraction in these arguments, empirical assessments rely almost exclusively on latent resource availability rather than actual resource extraction. Focusing on maritime piracy, this article argues that piracy is a funding strategy neglected in current research. Anecdotal evidence connects piracy in the Greater Gulf of Aden to arms trafficking, the drug trade, and human slavery. The revenue from attacks may find its way to Al-Shabaab. In Nigeria, increasing attacks against oil transports may signal an effort by insurgents to use the profits from piracy as an additional revenue stream to fund their campaign against the Nigerian government. The article hypothesizes that piracy incidents, that is, actual acts of looting, increase the intensity of civil conflict. Using inferential statistics and predictive assessments, our evidence from conflicts in coastal African and Southeast Asian states from 1993 to 2010 shows that maritime piracy increases conflict intensity, and that the inclusion of dynamic factors helps improve the predictive performance of empirical models of conflict events in in-sample and out-of-sample forecasts.

AbstractIn the early 1990s, Niger saw growing anger towards the military regime in power, not only because of police violence, but also due to its economic and social policies, particularly its first structural adjustment programme. After several months of revolts, the regime fell, giving way to a democratic government in 1991. Under pressure from international financial institutions, the new government quickly embarked on the same economic and social path as the previous one and adopted an adjustment policy, resistance to which had played a fundamental role in its accession to power. The government faced increasing street protests, and was overthrown by the army in January 1996, with most of the population not mobilizing to protect the democratic institutions. This article examines the conflicts of rationales that marked these few years, and shows how, by whom, and to what extent these rationales were opposed in practical terms. It also offers a social history of the adjustments by looking at how they were received by the people. By so doing, it looks back at a moment that has profoundly marked Niger's recent history: in this country, as in others, the adjustments have reconfigured rivalries, produced violence, and left an indelible mark on the political imaginary up to the present day.

In this article, we analyse the political and social process through which Niger has emerged as a new oil state since 2008. Instead of viewing the situation as a clear-cut resource-curse scenario, we see oil as an important, but by no means determining factor in the country's current political workings. Analysing the main features and narratives of the Nigerien political game in this time of incipient oil production, we first of all observe how various political actors, including the government, political parties, civil society, and wealthy businesspeople, transform oil into a political resource by developing particular notions, images, and meanings of it, including scenarios of a resource curse or resource blessing. We thus argue that in the formative moment of Niger becoming a new oil state, oil appears as an idiom within which Niger's current political and social processes are framed.

ABSTRACTThe Nigerian Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB), which is currently being discussed in Parliament, aims at reforming the oil industry. But it also reveals the guiding forces of local politics. The PIB exposes the limitations of the state's ambitions, desire and capacity for reform, and it is strong evidence for the regional divisions and social tensions catalysing resistance against the government of President Goodluck Jonathan, which is accused of ethnic bias in favour of the oil-producing areas of the Niger Delta.

By examining evidence from India, where quotas for women in local government were introduced in 1993, this article argues that institutional reform can disturb hegemonic discourses sufficiently to open a window of opportunity where deliberative democratic norms take root and where, in addition to the politics of recognition, the politics of redistribution also operates.

In the international press Nigeria is represented almost exclusively as a state in crisis. Recurrent military coups, ethnic and religious sectionalism, a civil war, a series of bloody riots and local unrest (of which the Niger delta situation is the best-known example), economic turmoil, and the re-imposition of the Islamic criminal code in many northern states have all been used to paint a picture of chaos and collapse. Journalists and government officials alike tend to find the roots of Nigeria's problems in intractable ethnic conflict, the collapse of oil prices in 1983, structural adjustment mandated by the International Monetary Fund in 1986, and hatred between Muslims and Christians. The trouble with Nigeria is also understood to illustrate the trouble with Africa. With 25 percent of the population of sub-Saharan Africa, Nigeria appears as representative of Africa. Potentially wealthy from its oil revenue, it symbolizes Africa's promise denied.

This study is about the vicissitudes of democratisation in the context of neo-patrimonialism. It examines the aborted transition to democracy in Nigeria (1985--1993) by critically adopting the arguments proffered in the 'new institutionalism' literature. The key insight of the 'new institutionalism' approaches is that they neither privilege structures nor human agency. Instead they seek to explicate how pre-existing institutions and rules shape the choices of political actors. To this end, the 'new institutionalism' approaches lend themselves to a more comprehensive understanding of the processes of regime change.<br>The annulment of 1993, and the country's continuous failure to establish a viable democratic regime, can be attributed to the underlying political process in Nigeria, which puts an emphasis on capturing power for personal and sectional gains. Given this situation, political competition becomes a struggle of the survival of the fittest between those with power and those without. Thus, this study contends that the constitutive rules of a polity, while not determining the outcome of regime transitions, shapes actors' behavior towards specific goals and interests. The breakdown of the Babangida-initiated transition programme is an interesting example of this dynamic. The challenge to regime transitions therefore is understanding how inherited rules and institutions structure the political actors' choices. To meet this challenge an integrative approach is required for the study of regime transitions.

The Office du Niger irrigation scheme, located on the Niger River in the Republic of Mali, originated in a grandiose but seriously flawed proposal devised in 1920 by a French colonial Public Works engineer named Emile Bélime. Originaly conceived as a means of transforming the Niger Valley into a cotton belt, and later promoted as the heart of a French West African granary, the scheme never attained more than a tiny fraction of its presumed agricultural potential. Its construction and exploitation required the forced uprooting of tens of thousands of Africans. It absorbed a large portion of scarce colonial revenues until after the Second World War and generated no profits. During the inter-war period, the Office du Niger gradually acquired the de facto status of a state within the State, with Emile Bélime at its head. When the scheme was finally recognized as an economic and humanitarian failure in 1945, colonial authorities endeavoured to eliminate its worst shortcomings and give it a new identity as a prototype of economic and technical assistance to an underdeveloped area. After 1961, Malian leaders felt that the scheme could be used as a pilot project for agricultural development in the new republlc, and the scheme's existence has dictated the course of Malian agricultural policy ever since.<br>Le projet d'irrigation de l'Office du Niger, situé dans le delta intérieur du Niger au Mali, est né d'une proposition très insuffisante mais grandiose conçue en 1920 par un ingénieur des Travaux Publics Coloniaux, Émile Bélime. Conçu à l'origine comme un moyen de transformer la Vallée du Niger en une vaste plantation de coton, et envisagé par la suite comme le grenier central de l'Afrique Occidentale, ce projet n'a jamais atteint qu'une petite partie de son potentiel agricole espéré. Sa réalisation et sa mise en exploitation on nécessité le déracinement par contrainte de dizaines de milliers d'Africains. Même après la deuxième guerre mondiale, le projet a absorbé encore une grande partie des revenus coloniaux, déjà limités, mais il n'a généré aucun revenu. Pendant l'entre-deux-guerres, l'Office du Niger a acqui petit à petit le statut de facto d'un état dans l'État, dirigé par Émile Bélime. En 1945, quand le projet a été finalement reconnu comme une échec sur le plan économique et humanitaire, les autorités coloniales ont essayé de corriger les erreurs les plus graves et lui ont accordé le nouveau statu de prototype pour d'autres projets d'assistance économique et technique aux régions sous-développées. En 1961, le Gouvernement du Mali, qui avait récemment accédé à l'indépendance, pensait en faire un projet pilote pour le développement agricole du pays. Sa réalisation détermine encore aujourd'hui la politique agricole du Mali. fr

Thesis (MA) -- Stellenbosch University, 1998.<br>ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The perception exists that the South African transitional negotiations were initiated by events during 1990. This study challenges such a perception and argues that prior to formal contact there existed a crucial period of informal bargaining. This period, known as prenegotiation, saw members of the National Party government and the African National Congress (ANC) attempt to communicate in order to gauge the possibility of a negotiated settlement. By utilising a phaseological approach to bargaining/negotiation, this study analyses the transition in order to ascertain the structure and functions of South African prenegotiation. The following three negotiation phases are identified: bargaining about bargaining, preliminary bargaining and substantive bargaining. Both of the first two phases are regarded as part of prenegotiation. This study argues that the first phase started as early as 1985 under conditions of immense secrecy and stayed that way until its conclusion in 1990. Three different avenues of communication were established during this time. The first avenue existed between government officials and the imprisoned Nelson Mandela. Regular meetings were held in an attempt to create an understanding of what was needed to normalise South African politics. The second avenue operated mostly on international soil, through intermediaries, and became an indirect channel of communication between exiled ANC officials and officials in the government's National Intelligence Service. The third avenue consisted of independent efforts by extra-governmental role-players to establish communication with the exiled ANC leadership. All three avenues impacted differently on the negotiation process, yet all are regarded as part of the bargaining about bargaining phase. The second phase was initiated by F.W. de Klerk's opening of parliament speech in 1990. In this phase new negotiators came to the fore and it signified an ongoing attempt by the government and the ANC to establish a contract zone for substantive bargaining. Prominent agreements included the Groote Schuur Minute, the Pretoria Minute, the D.F. Malan Accord and the National Peace Accord. The establishment of a multi-party negotiating forum, Codesa, ended preliminary bargaining, but only temporarily. After deadlock occurred in May 1992 it became necessary to revert back to prenegotiation issues before further progress could be made. The bilateral discussions that ensued between the government and the ANC saw the most prominent bargaining relationships of the transition develop, notably between Roelf Meyer and Cyril Ramaphosa, and between Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk. With the signing of the Record of Understanding and the establishment of the Multi-P~ Negotiating Process ·m1993, ~ ,--· .. . ~ ~-- prenegotiation came to an end. In focussing primarily on prenegotiation, this study attempts both to refine existing prenegotiation theory and to identify possible recommendations for other deeply divided societies. For the success of a negotiation process it is an imperative that lasting good faith and a workable contract zone are established prior to any form of substantive bargaining.<br>AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die opvatting bestaan dat die Suid-Afrikaanse oorgangsonderhandelinge geinisieer is deur gebeurtenisse tydens 1990. Hierdie stuC.:ie betwis so 'n opvatting en argumenteer dat 'n noodsaaklike tydperk van informele onderhandeling voor formele kontak bestaan het. Gedurende die voorafgaande tydperk, wat bekend staan as vooronderhandeling, het lede van die Nasionale Party regering en die African National Congress (ANC) gepoog om kommunikasiekanale daar te stel en sodoende die moontlikheid van 'n onderhandelde skikking te ondersoek. Deur van 'n fase-benadering tot onderhandeling gebruik te maak, analiseer hierdie studie die oorgangstydperk met die doel om die struktuur en funksies van Suid-Afrikaanse vooronderhandelinge te bepaal. Die volgende drie onderhandelingsfases word onderskei: onderhande/ing oor onderhandeling, voorlopige onderhande/ing, en substantiewe onderhandeling. Beide fases een en twee word beskou as deel van vooronderhandeling. Volgens hierdie studie het die eerste fuse so vroeg as 1985 onder uiters geheime omstandighede begin, en het dit so voortgeduur tot met die finalisering daarvan in 1990. Drie verskillende kommunikasiewee het ontstaan gedurende hierdie tydperk. Die eerste weg was tussen regeringsamptenare en die gevange Nelson Mandela. Gereelde ontmoetings is gehou in 'n poging om 'n verstandhouding te kweek oor wat nodig sou wees om Suid-Afrikaanse politiek te normaliseer. Die tweede weg het meestal op internasionale grondgebied afgespeel deur middel van tussengangers, en het 'n indirekte kommunikasiekanaal tussen uitgeweke ANC lede en amptenare van die regering se Nasionale Intelligensie Diens bewerkstellig. Die derde weg het bestaan uit ona:thanklike pogings deur rolspelers buite die regering om kominunikasie te bewerkstellig met die uitgeweke ANC-leierskap. Alhoewel die wee op verskillende vlakke die onderhandelingsproses beiinvloed het, word al drie as deel van die eerste fase beskou. Die tweede fase is ingelei deur F. W. de Klerk se parlementere openingstoespraak in 1990. In hierdie fase het nuwe onderhandelaars na vore getree en dit is gekenmerk deur 'n deurlopende poging van die regering en die ANC om 'n kontraksone vir substantiewe onderhandeling te skep. Prominente skikkings het ingesluit die Groote Schuur Minuut, die Pretoria Minuut, die D.F. Malan Verdrag, en die Nasionale Vredesverdrag. Die totstandkoming van 'n veelparty-onderhandelingsforum, Codesa, het die einde van voorlopige onderhandeling aangedu~ alhoewel slegs tydelik. Na 'n dooiepunt bereik is in Mei 1992 het dit noodsaaklik geword om terug te keer na voorlopige onderhandeling. Die daaropvolgende bilaterale ontmoetings tussen die regering en die ANC is gekenmerk deur die ontwikkeling van prominente onderhandelingsverhoudings, veral tussen RoelfMeyer en Cyril Ramaphosa, en tussen Nelson Mandela en F.W. de Klerk. Met die ondertekening van die Rekord van Verstandhouding en die totstandkoming van die Veelparty-onderhandelingsproses in 1993, het vooronderhandeling tot 'n einde gekom. Deur hoofsaaklik op vooronderhandeling te fokus, probeer hierdie studie om beide bestaande vooronderhandelingsteorie te verfyn, asook moontlike riglyne vir ander diepverdeelde samelewings te identifiseer. Vir 'n onderhandelingsproses om suksesvol te wees is dit noodsaaklik dat blywende goedertrou en 'n werkbare kontraksone tot stand gebring word voor die aanvang van enige vorm van substantiewe onderhandeling.<br>Centre for Science Development (HSRC, South Africa)

Thesis ( M. Tech. (Public Management )) - Central University of Technology, Free State, 2013<br>Traditional Leaders (Chiefs) historically served as “governors” of their communities with authority over all aspects of life, ranging from social welfare to judicial functions. The Basotho generally hold Chiefs in high esteem, continue to turn to them for assistance when conflict arises, depend on them for services, such as birth and death registration and regard them as integral and relevant role-players in local governance. Although many countries in Africa maintain a system of Traditional Leadership and many have incorporated Traditional Leaders into democratic forms of government, a concern exists in some quarters that Chieftainship in Lesotho may present a challenge to democratic governance and development. Similarly, local government structures created by the current decentralisation processes are perceived by many as deteriorating the authority of Chiefs. According to the Constitution of Lesotho, 1993 (Act 5 of 1993), the co- existence of the Chiefs and local Councils are legitimised. Under the legislation governing this process (the Local Government Act, 1997 (Act 6 of 1997), some of their powers and functions have been transferred to local government structures. The major sources of conflict between Chiefs and Councillors appear to be uncertainty and confusion around roles and functions of the various role-players created by the legislative and institutional framework and the loss of power and status that many Chiefs feel. Some of this confusion may be a deliberate form of resistance to the changes, but it is apparent that legislative clarity is required and that the roles and functions of all role- players need to be clearly defined and understood if development is to take place in a coordinated way. The inclusion of two Chiefs in each Community Council as well as two in District Municipalities would seem a genuine attempt to ensure that Chiefs are not marginalised in this modern system of local governance in Lesotho. The high proportion of Traditional Leaders (Principal Chiefs) in the Senate is a clear indication of the pre-eminence of the institution of Chieftaincy (Traditional Leadership) in Lesotho. On the other hand, the National Assembly is completely elected and consists of 120 members, elected through the so-called Mixed–Member-Proportional representation model. Although Chieftaincy is part of this organ of the state, it has limited powers in the legislative process and general decision-making processes outside Parliament. These powers are instead a jurisdiction of the elected representatives in the National Assembly. A similar set up exists at the local government level where Councillors enjoy decision-making powers with Chieftainship structures, such as the village, area and ward Chiefs role being ambiguously defined. It is very clear that the co-existence of the two institutions is a very crucial and challenging one. This co-existence has raised a number of political, developmental and conceptual problems and problems and challenges that have not been adequately addressed, let alone resolved. One of the problems is the anomalous situation in which people are simultaneously citizens of the state and subjects of the Chiefs. Other challenges include, amongst others, contradicting legislation, revenue constraints, a lack of human resource capacity, poor stakeholder management, the increasing rate of HIV/Aids in Lesotho, and so forth. Possible causes of these challenges had been investigated as well as how they can be managed or minimised in order to enable Chiefs to play an effective role in a modern democracy. With this research study an attempt was made to explore the role of Traditional Leaders in the current system of local government in Lesotho and how to improve Chieftainship as a strategy to complement governance at the grassroots level. The term “Chiefs” is used in this research study as synonymous to Traditional Leaders, because it is the term used in all legislation dealing with Traditional Leaders in Lesotho and it includes Principal Chiefs, Area Chiefs, Chiefs and Headmen, unless the context clearly indicates otherwise.

This research seeks to understand the reasons for failures of Bill Clinton, Yasser Arafat, and Ehud Barak's Camp David Summit that was held in July, 2000. The Summit was arranged to complete the last phase of Oslo Peace Process. Numerous researches have attempted to reveal the facts of the summit but, so far, they have failed to present the complete details of what happened before, during, and after the summit. This research explores all aspects of the problem including the various variables that would have had effected the breakdown of the Middle East peace process. Finally, the researcher determines the parameters needed to maintain a substantial peace in the Middle East and what proposed strategies might be followed in order to avoid the previous mistakes in future peace negotiations.

Violence in Nigeria has a tendency to shape-shift - from violent crimes, such as kidnapping and robbery, to various expressions of political violence, such as terrorism and insurgency, as well as police and military brutality. Indeed, because of this, it’s difficult to talk about one type of violence without appreciating not only how it relates to specific contextual conditions but also to other forms of violence, which often overlap each other. Since Nigeria returned to civilian rule in 1999 the term ‘terrorism’ has increasingly been a part of the national discourse on security. On the one hand, the government refers to countering terrorism within the framework of its national security agenda while on the other hand, insurgent movements, namely those that have emerged in the southern Niger Delta region as well as the northeast, have increasingly used terrorism as one of many tactics within their violent campaigns. Though one can certainly make the argument that terrorism in Nigeria has been a growing concern, particularly in the last decade, analysis tends to look at the phenomenon in isolation rather than considering how it is connected to other forms of violence, and more importantly, how state responses to organized violence drive non-state groups to adopt new tactics and escalate conflict. To fill this gap this article will look at how terrorism is understood and experienced in Nigeria and how its conceptualization shapes the practice of counter-terrorism. Our analysis will capture both international and domestic factors - including the impact of 9/11 and subsequent EU and US efforts to counter terrorism in Nigeria - as well domestic realities, namely the societal impact of Nigeria's 1999 transformation from long military to democratic rule as well as the more recent insurgencies in the Niger Delta (2005-2009) and in the northeast (2009-present). Combined, analyzing the domestic and international considerations over a 15-year time period will allow us to trace how the conceptualization of terrorism and practice of counter-terrorism has changed over time.

Since the mid-1990s, adoption of wide-area computer networks, such as the Internet and the World Wide Web (WWW), by the public, educational institutions and private sector organizations has helped spur an interest in using these new Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) as a means to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of organizational processes. Private sector firms have focused on using Internet-based technologies, especially the browser-based technologies of the WWW, as a means to conduct business transactions. The use of such electronic transmission technologies in carrying out business activities has generally been dubbed electronic commerce, or e-commerce (Schneider, 2003). Attempts to reinvent public organizations in the United States during the 1990s were heavily grounded in the belief that the adoption of new forms of ICT will streamline both service generation and delivery (Osborne &amp; Gaebler, 1993; Gore, 1993). Some government actors and observers, such as the National Science Foundation, have more recently referred to the overall use of ICT to carry out the activities of government institutions as digital government. The term digital government has in many respects grown to refer to the development, adoption or use of ICT as a key component of a public organization’s internal information and control systems, as well as any use of ICT to facilitate interaction with external stakeholders. Some scholars have attempted to examine how governments have used ICT systems, such as the Internet and WWW, as a means to facilitate interactions with citizens and other stakeholders in an attempt to foster democratic processes via electronic media. These activities have been called electronic democracy, or e-democracy. This broad concept is then usually subdivided into two subsets of activities, electronic politics and electronic government. Electronic politics, or e-politics, centers on activities that facilitate civic awareness of political processes, as well as the ability of citizens to participate in those processes. Electronic government, or e-government, includes the use of ICT by government agencies to provide programmatic information and services to citizens and other stakeholders (Watson &amp; Mundy, 2001).

Menachem Begin became prime minister of Israel on June 20, 1977, with a clear goal: to implement as quickly and as extensively as possible the policies of Revisionist Zionism as articulated by his mentor and hero, Vladimir Jabotinsky. “Swing to the right: 1977–1995” outlines the key events in Israeli politics that led to a decisive swing to the right in Zionist ideology, including the 1978 peace treaty with Egypt that returned the Sinai Peninsula, the Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements with the Palestinian Liberation Organization in 1993, and the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in November 1995 by a member of the ultra-right-wing religious Zionist movement.

This chapter and the following Chapter 7 are interconnected as they both discuss Palestinian diaspora mobilizations. This chapter focuses on the transnational social field and the four types of diaspora entrepreneurs connected not simply to the West Bank and Gaza but also to Jerusalem, Palestinian camps in Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, and other fragile states in the Middle East. The 1948 ‘great dispersal’ of Palestinians became a pivotal point for refugee migration and subsequent commemoration in the diaspora. The PLO secularist nationalist movement and Islamic movements have developed rich exile politics since the 1970s–1980s. The 1993 Oslo Accords presented an opportunity for embedding the diaspora-based PLO into homeland territory and establishing an internationally endorsed local government under PNA leadership. Islamic networks existed in parallel, drawing more strength from the failed peace process and gaining momentum with the second intifada after 2000. It paved the way for Hamas to win elections in 2006 and establish alternative governance in Gaza, which has been disputed ever since. The polarization of domestic politics was transposed to the diaspora. There are many disagreements in this field on what is the main goal of the Palestinian cause beyond ending occupation of the Palestinian territories. For some, achieving statehood is important, advocating either a two-state or a one-state solution. For others, a solution for refugee return needs to be prioritized. This chapter presents data on migration in the Palestinian field, in the Middle East and globally, and specifies the individual profiles of Palestinian diaspora entrepreneurs.