Richard Joseph's seminal 1987 book Democracy and Prebendal Politics in Nigeria represented a watershed moment in the understanding of the political dynamics of Nigeria. This groundbreaking collection brings together scholars from across disciplines to assess the significance of Joseph's work and the current state of Nigerian politics.

Originally published in 1987, this book examines the relationship between the pattern of party formation in Nigeria and a mode of social, political and economic behaviour Richard Joseph terms 'prebendalism'. He demonstrates the centrality in the Nigerian polity of the struggle to control and exploit public office and argues that state power is usually viewed by Nigerians as an array of prebends, the appropriation of which provides access to the state treasury and to control over remunerative licenses and contracts. In addition, the abiding desire for a democratic political system is frustrated by the deepening of ethnic, linguistic and regional identities. By exploring the ways in which individuals at all social levels contribute to the maintenance of these practices, the book provides an analysis of the impediments to constitutional democracy that is also relevant to the study of other nations.

An introduction to the politics and society of post-colonial Nigeria, highlighting the key themes of ethnicity, democracy, and development.

This book features essays that untangle, express and discuss issues in and around the intersections of politics, social justice, intolerance, terrorism, minorities, poverty, and education, and as they relate to the two concepts of radicalisms and conservatisms in Africa.

As the "Giant of Africa" Nigeria is home to about twenty percent of the population of Sub-Saharan Africa, serves as Africa's largest producer of oil and natural gas, comprises Africa's largest economy, and represents the cultural center of African literature, film, and music. Yet the country is plagued by problems that keep it from realizing its potential as a world power. Boko Haram, a radical Islamist insurrection centered in the northeast of the country, is an ongoing security challenge, as is the continuous unrest in the Niger Delta, the heartland of Nigeria's petroleum wealth. There is also persistent violence associated with land and water use, ethnicity, and religion. In Nigeria: What Everyone Needs to Know®, John Campbell and Matthew Page provide a rich contemporary overview of this crucial African country. Delving into Nigeria's recent history, politics, and culture, this volume tackles essential questions related to widening inequality, the historic 2015 presidential election, the persistent security threat of Boko Haram, rampant government corruption, human rights concerns, and the continual conflicts that arise in a country that is roughly half Christian and half Muslim. With its continent-wide influence in a host of areas, Nigeria's success as a democracy is in the fundamental interest of its African neighbors, the United States, and the international community. This book will provide interested readers with an accessible, one-of-a-kind overview of the country.

The post-Cold War world has produced a global consensus on the devastation caused by corruption in society. However, in spite of the growing awareness of the danger that corruption constitutes to democracy and development, and the growing number of anti-corruption agencies in Africa in the last decade, there is yet no elaborate scholarly focus on these agencies, most of which were created in the wake of the recent expansion of multi-party democracy in Africa. As a corrective to this, Authority Stealing chronicles the story of Nuhu Ribadu, arguably Africa''s most courageous and most successful anti-corruption Czar and former head of Nigeria''s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). The book places the anti-graft exploits of Ribadu in post-military Nigeria on a larger canvass of the crisis of nationhood in a country in which public office is regarded as an ''eatery.'' This revealing and riveting narrative of one of Africa''s biggest cesspools of graft explains how the systemic or structural crisis which reproduces a thieving ruling class in a typical postcolonial state has pushed a country with an abundance of human and material resources to the bottom of the global human development index. This crisis has also led to the phenomenon of the advance-fee fraud, otherwise known globally as ''Nigerian 419'' or ''Nigerian Scam.'' While focusing on the era of democracy in Nigeria, the book uses biographical, structural and historical perspectives covering fifty years of Nigeria''s existence, illuminating the paradoxes of anti-corruption campaign in Africa. This book, which is based on ethnographic and archival materials, supplemented with interviews with key dramatis personae, will appeal to a variety of audiences and disciplines, including Africanists, anthropologists, political scientists, sociologists, historians, economists, policy makers, international development experts, criminologists and investigators of international crime syndicates, global anti-graft agencies and activists, and lay readers interested in the issue of corruption around the world. This book is part of the African World Series, edited by Toyin Falola, Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities, University of Texas at Austin. "The reader will find him or herself ... cringing at the extent of debauchery that has enveloped Africa''s most populous state. Adebanwi''s writing appears most fluent and concise when he tackles head-on the corrosive nature of political decadence and corruption, and the multifaceted vision employed by [Nuhu] Ribadu and his contemporaries at the EFCC to rid the nation of this cancer.... [A] salient document depicting an important crusader for justice..." -- Professor Chinua Achebe, author of Things Fall Apart, and David and Marianna Fisher University Professor, Brown University "An excellent, richly detailed source for readers with little knowledge of--but great interest in--the micro-underpinnings of the more visible macro-phenomenon of prebendal politics in Nigeria over the last decade, drawn primarily upon local media reporting and interviews with principals." -- African Studies Review "Will the cesspools of corruption in Nigeria be forever drained and will this great nation discover a path to democratic prosperity? That is the question which confronts us on almost every page of Adebanwi''s searing exposé." -- Richard Joseph, John Evans Professor of International History and Politics, Northwestern University "Authority Stealing documents how discovering, documenting, publicizing, and gesturing at eradicating corruption have constituted the most common methods with which regimes have been compromised, and regime changes have been justified, in Nigeria since independence. When Adebanwi concludes that corruption seems to have become a key instrument of state policy in Nigeria, he cannot be faulted. This book provides the evidence to theorize corruption discourse as the main instrument with which Nigerian rulers invent legitimacy, induce consent from the governed, nurture public goodwill, and sustain continuation. Governance in Nigeria thrives on corruption!" -- Adeleke Adeeko, Humanities Distinguished Professor, The Ohio State University "Readers will be rewarded with a thorough education in the personalities, practices, and political culture that allow billions of dollars of Nigerian state revenues to disappear every year." -- Foreign Affairs "Wale Adebanwi has written an important and illuminating account of Nigeria''s anti-corruption war during Nuhu Ribadu''s courageous leadership of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) ... Adebanwi is good at navigating the thickets of conflicting information that emanated from each high-profile corruption case." -- Journal of Modern African Studies

"The country-specific chapters serve to underline the differences between African democracy and liberal democracy, yet some authors are at pains to emphasize that whatever their limitations, African democracies are an advance over what had gone before." -- African Studies Review

Nigeria, despite being the African country of greatest strategic importance to the U.S., remains poorly understood. John Campbell explains why Nigeria is so important to understand in a world of jihadi extremism, corruption, oil conflict, and communal violence. The revised edition provides updates through the recent presidential election.

The overthrow in January 1966 of Nigeria’s First Republic erased what had been regarded as perhaps the most promising prospect for liberal democracy in post-colonial Africa. Marking the sweeping failure of parliamentary institutions across a continent of new nations, it accelerated the slide into a ghastly civil war. Class, Ethnicity and Democracy is the first scholarly study to analyze the evolution, decay, and failure of Nigeria’s First Republic and to weigh this crucial experience against theories of the conditions for stable democratic government. Rejecting explanations that focus on political culture, political institutions, or ethnic competition and conflict, Larry Diamond identifies the root of Nigeria’s democratic failure in the interrelationship between class, ethnic and state structures. This led the emergent dominant class in each region to mobilize and exploit ethnicity and to trample the democratic process in furious competition for state control, since that control was the primary means for accumulating wealth and consolidating class dominance. Tracing the polarization of conflict and the erosion of legitimacy through five major crises, Diamond presents a new methodology for analyzing the persistence and failure of democracies and points to the relationship between state and society as a crucial determinant of the possibility for liberal democracy.