Olayinka Akanle

Peripheral scholarship and the context of foreign paid publishing in Nigeria

Lately, a phenomenal dimension of peripheral scholarship, compulsorily demanding the ‘foreign’, has evolved into the practice of paid publishing in ‘foreign’ journals among Nigerian academics. These ‘foreign’ journals afford speedy publishing at a fee with little or no peer review. This study is a descriptive research which collected qualitative data through 30 in-depth interviews conducted with academics in two federal universities in Nigeria. The findings established that though some universities are beginning to question their intellectual validity and propriety, predatory paid-for foreign journals remain popular among academics desirous to satisfy the ‘international publishing rule’ for promotion at all costs. Lacking international scholarly credibility, predatory journals will not advance Nigerian scholarship into the global scholarly mainstream which the ‘international rule’ ultimately seeks.

Fuel subsidy in Nigeria: contexts of governance and social protest

Purpose – Fuel subsidy removal has become a recurring issue in Nigeria. Successive governments in the country have interfaced with this issue as they attempted to reform the economy and the petroleum downstream to reduce corruption and waste and make the sector more effective. Importantly however, fuel subsidy removals have always met opposition from the citizens and civil society organisations. The remit of this article is to bring original and current perspectives into the issue and trajectories of fuel subsidy, which has become a major problem in Nigerias development struggles. Previous works were dated and did not capture most recent popular uprising. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – Purely primary, empirica and normative with primary insight. Findings – A major mechanism that must be put in place is popular and unpoliticized anti-corruption mechanisms and networks especially to sanitize the oil sector in the minimum. Also, government must demonstrate transparency...

Kinship construction variability among Nigerian international migrants: The context of contemporary Diaspora

Understanding the selves, situations and actions of Africans can never be comprehended outside kinship. Local and foreign worldviews are first pigeonholed into culture and defined within kinship realities in Nigeria and Africa. There have been studies on kinship in Africa. However, the findings from such studies portrayed the immutability of African kinship. Thus, as an important contribution to the on-going engagement of kinship in the twenty-first century as an interface between the contemporary Diaspora, this article engaged kinship within international migration. This is a major behavioural and socio-economic force in Nigeria. Methodological triangulation was adopted as part of the research design and primary data were collected through in-depth interviews (IDIs), and life histories of international migrants were documented and focus group discussions (FGDs) were held with kin of returnees. The article found and concluded that while returnees continued to appreciate local kinship infrastructures, the infrastructures were liable to reconstruction primarily determined by dominant support situations in the traditional African kinship networks.

The existentialities of Ethiopian and Nigerian migrants in South Africa

ABSTRACT Many studies on international migrations have concentrated on South-North migrations, causes and consequences of such migrations, sending and receiving countries and characteristics of migrants’ interfaces. there is much less scholarly work on South-South migrations, and academic and policy works on wider Africans’ migrations into South Africa are particularly scarce. even among the very few existing studies on South-South migrations, very few account for migrants’ existentialities in South Africa – a nation experiencing the largest scale migrations in Africa and strategising to cope with associated issues, especially among the hard-to-reach migrant communities. This article therefore, examines the ramifications of experiences and existences or existentialities of ethiopian and Nigerian immigrants in South Africa as crucial case study for the growth of pan-Africanism. the approach adopted for this article is transnational systematic interactions and observations in Ethiopia, Nigeria and South Africa. Secondary sources from unclassified documents, scholarly journals, reports and reliable Internet sources were utilised. The findings suggest the need for more robust, inclusive and dynamic social/migration policies in South Africa, as well as other southern nations experiencing high immigration. the argument is that the receiving nations of migrants must pay more attention to objective and comprehensive understanding of migrants and migrant communities to sustainably appropriate migration’s gains and to ameliorate unintended migration consequences.

Asuwada Epistemology and Globalised Sociology: Challenges of the South

Professor Akiwowo propounded the Asuwada Theory of Sociation in the 1980s as a contextual episteme to explain African social experience. The theory particularly attempts an indigenous postulation to social interactions among Africans in general and the Yoruba in particular. Its concepts attempt to emphasise contextual values of social beings who would contribute to social survival and community integration and development. This theory postulates that among Africans in general and the Yoruba in particular, the need to associate or co-exist by internalising and rightly exhibiting socially approved values of community survival and development, is integral to local social structure, as failure to co-exist potentially endangers the community. A deviant who defaults in sociating values is deemed a bad person (omoburuku), while the one who sociates is the good person (omoluabi). This theoretical postulation contrasts western social science theories (especially sociological Structuralist (macro) and Social Action (micro) theories), which rather emphasise rationality and individualism (at varied levels depending on the theory). Western social science ethnocentrically depicts African communal and kin ways of life as primitive and antithetical to development. Western social science theories have remained dominant and hegemonic over the years while Akiwowo’s theory is largely unpopular even in Nigerian social science curricula in spite of its potential for providing contextual interpretations for indigenous ways of life that are still very much extant despite dominant western modernity. This article examines the Asuwada Theory within the context of globalised social sciences and the complicated and multifaceted glocal challenges confronting the adoption of the Akiwowo’s epistemic intervention.

International Migrants’ Remittances and Kinship Networks in Nigeria: The Flip-Side Consequences

International migrants’ remittances are among the most researched subjects in contemporary globalization scholarship and policy studies. Most studies have examined the impacts of remittances on households in developing countries, and the findings are often positive and optimistic. Many of the existing studies have, however, presented only the positive economic impacts of remittances on households, with very little attention being paid to the equally important social impacts of remittances within the broad kinship networks that drive Africans’ lives and livelihoods. Remittances affect migrants’ kinship networks, patterns of family interactions, obligations, and expectations in the households left behind as kin attach meaning to remittances and construct values from them in ways that ultimately make remittances more intertwined and complex. Using primary and secondary data gathered in 2015 and 2016, this article discusses what we still need to know in terms of the relationship between international migrants’ remittances and their kinship networks at home beyond near-linear economic impacts. That is, although positive relationships may exist between remittances and household well-being in developing countries, can other narratives of kinship be used to understand the impacts of remittances and how they can be sustainably used for development?

Non-state Actors as the Strategic Realm in Africa’s Development

Non-state actors have been variously recognized as important engines of growth and development across the world. This is because they have objective and critical existence that make it possible for them to engage/disengage with the state to objectively immobilize and/or drive the development of nations and continents. Thus, this chapter examines issues bothering on non-state actors and their effects on development of Africa. Here are two types of non-state actor—armed and unarmed—and both are examined in this chapter relative to their contributions to development on the continent. Their contributions are examined across African nations in terms of positive contributions and negative ones. Issues of their abuses that have negated their contributions are also investigated. Indicative questions of this chapter are: What is/who are non-state actors? What are their typologies and what development philosophies guide their existence and operations? What is their political economy? To what extent have they/have they not contributed to development of countries in Africa? What are their challenges? What are their successes? Have there been abuses? Are they very important to Africa’s development? How can they better drive development in Africa? And so on.

Introduction: The Development of Africa: Issues, Diagnoses and Prognoses

Africa’s development is one of the most critical and important issues on the global agenda. This point has been attested to by the global adoption of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and the immediate adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) on the expiry of the MDGs, to drive development in Africa and other developing countries, while simultaneously not isolating the developed countries. This is because the underdevelopment of Africa is a problem that does not affect Africa alone, but directly or indirectly affects the world at large. Today, Africa remains largely mired in underdevelopment rather than showing the needed signs of development. Generally, independence struggles in most African countries were contingent on the belief that decolonization and independence would lead to the requisite development on the continent. However, more than half a century after the demise of colonialism, development is still elusive on the continent despite repeated efforts.

Jedijedi: Indigenous versus western knowledge of rectal haemorrhoids in Ibadan, Southwestern Nigeria

ABSTRACT The nexus of indigenous knowledge systems, medicine and disease conceptualisation remains a critical issue in having sustainable health globally. If knowledge about diseases is not objectively shared, sustainable global health may never be achieved. This is exacerbated by the political economy of South and West relations, which affect medical knowledge flows and acceptance. This article thereby investigates the knowledge gap ramifications of jedijedi in Ibadan, Southwestern Nigeria. Jedijedi can be literally translated as ‘consumer of the rectal system’ or ‘consumer of the buttocks’. This article examines the contours of indigenous and western knowledge systems through jedijedi to extend understanding of global knowledge production and deployment narratives and realities. A major challenge is the refusal to acknowledge the disease in western medical epistemologies leading to prevalence of the disease. This article is based on a study conducted in Nigeria in 2014. Empirical primary data were gathered through 40 in-depth interviews with agunmu (local herb) sellers, clients of agunmu sellers, who also have experience of western medicine, clients of western medicine, pharmacists, traditional doctors and western medical doctors. Secondary data were also gathered.

Remittances and Household Welfare in Nigeria

Remittances remain among the most researched issues in contemporary international migrations, poverty alleviation, welfare dynamics and development financing in developing countries. This is particularly so as remittances continue to rival Official Development Assistance (ODA) and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and it is being argued to be more effective in driving development than aid. While studies exist on influences of remittances on household welfare in developing countries, many more are needed to sufficiently understand the actual roles of remittances in households’ welfare in Sub-Saharan Africa- one of the poorest regions in the world. The relationship between remittances and household welfare has particularly not been sufficiently empirically tested in Nigeria- the most populous nation in Africa, among the poorest countries in the world and the highest remittances receiving nation in Africa. This article therefore examined the influence of remittances on households’ welfare in Nigeria. This is a very important article considering the increasing trend of migration and efforts to reduce poverty and inequality. Secondary and primary data were gathered for this article. Secondary data were gathered through documents, journal articles and newspapers, among others, while primary data were gathered through quantitative and qualitative methods between 2015 and 2016, Appreciable positive relationships were found between remittances and household welfare. Unlike many previous studies which claimed remittances receiving households mostly spend remittances on consumptions, more robust expenditure patterns were found. Expression of welfare was also found to be beyond the commonly noted to include important intangible welfare credits like community respect for remittances receiving households. It is concuded that development experts, partners, governments, groups and individuals should therefore better appreciate and appropriate both the financial and non-material effects of remittances on inequality and poverty in developing countries especially of Africa.