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This study raises some fundamental issues in the relationship between public debt and sustainable national development in Nigeria. The work is significant in highlighting the position of public debt in the subject area of public administration. The study finds a very weak linkage between public debt and sustainable national development in the Nigerian state. The theoretical framework of the investigation is the bureaucratic theory. The work finds that the bureaucracy is as guilty as the politician in the country, in the transmutation of public debt into a brand of national bazaar. It is finally recommended in the paper that taxation-increases be adopted as alternative to public debt, in ensuring that the current generation of the country's citizens, in meeting their immediate needs do not invariably endanger the capacity of future generations in the same regards.

The electricity sector is an immensely critical component of the equations in a 21st century economy. Economic security on the other hand is the essence of national development. The crucial question in this study therefore borders on the extent to which the electricity sector in Nigeria positively relates to economic security and how these variables ultimately link with national developmental dreams in this nation-state. We have made use of secondary sources of data and the elite theoretical framework in the conduct of the study. The methodology of the study is the critical mode of research. Our findings indicate that there are immense weak-linkages between Nigeria's electricity sector reality, economic security and national developmental aspirations in the country. And this is principally (un) driven by elite insensitivity. The paper emphasizes that a critical leadership challenge in Nigeria hinges on the appreciation of the import of these linkages by current and subsequent generations of national development planners in the Nigerian state.

This study examines the concept of human capital accounting as it relates to the public sector of developing countries. It interrogates the origin of the concept of human capital accounting. It studies what human capital accounting portends for the public sector in developing countries. It is a study of the relevance and the omens of human capital accounting in the public sector of developing countries. The public sector trajectory of human capital accounting is viewed in the study, as a peculiar tool of public (sector) administration in the developed societies and not a universally applicable tool of public administration at the current level of development in the developing states. Consequently, the study leads to a conclusion that in the public sector of developing states, human capital development or human capital formation may be the more relevant engagement for scholarship and practical purposes.

Development and its sustainability have undeviatingly remained critical components of social science investigation. Sub-Saharan Africa has also continued to elicit mainstream investigative attention. There is apparently, acute bewilderment on what has become the fate of development in this region of the international community. Findings of this study indeed validate a hypothesis of gargantuan developmental challenges in Sub-Saharan Africa. Consequently, policy ambivalences on water are indicative of the difficulties of sustainable development in the African region. It is concluded in this study that the availability of sound water policies and the spirited implementation of such policies can change the atmosphere of weariness in this African area. To engender the requisite sustainable development therefore requires that the composite governments (and other private investors) in Sub-Saharan Africa should embark on massive and functional water schemes, borne of credible water policies. The Nigerian state is strategically placed by naturally hued opportunities to take the lead in this regard.

This paper examines how the dominant political parties in a corruption-prone political system have been struggling for survival (and legitimacy) based on anti-corruption crusades and the attendant supports. The study has in the process, interrogated what may constitute the core concerns of the leading political parties, in such corruption-bedeviled polities. The investigation is fundamentally, a case study of the Nigerian state. Accordingly, the central research questions of the paper are as follows: How are the two dominant political parties in Nigeria brawling for survival? Attendant to the wrestles, what is the fate of good governance in the country? The study finds that while the two dominant political parties are engaged in the scuffle to survive, a national vacuum is in contradiction, created in the area of general political mobilization. It has been posited in the paper that political parties’ legitimacies are never constructed on single societal agenda. It is finally recommended in the work that while the government (in power) may be wedging wars against the debilitating sleaze in the system, the political parties (in order to survive and retain legitimacy) must continously engage in the articulation and aggregation of politically complementary programmes and actions. This would not only lead to the survival of the parties as political entities but in a generic dimension, lead to the critically desired national growth and survival in such countries, where corruption still presents the overriding national challenge. The methodology of the paper is logical argumentation.

This study examines the linkages between relative deprivation and identity politics in a postcolonial state. It further investigates the relationship among these variables and nation-building challenges in the postcolony. It is a case study of the Nigerian state in West Africa, which typically harbours the attributes of postcoloniality and indeed, large measures of relative deprivation in her sociopolitical and economic affairs. The study is also an interrogation of the neo-Biafran agitations in Nigeria. It has been attempted in the study to offer distinctive explanations over the problematique of nation-building in the postcolonial African state of Nigeria, using relative deprivation, identity politics and the neo-Biafran movement as variables. In framing the study’s theoretical trajectories and in historicizing the background of the research, ample resort has been made to a significant range of qualitative secondary sources. A particularly salient position of the study is that it will actually be difficult to locate on the planet, any group of people whose subsequent generations (in perpetuity) would wear defeat on the war front, as part of their essential identity. Hence, relative deprivation was found to be more fundamental than identity politics in the neo-Biafran agitations in Nigeria. However, the compelling issues were found to squarely border on nation-building complications in the postcolony.

Local governments in many parts of Africa are yet to be fully accepted as important levels of government (by political actors at the central and sub-central levels). This gives rise to the contradictory scenario whereby such political actors at the central and sub-central levels remain the apostles of centralization on one hand and exponents of democracy as a model of national government on the other hand. Nigeria is the most populous African country. And this marginalization of the local government in the democratic process is prevalent in Nigeria. Invariably, the pervasive effect of this condition, as it negatively affects the availability of dividends of democracy to the African citizen, is worrisome. In the meantime, the continent of Europe is perceived in the study as having possibly taken local government understanding to a model level of local self-governance, through its European Charter of Local Self-Government. Europe is thus, seen in this study as a region in the lead in situating the local government paradigm, within its proper democratic context. The theoretical framework of deliberative democracy is adopted in the study to engage African states to embrace local self-governance as a critical component of democratization.