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The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of Group thinking, cohesiveness and Personality characteristics as predictors of Criminal Behaviour. The population comprises of Three Hundred (300) students through stratified sampling technique from institutions in Ekiti State was used. A questionnaire was designed using a descriptive research design for data collection. The data was collected using questionnaire. Three hypotheses were tested in total and they are: there will be a significant relationship between group thinking, cohesiveness, personality characteristics and criminal behavior; Personality Characteristics will significantly predict criminal behavior; Group thinking and cohesiveness will have main and interaction influence on criminal behaviour; the first hypothesis was tested using regression analysis and found that there is a positive and significant relationship between criminal behaviour and group thinking with r = .194, p 0.05 significant level and the hypothesis rejected. The thirds hypothesis was tested using one way ANOVA analysis showed that group thinking has an influence on criminal behaviour among adolescents, F(299) = 5.768, p0.05. the results were discussed in line with relevant empirical literature, conclusion and recommendation. The study concluded that group thinking is a major predictor of criminal behaviour among adolescents, while group cohesiveness and personality characteristics do not influence criminal behaviour among adolescents. It was recommended that there is need of adequate sensitization of adolescents on the negative consequences criminal behavior and how it can affect their future if not curtailed, Government should organize empowerment for the youth, so that it can reduce criminal act and the government introduces or organize seminar to the adolescents, to teach them how to behave in the society.

This article revisits the legitimacy question as it touches the Nigerian 1999 Constitution, bringing to the discourse a review and application of pertinent theoretical perspectives on constitution making and constitutional legitimacy. This theoretical and pragmatic approach introduces a refreshing angle to the debate, revealing the paucity of any attempt to ascribe any legitimacy claim to a constitution with a doubtful normative claim and fraudulent attribution of its source and legitimacy to the people. The author finds the consent basis of constitutional legitimacy as most attractive to a divided state like Nigeria, and concludes by advocating the adoption of a blend of the principles of the constituent assembly and post sovereign constitution-making models for the production of a new people-driven and inclusive constitution to meet the needs of the Nigerian people.

Background Poor environmental conditions and hygiene practices at the time of childbirth is linked to life-threatening infections and death in mothers and babies. Improvements in water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) have been identified as a means through which the lives of mothers and babies could be saved. This study was carried out to explore WASH conditions and infection prevention and control (IPC) practices in traditional birth homes/centers in Abeokuta, Southwest Nigeria. A total of 50 traditional birth centers and attendants (TBAs) were enrolled in the study. Sociodemographic characteristics of the TBAs and features of the birth centers were obtained using a semi-structured questionnaire. Assessment of WASH conditions and IPC practices was based on established protocols. Results Findings revealed that majority of the centers operated under poor WASH conditions and IPC practices; none met with the WHO minimum standards for environmental health. Conclusions Adequate WASH facilities and IPC practices remain a critical component of maternal and child health even in non-facility birth. As the transition to facility births continues in many countries, the large number of non-facility births demands their inclusion in WASH-related strategies, if global goals of reducing deaths of newborns and women deaths will be achieved.

Intellectuals are in a strict sense a product of the societies in which they are historically located and from which they could not assume a sense of themselves as an independent social force. Nor ...

Democratization has proceeded in Africa in terms of implementing multiparty democracy. However, there are still major challenges with this process across the continent. By examining the contribution of the intellectual to election administration in Africa vis‐a‐vis the political obligation of the citizen to the state, the knowledge of political science plays a significant role in resolving the challenges mitigating against democratic consolidation in the continent. This article interrogates the responsibilities of university academics in election administration from 1959 to 2019 and recounts the impact of such interventions for democratization and political stability in Nigeria. Our enquiry reveals that many of the problems undermining election administration are clearly beyond the interventions by these academics. The constraints and limitations of university academics in their efforts as instruments of large‐scale political change in Nigeria are connected largely with the fact that no institution or segment of the society is insulated from the power associated with politics in Nigeria. Accordingly, beyond election administration and also beyond the role of the intelligentsia therein, Nigeria's political ecology must undergo significant holistic changes to deliver a credible, fair and transparent electoral process. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Plant species used as spices in Bayelsa State, Nigeria, were assessed in this study. A total of twenty four spicy plants were identified. This included a fungal species and twenty three plant species. These species were of diverse life forms (25% trees; 8% shrubs, 58% herbs and 4% grasses). The study also revealed that the spicy plants identified were heterogeneously distributed across the three senatorial zones of the State. Fruits/seeds were the most utilized parts of the indigenous spicy plants identified. 63% of the identified spicy plants were sourced from the wild and 38% were cultivated in the State. Parts of the plants utilized for spices were fruits, seeds, leaves, shoots, bulbs, rhizomes and in some cases the entire-part. Fruits and seeds dominated the parts used (46%), while rhizome and the entire-parts were the least utilized parts (4%) for spices in the study area. Most of the methods employed in harvesting the spicy plants were annihilative and inhibitory. Also environmental pollution among other factors threatens the existence of the spicy plants growing in the wild in the study area. In conclusion conservational strategies that will ensure sustainable use of the identified spicy plant species were proposed.

The absence of writing in pre-colonial Africa has often befuddled indigenous African jurisprudential thoughts about law and related concepts. This article attempts a reconstruction of indigenous African jurisprudential thoughts on the concept of justice through a prescriptive exploration of Yoruba proverbs. This attempt reveals inter alia the reconciliatory and metaphysical nature and character of justice, as well as the goals of punishment and the character and nature of a desirable judicial system in African thoughts. While noting the artificiality of the categorizations adopted for the reconstruction, the author cautions that, although it may be necessary to compare the indigenous African conceptions of justice with similar postulations in western jurisprudence, the true value of the former lies in their proper understanding and appreciation within the indigenous African setting, as doing otherwise might lead to contradictions and absurdities.

An appraisal of the ethnobotanical knowledge of the timber species in Bayelsa State, Nigeria, was carried out with the aid of a semi structured questionnaire guide. Five communities were selected from each of the eight Local Government Areas of the state, making a total of 40 communities used for the study. Ten respondents were randomly selected from each of the community, thus constituting 400 respondents in all, and were interviewed with the questionnaire guide.

This article discusses the growing tension between constitutionally defined citizenship and socially accepted practices of “we–they dichotomies” as a turbulent component of the national question discourse in Nigeria. It examines the adoption of dual citizenship across the country as well as how this generates violent ethnic conflict. Importantly, while citizenship refers to one’s full membership of a sovereign political community acquired either by birth, naturalisation or any other process legitimised and recognised by the supreme law of the state, indigeneship, on the other hand, is a discriminatory policy employed by local or provincial governments for protecting the rights of their so–called indigenous populations to employment, political power and other resources of the regions or states against domination by alien populations and outsiders. It is argued that while such distinctions have been made possible inter alia by Nigeria’s multi–ethnic character, the ensuing struggles and tensions have...

An apt analogy for speaking to Africa's experience with development is offered by the twinning of colonialism and modernization. While colonialism left behind some forms of hybridity and mimicry, the urge to decolonize—to be free from the colonizer's control in every possible way—was integral to all anti-colonial criticism after the Second World War. The politics of decolonization followed by the new states in the mid twentieth century, however, displayed an uncritical emphasis on modernization, in which development, pursued—with technology and tools of scientific progress—was a catching-up exercise with the West. As an epistemological export from the West, taking the form of science as hegemony and ideology within colonial discourse, this has not delivered material progress for Africa. The widespread concern about the intractability and magnitude of the problems facing the continent has made development a popular theme in the literature on African studies. The disappointment across various academic circl...

Animating Africa within the field of African studies is presently deeply problematic. This is mainly because the power undergirding the construction of Africa within the field is wielded within the epistemic modes of Western intellectual thought. Consequently, unless Africanism is decolonised from that epistemological mode, African studies not only remains a colonised field of enquiry, but also continues to legitimise and validate the theses on Afro-pessimism. Its utilitarian value for the continent also remains ineffectual. Actualising the decolonisation of knowledge in this regard is no doubt an epistemological project. It is also a matter of intellectual and political struggles. This is mainly because the actual histories of the various disciplinary practices around which knowledge production takes place – on Africa – have a profoundly colonial genealogy. The task of working Africa’s destiny out of that heritage is therefore a compelling task for postcolonial studies. How did Africa become the object o...

The articulation and execution of foreign relations policies are no doubt responsibilities that fall squarely within the legal and constitutional competence of the executive in most democratic societies. Nevertheless, the place of the legislature in ensuring success can never be glossed over. This article examines the nature and means of legislative powers on the foreign plane. It focuses on an articulation of these powers using the Nigerian National Assembly as a case study. It is discovered that the powers exercisable are derived from the basic legislative powers granted by the Constitution and that they are quite extensive. Nonetheless, the Nigerian National Assembly is yet to attain the “transformative” status as envisaged by the Nigerian presidential Constitution.

Abstract Although the ideas of political leaders in Africa provide a popular entrée to African politics, the exploration of their contributions and profiles still remains a largely underdeveloped genre. This is especially the case with intellectuals and scholar-activists on the continent. Yet by challenging existing hierarchies and oppressive institutions as well as truth regimes and the structures of power that produce and support them, engaged scholars occupy a critical position in society as vanguards of various popular struggles. The world therefore has a lot to learn from their contributions and failings as progressive social forces. This article examines Claude Ake’s corpus as a basis for filing this gap. It discusses his contribution to the autochthonous transformation of the state in Africa - using endogenous knowledge production - as one of his major legacies for the social sciences in Africa. Being a political scientist with an unusually broad intellectual formation and horizon, the article highlights the developments and shifts, which shaped his worldview and writings. It pays attention to his production - over the last four decades - of a wide ranging body of works, which have been quite instructive not only for their analytic acuity, methodological rigour and theoretical sophistication, but also for being remarkable works of magisterial erudition, the products of an exceptionally great mind, written with a deftly profound authority and also constituting a significant attempt to adapt the intellectual legacies of Marxist scholarship towards understanding the political economy and social history of contemporary Africa from a broadly critical perspective.

Studies on post-conflict reconstruction in Africa have glossed over the need for state transformation as a prerequisite for sustainable peacebuilding in post-conflict societies. This article fills this gap and discusses the relevance of Claude Ake's political thought for state reconstruction in post-conflict Africa. It underscores the need for the autochthonous transformation of the state as a central component of peacebuilding and post-conflict transition in the continent as Ake had suggested. Drawing on Sierra Leone, it theorizes Ake's works on the state in Africa against the backdrop of externally driven state reconstruction projects hinged on hegemonic discourses of ‘nation-building’ in post-conflict situations. It presents Ake's corpus as a basis for critiquing ongoing state rehabilitation attempts and urges a return to endogenous initiatives of rebuilding the state from below as a condition for achieving a sustainable democratic reconstruction of the state in post-conflict Africa.

One element in the contradictions underpinning Nigeria's development crisis is the marginalisation of the youth. This article examines the factors that influence youth restiveness in Nigeria's Niger Delta region. It discusses the impact of conservative elite politics and the oil-centric political economy characterised by the impoverishment, neglect and the repression of the oil-producing communities on the youth in the region. The article raises pertinent questions on the violence–development dialectic, drawing upon the context, dynamics, explanations and impact of youth violence in Nigeria's oil-rich Niger Delta. It examines the contradictions and injustices existing against the ethnic minorities of the oil-bearing communities in the region, from the centralisation of oil revenues by the federal centre and how these have generated marginalisation and violent conflict in the region. Detailing the repressive responses by the Nigerian state and the forms of violence that have occurred in the region between ...