John Sunday Ojo

The article reflects on NATO's journey since its inception in 1949, highlighting its role in maintaining global security and stability. It also addresses contemporary challenges such as geopolitical tensions with Russia and China, cybersecurity threats, and the importance of technological advancements in defense.
Discover how NATO continues to adapt and evolve to meet the demands of the modern world and reaffirm its commitment to collective defense and international cooperation.
"However, despite the NATO allies pledging continuous military aid to Ukraine, the 2024 forum lacks a clear roadmap to end Russia’s aggression either through diplomatic pursuit or direct involvement in the war. It becomes imperative to interrogate NATO on how long Ukraine would depend on allies to defend itself against Putin’s war in Ukraine. One of the concerns of the 2024 Washington Summit is the lack of a comprehensive blueprint to promote sustainable peace beyond military aid provisioning. Moreover, another fundamental distress regarding the future of NATO lies in the changing political leadership among its key allies. For instance, if America’s commitment declines, changes, or withdraws from the alliance (although it requires a 2/3 majority of the Senate or an act of Congress) resulting from the changing policy of a new political administration, such action will have a dire consequential impact on the organisation. "

We review the impact of humanitarian actors in civil war through the examination of the concepts of neutrality and impartiality – embedded within the ‘do no harm’ principle. We argue that despite the rationale of principles seeking to detach international action from the embodied dynamics of conflict, these governing tenets have effectively served to reinforce power discrepancies between authoritarian regimes, opposition forces, and civilians in civil wars. Because humanitarian practices have so often been co-opted to strengthen the position of authoritarian regimes and inflict harm, we trace their impact in conflict networks and assess whether they serve to further protract and unbalance civil war.

In Nigeria, resource contests have sparked unending ecological conflict. As a result, conflict resolution measures have been proposed to mitigate climate-related conflict. However, the acceptance of such policies is hampered by ethnic suspicions, communities' exclusion, religious sensitivities, and a lack of political will.

While the post-9/11 event has animated how state actors frame terrorism, contemporary studies have failed to address the politics inherent in proscribing, repressing, and labeling separatist movements as terrorists. This paper explores the politics of framing terrorism using the contemporary selfdetermination struggles advanced by the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) and the Yoruba Nation's freedom frontiers. The study proposes a United Nations-coordinated global framework for regulating and evaluating states' activities in identifying specific groups as terrorists. Taking such a stance would prevent aggrieved agitators from being persecuted by the state in the name of terror.

In recent decades, African governments have intensified social/ethnic integration efforts through constitutional reforms and drafted and adopted local and transnational policy guidelines and structures. Together, these should enhance equal political representation and ethnic diversity in the public service for all-inclusive governance processes. Based on multicultural perspectives, this chapter explores multicultural public policies to explain why inter-ethnic conflicts and loose state-society relations persist despite implementing these policies in Africa. Cameroon and Nigeria are used to demonstrate how underlying intricacies in the implementation of multicultural policies reside in a complex mix of socio-political, economic and historical variables of governance in Africa. We conclude by highlighting a few policy recommendations for strengthening multicultural policies and structures.

The ubiquitous nature of corruption in Nigeria's political boulevard has been a cogged wheel that backpedal developmental liberation in the country. Consequently, Nigerian government embarked on major reform that led to the creation of Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC) to eliminate the scars of corruption in Nigeria's political map during Olusegun Obasanjo's regime.  However, the anti-corruption institution has received a lot of criticism among the general populace in Nigeria. The agency has been accused of politicization, selective operation, lack of transparency and as an instrument of political persecution. Therefore, this study investigates to what extent Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC) becomes a political device in the hand of politicians in facilitating further looting and persecuting political enemies. The paper argues that various regimes in Nigeria's fourth republic, ranging from Olusegun Obasanjo's administration (1999-2007),...

ABSTRACT This article discusses contemporary African democratic practices vis-à-vis politics of stomach infrastructure that debilitates sustainable infrastructural development in the region. In this article, clarifications are articulated within four interlinked phenomena: the enthusiasm for democracy, its collapse, and the resurgence of hybrid-democratic order that metamorphosed into politics of stomach infrastructure that facilitates corruption in African postcolonial state. It unravels the existing democratic prototype against ideal democratic order. The article considered the prevailing democratic inclination moseyed through citizens and political elite’s armistice that presage democratic peril. The article argued that unscrupulous political collaboration and democratic debauchery that exist between the political elites and the electorates craft an opportunity for institutionalized corruption in the region. Finally, the article found homogenous paradigms of corruption in the selected African states, including South Africa, Tanzania, Kenya, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Nigeria.

textabstractThe focal narrative in the literature on government and politics in Africa is sheathed with the credence that the region has been governed by tyrants, despotic regimes and political intrigues, abetting political transitions in belligerent awareness as a result. This paper attempts to make a significant departure from this account by Interrogating the emerging political orders that deconstruct this primordial discourse on the African socio-political landscape. It argues that the locus of political transition has shifted from a long established political culture to a more mature democratic orientation. It demonstrates that some African nations have evolved from political pettiness to political adolescence. It concludes that the recent political transitions that took place in some African nations represent a different type of regime change that marks a momentous departure from the unwavering political culture previously present in Africa.

Nigeria attained independence on October 1 st 1960 as a nation-state comprised of divergence ethnic clusters. By the time of independence, the country was set on the footpath of democratization by the colonial state. The effort at democratization was short-lived by the military coup that claimed the lives of many civilians. The political threshold is therefore attributed to the nauseating root of political assassination that scaled through many political transitions in the post-independence Nigeria. This paper interrogates the interplay between party politics, stratocracy and political related carnages since termination of colonial occupation in Nigeria. The study traces the major political assassination cases from 1966 to 2016. Drawing upon massive political killings, the article explains the root cause of immoral ecology of politically related murders and its horrible implications. It found that the deplorable military cosmopolitan governance, skyrocket political factionalism, cataclysmic ethno-religious politics, avalanche criminalization of the political party system, hegemonic political incumbency and faltering judicial system elicit contagious politically motivated killings in Nigeria. The paper concludes by providing recommendation that application of intra-party and inter-party dialogues become a mechanism for averting political homicide in political engagements and electioneering. To this end, there is a need for Nigerian political elites to eschew from inflammatory catch phrase such as " door die " " rig and roast " and other grumbling words that encourages political bloodbath. Hence, sanitization of politics that extricate narcissistic interest is a pungent bludgeon to sustain political civility in Nigerian emerging democracy.

The ubiquitous nature of corruption in Nigeria's political boulevard has been a cogged wheel that backpedal developmental liberation in the country. Consequently, Nigerian government embarked on major reform that led to the creation of Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC) to eliminate the scars of corruption in Nigeria's political map during Olusegun Obasanjo's regime. However, the anti-corruption institution has received a lot of criticism among the general populace in Nigeria. The agency has been accused of politicization, selective operation, lack of transparency and as an instrument of political persecution. Therefore, this study investigates to what extent Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC) becomes a political device in the hand of politicians in facilitating further looting and persecuting political enemies. The paper argues that various regimes in Nigeria's fourth republic, ranging from Olusegun Obasanjo's administration (1999-2007), Umaru Musa Yar'Adua's regime (2007-2010) and Goodluck Jonathan's political dispensation (2010-2014) employed anti-corruption agency as a shield to foster corruption and persecute political opposition. Drastic measures are suggested for the efficiency, effectiveness and absolute autonomy of the agency in Nigeria.

In this chapter, we postulate and argue that the differential responses to Ukrainian, Syrian and Afghan refugees exemplify the discrepancies in the application of international asylum law among OSCE countries, which are rooted in historical animosities. Through case studies, we trace institutional racial biases in immigration policies and the exportation of Global North bordering practices. Identifying the dissonance these differential responses present in both the political sphere and the public provision of social solutions, we critically assess policy needs and affirm the continued impacts of historic, colonial, and racial antecedents in migration policy. Finally, we explore localization as an approach community leaders and social actors may employ to create sites of civic resistance through whole-of-society collaborations and the development of micro-social policies.

In Nigeria, armed banditry has emerged as a contemporary threat to national security. Commentators and scholars have repeatedly pointed to overlapping foci such as herders-farmers' conflicts, warlordism, ungoverned spaces, transnational criminal networks, and the proliferation of Small Arms and Light Weapons (SALW) from Libya as dynamics influencing the current security dilemma in Nigeria. The emergence of armed banditry has triggered the prevalence of everyday killings, kidnapping for ransom, property destruction, and cattle rustling. However, the group's origin remains obscure, while its objectives and organizational structure are fuzzy.



This book aims to unravel the evolution, dynamics, and trajectories of armed banditry in Nigeria. As it explores the activities of armed banditry in Nigeria, the debate will focus on its historical context, socio-economic consequences, transnational dimensions, and the response to armed banditry in Nigeria. Furthermore, the book will explore whether the scourge of armed banditry represents a new terrorist organization with a distinct ideological orientation (if at all) or another non-state armed group creating and profiting from a criminal economy through the reign of terror. In response to the increasing concern for the criminal activities of armed banditry in Nigeria, the book anticipates unpacking its emerging trends and operational nomenclature.

Contemporary urbanization in Africa underscores infrastructural development, new market opportunities, technological innovation, science and business expansions. The convergence of opportunistic values embedded in this has revolutionized and triggered the development of megacities in Africa. However, the rapid growth of the so-called self-contained megacities neither represents the intrinsic values embedded in sustainable urban development nor portrays the climate urbanism that Africa’s megacities claim to symbolize. Thus, there is a mismatch between megacities’ challenges and the current reality of mushrooming megacities in Africa. This has raised a fundamental debate regarding the incongruity between the anticipated policy objectives for sustainable development and the recent climate urbanism that intends to mitigate carbon footprints in the cities. This chapter addresses these issues by interrogating the extent to which Africa’s megacities have adopted sustainable urbanism and climate urbanism to inform future urbanization policies.