Nigeria in Search of a Credible Electoral Administration

Author(s):  
Rotimi T Suberu

Recent elections in Nigeria have produced conflicting and ambiguous assessments regarding the quality, integrity and credibility of the country’s electoral governance. On one hand, widespread domestic and international criticisms of the farcical 2007 elections provoked remarkable constitutional, statutory, and administrative proposals, programmes, and policies for reforming Nigeria’s electoral processes. Those reforms led to electoral cycles that observers adjudged to be comparatively competitive, broadly acceptable, and generally indicative of a shift away from the country’s extended history of electoral maladministration, corruption, and chicanery. On the other hand, credible reports emphasize the persistence of significant levels of fraud, violence, and disorganization in Nigerian elections. This chapter shows that these contradictory outcomes and dual perspectives are consistent with the partial and incomplete nature of recent electoral reforms in Nigeria. Those reforms have extended the autonomy of the country’s election management commission, without guaranteeing the agency’s effective political insulation or addressing broader and deeper weaknesses in the country’s electoral landscape. Nigeria resembles a classic hybrid regime with increasingly competitive electoral contests that, however, continue to witness undemocratic levels of manipulation, corruption, and violence. More extensive reforms, along the lines proposed by a major official electoral reform committee, would have produced more substantial improvements in electoral integrity and quality.

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Freidin ◽  
Juan Uriagereka ◽  
David Berlinski

The following remarks attempt to place Jean-Roger Vergnaud’s letter to Noam Chomsky and Howard Lasnik more centrally within the history of modern generative grammar from its inception to the present.


2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
William Skiles

This article examines the nature and frequency of comments about Jews and Judaism in sermons delivered by Confessing Church pastors in the Nazi dictatorship.  The approach of most historians has focused on the history of antisemitism in the German Protestant tradition—in the works, pronouncements, and policies of the German churches and its leading figures.  Yet historians have left unexamined the most elemental task of the pastor—that is, preaching from the pulpit to the German people.  What would the average German congregant have heard from his pastor about the Jews and Judaism on any given Sunday?  I searched German archives, libraries, and used book stores, and analyzed 910 sermon manuscripts that were produced and disseminated in the Nazi regime.  I argue that these sermons provide mixed messages about Jews and Judaism.  While on the one hand, the sermons express admiration for Judaism as a foundation for Christianity, an insistence on the usage of the Hebrew Bible in the German churches, and the conviction that the Jews are spiritual cousins of Christians.  On the other hand, the sermons express religious prejudice in the form of anti-Judaic tropes that corroborated the Nazi ideology that portrayed Jews and Judaism as inferior: for instance, that Judaism is an antiquated religion of works rather than grace; that the Jews killed Christ and have been punished throughout history as a consequence.  Furthermore, I demonstrate that Confessing Church pastors commonly expressed anti-Judaic statements in the process of criticizing the Nazi regime, its leadership, and its policies.


2013 ◽  
Vol 54 (128) ◽  
pp. 401-417
Author(s):  
Paul van Tongeren

Is friendship still possible under nihilistic conditions? Kant and Nietzsche are important stages in the history of the idealization of friendship, which leads inevitably to the problem of nihilism. Nietzsche himself claims on the one hand that only something like friendship can save us in our nihilistic condition, but on the other hand that precisely friendship has been unmasked and become impossible by these very conditions. It seems we are struck in the nihilistic paradox of not being allowed to believe in the possibility of what we cannot do without. Literary imagination since the 19th century seems to make us even more skeptical. Maybe Beckett provides an illustration of a way out that fits well to Nietzsche's claim that only "the most moderate, those who do not require any extreme articles of faith" will be able to cope with nihilism.


1898 ◽  
Vol 63 (389-400) ◽  
pp. 56-61

The two most important deviations from the normal life-history of ferns, apogamy and apospory, are of interest in themselves, but acquire a more general importance from the possibility that their study may throw light on the nature of alternation of generations in archegoniate plants. They have been considered from this point of view Pringsheim, and by those who, following him, regard the two generations as homologous with one another in the sense that the sporophyte arose by the gradual modification of individuals originally resemblin the sexual plant. Celakovsky and Bower, on the other hand, maintaint the view tha t the sporophyte, as an interpolated stage in the life-history arising by elaboration of the zygote, a few thallophytes.


1985 ◽  
Vol 24 (95) ◽  
pp. 327-340
Author(s):  
Francis Thompson

The Irish land act of 1881, it is generally agreed, was a victory for the Land League and Parnell, and nationalist policy with regard to the act and the attitude of southern tenants towards it have been many times subjected to detailed examination by historians of this period. In these analyses of the events of 1880–81, however, little reference is normally made to the part played by the different parties and interests in the north of the country. It is often assumed, for example, that the Ulster tenants held aloof from the campaign for reform, lending no more than occasional vocal support to the agitational efforts of tenants in the south and west. Indeed, they were later excoriated by William O'Brien, Michael Davitt and others not only for giving no support to the land movement but also for sabotaging Parnell's policy of testing the 1881 act by precipitately rushing into the land courts to take advantage of the new legislation: ‘that hard-fisted body of men, having done nothing themselves to win the act, thought of nothing but turning it to their own immediate use, and repudiating any solidarity with the southern and western rebels to whom they really owed it’. If, however, northern tenants were harshly judged by nationalist politicians in the years after 1881, the part played by the northern political parties in the history of the land bill has been either ignored or misunderstood by historians since that time. The Ulster liberals, for example, are rarely mentioned, the implication being that they made no contribution to the act even though it implemented almost exactly the programme on which they had been campaigning for much of the previous decade. The northern conservatives, on the other hand, are commonly seen as leading opponents of the bill, more intransigent than their party colleagues in the south, ‘quick to denounce any weakening of the opposition’ to reform, and ‘determined to keep the tory party up to the mark in defending the landlord interest’


1998 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
J. L. Helberg

The book of Amos contains many undertones of threat, except in the epilogue which, according to many scholars, is redactional The question thus comes to the fore whether this characteristic implies that God is seen by Amos as a God of threat for whom one can only have fear. This article, however, points out Amos’ moral justification of God's deeds. Israel's actions, on the other hand, display a self-centredness and a lack of theocentric and personal approach. Within this framework the history of salvation, especially the exodus and the conquest of the land, as well as the election, covenant and the idea of the remnant, is fossilised and God is made a captive of space, time and relations. However, Amos' proclamation implies that in reality God cannot be made captive - neither of such a religion nor of a theology of threat. Amos envisions a situation in which everything will comply with the real aim set for it/him.


2020 ◽  
pp. 21-39
Author(s):  
Maksym Bondarenko

The article analyzes structural, word-formation and morphological peculiarities of Ukrainian oikonyms motivated by plant names. The conducted research of fixed in the «History of Cities and Villages of the Ukrainian SSR» and «Administrative and Territorial System of Ukraine» for 2019 (current list of Ukrainian oikonyms) confirmed the opinion of many linguists that the most productive way of creating names of settlements is the suffixation, on the other hand, far fewer units are formed with the help of compounding and prefixation. The following groups were distinguished on the basis of the analysis of oikonym-phrases formed from plant names: oikonym-phrase in which the noun is motivated by the plant name and the adjective indicates colour; oikonym-phrases in which one of the components is in the most cases an adjective motivated by plant name, and the main noun is one of the types of landscape, etc. We have considered some interesting oikonym-phrases which occur in all regions of Ukraine, for example, с. Кисла Дубина, с. Красні Лози, с. Мокра Рокитна etc. Some of the names of settlements have been significantly influenced by the Russian language, especially at the morphological level.


2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tautvydas Vėželis

This article examines the problem of overcoming nihilism in Heidegger’s dialogue with Jünger. It is suggested that nihilism is manifested in various forms and is the deep logic of the whole history of European civilization. One of the main aims of this paper is to outline the relationship of nihilism and Nothing in Heidegger’s dispute with Jünger, viewing how Heidegger distinguishes his approach from Jünger’s point of view. Heidegger, on the one hand, treats nihilism as consummation of the Western metaphysical tradition, on the other hand, identifies Nothing itself as the shadow of Being, which cannot be overcome in the traditional dialectical thinking manner.


Author(s):  
Roberto Luquín Guerra

Apart from his political and educational work, and from his controversial autobiography, José Vasconcelos is known for his Ibero-Americanist thought. The Cosmic Race, Indology and Bolivarism and Monroeism gather all the ideas that are attributed to his theoretical point of view. His philosophy is what we know less of and what is most criticized. Nonetheless, is there a connection between his philosophical thought and his Ibero-Americanist ideas? Abelardo Villegas says that Vasconcelos’s philosophy is the product of a racial and cultural message. Therefore, according to Villegas, his philosophy is subordinated to his Ibero-Americanist ideas. Patrick Romanell, on the other hand, states that the Ibero-Americanist ideas make up the popular and illusory side and, hence, must be separated from the philosophical thought. The aim of this paper is to elucidate this problem. In order to clarify it, we will follow Villegas viewpoint to the bitter end. His reasoning invites us to look closely at the history of Ibero-American thought as well as at Vasconcelos’s first works. Precisely by analyzing these two aspects and the point where they meet, we might be able to find an answer.


De Medio Aevo ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 99-115
Author(s):  
Laurence Moulinier Brogi

Thanks to an unprecedented experience, that of confinement on a global scale due to a pandemic, this article offers a reflection on the confinement of only a part of humanity, women, at a given time, the 12th century, as a modest contribution to the history of gender relations in the Middle Ages. Different women, in fact, underwent or on the contrary sought at that time isolation and seclusion: in all cases, their loneliness was linked to men, who inspired them to withdraw as a solution to escape marriage and sexuality, or required to get rid of their unwanted company. We therefore wonder here what are the faces and common points of the various forms of relegation that were going on, what resistance women could oppose, but also what were its limits: some of them chose the solitude as a pledge of peace and security but could they really be left alone? Could the recluses really provide for themselves? Were the imprisoned wives not kept in touch with the outside world, especially the male? At the end of this study, absolute solitude in the feminine seems more an ideal than a reality because even in the most austere cells, women could hardly do without men completely. On the other hand, confinement largely protected them physically, leaving in many cases other types of love than carnal one to flourish


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document