Good Governance in Nigeria: Rethinking Accountability and Transparency in the Twenty-First Century
| Dates: | 20 May 2024 |
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| Times: | 16:00 - 17:30 |
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| What is it: | Lecture |
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| Organiser: | Global Development Institute |
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| Who is it for: | University staff, External researchers, Adults, Alumni, Current University students, General public |
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| Speaker: | Dr Portia Roelofs |
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Book launch with Dr Portia Roelofs, King’s College London
Political science has long claimed that African political systems are dysfunctional because they are too embedded in social and material relations. This assumption informed the rise of the World Bank’s good governance agenda in the late 1980s. This lecture and book launch situates this technocratic vision of how to fix African politics in a longer ‘epistocratic’ political tradition that emphasises the knowledge-based, epistemic dimensions of governance. In this context, the "Lagos model", developed first in Lagos state, southwest Nigeria, from 1999 onwards and then extended to nearby Oyo and Ekiti, was celebrated by donors as an example of ‘home grown good governance’, where governance reforms were not imposed by donors through conditionality but actively adopted by the government itself. By tracing how this domesticated version of the good governance agenda was contested in the twenty-first century electoral competition, Roelofs re-evaluates the social, material and epistemic dimensions of good governance and argues for rethinking accountability and transparency, drawing on lessons from Nigerian political discourse and practice.
Speaker
Dr Portia Roelofs
Role: Lecturer in Politics
Organisation: King's College London
Travel and Contact Information
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G33
Humanities Bridgeford Street
Manchester
