27th August 2014: Final corrections were made to this paper as requested by the author - Editor.This work investigates the impact of Informal Cross Border Trade (ICBT) on poverty alleviation in Nigeria using Kotangowa market in Lagos as a case study. While the policy dialogue in Nigeria is driven by the state-centric perception of ICBT as an economic malice, this study analyzes the impact of ICBT including smuggling on the socio-economic development of participants. Also, it examines the role of the state and non-state actors in negotiating the implementation of regulations at the margins and center of the state. The research problem is examined through an assessment of the financial history of informal cross-border traders and customers in the market. The factors considered include income levels, assets acquisition, and expenditure overtime. The approach is qualitative based on descriptive method of data analysis. While ICBT is tainted by state policies as hampering economic development, findings show that it actually alleviates poverty. This paper argues that informality of this nature exemplifies the moderation of arbitrary state policies by non-state actors in Sub-Saharan Africa. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3126/ctbijis.v2i1.10809   Crossing the Border: International Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies Vol.2(1) 2014: 13-22

The literature on the Third Plague Pandemic in West Africa focuses on urbanisation and disease processes in colonial Senegal, Ghana, and Nigeria. Consequently, there is a dearth of historical study of the relational complexities between public health interventions and maritime trade during the outbreak in the region. It is with this in mind that this article examines the historical effects of plague control on internal commerce and international maritime trade in Lagos from 1924 to 1931. The study is based on the historical analysis of colonial administrative, sanitary and medical records as well as newspaper reports. It concludes that the nature of colonial public health intervention was determined by economic policy preferences that impacted distinctively on internal commerce and international maritime trade in Lagos.

This article examines the politics of public policies characterised by increased securitisation of Nigeria's national boundary from 2014 to 2017. While the regulation appears on paper to discourage transborder crime, capital outflow and sustain a favourable balance of payment, the existing armoury of West African border literature argues otherwise. What is new in the transborder dynamics of West Africa? What informs government's border policies in Nigeria? In answering these questions, this study provides a template for a reassessment of the gap between borderlands theory and policy in West Africa. The approach is comparative based on the critical analysis of oral interviews, government trade records, newspaper reports and the extant literature. The article provides a platform for rethinking of the nexus between governance and development in West Africa from the securitisation and neo-patrimonial perspectives. It concludes that effective border management in Nigeria is set aback by misguided and dysfunctional elitist-centred regulations that are devoid of the realities on the ground.

While studies have unveiled the implications of the bubonic plague outbreak in colonial Lagos in the areas of town planning, environmental health and trade, there is a dearth of scholarly writings on the multiplex nature of the biomedical, Christian, Muslim, non-Christian and non-Muslim African responses to the epidemic outbreak. Based on the historical analysis of colonial medical records, newspaper reports, interviews and the literature, this paper concludes that the multiplex and transcultural nature of local responses to the bubonic plague in Lagos disavow the Western biomedical triumphalist claims to epidemic control in Africa during colonial rule.

The literature on the plague in Lagos focuses primarily on the impact of the epidemic on urban planning and social inequality. While the need for town planning was conceived during the outbreak, the implementation of major urban planning schemes in the port city was delayed till the post-plague years due to the global economic depression. Thus, the existing studies are restricted to the aftermath of the epidemic. In advancing this discourse, this paper examines the place of environmental change and sanitation in plague outbreak and control between 1924 and 1931. The approach is historical, based on the critical analysis of colonial administrative, meteorological, sanitary and medical records, as well as newspaper reports. This paper concludes that, while the scourge was combated through transborder epidemic surveillance, quarantine and medical interventions, sanitary measures were directly responsible for its termination in 1931. This brings to the fore the place of nature and culture in managing emerging infectious diseases such as Ebola in West Africa.