This essay analyses the construction of the anti-corruption war under the civilian government in Nigeria between 1999 and 2008. We consolidate existing insights in the literature in three key ways. First, we show that in democratising contexts like Nigeria, the gravest threats to anti-corruption campaigns often emanate from a combination of intra-elite rancour and political intrigue. Second, we provide an explanation of what happens when, literally, corruption fights back. Finally, we suggest that where anti-corruption efforts are not backed by other radical institutional reforms, they fall prey to the overall endemic (systemic) crisis, a part of which,ab initio, necessitated the anti-corruption war.

This paper examines the cultural repertoires of the youthful, ‘militant’ faction of the Oodua People's Congress (OPC) in Nigeria, pointing to ways in which violence and ritual can be interpreted both as an instrumentally rational strategy of power struggle and as a form of symbolic action with cultural meanings. The OPC case strongly challenges the bifurcation of tradition and modernity, given the way the group appropriate culture in negotiating Yoruba identity, while also retaining democratic rhetoric. It argues that the activities of the OPC constitute not stable, bounded manifestations of culture, but rather fluid, ambivalent and paradoxical ethnic-power relations and formations.

Given its place in the vortex of power relations in Nigeria, the Nigerian press has nurtured and/or subverted, promoted and/or combated the legitimacy of hegemonic power-blocs and state in their relationship with minority (marginal) ethnic groups. The role of the press in this context has become more crucial since the struggle of the minority ethnic groups gained a new impetus in the 1980s and 1990s Nigeria, linked as it was to a global resurgence of the drive towards self-determination and the attendant nationalist struggles. This article use the case of the Ogoni ethnic group in the oil-rich region of Nigeria to examine how newspapers and news magazines use narratives to interrupt and intervene in the process of dominant discourses and practices that subordinate relatively powerless minorities. Against the backdrop of narrative theory, the article provides empirical evidence of the centrality of narratives in the mobilization or de-mobilization of marginal intervention in the socio-economic and political life of the centrein the African postcolony.

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In this article, I explore a possible ‘conversation’ between a leading African political sociologist, Peter P. Ekeh, in his theory of ‘two publics’, and the late French philosopher, historian and social theorist, Michel Foucault, in his theory of governmentality. I examine the ‘lingering effects of colonialism’ and point to how Ekeh’s insight and its usefulness for examining the politico-cultural consequences of colonialism in terms of the conduct of conduct in the public realm can be further enriched by relating it to the deeply penetrating insight on the nature of power and domination articulated through the concept of governmentality and sovereign power. The paper concludes that Ekeh’s thesis is particularly suitable for interrogating governmentality and its useful insights for understanding public life in Africa because, like Foucault’s theory of governmentality, it is grounded on a historical account of contemporary processes of socio-political and economic configuration.