Political Scientists and Nation-Building: The Nigeria’s Experience

Ibrahim Hassan

doi:10.56201/jpslr.vol.11.no9.2025.pg68.81

📄 Download Paper

Political Scientists and Nation-Building: The Nigeria’s Experience

Ibrahim Hassan

Abstract

Nation-building is so crucial a project that requires the services of many actors to achieve. It embodies such elements as national integration, poverty reduction through employment generation, robust economic development through industrialization, as well as infrastructural revolution through good governance. The actors involved in it have different and very important roles to play. Unfortunately, over the years, especially in Nigeria, the role of political scientists in nation-building has been surreptitiously scuffled through a deliberate constitutional design to permeate an unsavory political exclusionism in addition to the crude stereotypic mentality built around them by Nigerians. Against this backdrop, the paper asked: what role(s) should political scientists play in the overall project of nation-building in Nigeria? Among other things, the work discovered that the role of political scientists in the project of nation-building is to offer genuine political leadership which remains the panacea for resolving other problems inherent in the society. Consequently, the study recommended that justice in Plato’s sense be observed if nation- building would be made less difficult in Nigeria.

Keywords

nation-buildingstate-buildingpeace-buildingrolepolitical scientists.

References

Alesina, A., & Reich, B. (2012). Nation building. A paper prepared on October, 2012 and revised on August, 2013. Allen, P. J. (2012). Why don’t Americans elect scientists?” The New York Times, 13 February. Carolyn, S. (2005). Nation building. http://www.beyondintractability. org/essay/ nation- building, retrieved on 17 July 2014. Egan, H. E., Adamu, I. M. & Oni, O. F. (2017). Political socialization and youth participation in Nigerian democracy: A gain or lost?. Social Science and the Challenges of Democracy in Nigerian, 1 (1), 78-83. Gambari, A.I. (2008). The challenge of nations: The case of Nigeria. A lecture delivered at the first year anniversary of Mustapha Akanbi foundation at Sharaton Hotel, Abuja on 7February. Goldberg, M.L. (2006). Nation building strategies’. http://www.undispatch.com/ nation- building- strategies, retrieved 17 July 2017 Harris, M. (2007). Contemporary Greece: Structures, Context and Challenges, LSE. Paper prepared for presentation at the 3rd Hellenic Observatory PhD symposium on June 14-15 Karl, W.D., & William, J. F. (1966). Nation building in comparative context. New York:Atherton. Pie, M., & Kasper, S. (2003). Lessons from the past: The American record in nation- building, http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/nation-building retrieved on 17 July,2017 Reimer, A. K. (2005). The concept of state-building, nation-building and society-building. AARMS, 4(3), 367-379. Robert, K. (2011). Nation-building: Our national pastime. http://www.nytimes. com/2011/10/16/ books/review/libertys-surest-guardian-by-jeremi-suri-bookreview. html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 Scott, Z. (2007). Literature review on state building. A report prepared for the department of international development, university of Birmingham through the governance and social development resource center framework.

Political Scientists and Nation-Building: The Nigeria’s Experience

Abstract

Keywords

References

More Articles from JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE AND LEADERSHIP RESEARCH