Research
Changing Cycles of Terrorism: The use of Vehicles as a Tool for Violent Attacks
Terrorist activities are usually carried out by men of the underworld who derive pleasure is taking the lives of innocent people through the use of car bombs, suicide bombers and in rare cases sporadic shooting at crowded places. These methods over the years have proved to be very effective and capital intensive with serious logistic planning and critical intelligence and evaluation of the target area before the time or date to strike. However, with the whole world especially the super powers on high alert, the terrorists have changed their tactics and have selected a more discrete but effective method to deploy violence through the use of vehicles to ram into crowds of unsuspecting innocent people. To this end, this it is the aim of this paper to attempt to demonstrate how terrorist have changed their game by now using a motorized technique in their violent operations. The study adopted the use of secondary data and the descriptive method in the analysis of its variables. The research concluded that terrorists have adopted the use of vehicles to ram into crowded places because the method raises little or no suspicion before the attack. The paper recommends that speed breakers should be installed at bus stops and also government of states need to invest in intelligence gathering and proactive to avoid such attacks in the future.
Intra-Elite Conflict and Problems of Governance in Nigeria: Imperatives of Games Theory in African Politics
In modern African politics, terrorism and failed state syndrome have became prevalent and a challenge to democratic values and virtues of good governance, posing great threat and stress to the survival of domestic political systems. This increasing political stress is a product of competition and struggle for power and supremacy among players in the executive and legislative organs of government, which has reduced the parliament to a rubber stamp of power seekers as well as the use of electoral violence as instruments of regime change. Therefore, this study seeks to examine the root cause of political struggle and problems of good governance in Africa by analyzing the variables of intra-elite crisis in the parliament and the quest for establishment of spheres of influence by players in the executive arm. The rivalry between both elites has created tremendous problems of governance and the desires of incumbent presidents to elongate their tenure by using the legislature to amend the constitution to suit their third term bid as was seen in Burundi. The games theory is used as a tool of analysis to describe the roles of elites in the intra-power struggle for the control of the parliament which has made modern legislatures in Africa a new theater for proxy wars of domestic power seekers resulting in the collapse of parliamentary values and the ascendency of executive authoritarianism. This has made legislature in Africa weak and unstable culminating in the democratization of disempowerment of the citizens from the benefits of good governance, promoting poverty, political exclusion, apathy and frustration. Therefore, we conclude that intra-elite struggle for power has provided the political mechanism for reshaping and influencing the legislative processes and powers of the parliament to satisfy the self interest of power seekers.
Electoral Violence and 2015 General Elections in Nigeria
The Nigerian state is not alien to electoral violence which can be traced as far back as the pre independence elections. Contestants in Nigeria can go to any length to rig and win elections even if it means to break the states monopoly of violence to deploy terror to win elections. At the just concluded 2015 general elections in Nigeria, the South South part of Nigeria witnessed different levels of mayhem and the destruction of lives and property. On the other hand the Northern and South Western states witnessed minimal electoral violence unlike previous years where violence was more in the North. To this end it is the aim of this paper to highlight how electoral violence was reduced during the 2015 general elections. This paper adopted the use of secondary data in the analysis of the research. However this paper concluded that the electorates in the Northern part of Nigeria and the South West aligned to the All Progressives Congress political party (APC) the opposition party which eased tensions but in the South South violence broke out as a result of an attempt by the opposition party to unseat the ruling party Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). This paper recommends that continuous voter education should be increased in order to educate people on the ills of electoral violence. Also stiffer penalties should be handed down on the agents and accessories of electoral violence so as to deter others from deploying violence in future elections in Nigeria.
