The Institutional Development of Political Science in Nigeria: Trends, Problems and Prospects

Abstract

Political science in Nigeria has developed within contextual parameters provided by (a) the multinational character of political science, with particular reference to the hegemonic role of the US in its global diffusion; (b) the statist structure of Nigeria's political economy; and (c) the logic of colonial nationalism. In explaining the character of Nigerian political science within these historically determined contexts, the author proceeds within a theoretical framework which links the development of the discipline to the asymmetrical nature of international social formations, in the division between hegemonic or centre societies and dependent or peripheral ones. But the author also focuses on how factors internal to political science as a vocation in Nigeria have conditioned its development and have interacted with factors external to it.