State failure and the contradictions of the public sphere, 1995-2005

Abstract

Although there are differences of nuance and analytic pitch, there is near unanimity among scholars, orthodox and radical, that the Nigerian, indeed African state has failed or is failing. Whether it is seen as an unsteady state unable to manage the wild play of centrifugal forces or as a monumentally corrupt contraption that is little more than " a criminal racket [and where] the police and organized crime may be one and the same thing," the unfailing verdict is that of a " privatized" and predatory state unable to guarantee the minimal conditions for its medium-term survival. Epileptic infrastructural services of which the woes of the National Electric Power Authority (NEPA), or its reincarnation as the equally inept Power Holding Corporation of Nigeria (PHCN), constitutes a potent symbol; incendiary communal and interreligious outbursts, which sometimes evoke the ominous prologue to the civil war of 1966-1970; rampant corruption in public life as well as the presence of a large informal sector are some of the indices often cited to pinpoint the ineffectiveness of the state.