Iwilade, A (2017) Slipping through the net: everyday agency of youth and the politics of amnesty in Nigeria’s Niger Delta (2009–2015). Journal of Contemporary African Studies, 35 (3). pp. 266-283. ISSN 0258-9001
Abstract
Using the 2009 Amnesty in Nigeria’s Niger Delta, this paper explores youth manipulation of neopatrimonial systems of coercion and cooptation. It makes three arguments. First, the violence preceding the amnesty declaration was as much a youth-led insurgency to protest social and environmental justice issues as it was a crisis within Nigeria’s neopatrimonial system. Second, the amnesty programme was designed to re-constitute the collapsed neopatrimonial system, linking youth to patrons both within the Delta and in the broader Nigerian society. Finally, the paper argues that a counter hegemonic process through which youth express their agency by manipulating the amnesty in innovative ways is going on simultaneously. These arguments indicate a need to reconsider familiar tropes of ethnicity, culture and institutional deficits in the way we think about governance projects in post-colonial Africa and the tendency to exaggerate the relevance of the ‘bigman’.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | (c) 2017, The Institute of Social and Economic Research. This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in the Journal of Contemporary African Studies on 19 June 2017, available online: https://doi.org/10.1080/02589001.2017.1339867 |
Keywords: | Youth, amnesty, DDR, oil, Niger Delta, clientilism, neopatrimonialism |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Education, Social Sciences and Law (Leeds) > School of Politics & International Studies (POLIS) (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 24 Jan 2018 15:49 |
Last Modified: | 19 Dec 2018 01:38 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Taylor and Francis |
Identification Number: | 10.1080/02589001.2017.1339867 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:126597 |