LIST OF REASONS

Introduction Groups have attracted the inquisitive interests of assorted disciplines including Political Science, Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology, Epidemiology, Education, Social work, Business, and Communication Studies. A great deal of these disciplines hold groups as the smallest unit of the society in such a manner that understanding the groups amounts to understanding the society. The most revered group theorist in Political Science, Arthur Bentley in his magnum opus, the Process of Government, along the thought that a group is the smallest unit of the society, forcefully reduced political phenomena to group dynamics, saying that "When groups are adequately stated, everything is stated. When I say everything I mean everything…,” (Bentley, 1908, p. 271). This statement goes a long way to show that the shortcut to studying political processes of a political system is squarely by studying the interactions between and among the groups. This chapter discusses group dynamics...

Introduction The primacy of communication in every system is definite and convincing. It is the livewire that ensures the survival and/or the usefulness of the system. Accordingly, a typical political system needs political communication for its survival and utility. In this regard, a political system maintains constant correspondence with its environment in an input-output relationship, and keeps track of the effects of its output through the feedback mechanisms. The matrix of the political communication between the political system and its environment manifests among other things as public opinion. It follows therefore to mean that public opinion is a subset of the mother political communication. But on the face value however, public opinion and political communication can be mistaken to belong to the environment and the political system respectively. Public opinion is indeed an exclusive thing of the environment, but the political system cannot lay exclusive claim to political commu...

INTRODUCTION National development is one of the vital national interests of nations of the world. As a matter of fact, national development commands as much priority as security in the catalogue of national interests of nations. Nations can go to war in the quest for development, as much as they could on security grounds. The successes and failures of a government are measurable, among other things, against its ability to protect its territoriality, and engender national development. This explains why the quest for national development has obsessed nations of the world, Nigeria inclusive. Starting with the Colonial Development Plan (1958 – 1968), Nigeria hit the ground running in the quest for national development, tinkering strategies, and a motley of tactics pursuant to national development. The country since then has designed and adopted a litany of national development plans which were largely medium term plans, national rolling plans, and strategic initiatives as listed below...