LIST OF REASONS

INTRO:  Simply put, political apathy means lack of interest in politics, i.e. the activities of the state. More often than not, voter apathy is used interchangeably with political apathy. The interchangeable usage is understandable because voting is the hallmark of political participation, but then, it is careless to do so. As a matter of fact, every voter apathy is political apathy, but not every political apathy is voter apathy. Voter apathy is a subset of political apathy, together with other subsets of political apathy such interest apathy, and information apathy. A voter apathetic person does not go to cast vote in an election, interest apathetic person does not show interest in political activities such as referendum, demonstration, or rally, etc., and information apathetic person does not go for political news, or engage in political discussion. From the foregoing, it is observable that political apathy is the opposite of political participation. Democracies all over the wor...

INTRO :  The nature and character of l ocal government in Nigeria today (except for few infractions) is largely the product of the 1976 Local Government Reform by the Murtala/Obasanjo regime. The Reform is marked with bringing uniformity to the cacophony and disharmony that once reigned on local government system in Nigeria. In the 1976 Local Government Reform Guidelines, the Federal Government of Nigeria defined local government as “Government at local levels exercised through representative councils established by law to exercise specific powers within defined areas.” The powers which the local representative councils can exercise within their jurisdiction are local affairs “(including staffing) and institutional and financial powers to initiate and to determine and implement projects so as to compliment the activities of the state and federal government in their areas, and ensure through devolution of functions to those councils and through the active participation of the people...

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...