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Afrocentrism, national interest and citizen welfare in Nigeria's foreign policy maneuvers.

ABSTRACT: Background: Nigeria's former Prime Minister, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, in his addresses of August and October 1, 1960, declared Africa as the centrepiece of Nigeria's foreign policy. This policy thrust has remained a constant variable in the country's diplomatic engagements over the years. The doctrine of Afrocentrism is predicated on the supposed manifest leadership role placed on Nigeria by nature. This made her leaders define Africa's interest as Nigeria's national interest, a development that has been contended to have no empirical bearing on the welfare of Nigerians thereby generating intense scrutiny. Consequently, this study evaluates the impact of Nigeria's Afrocentric foreign policy thrust on the welfare of the ordinary Nigerians. The study further analyses the country's gravitation towards citizen-centred diplomacy in 2007. These will help in comprehending the interaction between national interest and foreign policy in Nigeria, and to identify whose interests have been protected the most in Nigeria's foreign policy pursuit - that of the ordinary citizens or the elites? Methods: Through the qualitative research method, in-depth interviews (IDIs) were conducted with Key Informants (KIs) for data collection. Responses from field study are merged with other primary and secondary sources of data to provide an incisive and balanced analysis that is premised on political realism. Results: Findings indicate that Nigeria's international generosity and leadership role has never been predicated on a clear vision of national interest. Notwithstanding the flaws in Nigeria's foreign policy over the years, this study also discovered that the outcome has not been a total failure as some respondents maintain. Conclusions: With the nation's gravitation towards citizen-centred diplomacy, it is hoped that the country will put the interest of its citizens first in her policy pursuits.

SUBMITTER: Mbara GC

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8256188 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:BackgroundPharmaceuticals are an integral component of health care systems worldwide, thus, regulatory weaknesses in governance of the pharmaceutical system negatively impact health outcomes especially in developing countries 1. Nigeria is one of a number of countries whose pharmaceutical system has been impacted by corruption and has struggled to curtail the production and trafficking of substandard drugs. In 2001, the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) underwent an organizational restructuring resulting in reforms to reduce counterfeit drugs and better regulate pharmaceuticals 2. Despite these changes, there is still room for improvement. This study assessed the perceived level of transparency and potential vulnerability to corruption that exists in four essential areas of Nigeria's pharmaceutical sector: registration, procurement, inspection (divided into inspection of ports and of establishments), and distribution.MethodsStandardized questionnaires were adapted from the World Health Organization assessment tool and used in semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders in the public and private pharmaceutical system. The responses to the questions were tallied and converted to scores on a numerical scale where lower scores suggested greater vulnerability to corruption and higher scores suggested lower vulnerability.ResultsThe overall score for Nigeria's pharmaceutical system was 7.4 out of 10, indicating a system that is marginally vulnerable to corruption. The weakest links were the areas of drug registration and inspection of ports. Analysis of the qualitative results revealed that the perceived level of corruption did not always match the qualitative evidence.ConclusionDespite the many reported reforms instituted by NAFDAC, the study findings suggest that facets of the pharmaceutical system in Nigeria remain fairly vulnerable to corruption. The most glaring deficiency seems to be the absence of conflict of interest guidelines which, if present and consistently administered, limit the promulgation of corrupt practices. Other major contributing factors are the inconsistency in documentation of procedures, lack of public availability of such documentation, and inadequacies in monitoring and evaluation. What is most critical from this study is the identification of areas that still remain permeable to corruption and, perhaps, where more appropriate checks and balances are needed from the Nigerian government and the international community.

Project description:Wild penguins are facing increased threats to their populations and their welfare as a consequence of human activities. Understanding the perception of animal welfare is essential to identify ethical concerns related to the negative impact of anthropogenic factors on wild species and to guide conservation efforts that reflect societal values. Since penguin conservation is of general interest, we examined the human dimension of welfare assessment across a range of interest groups concerned with penguins, seabird biology and wildlife conservation. We provided participants with a Penguin Welfare Assessment Tool (PWAT) based on the five domains model. The PWAT supports consideration of the impact of four physical aspects on welfare-relevant mental states. Bibliometric analysis of keywords from 347 scientific articles indicated that penguins around the world face five main types (themes) of anthropogenic factors and we then developed five hypothetical scenarios, each related to one theme. Seventy-five participants scored the overall impact of the events described in the scenarios on penguin welfare as negative using the PWAT. Participants rated short-duration, high-intensity events (i.e., being trapped in a ghost fishing net) as having a significantly more severe impact on penguin welfare than low-intensity, long-duration events (P < 0.0001). Scores provided by participants for each domain for each scenario were largely as expected and we found good correlation (all P < 0.0001) between the physical domains and "mental state" for all scenarios, indicating that the tool was facilitating the participants' assessment of welfare. No evidence was found that experience of working or studying penguins, or indeed any other demographic factor investigated, influenced the assessments of welfare. We found little agreement between participants in the scores provided (unalike scores mostly between 0.7 and 0.8), and agreement between participants with experience of working with penguins was no better than between participants without such experience. We discuss the possibility that low agreement within different interest groups may be improved by providing more scientific information to support the evaluation of penguin welfare. We conclude that scientific knowledge of penguin biological responses to anthropogenic factors is vital to support the evaluation of wild penguin welfare by the public and other stakeholders.

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Afrocentrism, national interest and citizen welfare in Nigeria's foreign policy maneuvers.

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