empowerment

Blood Will Flow In the Streets

Blood Will Flow In the Streets

Blood Will Flow In the Streets

“Empowerment” has a strange meaning in the Nigerian context. It is “the sharing of money” by politicians to clients, supporters, the undecided and antagonists”. Empowerment is thus the use of state money to buy political support within the polity. It uses means such as rent offerings, sinecures, “pacifiers” and prebendalism. Empowerment can wear a ‘something-for-nothing’ shirt since it is often unearned or undeserved. But it also means jobs for ordinary folks. We argue, empowerment is a national habit. (more…)

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Grimot Nane Zine

When Empowerment Becomes a Euphemism for Corruption

The word and context of “empowerment” has come to take on in interestingly corrupt or perverse meaning of its own in everyday Nigerian parlance. Unlike its real meaning in everyday day society or academia, it has by way of customary euphemism come to mean the “corrupt and preferential distributions of rents (public goods or public funds) through patronage networks to key political supporters and their dependents”. Empowerment by such an understanding has evolved in to a social bad. (more…)

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