I reject the claim the article titled Gowon and Babangida Created Nigeria’s Drug Culture, which I wrote is guilty of appropriating unnecessary blame to Gowon and Babangida wrongfully or misleading readers about the creation of the drug culture in Nigeria. In the first paragraph, I made it clear that some will disagree with the content. There is a big distinction between the “drug culture” and “drug trafficking” in Nigeria; the former is local Nigerian addictive drug use and the latter concerns Nigeria as an “entrepôt” for international drug trafficking. Even if some assume they are the same thing, let us look at the Gowon and Babangida regimes and their impact on drug access more carefully and see where the blame for Nigeria’s drug culture lies. Continue reading →
In Nigeria, there exists a non-market non-governmental extortionist technostructure that is nameless, but for convenience, we shall call it the ONT (i.e. the Owners of Nigeria Technostructure). The ONT is somewhat implicated in existing in the works of many authors (Dudley 1982; Agbese 1990; Diamond 1991; Osoba 1993, 1996; Cayford 1996; Ake 1996; Ihonvbere 1996, 1999; Smith 2001; Oduyela 2004; Madichie 2005; Asobie 2006; Omotola 2006; Oarhe 2010). Analogous to the concept of the market technostructure propounded by John Kenneth Galbraith in which corporate bureaucrats had more power than shareholders, and the focus of corporate activity was more on survival than profits. The ONT holds more power than market shareholders/leaders and government administrators, respectively or combined, and is focused on the survival of the nation’s economy to serve it interests rather than national prosperity (see Asobie 2006). It is a fact that citizens of Nigeria are also shareholders (or stakeholders) in the economy.
