Contending Issues in the Niger Delta Crisis of Nigeria - Journal of ...

Contending Issues in the Niger Delta Crisis of Nigeria
Chapter VII:
The Political Class and Intergovernmental Relations in
Nigeria
By Samuel W. Ibodje and Fidelis Allen
Introduction
Introduction
As a discursive category, the political class is often conceptualized
negatively in the case of Nigeria. This is no fault of the scholar, nor
political analyst, seeing that many things have gone wrong with the
political class over these past years since independence was attained.
This paper examines the character of the political class in relation to
intergovernmental relations. The link, from 1999 to date, appears to
present a typology of federalism where communication of the orders of
government is influenced negatively by the character of politicians.
Fashionably, every federal system is unique in some way. So is the
relationship of the orders of government. The question is, what is the
character of the political class How has it affected intergovernmental
relations It is argued here that the institutions for the management
of intergovernmental relations in Nigeria lack institutionalization in
many respects, resulting in the undue exercise of influence from
higher orders of the political class on the lower orders of governments
and their politicians.
165