Africa must liberate itself from overwhelming West influence – Don

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By Henry Oladele

A Professor of Political Science, Sylvester Akhaine, on Tuesday said that liberation of Africa from overwhelming influence of the West would  require radical perspectives which should interrogate causality.

Akhaine made the assertion while delivering  the 103 Inaugural Lecture Series of Lagos State University.

The event held at the main campus of the university at Ojo, with the topic: Shifting for Good: The Weapon of Empiricism in the Disorder of a Third Wave of Democracy in Africa’.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that causality  is  the relationship between  cause and effect.

It can also be described as  an influence by which one event, process, state or object (a cause) contributes to the production of another event, process, state or object.

He said that interrogation of the causality should be the concern of the academia.

“The desire to tell the truth always should be the focus of the Lagos School of Politics as I like to call the Department of Political Science, Lagos State University.

“It is the only way we can find solutions to our existential challenges in Nigeria, Africa and the world at large,” he said.

On the Third Wave of Democracy in Africa, he said that Africa was caught up in it in the late 1980s, described by some scholars as the age of democratic renewal.

“Arrival at this juncture in Africa’s historical and political development was a combination of three main factors that are exogenous and endogenous in nature and interacted to produce democratic outcomes.

“It is to be noted that the unfinished business of decolonisation played a part.

“However, democratisation was largely driven by internal dynamics anchored on the realisation that military rule was an aberration,” he said.

The don said that  continuous agitation by both the civil society and political class led the way to democratic transitions, nation-building and development efforts.

Akhaine noted that 56 coups occurred in Africa from 2010 to 2024.

He said that 41 of the coups were attempted, while 14  were carried out, and one, a self coup. (NAN)

Edited by Ijeoma Popoola

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