Professor Sylvester Odion Akhaine of the Political Science Department, Lagos State University (LASU), has warned that the liberation of Africa from the overwhelming influence of the West requires radical perspectives which should interrogate causality.
Akhaine spoke on Tuesday – yesterday, February 25 – while delivering the 103 Inaugural Lecture Series of the Lagos State University.
The event was 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’.
Causality is described as the relationship between cause and effect; it could 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.
Akhaine said the interrogation of 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 Africa was caught up in it in the late 1980s, a period 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 de-colonisation played a part.
“However, democratisation was largely driven by internal dynamics anchored on the realisation that military rule was an aberration,” he said, noting that continuous agitation by both the civil society and political class led the way to democratic transitions, nation-building and development efforts.
Akhaine lamented that 56 coups occurred in Africa from 2010 to 2024, lamenting that 41 of the coups were attempted, while 14 were carried out, and one, a self-coup.
