WILBERFORCE JOURNAL OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES (WJSS)
ISSN: 2504 – 9232
Volume 5, No. 2, September 2020
Pages 65-75
DOI: 10.36108/wjss/0202.50.0250
Interrogating Empowerment as a Tool for Good Governance in the Niger Delta
Weni .K. Igirigi
Abstract
Governance aims to provide basic amenities, opportunities and the enabling socio-economic environment for citizens to meet their aspirations within the prescribed social order. In Nigeria and the Niger delta, the ubiquitousness of corruption is the major challenge to governance. Approaches employed to tackle or bypass the corruption challenge include the use of empowerment programmes. Empowerment is conceived as a vehicle through which national governments tackle underdevelopment, unemployment and sustainable livelihoods. This research investigates what empowerment means to Niger Deltans, comparing provider-recipient perspectives. It also examines the impact of empowerment programmes and practices as employed across the Niger Delta, and the role empowerment plays in producing good governance outcomes. The research shows that; conflicting empowerment expectations exists between end-user benefactors and programme designers/providers which hampers development efforts. These conflicting expected outcomes stem from an entitlement to empowerment. Empowerment also serves the role of conduit for corruption which is a bane of good governance in the Niger delta and Nigeria. Finally, further room for research exists in questioning our dependence on empowerment programmes as facilitators of rural development as against direct infrastructural and institutional development.
Keywords: Empowerment, Governance, Good Governance, Governmentality, Development