Kwara State University
Ayoola ARANSI
Designation: Senior Lecturer
Department: Linguistics African and European Languages
| My Publications | ||||||||
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| S/N | Title | Abstract | Authors | Volume Numbers | Publication Type | Publication Date | Link | |
| 1 | Proverbs and Diplomacy in Local Level Politics in Nigeria: A Retrospective Examination |
Abstract There is no doubt that proverbs and diplomacy play a significant role in local level politics in Nigeria. Some scholars in the social science have argued that all politics can be said to be local in nature. This paper provides an avenue for a retrospective examination of the use to which proverbs and diplomacy can be put in ensuring mass participation of the people in local level administration and/or governance in Nigeria. Proverbs have also been used to ensure effective service delivery, interpersonal relationship, and above all, responsible and responsive government. It is obvious that whatever is left of Africa today is a fact of a history of European exploration, slavery, colonization, independence, military incursion and the thirst for democracy and good governance. These historical facts about Africa played a lot of roles on the African traditional life. There is the need to blend tradition with modernity in the employment of proverbs and diplomacy, particularly in local level politics in Nigeria. Proverbs, considered as short, repeated witty statements of experience used to further social ends, could be used to lure the citizenry to embrace participation in local level politics, ensure effective services delivery, interpersonal relationship and responsible and responsive government. Man can be said to be a political animal. If this assumption is right, then everyone should endeavor to participate in politics. However, in the Nigerian setting, there is the assumption that politics is a dirty game. This presupposes the fact that politics is devoid of decency. Hence, Laski puts it “politics is the authoritative allocation of values, who gets what, when and how”. There is a Yorùbá proverb that says: o ko si ni’be, o ni bawo ni won se pin in”, meaning: “you are not there, you are probing how things are shared”. This paper posits that mass participation in local level politics, effective services delivery, responsible and responsive government, | Aransi, I. O. and A. O. Aransi | 1 | Chapter in Book | 2012-12-01 | www.warrenpublishing.net | |