Intervention is opening to post just a few materials strictly as a concession to two birthday celebrants. One is Justice James Ogebe at 85 while the second is Professor Okwudiba Nnoli. Each of them symbolises a value. Adagbo Onoja, Intervention’s Editorial Associate, rounds off the package on Nnoli with a question: Where are the Nnoli’s Students?”
Along with a piece on Prof Nnoli are a few other tributes from NPSA President which have accumulated at Intervention – Prof Linda Kwon – Ndung and former governor of Ekiti State, Dr Kayode Fayemi.
The week that just ended March 21st showed flashes of 2027, Nigeria’s next date with history in electoral politics. ‘Flashes of 2027’ speaks to the week.
We haven’t heard the last of Prof Sylvester Odion Akhaine’s February 25th, 2025 Inaugural Lecture at the Lagos State University, Ojo in Lagos State, Nigeria. It is reproduced here with a short preface from Intervention. Attention on it is justified by the contention that, as a former activist of the defunct NANS, traces of the activist heritage will sneak out here and there in the lecture. It is by publishing it that we can ascertain that.
An irregular contributor has had a piece from a visit to an orphanage. It is considered an important piece in this platform because it is on a category for which no compassion and/or attention can be too much. Another irregular contributor has a piece for the attention of the paramount ruler of the Tiv nation, predominantly of Benue State in central Nigeria.
One piece that has been in the works but still could not make it today is on the 40th anniversary of the publication of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. First published in 1985 before a 2nd edition in 2001, it is difficult to find a text matching its understanding of the problems of contemporary capitalism and how to confront it. Of course, it has been over-reviewed but which does not make a review of it for the Nigerian audience unnecessary. It should come in our next edition before the 40th anniversary comes on stream this April.
In place of a review of Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, Intervention offers an alert, (not a review) for those who haven’t heard of a wave making text Change Makers: Radical Strategies for Social Movement Organising. It is very much an update on the complexities of the series of start and stops in social movement politics in the post – Cold War. There is a sense in which it can be called a sequel to Hegemony and Socialist Strategy even though the authors of Change Makers do not fully share the discursive ontological hook-up of Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. Still, the two pairs of authors are connected to the extent that Laclau and Mouffe dismissed classical Marxism and radicalised hegemony from the Gramscian conception on the basis that the singularity of the working class has been overtaken. A book that reflects on the problems of social movement politics is, therefore, a sequel since it is social movement politics Laclau and his wife privileged, though in a very sophisticated pattern of frontier formation for discursive change.
Enjoy the package. The stories will follow but not necessarily in any order. This package is, however, not an indication that Intervention has resumed regular posting of stuff. No. It is still on a publishing break and we ask contributors to, please, not send materials for publications yet. We shall continue to publish occasionally, depending on what is at stake but that is entirely discretionary!
