The Political Science establishment in Nigeria is stepping into an intense intellectual scrutiny of what the phenomenon of corruption might be doing to democratic recovery on the African continent. The event is the 2025 version of the Billy Dudley Lecture which is in its 17th year now, having been inaugurated under the Prof Adele Jinadu presidency of the Nigerian Political Science Association (NPSA) in the 2003 – 2005. But the first in the series was delivered by Prof Jinadu in 2008.
AU Headquarter Building, Addis Ababa
The next one is on August 25th, 2025 and it is on the topic The Influence of Corruption on Africa’s Democratic Recovery: Democratic Governance or Authoritarian Reversals?
It will be delivered by Professor Victor Adetula of the Department of Political Science at the University of Jos. The sensation here will be the sub-text of Prof Adetula’s topic which is whether the continent is heading for democratic governance or authoritarian reversal from the consequences of corruption. At the moment, only he and his data have anything in the form of an answer to the question. And the answer might speak to the rhetorical just as it could shock. For now, we all have to wait for Prof Adetula.
Notwithstanding decline across the board, the NPSA has basically sustained the Dudley Lecture series. However, the series have not been as hair raising on the Dudley scale. It has been difficult to forget Dudley partly because the title of his own Inaugural Lecture in 1975 was, in and of itself, hair raising: Skepticism and Political Virtue. In other words, the title alone carried the sort of crispness as to invest the Inaugural Lecture with a mystique.
Prof Adetula is speaking on a topic that is complicated in its unfolding but inviting of popular interest. For that reason, he will most likely have more active and passive listeners than both he and the NPSA might have bargained for.
Head offices of serious political parties across Africa will love to read his testament just as presidential dachas and financial hubs from Addis Ababa to Abuja, Johannesburg, Nairobi, and so on, students of power relations, big banks, donors, the international development circus, the United Nations family and the global civil society will be all ears.
Prof Billy Dudley executed a spectacular cut into the Nigerian Political Science space at the University of Ibadan as for his academic exertions to endure and be considered worthy of honouring. The event for this year is being held online, meaning that more academics and interested elements will be able to partake, depending on how widely the NPSA spreads its Billy Dudley ecumenism.
