Nexus of Poor Governance to Poverty and Insecurity in Africa : The Nigerian Experience

Poor governance, corruption, poverty, insecurity and unbridled nepotism are increasingly becoming norms in Africa. While most leadership is paying lip service to the fight against these menaces, the followership has not only resigned to fate but also contribute their quota in worsening the situation through various acts of criminality. The study broadly takes a look at how poor governance and systemic political corruption are accountable to poverty and insecurity which are plaguing African states with the specific objective of exploring how these factors have contributed to instability in various African states, particularly Nigeria. It contends that impunity and lack of selfless, visionary, transparent and accountable leadership contain crippled development of the continent and inflicted poverty on the people, who in turn resort to deviance as a survival strategy. The work was based on the theory of frustration and aggression. Methodologically, the study adopted the ex post facto research design and content analysis as its research tools to explain the study.