Comparative Politics Short Essay Social Sciences Essay

Comparative Politics
Name
Institution
Introduction
From the known continents that make up the world, Africa is the second-most popular and the second-largest continent after Asia. Covering about 20 percent of its land area and 6 percent of the earth's total surface, the continent has about 1.4 billion people living there (Aborisade & Aliyyu, 2018). The population accounts for approximately 16 percent of the world's human population. Africa is recognized as a rich continent regarding natural resources and agriculture. It is abundant with gold, diamond, bauxite, cocoa beans, copper iron, uranium, natural gas, platinum, and cobalt(Aborisade & Aliyyu, 2018). With all these resources, different countries from different continents have made their way into Africa in search and scramble for these resources. Something that has and still brings Africa to its knees. Africa, as a continent, needs quality leaders who will propel it back to its glory. My argument will primarily be based on poor leadership and misuse of power as some of the causes of a poor depiction of the African continent. Such issues have resulted in Africans protesting for better lives and leadership, which is also the main issue that will be addressed in this paper.
For years, countries worldwide have shown their generosity by donating food, clothes, funds for projects, among other necessities, to several countries in Africa. Such donations are sent to these countries whenever a specific country is on the brink of war (civil or political), terrorism, natural disasters (a rare occurrence), or political conflicts. Africa is prosperous, and it does not require aid. All it needs is good leadership and proper allocation of resources (Mueller, 2018). Africa should be the continent doing most of the exports than other continents because of its natural resources that countries from the west salivate on.
From the 54 countries in the African continent, Nigeria stands a chance of being the superpower. The Nigerian government has the biggest economy in the continent, it has a vast trained military budgeted for, and it has a fair record of regional engagement (Aborisade & Aliyyu, 2018). Consequently, it is still featured as one of the most corrupt countries in the continent due to a flawed governance system, incompetent leadership, and unjust or misappropriation of public resources and funds. With such issues in place, getting jobs has been a burden for citizens in Nigeria. When no jobs are available, crime becomes the order of the day. Nigeria is one of the countries well known to have cyber crimes. Most youths engage in cybercrime and fraud to sustain themselves.
The country has been dormant, lamenting these issues in silence until recently, where its citizens took it to the streets to protest about police brutality. The protests paved the way for expressing other issues like inequality and disbandment of the entire police unit. Tens of thousands of Nigerian citizens across the country protested over these issues, but their response was what they were protesting about (Igbo, 2017). One would wonder why the government of a civilized nation like Nigeria responded to peaceful demonstrations with the military. How would such a move to solve the situation in the first place? To what extent would the Nigerian government go regarding the issue?
To answer these questions, it is necessary to reflect on the issues at hand that the Nigerian government has been failing to address for years. In cases of demonstrations, Nigeria would have deployed regular police and anti-riot police and not the military. The use of the military would have worked in cases of external or, in some instances, internal threats (Igbo, 2017). Thoughtfully, the Nigerian government would have gone to the extent of delivering the desires of the people based on their complaints or issues; in this case, police brutality.
The rate of unemployment in Nigeria is also alarming, and its government has been failing to address this issue for years. In this case, what are the causes of high unemployment rates in Nigeria, and how is unemployment related to crime? Some of the causes are rapid increase in population, rapid change in technology, neglect of agricultural sector, migration (rural to urban), wrong impression on technical training, corruption, and grave embezzlement of public funds. With unemployment in play, issues like crime will arise. Crime has been prevalent in the country. Tourists from across the globe and even residents and citizens have been victims of a wide range of violent crimes. Such may include assault, armed robberies, carjackings, cybercrimes, money laundering, rape, extortion, burglary, and kidnapping. In response to such, the Nigerian government set up a particular police unit to combat crime (Igbo, 2017). This is how the Special Anti-Robbery Squad, commonly known as SARS, was formed. The squad was formed in 1992 to combat such crimes, but recently the team has been doing more than just fighting the issue of crime.
Since the formation of the squad, there have been several reported cases of brutality and stereotyping. For example, the squad would harass, arrest, or even kill any youth to dress smartly and expensively. According to the nigerian citizens, the most outrageous claim is where the squad went to the extent of mistreating people for owning an iPhone (Adegoke, 2020). One would wonder, how is an iPhone related to crime? According to research, smartphones and crime are two things that should not relate. According to criminal researchers, the likelihood of a criminal using a smartphone, especially on internet-related crimes, is minimal. Smartphones always leave traces of the crime that criminal investigators use to trace the criminal before an arrest. The researchers also found out that most criminals use burner phones because they are difficult to trace, and it is also hard to identify the user. Tracing the location of the criminals and who used the phone to call is trivial (Aborisade & Aliyyu, 2018). The carrier will have the recent calls dialed but will never show the call's contents or who the call was for. Therefore, this shows the level of incompetence that the Nigerian police showed about professionalism.
The formation of the Special Anti Robbery Squad was a good idea, and it would have solved or at least minimized the cases of crime in Nigeria. The issue with the idea is the kind of process that the gov...