The main activity of public administration is to implement public policies and programmes. This is why governments all over the world rely on public administration institutions to provide public services to the people. To effectively achieve this, universal public values and principles of public trust, ethical standards, transparency etc., are observed. Using content and descriptive analysis, this article explores the current state of public administration practice in Nigeria. It digs into why the institution continues to under-perform, especially in this era of heightened public expectations on service delivery and support for nation-building. The article examines this apparent vitiation from the initial vision of a “world class service, implementing government policies and programmes for rapid and sustainable development” of the country. This is against the backdrop of series of administrative reforms by successive governments and the influence of global reforms and changing practices. The article recommends for better political leadership and purpose-driven reform of the public administration system in response to increasing public service delivery expectations and overall contributions to nation-building.

Over the years, the Federal government has through different avenues sought to establish closer cultural, social, religious and linguistic ties among the people so as to create the long eluded unity in the country. Among these government initiatives are the establishment of Unity Secondary schools in different States of the Federation, National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) programme and political appointments at the Federal level, through the Federal character policy. Despite all these and other concerted efforts by the Federal government, disharmony still prevails among Nigerian. This paper discourse the integration of Peace education as a programme for impacting, maintaining and promoting culture of peace and to develop the necessary skills to peacefully resolve conflict among citizens in Nigeria. Considering various challenges facing the country such as political tensions, inter-religious conflict, ethno-tribal conflicts and recently the Herdsmen/farmers clashes to mention but a few. This, in turn, will impact positively on the society. Therefore, it is crucial to develop a peace education programme as it forms a crucial part of education that can installed in human mind as an antidote to ‘war is in the minds of men’.

Elections are important constitutional requirements for the enthronement and sustenance of any democratic political system. It is within this framework that some political pundits have argued that elections can make or mar a nation. This is so because elections are adversarial in their nature as they represent a contest for power, yet the emergence of electoral violence is not a result of the process being followed, but signals a critical departure from the accepted rules that govern the process. How then can election-related violence be better anticipated and conflict prevention programming put in place to mitigate its occurrence and stem its escalation? This paper suggest an approach that identifies potential conflict triggers and activate the responds of relevant agencies in order to prevent or minimize the conflicts or violence in the electoral process. Central to this approach is to mainstream conflict sensitivity in election programming. This means incorporating conflict-sensitivity into pre-election, election and post-election programmes. The need to mainstream conflict sensitivity in election programming in Nigeria has arisen owing to the fact that elections in Nigeria since 1999 have been marred by violence of different magnitude. The paper contends that attention must be given particularly to the pre-election phase where violence that is aimed at disrupting elections by actors who do not want the elections to take place at all, and violence triggered by the rivalry between the contesting candidates/parties can be detected and responds mechanism activated. Conflict sensitive election programming would help stem the tide of electoral violence. Issues/context analysis, training programmes, dialogue among electoral stakeholders and efficient and credible complaints processes are central to mainstreaming conflict sensitivity in election programming in Nigeria.

The study is a comparative study of the legacies of political godfatherism in Nigeria which aims at establishing the link between political leadership, governance and nation building. Adopting a qualitative method of data collection and content analysis using secondary sources such as textbooks, journal articles, newspapers and magazines, the study examines the content, context and character of the godfathers and their contributions to development of party politics and democratic governance towards nation building. The study serves as a barometer for assessing the larger issue of whether the political activities of the godfathers have entrenched sound and progressive or otherwise retrogressive democratic culture that approximate nation building. In comparative terms, the study reveals that in spite of their shortcomings, the activities of the godfathers in the first and second republics were to a large extent more patriotic, less chauvinistic and relatively tilted towards nation building unlike those of third and fourth republics that are extremely self centred, chauvinistic, transactional, predatory, erecting complex structures of retrogressive and paradoxical democratic culture, party discipline and good governance; tantamount to derogation of nation building. The study concludes that if these predatory activities remain unchecked, positive democratic culture and good governance which is the fulcrum of nation building will remain a mirage.