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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:'Get to the bridge and I will help you to cross': merit, personal connections and money in access to Nigerian higher education
Author:Willott, ChrisISNI
Year:2011
Periodical:Afrika Spectrum (ISSN 0002-0397)
Volume:46
Issue:1
Pages:85-108
Language:English
Geographic term:Nigeria
Subjects:universities
access to education
patronage
External link:https://journals.sub.uni-hamburg.de/giga/afsp/article/view/436
Abstract:This article examines the methods students use to gain access to a university in Nigeria's elite federal sector. It explains the relationships between three 'currencies' - merit, personal connections and money - that are utilized by students to achieve their goals. The author argues that influences representing the official rules - merit - and those representing semi-official or unofficial processes - personal connections and money - intersect in ways that reveal the complexity of the relationship between State and society in contemporary Nigeria. The analysis reveals that in this case the hybrid interpretation of the neopatrimonial State, which views official and unofficial norms as existing in parallel and suffusing one another, has more analytical value than its counterpart, the wholesale State privatization thesis. Bibliogr., notes, sum. in English and German. [Journal abstract]
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