Emmanuel Remi Aiyede

Emmanuel Remi Aiyede is Professor of Political Institutions, Governance and Public Policy in the Department of Political Science, University of Ibadan. He is the current Head, Department of Political Science (01 August 2020), former Sub-Dean, Faculty of the Social Sciences (2012-2014) and former Coordinator, Leadership and Governance Programme (2010- 2014), Centre for Sustainable Development, University of Ibadan. He was also Visiting Scholar, The Electoral Institute, Independent National Electoral Commission, Abuja (2016-2017), and Visiting Fellow, Transregional Centre for Democratic Studies (TCDS) New School University, New York, 2000. He began his career as a Fellow at the Governance Unit of the Development Policy Centre (DPC), an independent think tank in Ibadan in 1998, after a brief stint in journalism. He taught at the University of Lagos, before joining the University of Ibadan in 2005. He has had visiting lectureship experience in several universities within and outside Africa. He has been on the Editorial Board of Nigeria’s oldest surviving newspaper, the Nigerian Tribune, since 2008. He contributes to public discourse in the Nigerian news media.

Professor Aiyede graduated with a Ph.D. degree in political science from the University of Ibadan in 2000. He is an alumnus of the Fulbright Study of the US Institute of National Security Policy after 9/11, University of Delaware, USA, in 2009. He is a beneficiary of the Executive Education programme on Governance at the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS), Harvard University, 2008 and the Partnership for Africa Social and Governance Research (PASGR) series of training programmes on Pedagogical methods for teaching public policy and e-case development, Nairobi (2013-2014).

His research work connects public policy, institutional reforms and democratic institution building. Maitaining close contact with the policy process, he has participated in building the governance and policy capacities of national and state legislatures in Nigeria. He provided expert and technical support to the then Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, and later of information, of the Nigerian Federal Government, Mr Frank Nweke, 2004-2007. He chaired the committee that produced a Training Policy for the Electoral Institute in 2017 and conducted the study on the proliferation of political parties for the Nigeria Election Working Group (2018). He has been involved with the Partnership for African Social and Governance Research (PASGR) in promoting innovative pedagogy in higher education in Africa. He was a part of the team that developed the curriculum for the Master of Research and Public Policy programme currently being run in 13 African universities; and he is also on the team currently developing the Ph.D. programme which is expected to commence in September this year in some universities across Africa.

He has taught Social and Public Policy in the master’s in development Practice at the Centre for Sustainable Development, and Comparative Defence Policy in the M.Sc. in Strategic Studies programme jointly run by the University of Ibadan and the National Defence College. He regularly visits the Defence College to deliver lectures and engages with officers of the Nigerian military at several similar occasions.

He has consulted for several donor agencies and international organisations, such as the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), the European Centre for Electoral Support (ECES), Centre for the Democratic Control of the Armed Forces (DCAF) Geneva, Global Integrity, the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

He plays faculty advisory roles to several student organisations on campus. These include the Rotaract Club, Integrity Club, Ace Five Initiative, Unilever Campus Ambassadors Programme and the Political Science students’ Press Organisation.

His recent publications include: The Proliferation of Political Parties and Election Management in Nigeria (2018), and “Civil Society Efficacy, Citizenship and Empowerment in Africa” in Voluntas (2017). His article “The Dynamics of Civil Society and the Democratisation Process in Nigeria” Canadian Journal of African Studies (2003) won a medal in the World Bank prize for Outstanding Research in Development of the Global Development Network (GDN). His article on Fiscal Federalism and the Dilemma of Constructing a Developmental State in Nigeria in the International Political Science Review (2009) is one of the 50 most cited articles in the Sage and the Journal website for several years.