Polit Journal Scientific Journal of Politics

Challenges of Female Activists and the Use of Social Media for 2023 Presidential Election in Nigeria

2026-04-02T02:27:25+00:00

Social media have galvanising impact on feminists’ issues, serving as tools for political communication and mobilisation. In amplifying gender equity in political seats, Nigerian female activists were often subjected to multiple barriers, hindering the attainment of the SDG5. Previous studies in communication of gender equity have focused on how the Nigerian female activists utilised the use of social media to raise this call. However, there is a dearth of literature on the challenges encountered by female activists while engaging social media for more women participation in politics. This study was, therefore, designed to examine the challenges encountered by female activists in the use of Social Media for 2023 Presidential election in Nigeria, with a view to establishing the extent of difficulties faced. Uses and Gratification and Patriarchy Hegemony theories were used as the framework while the qualitative design was adopted. Datareportal 44.7 percent of Nigeria’s social media users were female out of which existed Nigerian female activists. Fifteen female activists were purposively selected with snowball sampling also adopted. In-depth interview was adopted in eliciting responses using interview guide as research instrument. The findings reveal the female activists encountered cyber bullying and online threats, disinformation and misinformation, tribal bullying and patriarchal dominance, defamatory comments, hacking and account and suspension to the extent of having technical and financial barriers.

Quantum Enhanced Multimodal Analysis of Political Polarization on TikTok: A Case Study of Ethiopia’s Digital Public Sphere

2026-05-16T04:28:03+00:00

Ethiopia's political landscape, characterized by ethnic federalism and the National Dialogue process, faces escalating polarization amplified by TikTok's algorithmically curated content. Traditional machine learning approaches struggle to capture the quantum-like dynamics of political discourse, superposition of identities, entanglement of ethnic and ideological factors, and context-dependent meaning. This study introduces the first quantum-enhanced multimodal framework for analyzing political discourse on Ethiopian TikTok, integrating quantum entanglement-driven fake news detection (Q-ALIGNer), quantum LSTM sentiment analysis, and quantum frequency-based opinion shift modeling (OpinionXf). We developed a hybrid quantum-classical pipeline processing 50,000 Amharic, Oromo, Tigrinya, and English TikTok videos. Q-ALIGNer encodes text, video, and audio modalities as quantum states with entanglement-based fusion. Quantum LSTM captures temporal sentiment evolution, while OpinionXf models opinion shifts using frequency-domain transformations. Performance was evaluated against classical baselines using 10-fold cross-validation. Q-ALIGNER achieved 92.5% accuracy, outperforming classical models by 8.2–13.9%, with only 4.6% accuracy drop under adversarial attack versus 11.9% for classical models. Quantum LSTM achieved 89.7% accuracy with 15.2% MAE reduction over AfriBERTa. Sarcasm detection improved by 8.4% and coded political language by 9.1%. OpinionXf achieved 85.7% precision and 100% recall for 72-hour early warning, detecting shifts 3–6 days before classical models. Ablation study revealed quantum layers contributed 46.3% and entanglement 53.7% of total performance gain. Entanglement-based similarity maps revealed three political actor clusters with intra-cluster entanglement 0.85–0.92 versus inter-cluster 0.65–0.72. Quantum-enhanced frameworks significantly improve detection of misinformation, sentiment polarization, and opinion shifts in Ethiopian political discourse, enabling proactive early warning systems. Deploy the 3-layer quantum model with all-to-all entanglement for Ethiopia's National Dialogue Commission, prioritizing high-persuadability local issues while approaching identity-based topics through deliberative processes.

Ethiopian Women, the Law of Safuu, and Ecofeminist Climate Justice in Genesis 2

2026-05-22T03:29:50+00:00

Mainstream eco-theological readings of Genesis 2:4–17 have emphasized “stewardship” or “dominion” without engaging African Indigenous legal systems or the concrete climate knowledge of Ethiopian women. The Oromo moral-ecological law of Safuu, a system of prohibitions against pollution, deforestation, and over-extraction remains largely absent from biblical interpretation and climate justice discourse. This article advances an Ethio-ecofeminist reading of Genesis 2:4–17, arguing that the creation narrative, interpreted through Safuu and the lived agency of Ethiopian women as seed-keepers, water fetchers, and sacred-grove guardians, yields a juridical-ecological mandate for climate justice. The study employs decolonial feminist biblical criticism and Oromo epistemology, conducting a verse-by-verse exegesis of Genesis 2:4–17 alongside ethnographic and policy analysis of Ethiopian women’s climate burdens, the Gadaa governance system, and forest carbon offset schemes. Findings: The Hebrew adam-adamah kinship resonates with Oromo Uumaa (creation as family); the prohibition of the tree of knowledge functions as a Safuu boundary protecting interdependence; and the mandate to avad and samar (to till and to keep) charges humans with sacred service and protective guardianship. Ethiopian women’s watershed councils, seed cooperatives, and liturgical forest rituals enact this mandate against extractive agriculture and carbon offset projects that displace them. Conclusion: Genesis 2, read through Safuu and Ethiopian women, replaces the “dominion” model with an indigenous, gendered framework for climate justice grounded in communal land trusts, water commons, and restorative enforcement. Policy makers should recognise women’s Idir assemblies as official water governance bodies, mandate free prior informed consent for forest carbon projects, and integrate Safuu-based dispute resolution into land administration.

Collective Action for Public Health, Fragmented Action for Public Peace: Institutional Resilience and Failure in Ethiopia's Religious Councils

2026-05-22T04:30:01+00:00

Ethiopia’s Inter‑Religious Council of Ethiopia (IRCE) successfully mobilised collective action against COVID‑19 but has failed to mediate the country’s multiple ethnic conflicts. This paradox challenges assumptions about the peacebuilding potential of religious institutions. This study investigates why the same religious institutions demonstrate high collective action for public health but fragmentation for peace, testing whether threat type (exogenous vs. endogenous) explains divergent outcomes. A comparative case study design was employed, comparing the IRCE’s response to COVID‑19 (exogenous threat) with four ethnic conflicts (endogenous threats): Tigray, Oromo, Amhara, and Gurage. Data sources included IRCE public statements, news archives, ACLED conflict data, NGO reports, and peer‑reviewed literature. Analysis traced five criteria: public statements, ceasefire calls, mediation attempts, humanitarian roles, and internal unity. COVID‑19 produced high collective action, leader neutrality, state partnership, clear positive‑sum goals, and success. All four ethnic conflicts produced low to very low collective action, loss of leader neutrality, the state as protagonist, zero‑sum goals, and failure. The Gurage case involving co‑religionists on both sides demonstrated that even shared faith cannot overcome endogenous partisan divisions. Foundational weaknesses include government co‑optation of religious leaders into the ruling party, financial dependency, and abandonment of religious doctrines demanding justice. Ethnic identity overrides religious authority in endogenous conflicts. The IRCE’s institutional design assumes neutrality that no longer exists when the state is a belligerent and leaders share ethnic identities with combatants. Institutional resilience is domain‑specific: success in public health does not transfer to peacebuilding. During active civil wars, donors should support local, traditional peace custodians (e.g., Aba Gars) rather than national inter‑religious councils, and prioritise internal ethnic de‑escalation within religious bodies before external mediation.