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Expert Bio
Ebenezer Obadare is Douglas Dillon senior fellow for Africa studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Before joining CFR, he was professor of sociology at the University of Kansas, Lawrence. He is also a senior fellow at the New York University School of Professional Studies Center for Global Affairs, as well as a fellow at the University of South Africa’s Institute of Theology. His most recently published book, from the University of Notre Dame Press, is titled Pastoral Power, Clerical State: Pentecostalism, Gender, and Sexuality in Nigeria.
Obadare was Ralf Dahrendorf Scholar and Ford Foundation International Scholar at the London School of Economics and Political Science where he completed his PhD in social policy in 2005. He holds a BA in history and an MSc in international relations from the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria.
Obadare was a political reporter for The News and TEMPO magazines from 1993 to 1995, and a lecturer in international relations at the Obafemi Awolowo University from 1995 to 2001. His primary areas of interest are civil society and the state, and religion and politics in Africa.
He is the author and editor of numerous books, including Christianity, Sexuality and Citizenship in Africa (2019), Pentecostal Republic: Religion and the Struggle for State Power in Nigeria (2018), Governance and the Crisis of Rule in Contemporary Africa: Leadership in Transformation (2016), Humor, Silence, and Civil Society in Nigeria (2016), The Handbook of Civil Society in Africa (2014), Civic Agency in Africa: Arts of Resistance in the 21st Century (2014), Democracy and Prebendalism in Nigeria: Critical Interpretations (2013), and Nigeria at Fifty: The Nation in Narration (2011).
Obadare’s essays have appeared in the leading Africanist and disciplinary journals, including the Review of African Political Economy (ROAPE), African Affairs, Politique Africaine, Journal of Civil Society, Democratization, Patterns of Prejudice, Africa Development, Africa, Critical African Studies, Development in Practice, Journal of Modern African Studies, Journal of Contemporary African Studies, Interkulturelle Theologie, and Journal of Church and State.
He is the editor of Journal of Modern African Studies and contributing editor of Current History.
Affiliations:
- Center for Democracy and Development, (Abuja, Nigeria), Journal of West African Affairs, Democracy and Development, editor
- Journal of Modern African Studies, Cambridge University Press, UK, editor
- New York University, Center for Global Affairs, fellow
- Nigerian Tribune Newspapers (Ibadan, Nigeria), editor at large
- University of South Africa, Research Institute for Theology and Religion, fellow
Current Projects
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Africa needs more liberal democracy, not less.
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Nigerians are increasingly frustrated at the growing disconnect between the political class and ordinary people.
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When it comes to wealth transfer, Nigerian Pentecostal churches prefer to keep it all in the family.
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The phenomenon of state-sponsored weddings across Nigeria’s predominantly Muslim northern region raises pertinent questions on the limits of political benevolence.
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The genital disappearance panic sweeping across Nigeria evokes nagging anxiety over masculinity and male power.
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The UN-authorized Kenyan peace mission to Haiti is a welcome gesture, but it falls drastically short of the help the country urgently needs to establish a modern state.
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The furor over Nigerian President Bola Tinubu’s academic records is less about his person and more about the character of Nigerian society.
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Why do public office holders in Nigeria increasingly appoint a large number of personal aides?
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Pervasive despondency about democracy in Africa urges the imperative to strengthen democratic institutions and practices.
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What various forms of bodily deportment can teach us about power and authority in Africa.
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The latest generation of African coupists offers definitive proof that the armed forces are the greatest victims of military rule.
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The apparent success of the military coup in Niger bodes ill for democracy and stability in the Sahel and the rest of the continent.
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Nigeria should lead an Afro-Western alliance to flush out Niger’s military junta and restore democracy in the country.
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Tinubu’s macroeconomics gets a reality check from Nigeria’s micropolitics.
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What attitudes toward public infrastructure tell us about the state of the social contract in Nigeria.
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Senegalese leader’s belated disavowal of a third term ambition is a win for the country’s civil society and the region’s prodemocracy coalition.
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Nigeria should seize the opportunity to raise its diplomatic game and lead the continent from the front.
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For the first time since the country’s return to civil rule in 1999, Nigerian Pentecostals find themselves on the outside looking in.
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Up against the wall, Tinubu will need his famed political savvy—and more—to stanch rising discontent in Nigeria.
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When Nigerians needed him to deliver, President Muhammadu Buhari fell short.
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Rising vigilantism in Nigeria reflects public cynicism about law enforcement and the judicial system.
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When a phraseology says more about its users than the reality it purports to describe.
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Nigeria’s close-run presidential election was not about religion, until it was.