Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2022, Theatre

Bud Coleman and Judith A. Sebesta in Women in American Musicals: Essays on Composers…. (2008) and Michelle Parke in Queer in the Choir: Essays on Gender and Sexuality in Glee (2014), all contend that “Musical theatre is arguably the most popular form of theatre in the United States” (Coleman and Sebesta, 6). Since the Nigerian tour of the Broadway musical Fela! in 2011, the form has generated a renewed excitement in that country's theatre culture, which was on the verge of extinction. A central contributor to this interest in musical theatre in Nigeria is producer Bolanle Austen-Peters (a.k.a., BAP). Inspired by Fela!, Austen-Peters has produced five Broadway-style musical theatre performances in the last decade, staged in Nigeria and abroad. In this study, I analyze three key works from Austen-Peters's still-in-process career while also providing documentation for this new art form to ensure its preservation and inspire prospects of future research. By using Ruth Little's, Cathy Turner's, and Synne Behrndt's definitions of dramaturgy, I critically evaluate and attend to how contemporary musical theatre in Nigeria functions. In addition, employing Marvin Carlson's concept of theatrical interculturalism, I endeavor to understand how traditional Nigerian performance elements are making their way into this reimagined art form. Following the introduction which lays out the topic and methodologies, chapter two is a critical exploration of Austen-Peters's first musical script, Saro, The Musical (2013). Specifically, I explore how she is modifying and modernizing traditional Nigerian performance practices to create a musical theatre production unique to Nigeria. My focus in chapter three is an analysis of a video recording of Austen-Peters's second work, Wakaa, The Musical (2015), which debuted in Nigeria before transferring to London in 2016 for a limited run. Building on the work done in chapter two, in this chapter I investigate how this performance combines el (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Michael Ellison PhD (Advisor); Timothy Pogacar PhD (Other); Jonathan Chambers PhD (Committee Member); Heidi Nees PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: African Literature; African Studies; Music; Performing Arts; Theater; Theater History; Theater Studies

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2021, English

Although sexual violence against women is rampant in Nigeria, there is a dearth of feminist studies that examine sexual violence against women in Nigerian films and at the same time answer the question continuously begging for an answer- why is sexual violence against women so rampant in Nigeria? Therefore, this thesis studies Emeka Nwabunze's Child, not Bride, Kunle Afolayan's October 1, and British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Africa Eye documentary, Sex for Grades and argues that the prevalence of sexual violence against women in Nigeria is a consequence of incorrect notions about femininity in the nation's culture. Julia Serano's book, Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity and Catherine MacKinnon's essay “Sexuality from Toward a Feminist Theory of the State” serve as the feminist methodological framework of this thesis. Serano's work clarifies two things: 1. The possession of femininity is often used to rationalize injustices done to women and, 2. Patriarchy ensures that femininity is perceived as inferior to masculinity by imposing inferior meanings on femininity and interpreting feminine expression as consent to sexual objectification and violence. Based on the notion that human beliefs and behaviors are dictated by culture and, therefore, cannot be legitimately judged without the proper cultural context, this thesis employs Yoruba culture as a microcosm of Nigerian culture and explores Yoruba cultural notions about femininity. The social significance of this study is that it is a valuable tool for women's rights organizations in their fight for the prevention and elimination of rape in Nigerian society.

Committee: Erin Labbie Ph.D. (Advisor); Khani Begum Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: African Literature; African Studies; Ethnic Studies; Film Studies; Gender Studies; Sub Saharan Africa Studies; Womens Studies

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1978, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects: Political Science

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1972, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects: Economics

Doctor of Philosophy, University of Akron, 2009, Counselor Education and Supervision

Due to increase in racial and ethnic diversification of United States (USA), most counselors can expect to see clients from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds. In addition to the increases in the number of African Americans, Asian Americans, and Hispanic Americans, there has been an increase in the number of African subgroups that includes Nigerians. Within the past two decades, the USA has witnessed an unprecedented influx of Nigerian immigrants in most major cities of this country and universities. Though several studies have examined the general attitudes of minority groups to counseling, no specific studies have been conducted on the growing population of Nigerians in the USA. This study therefore examined The Relation between Demographic factors and Attitudes about Professional Counseling among Adult Nigerians living in the USA. A sample of 225 first generation Adult Nigerian immigrants living in the Midwest region of the USA participated in this study (122 women and 103 men) from ages 20 to 63. Duration of stay in the USA ranged from 1year to 47years. Demographic form and the Attitudes Toward Seeking Professional Psychological Help Scale (ATSPPHS) were used for this study. Correlation matrix was conducted with the independent and dependent variables. Five multiple regressions were performed using the combined Independent Variables that were significant (Socio-Economic Status, Sex and Duration of Stay) with each of the Dependent Variables of Total Score, and subscales of Need, Stigma Tolerance, Openness, and Trust. Results showed that Socio-Economic Status, Sex and Duration of Stay in the USA were significant in predicting the Need and Openness subscales of ATSPPHS. Five percent of the variance in ATSPPHS Need subscale scores was accounted for by the regression model. T-tests results showed that no predictor variables significantly contributed to the regression model when other independent variables were controlled. But, 6% of the variance in ATSPPHS Opennes (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: John E Queener (Advisor) Subjects: Academic Guidance Counseling

Master of Science (MS), Ohio University, 2024, Environmental Studies (Voinovich)

More than half of extremely poor Nigerians live in rural areas where the deprivation of access to basic social infrastructure such as access to reliable electricity is at its highest. About 140 million Nigerians, or around 71% of the population, do not have access to energy. Bridging Nigeria's energy deficits with a net zero target and lifting millions of Nigerians out of poverty requires enormous resources from diversified energy mix such from renewable energy and technical knowledge that cannot be sourced locally. Nigeria needs to explore encourage and maintain international bi-lateral and multilateral relationships as avenues to tap international development assistance in the form of aid and foreign direct investments for renewable energy. International development partners like the GIZ have worked in Nigeria since 1974, and operated country offices in Nigeria's capital since 2004. GIZ's projects have provided advisory services to enhance access to, use of, and investments in renewable energy, energy efficiency, and rural electrification in order to address the problem of irregular power supplies. This assistance includes the twin goals of increasing access to solar energy and to reduce carbon emissions. This thesis evaluates whether GIZ-supported efforts have increased access to renewable energy, and reduced carbon emissions. The research found out that GIZ investments have contributed indirectly to increasing renewable energy access in Nigeria between 2015 and 2022 with no evidence of carbon emissions' reduction.

Committee: Geoffrey Dabelko (Advisor); Sarah Davis (Committee Member); Thomas Smucker (Committee Member) Subjects: Alternative Energy; Climate Change; Energy

Master of Arts, University of Toledo, 2023, History

Women in modern Nigeria have been subjected to decades of gender discrimination manifesting in societal gender oppression and institutional prejudice. Women trail behind men in education, financial power, and political representation. Religious reformation and British colonialism have proven to have had a significant role in the uprooting of Indigenous customs in specific northern and southern regions of Nigeria. This project interrogates the factors of religious change and colonialism upon the internal valuation of womanhood of Hausa women in a Muslim society and Igbo women in an increasingly Christian region. The Colonial Womanist Devaluation model is used to identify the changing internal definitions of womanhood of Hausa and Igbo women against the external factors of religious change and colonialism. Through the application of this model, it was revealed that the slow process of Islamization within Hausa communities primed Hausa women to commonly accept the restrictions of an increasingly patriarchal society. In contrast, Igbo women more commonly resisted the patriarchal norms brought by Christian conversion and colonialism due to the perseverance of Indigenous Igbo culture. The findings of the Colonial Womanist Devaluation Model have proven consistent in the interrogation of the behaviors and internal valuations of womanhood in modern Hausa and Igbo women.

Committee: Shingi Mavima (Committee Chair); Tara Hollies (Committee Member); Ami Pflugrad- Jackisch (Committee Member) Subjects: African History; Black History; Comparative; Cultural Anthropology; History; Religious History; Womens Studies

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2023, American Culture Studies

#EndSARS, a hashtag movement decrying social profiling and brutal policing of young men by Nigeria's police faction, Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), initially became visible within digital publics as a protest movement in 2017. In October 2020, it became a mass offline and online movement within which feminist and queer activists emerged as focal political subjects. In this project, I examine the participation of women and queer people in a movement whose rhetoric primarily centered young men as sole victims of police brutality. Before October 2020, several hashtag and on-the-ground actions protested police discrimination, abuse, negative profiling, and fatal violence against women and girls, including the #JusticeForTina and #SayHerNameNigeria movements. Notwithstanding, there remained a dogmatic refusal to address police brutality experiences against women and girls within the #EndSARS digital politic. However, in October 2020, feminist and queer discourse spilled over into #EndSARS visions of intersectionality, although the transmissions of unpredictable intimacies within Nigeria's heteropatriarchy inevitably turned feminist and queer bodies into bodies of hate. I focus on #EndSARS' affective circulations as feminist and queer activists made Nigeria's mass struggle against police brutality a feminist/queer issue and repurposed its offline and online techniques. Through multiple methods of in-depth interviews, networked data scrapping and visualization software (Python for historical data collection and Gephi for networked visualizations), and my autoethnographic location as a feminist activist doing groundwork at that time, I highlight Nigeria's gendered and sexual resistance politics as it redefines what constitutes police brutality in the Nigerian context.

Committee: Radhika Gajjala Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Nicole Jackson Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: African Studies; Communication; Gender Studies; Womens Studies

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2023, Communication Studies (Communication)

This study extends knowledge on social support in promoting cervical cancer prevention in Nigeria. I drew on qualitative interviewing to understand and explain how supportive communication in interpersonal networks (relational networks and provider-patient interactions) and groups can influence women's decision to screen for cervical cancer in North-central Nigeria. The investigation focused on women's knowledge and experiences with cervical cancer and pap screening to identify supportive attributes that facilitated the uptake of pap screening in the female target population. A purposeful sample of 63 adult females participated in this study. An iterative approach was used to inductively synthesize and interpret data. Results characterize support provided by healthcare providers and lay persons (women, friends, family, and groups) as they provided relevant resources and modeled behaviors to convince women to utilize pap screening services. Insights from this study can serve as building blocks for constructing interpersonal and group communication interventions, and improving screening practices to increase the uptake of pap screening in North-Central Nigeria.

Committee: Christina Beck Dr. (Advisor) Subjects: Communication; Health

Doctor of Education (EdD), Ohio University, 2022, Educational Administration (Education)

This phenomenological case study examines the lived experiences of professors and academics in agriculturally related fields of study as scholar-practitioner educational leaders of ecological justice in Nigeria. As a phenomenological based investigation, I consider how they consciously perceive their interactions and experiences in terms of their views and understandings of socio-ecological injustice as a taken-for-granted phenomenon in their areas of practice. In turn, as a qualitative case study, I consider these individual scholar-practitioners as social actors within the bounded system formed by the universities and their academic discipline of agriculturally related practice in Nigeria. Findings from their shared lived experiences indicate that several factors impact their perception of ecological injustice, among these are stakeholders, the Nigerian ecological fund, the accepted standards and ethics governing ecological practices, residents and regional knowledge, and various causes of socio-ecological injustices. These themes which emerged from the case study as well as the participants themselves serve as textural and structural descriptions in the phenomenological sense. In conclusion, numerous considerations, suggestions, and implications are given based on these themes.

Committee: Charles Lowery (Committee Chair) Subjects: Educational Leadership

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2021, Popular Culture

Scholarship on female representations in hip hop has been predominantly premised on the sexualization of the female body. By focusing mainly on this singular aspect of the genre, we reduce the whole essence of womanhood in the industry to such interpretations. The limited scope of such discussions deprives the women of opportunities to tell their own stories of what they do when they dance. Seeing the cultural significance of dance as a form of popular culture in the Nigerian context, this essay, from a feminist perspective, closes this gap by engaging in a qualitative exploration of the lives of three female dancers in Nigeria telling their stories through dance. They are Kaffayat Oluwatoyin Shafau (Kaffy), Odumewu Debbie (Debbiepinkie), and Usiwo Orezinena Jane (Janemena). Exploring their social media archives, interviews granted to TV stations and a published autobiography “Alajoota” by Kaffy, this essay contextualizes and complicates the interpretations of sexualization in the Nigerian hip hop dance industry. Through dance Nigerian women performers are able to negotiate the heavily male-dominated hip hop scene. For them, dance is a coping strategy, a profession, a space for redefining self and embracing sexuality and femininity, and a form of youthful identity and inclusion. Anne Anlin Cheng in Second Skin: asks “How is it we know we are seeing what we think we are seeing? What are the conditions under which we see” (3)? Though theirs is still a negotiated agency, as it is in any society with hierarchies, their dancing taunts and resists patriarchy while working in and around the socio-economic, religious, and cultural contexts of Nigeria. By engaging dancers using academic discourses, we communicate their importance and highlight the social issues of greatest concern to women such as domestic violence, the rate of unemployment, the psychological effects of cultural confinement, and the burdens of stringent gender expectations.

Committee: Angela Nelson (Advisor); Jeremy Wallach (Committee Member); Rahdika Gajjala (Committee Member) Subjects: Cultural Anthropology; Dance

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2019, Gerontology

There is no formal word for dementia in Nigeria. Instead, people consider dementia an inevitable part of aging. Even so, people with dementia and their families are at risk of stigmatization. With its rapid aging, increased risk of dementia, and lack of formal long-term care, this study focused on the experiences of Nigerian women who are caring for a relative with dementia since women are at the center of informal long-term care in the country. The study employed a qualitative descriptive method. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with a purposive sample of 12 adult informal female caregivers in Anambra, Nigeria. Data were then analyzed for themes. Afterwards, focus groups involving 21 adult Nigerians residing in Ohio, US, were conducted to offer more insight on the findings. Three major themes were identified: making sense of dementia symptoms; perceived caregiving challenges and support; and “why we do it,” which relates to the major reasons these women provide care. Understanding the experiences and perceptions of Nigerian female informal dementia caregivers is important to improving caregiving quality and quality of life of the caregiver and the person with dementia. Increasing dementia awareness is also important to mitigate the potential threats of stigmatization associated with dementia in Nigeria. Findings point to a likely growing household burden that affects some older adults and their families, especially adult women, and draws attention to the need for strategies to help strengthen informal caregiving in Nigeria. The study also identifies the need for dementia education and formal long-term care policies in a rapidly aging Nigeria.

Committee: Kate de Medeiros (Committee Chair); Sara McLaughlin (Committee Member); Katherine Abbott (Committee Member); Jennifer Kinney (Committee Member); Amy Roberts (Committee Member) Subjects: African Studies; Aging; Families and Family Life; Gender; Gerontology; Health; Health Care; Public Health

Doctor of Management, Case Western Reserve University, 2018, Weatherhead School of Management

Industries in developing economies are facing ever increasing pressure to become greener and socially responsible. However, the prevailing regime of environmental policy drives green investment in developed economies. The case might be different, we conjectured, in tropical developing economies where environmental policy usually takes the form of traditional command-and-control. Moreover, studies on exploratory mixed method on green investment and organizational performance nexus are rare in developing economies. This gap in studies stays in the theme's state-of-the-art. Qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted with twenty upper echelon executives representing five Nigerian firms. Quantitative data was collected using structured questionnaire from 324 pulp and paper companies in Nigeria. The hypothesized relationships of this model were validated by structural equation modelling. The findings show that green investment is driven by factors uncommon to developed countries including raw materials scarcity, firm size and ownership structure among others. Contrary to the existing literatures and conventional empirical evidences, the study indicates a positive relationship between green investment and organizational performance of industrial firms, and, these firms surprisingly, are investing in them to a degree uncommon in most developing countries. The study provides some valuable managerial insights into the relationship between the nexus of green policies and firm performance in Sub Saharan Africa. Key words: green investment, environmental benign technologies, environmental regulations, organizational performance, pulp and paper industry, developing economies, Nigeria

Committee: Philip A. Cola, Ph.D. (Advisor); Kalle Lyytinen, Ph.D. (Advisor) Subjects: Environmental Management

Master of Science (MS), Ohio University, 2019, Geography (Arts and Sciences)

This study presents an application of Geographic Information systems (GIS) to examine the geographic pattern and spatial relationship between oil spills and child diarrhea, investigating whether the prevalence of diarrhea disease among children in the Niger Delta is associated with proximity to an oil spill. Oil spills are common in the Niger Delta and previous research has linked oil spills to human health hazards such as dermatoxic diseases, cancer, neonatal and child mortality. Investigating infant diarrhea is critical to understanding the underlying causes of infant mortality. This study is based on analysis of georeferenced oil spill data from the Nigerian Oil Spill Monitor, and spatial health data from the Nigeria National Demographic and Health Survey (DHS, 2013). The DHS contains a sample survey of 33,385 women of reproductive aged 15-49 years and 15,486 men aged 15-59 years in randomly selected households. The sample for this thesis contains 4,060 children under the age of 5 years in 3,384 households from 206 DHS clusters in the Niger Delta. This study reveals that both oil spills and infant diarrhea express a clustered pattern in the study area. There is also a significant spatial association between oil spills and infant diarrhea in the Niger Delta. Finally, the research concludes that addressing oil spills in the Niger Delta is critical to tackling infant diarrhea and minimizing human exposure to environmental hazards.

Committee: James Lein (Advisor); Risa Whitson (Committee Member); Dorothy Sack (Committee Member) Subjects: Geographic Information Science; Geography

Master of Arts (MA), Wright State University, 2018, International and Comparative Politics

China signed its first turn-key communication satellite contract with Nigeria in 2004. The contract stipulated that China would design, build, integrate, launch, and complete in-orbit checkout for the Nigcomsat-1 communication satellite and then transfer control over to Nigeria. By 2018, China had contracted and launched another six communication satellites for various foreign customers. The customers, who are foreign governments, are geographically dispersed throughout South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. The satellite sales have occurred during China's unprecedented economic growth, a time in which China has been granted additional foreign policy options as its power increases relative to others. This thesis utilizes lateral pressure theory to suggest that China has strategically signed contracts with foreign governments for the sale of communication satellites to further its foreign policy objectives. Examination of China's space history, its foreign policy goals, and key variables shed light on China's intentions and possible future actions.

Committee: Laura Luehrmann Ph.D. (Advisor); Liam Anderson Ph.D. (Committee Member); Alex Elkins M.A. (Committee Member) Subjects: Political Science

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1982, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects: Business Administration

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1981, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects: Education

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1980, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects: Education

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1977, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects: Agriculture

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1976, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects: Political Science