GNOSI: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Human Theory and Praxis

Recursive Hypocrisy: Indigenous Sovereignty and the Unresolved Contradiction of the Westphalian Order from 1648 to Caracas

2026-01-04T17:58:32+00:00

This paper contends that the 2026 capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro by U.S. special forces exposes not merely a contemporary breach of international law, but the unresolved foundational contradiction of the Westphalian states system itself: its constitutive suppression of plural and nested sovereignties. Through the critical lens of Indigenous Studies, the analysis re-frames sovereignty not as a monolithic property of the nation-state, but as a contested and relational field. It argues that the modern international order, born from the 1648 treaties that erased Indigenous political authority from European legal recognition, established a hypocritical logic that continues to reverberate. This logic simultaneously asserts the inviolability of state borders while rendering the inherent sovereignties of Indigenous nations within those borders invisible or contingent. The Venezuelan case serves as a potent exemplar of this recursive hypocrisy. The paper examines how the sovereignty of the Venezuelan state over territories like the Amazon, where nations such as the Yanomami, Pemón, and Warao exercise de facto autonomous governance, is itself a legacy of colonial imposition and remains actively contested. The U.S.-led intervention, while a flagrant violation of Venezuelan state sovereignty, was discursively justified in part by co-opting the narrative of Indigenous vulnerability, framing the action as a protection of these communities from state neglect and environmental predation. This instrumentalization reveals a cynical exploitation of the very colonial contradictions the Westphalian system created. The paper concludes that the organized hypocrisy of international relations is thus not simply a practice between states, but a deeply embedded structure originating in the original displacement of Indigenous political orders. Lasting stability requires moving beyond a system that can only see one sovereign per territory, and instead engaging with the plurinational realities that the system has always denied but never erased.

Performance of VAT Revenue Collection in Tanzania: An ARDL Approach on selected Macro-Economic Variables

2026-01-18T11:57:41+00:00

Value-Added Tax (VAT) is a cornerstone of revenue mobilization in Tanzania, yet its dynamic relationship with core macroeconomic drivers remains empirically underexplored. This study investigates the short- and long-run determinants of VAT revenue performance in Tanzania from 2006/07 to 2021/22. Utilizing an Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach, we analyze the impact of nominal GDP and inflation on VAT collections. While the informal sector size and VAT taxpayer registration were initially considered, diagnostic tests revealed prohibitive multicollinearity, leading to their exclusion from the final model, an instructive finding that highlights critical data and structural challenges for tax policy. The results indicate a significant positive immediate effect of economic growth on VAT revenue. However, the long-run GDP coefficients are negative, suggesting a complex, lagged adjustment mechanism. Contrary to the traditional Tanzi effect, inflation shows a modest but persistent positive influence in the short run. The study concludes that Tanzanian VAT collections are predominantly influenced by current economic activity and exhibit strong internal persistence. We recommend policies focused on sustaining formal economic growth and improving tax base measurement to enhance VAT revenue predictability and performance.

Strategic Ambivalence and Cultural Consciousness: Nigerian Youths, Decoloniality and the Challenge of National Development

2026-02-16T11:35:59+00:00

This study advances the discourse on postcolonial development by investigating the complex interplay between cultural consciousness and strategic ambivalence among Nigerian youths. While existing literature predominantly frames cultural engagement through binary narratives of preservation versus globalization, this research identifies a more nuanced reality where discursive cultural allegiance coexists with practical preferences for globalized alternatives. Through a survey of 450 university students at Obafemi Awolowo University, integrated with decolonial theoretical analysis, we examine four key domains of cultural practice: fashion, cuisine, language, and music. Our findings reveal a consistent pattern of strategic ambivalence, youth recognize and value indigenous heritage while simultaneously privileging globalized forms perceived to offer modernity, convenience, and prestige. The article argues that this unresolved tension represents more than cultural erosion; it constitutes a significant barrier to the culturally-grounded agency required for sustainable national development. We propose that brokering an effective relationship necessitates moving beyond awareness campaigns toward educational and policy interventions that foster critical cultural consciousness, enabling youth to navigate and synthesize global and local elements as innovative architects of Nigeria’s developmental future. This reconceptualization offers a more productive framework for understanding youth agency in postcolonial contexts and contributes to broader debates about culture-driven development.

The Spectre of the Treaty: Normative Gaps, Cartographic Anarchy, and the Perpetuation of the Tanzania-Malawi Lake Nyasa Dispute

2026-03-10T10:34:04+00:00

This article provides a critical historical-legal examination of the protracted territorial dispute between Tanzania and Malawi over sovereignty of Lake Nyasa (Lake Malawi). Drawing extensively on archival sources including colonial treaties, official correspondence, cartographic records, and legislative debates, it argues that the conflict's intractability stems not merely from competing national claims but from fundamental ambiguities embedded within the Anglo-German Heligoland Treaty of 1890, the dispute's foundational legal instrument. The treaty's failure to define key elements, including the demarcation of a dynamic shoreline, sovereignty over islands, and the jurisdictional implications of a “free trade zone,” created a normative vacuum subsequently filled by inconsistent colonial cartographic practices. The manuscript demonstrates how British administrators in Tanganyika and Nyasaland produced contradictory maps and administrative interpretations throughout the colonial period, with the mandate era of the 1930s favouring a median line boundary and the post-1945 period reverting to a shoreline depiction for politically motivated reasons. This cartographic anarchy bequeathed to the post-colonial states a toolkit of conflicting evidence. The analysis reveals how Tanzania legitimately anchors its median line claim in League of Nations mandate maps while Malawi legitimately anchors its shoreline claim in later colonial cartography and the treaty's literal wording, creating a perfect stalemate that the principle of uti possidetis juris cannot resolve. The discovery of hydrocarbon resources in the 2010s has intensified the dispute without altering its fundamental dynamics. The article concludes that lasting resolution requires moving beyond legalistic reinterpretation of flawed colonial documents toward political acknowledgement of the lake as a shared resource, with joint management regimes offering the most promising pathway forward.

Economic Boundaries and the Unintended Architecture of Colonial Governance: Cross Border Trade Networks Between Northern Nigeria and Southern Niger, 1914-1960

2026-03-12T11:53:52+00:00

This article examines the transformation of cross border trade networks between Northern Nigeria and Southern Niger from the establishment of the colonial boundary in 1914 to the independence of both nations in 1960. It advances a counterintuitive argument: that the illicit cross border trade which colonial administrations sought desperately to suppress did not merely persist despite their efforts, but actively shaped the architecture of colonial governance in ways that officials themselves failed to recognize. Drawing on archival sources from Nigeria, Niger, and the United Kingdom, the study analyzes how Hausa, Fulani, and Tuareg trading communities developed sophisticated arbitrage strategies that exploited differentials between British and French colonial systems. These strategies including currency arbitrage, commodity smuggling, and the cultivation of trans boundary social networks did not simply resist colonial control but generated economic flows that colonial states became structurally dependent upon. The article identifies three phases in this co constitutive relationship: disruption and reorganization from 1914 to 1922, the emergence of arbitrage economies that exposed the limits of colonial regulation from 1923 to 1939, and wartime and postwar transformations that revealed colonial dependence on the very trade they condemned from 1940 to 1960. By demonstrating how cross border trade functioned as an unrecognized infrastructure of colonial economies, the study contributes to debates in African economic history, borderlands theory, and the political economy of colonialism, arguing for a reconceptualization of illicit trade not as resistance to colonial power but as a constitutive element of its operation.

Iban Isong: An Efik Indigenous Juridical Tool for Gender Justice in Southeastern Nigeria

2026-04-17T12:16:36+00:00

This paper examines Iban Isong (literally “Women of the Land”), a precolonial Efik indigenous institution from the Cross River region of Southeastern Nigeria, as a dynamic mechanism for redressing gendered violence, economic marginalisation, and social injustice. Drawing on oral interviews conducted with Efik elders and women leaders in Calabar, as well as secondary sources including archival materials and scholarly publications, the study argues that Iban Isong functioned as a parallel juridical assembly that exercised binding moral and social authority over both female and male community members. Unlike male-dominated Ekpe and other secret societies, Iban Isong wielded collective sanctions including public naming, ritual boycott, and the confiscation of household resources to punish wife battery, marital dispossession, and the exclusion of women from land inheritance. The paper challenges colonial and neotraditional narratives that depict precolonial Efik and Ibibio societies as uniformly patriarchal. Instead, it demonstrates how Iban Isong represents a distinctive form of negotiated gender justice that holds critical lessons for contemporary legal pluralism. The findings suggest that revitalising deliberative elements of Iban Isong, while addressing its historical limitations, could inform community-based paralegal interventions in rural Southeastern Nigeria. By recovering this Efik word-concept as a living heritage of indigenous jurisprudence, the paper contributes to global debates on decolonising gender justice, legal pluralism, and the heritage of resistance in Africa.