Overview
I am a PhD candidate in Comparative Politics in the Department of Government at Cornell University, with minor fields in International Relations and Methods. My research examines how citizens understand and engage with political authority under conditions of contested democracy and fractured statehood, with a regional focus on West Africa and the Sahel. I earned my B.Sc. in Political Science at the University of Benin, Nigeria, graduating summa cum laude as the department’s Best Graduating Student and receiving a dissertation distinction. I hold graduate fellowships with Cornell’s Center on Global Democracy and the Institute for African Development. My work has received support from the American Political Science Association, the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, the Cornell Center for the Social Sciences, and the Cornell Society for the Humanities Dissertation Writing Groups.
Research Focus
My dissertation examines how citizens in coup-affected states in West Africa and the Sahel understand political authority when insecurity, unfulfilled democratic promises, and competing claims to sovereignty unsettle established institutions. At its center is a question about representation and the search for responsive government. What do citizens seek from political leaders, and how do they judge those who claim to act on their behalf? Rather than treating support for military leaders as self-evident evidence of a preference for military rule, I investigate the political aspirations and judgments that such support can express. I approach coups as moments that expose and reshape deeper struggles over the relationship between citizens and the state. This citizen-centered perspective connects comparative democratization, political behavior, and political legitimacy, asking how people evaluate competing political possibilities when neither constitutional continuity nor institutional rupture guarantees meaningful change. Methodologically, I combine quantitative survey analysis with qualitative discourse analysis to connect patterns in public opinion with the situated meanings citizens attach to leaders, institutions, and political change.