Power, Knowledge, and Social Exclusion: A Foucauldian Analysis of Disability Discourse in Nigerian Public Policy

Disability policy in Nigeria produces and reproduces particular forms of knowledge about disabled persons that simultaneously legitimise and naturalise their social exclusion, yet Foucauldian discourse analysis has not been systematically applied to the Nigerian disability policy context to reveal these power-knowledge dynamics. This doctoral study applies a Foucauldian genealogical methodology to conduct an original critical analysis of disability discourse in Nigerian public policy spanning the pre-independence period to 2024. The research combines genealogical document analysis of policy texts, parliamentary records, professional guides, and media representations of disability, with fifty-four interviews conducted with disabled persons, policymakers, medical professionals, and advocacy organisations across Abuja, Lagos, and Kaduna, alongside critical discourse analysis using NVivo. The doctoral study makes four original analytical contributions. First, it traces how colonial medical governance constructed disability as individual pathology, establishing the foundational episteme that continues to organise Nigerian disability policy. Second, it demonstrates how the post-independence welfare discourse repositioned disability as charitable burden rather than rights claim, producing a governmental logic that provides for rather than empowers disabled persons. Third, it reveals how the DAPA 2018 discursively advanced rights language while institutionally reproducing medical model assumptions in implementation frameworks. Fourth, it documents emerging counter-discourses produced through disabled persons' organisations that constitute a Foucauldian resistant subjectivity. The doctoral contribution advances Nigerian disability sociology and critical policy analysis through sustained application of Foucauldian theoretical tools to an empirically underexplored domain of post-colonial governance. Keywords: disability discourse, Foucault, power-knowledge, Nigerian policy, social exclusion.