This House has Fallen - Nigeria in Crisis

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  • Author: Karl Maier
  • Publisher: Penguin
  • Catalogue: 103881
  • Size: 13x20cm
As Karl Maier makes clear in the preface to his diligent, urgent study of Africa's largest nation, Nigeria is not a developing country, but an under-developing one. Rich in natural resources, since the British departed in 1960, "the bastard son of imperialism" has gone from being the premier African voice to a dissenting cacophony made up of its various ethnic, geographic and religious groupings. At the start of the new Millennium, Nigeria looks in danger of succumbing to regionalism, the alter ego of globalisation, and could descend into a disastrous turmoil of regional violence unprecedented since the Biafran war. This is the third, and worst, scenario envisaged by Maier, as he concludes what is a richly researched and vigorous survey of the country and its people.

Maier was an African correspondent for Western newspapers for 10 years, and reported from Nigeria from 1991 to 1993. He opens his account with the inauguration of President Olusegun Obasanjo in 1999, following it with swift analyses of historic Nigerian tensions, such as election monitoring, the numerous military coups, the battle of the Ogoni people in the Niger delta against oil producers and their own government, religious tensions between Muslims and non-Muslim communities, Sharia rule and the survival of the Igbo people.