ABSTRACT Drawing on Biafra as the most critical project in Igbo nationalism in Nigeria, this arti... more ABSTRACT Drawing on Biafra as the most critical project in Igbo nationalism in Nigeria, this article examines the interpretations and appropriations of the Nigeria-Biafra War. It focuses on the meaning and significance of the war, and how contemporary neo-Biafran movements have appropriated and transformed the Biafran project into a basis for political action in their bid to resuscitate Igbo ambitions for self-determination. The article expatiates on the deployment of Biafra as a symbolic marker that captures the realization of an authentic Igbo national spirit, the ultimate act of Igbo self-determination and quest for nationhood in the Nigerian state.
Nomos: Revista do Programa de Pós-Graduação em Direito da UFC, Sep 13, 2018
Resumo Este artigo baseia-se nas experiências contrastantes da Nigéria e da África do Sul para ex... more Resumo Este artigo baseia-se nas experiências contrastantes da Nigéria e da África do Sul para expor alguns paralelos interessantes na transição para a democracia na África contemporânea. Sem dúvida, várias questões foram levantadas em relação à democracia representativa e multipartidária na Nigéria e na África do Sul. Isso porque os dois países ostentam suas credenciais democráticas, aspiram à liderança continental e possuem sonhos continentais inspirados em visões diferentes, populares, participativas e inclusivas. No entanto, a Nigéria e a África do Sul são dois dos países mais divididos da África, e o advento de suas respectivas dispensações democráticas indica que a democracia hoje é iniciada de acordo com uma agenda neoliberal e até agora não conseguiu produzir os resultados desejados.
As Africa witnesses a shift from Afro-pessimism to Afro-euphoria, contemporary discourses on the ... more As Africa witnesses a shift from Afro-pessimism to Afro-euphoria, contemporary discourses on the continent have been hinged on the notion of a ‘Rising Africa’. This article explores the often-ignored structural defects upon which the notion is hinged, particularly in resource-rich contexts. The analysis is based on a critique of current narratives of a rising Africa as being far too simplistic and subjective to serve as an enduring basis for capturing the dialectics of change in a resurgent continent. It does this by engaging a multi-level analysis that draws upon the political economy of oil, growing inequalities in resource-rich states, strategic and energy security calculations of global actors, and the complex web of global forces that define the parameters and limits of development on the continent. Given the marginal position of the continent in the global extractive regime, this article posits that a lot will depend on understanding the implications, risks and opportunities embedded in Africa’s current resource boom, with a view to charting a viable and sustainable path in its unpredictable search for development.
Perhaps, more than any other period in Nigeria's post-civil war history, the publication of C... more Perhaps, more than any other period in Nigeria's post-civil war history, the publication of Chinua Achebe's book, There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra in 2012, brought memories of Biafra back to the very heart of Nigerian politics. Achebe's work opens up a landscape of contested memories marked by extant power struggles between official and unofficial forms of memories, national and sectional narratives, and hegemonic and subaltern conceptions of remembering in post-civil war Nigeria. While the Nigerian state still shapes the official history, memories and narratives of the war to suit its own vision, interests and politics, Achebe rejects the official views of the state as the sole and legitimate framework for remembering and interpreting the war and still connects to the war as a war of Igbo national liberation. Underpinning this divide, is the projection of memory as a critical tool, not just to remember or avoid a repeat of a difficult past, but as a control mechanism that defines relationships between âunequalâ groups with obvious implications for relations of power, legitimacy and authority in the Nigerian state.
This research interrogates the capacity of states to foster indigenous development in the contemp... more This research interrogates the capacity of states to foster indigenous development in the contemporary global economy. It does this within the context of contemporary developments in the global oil and gas industry. As the linchpin of the modern capitalist system, oil exploration and production produces enormous challenges to developing countries of the world. These challenges impact on oil and gas exploration and production through the deepening and broadening of international trade, transnational investment, deregulation of domestic markets, and industrial restructuring. By focusing Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
Map 3: Map of Nigeria's Eastern Region in the 1950s showing the secessionist region which broke a... more Map 3: Map of Nigeria's Eastern Region in the 1950s showing the secessionist region which broke away from the main federation in 1967.
Abstract:This article examines the contested narratives engendered by the teaching and writing of... more Abstract:This article examines the contested narratives engendered by the teaching and writing of the Nigeria–Biafra War. Drawing on the domain of education, it interrogates official and hegemonic narratives forged by the Nigerian state to shape the history, memories, and narratives of the war to suit its own vision, interests, and politics, in the light of marginalized ethnic groups that contest these narratives and reject them as the sole legitimate framework for remembering and interpreting the war. The analysis interrogates the extant education–reconciliation nexus, exploring the kind of education that will best serve the needs and processes of conflict resolution, reconciliation, and nation building in Nigeria.
This chapter returns to the relationship between natural resource abundance and the prospects of ... more This chapter returns to the relationship between natural resource abundance and the prospects of state-led development in resource-rich African countries. It re-engages with the debate on the nexus between the political economy of resource extraction and prospects of state-led development and examines the conceptual and analytical challenge of resource-rich states becoming developmental, and the conditions under which this can be achieved. The chapter interrogates the dominant literature on natural resource wealth-development discourses that seeks to draw a determinate linkage between the ‘resource curse’ on the one hand, and resource-rich African states on the other hand, and how this linkage renders democratic and developmental projects impossible, impracticable or problematic in Africa. At the heart of the discourse is the question of whether Africa can produce developmental states or not. The chapter delves into the theoretical and empirical interrogation of natural resource sectors as key components of development in resource-rich African states, the examination of the rather gloomy prognosis on which Africa’s resource curse is premised and the articulation of an alternative view for rethinking the nexus between resources and the state in Africa.
This chapter explores the complex dynamics and tensions besetting federalism since Nigeria’s retu... more This chapter explores the complex dynamics and tensions besetting federalism since Nigeria’s return to democratic rule in 1999 and its implications for national cohesion, unity, and development. It provides a background to the nature of Nigeria’s federalism under military rule and how the opening of democratic space in the post-transition years has unleashed current demands for political restructuring. This is followed by analyzing several factors and the politics driving or obstructing demands for restructuring Nigeria’s federalism from 1999 to date. These include quests for decentralizing power, reforming the country’s fiscal federalism and revenue allocation system, the politics of zoning and power-sharing between geopolitical regions, and the festering citizenship and the national question. Based on the foregoing analysis, the chapter provides deeper insights into the protests against the Nigerian federation’s structural inequities and the clamor for political restructuring by v...
This chapter draws on concepts in political and social analysis to shed light on contemporary man... more This chapter draws on concepts in political and social analysis to shed light on contemporary manifestations of Pentecostal and Charismatic movements in the Nigerian public space. The central argument in the chapter is pursued through an examination of the manner in which the Pentecostal explosion witnessed in the Nigerian public space has played out over time. It has attempted to capture the extenuating circumstances under which Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity made an 'exit' and 'engaged' with the Nigerian public space. The central aim has been to use the urban space as an analytical space to understand the complex twists, turns and manifestations of Pentecostalism in Nigeria. The advent of a Christian president from the south offered opportunities to re-engage with the immediate political context. This has invariably heightened political instability, posed a challenge to national integration, and accentuated the Christian/South versus Muslim/North power struggle that is inherent in national politics. Keywords:Christian; Church; Muslim; national integration; Nigeria; Nigerian public space; Pentecostal; political
South African Journal of International Affairs, 2009
... corruption, and provide support for democratic processes in preparation for the 2011 election... more ... corruption, and provide support for democratic processes in preparation for the 2011 elections', was received as thinly veiled criticisms that have been rejected by some of the political elite in Nigeria, although not by Nigerian President Umaru Yar'Adua ... Chan-Fishel, 2007, p. 143. ...
ABSTRACT This article examines the 'cultural repertoires' of neo-Biafran separati... more ABSTRACT This article examines the 'cultural repertoires' of neo-Biafran separatist Igbo groups in south-eastern Nigeria, pointing to the ways in which cultural repertoires, narratives and emblems are deployed to forge a separatist ethno-political project in a multi-ethnic state. The neo-Biafran movement reveals the robustness of political resistance and the existence of multiple frameworks through which ethno-nationalist groups resist and challenge extant power structures of the state in the quest for self-determination. The article argues that ethnic groups have the capacity to initiate their own 'cultural repertoires' in order to construct group identity, identify forms of external identity (the 'other') and shore up the boundaries of their own collective group identity. Myths of origin, narratives of the past, images and symbols are rooted in certain cultural repertoires, and are elaborated, interpreted, invented and reinvented to produce political identities that are complex and fluid in the struggle for political power.
... This contrasts with the views of Chuks, a younger member of the movement in Lagos who asserts... more ... This contrasts with the views of Chuks, a younger member of the movement in Lagos who asserts that “all we want is Biafra and total independence now” (interview 19 Jan. ... See Henry Duru, “MASSOB: The Intrigues that Stalled the Sit-at-Home Order,” Sunday Champion, 6 Sep. ...
ABSTRACT This article focuses on recent reconstructions of Igbo ‘memory’ by the Movement for the ... more ABSTRACT This article focuses on recent reconstructions of Igbo ‘memory’ by the Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign state of Biafra (MASSOB). MASSOB is a second-generation Igbo separatist movement that draws on a collection of ‘memory repertoires’ to agitate for the self-determination and exit of the Igbo ethnic group from the Nigerian state into an alternative political and administrative arrangement known as the Republic of Biafra. The core issues relate to dual narratives generated by the Nigerian–Biafran War. While the state shapes the official history, memories and narratives of the war to suit its own vision, interests and politics, MASSOB contests these official views as the sole legitimate framework for remembering and interpreting the war, but still connects to the war as a war of Igbo national liberation. These contestations provide the context for the enactment of memory claims and counterclaims, and their association with political violence in contemporary Nigeria.
Page 1. 07-11/12/2008 Yaoundé, Cameroun CODESRIA 12th General Assembly Governing the African Publ... more Page 1. 07-11/12/2008 Yaoundé, Cameroun CODESRIA 12th General Assembly Governing the African Public Sphere 12e Assemblée générale Administrer l'espace public africain 12a Assembleia Geral Governar o Espaço Público Africano ...
ABSTRACT Drawing on Biafra as the most critical project in Igbo nationalism in Nigeria, this arti... more ABSTRACT Drawing on Biafra as the most critical project in Igbo nationalism in Nigeria, this article examines the interpretations and appropriations of the Nigeria-Biafra War. It focuses on the meaning and significance of the war, and how contemporary neo-Biafran movements have appropriated and transformed the Biafran project into a basis for political action in their bid to resuscitate Igbo ambitions for self-determination. The article expatiates on the deployment of Biafra as a symbolic marker that captures the realization of an authentic Igbo national spirit, the ultimate act of Igbo self-determination and quest for nationhood in the Nigerian state.
Nomos: Revista do Programa de Pós-Graduação em Direito da UFC, Sep 13, 2018
Resumo Este artigo baseia-se nas experiências contrastantes da Nigéria e da África do Sul para ex... more Resumo Este artigo baseia-se nas experiências contrastantes da Nigéria e da África do Sul para expor alguns paralelos interessantes na transição para a democracia na África contemporânea. Sem dúvida, várias questões foram levantadas em relação à democracia representativa e multipartidária na Nigéria e na África do Sul. Isso porque os dois países ostentam suas credenciais democráticas, aspiram à liderança continental e possuem sonhos continentais inspirados em visões diferentes, populares, participativas e inclusivas. No entanto, a Nigéria e a África do Sul são dois dos países mais divididos da África, e o advento de suas respectivas dispensações democráticas indica que a democracia hoje é iniciada de acordo com uma agenda neoliberal e até agora não conseguiu produzir os resultados desejados.
As Africa witnesses a shift from Afro-pessimism to Afro-euphoria, contemporary discourses on the ... more As Africa witnesses a shift from Afro-pessimism to Afro-euphoria, contemporary discourses on the continent have been hinged on the notion of a ‘Rising Africa’. This article explores the often-ignored structural defects upon which the notion is hinged, particularly in resource-rich contexts. The analysis is based on a critique of current narratives of a rising Africa as being far too simplistic and subjective to serve as an enduring basis for capturing the dialectics of change in a resurgent continent. It does this by engaging a multi-level analysis that draws upon the political economy of oil, growing inequalities in resource-rich states, strategic and energy security calculations of global actors, and the complex web of global forces that define the parameters and limits of development on the continent. Given the marginal position of the continent in the global extractive regime, this article posits that a lot will depend on understanding the implications, risks and opportunities embedded in Africa’s current resource boom, with a view to charting a viable and sustainable path in its unpredictable search for development.
Perhaps, more than any other period in Nigeria's post-civil war history, the publication of C... more Perhaps, more than any other period in Nigeria's post-civil war history, the publication of Chinua Achebe's book, There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra in 2012, brought memories of Biafra back to the very heart of Nigerian politics. Achebe's work opens up a landscape of contested memories marked by extant power struggles between official and unofficial forms of memories, national and sectional narratives, and hegemonic and subaltern conceptions of remembering in post-civil war Nigeria. While the Nigerian state still shapes the official history, memories and narratives of the war to suit its own vision, interests and politics, Achebe rejects the official views of the state as the sole and legitimate framework for remembering and interpreting the war and still connects to the war as a war of Igbo national liberation. Underpinning this divide, is the projection of memory as a critical tool, not just to remember or avoid a repeat of a difficult past, but as a control mechanism that defines relationships between âunequalâ groups with obvious implications for relations of power, legitimacy and authority in the Nigerian state.
This research interrogates the capacity of states to foster indigenous development in the contemp... more This research interrogates the capacity of states to foster indigenous development in the contemporary global economy. It does this within the context of contemporary developments in the global oil and gas industry. As the linchpin of the modern capitalist system, oil exploration and production produces enormous challenges to developing countries of the world. These challenges impact on oil and gas exploration and production through the deepening and broadening of international trade, transnational investment, deregulation of domestic markets, and industrial restructuring. By focusing Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
Map 3: Map of Nigeria's Eastern Region in the 1950s showing the secessionist region which broke a... more Map 3: Map of Nigeria's Eastern Region in the 1950s showing the secessionist region which broke away from the main federation in 1967.
Abstract:This article examines the contested narratives engendered by the teaching and writing of... more Abstract:This article examines the contested narratives engendered by the teaching and writing of the Nigeria–Biafra War. Drawing on the domain of education, it interrogates official and hegemonic narratives forged by the Nigerian state to shape the history, memories, and narratives of the war to suit its own vision, interests, and politics, in the light of marginalized ethnic groups that contest these narratives and reject them as the sole legitimate framework for remembering and interpreting the war. The analysis interrogates the extant education–reconciliation nexus, exploring the kind of education that will best serve the needs and processes of conflict resolution, reconciliation, and nation building in Nigeria.
This chapter returns to the relationship between natural resource abundance and the prospects of ... more This chapter returns to the relationship between natural resource abundance and the prospects of state-led development in resource-rich African countries. It re-engages with the debate on the nexus between the political economy of resource extraction and prospects of state-led development and examines the conceptual and analytical challenge of resource-rich states becoming developmental, and the conditions under which this can be achieved. The chapter interrogates the dominant literature on natural resource wealth-development discourses that seeks to draw a determinate linkage between the ‘resource curse’ on the one hand, and resource-rich African states on the other hand, and how this linkage renders democratic and developmental projects impossible, impracticable or problematic in Africa. At the heart of the discourse is the question of whether Africa can produce developmental states or not. The chapter delves into the theoretical and empirical interrogation of natural resource sectors as key components of development in resource-rich African states, the examination of the rather gloomy prognosis on which Africa’s resource curse is premised and the articulation of an alternative view for rethinking the nexus between resources and the state in Africa.
This chapter explores the complex dynamics and tensions besetting federalism since Nigeria’s retu... more This chapter explores the complex dynamics and tensions besetting federalism since Nigeria’s return to democratic rule in 1999 and its implications for national cohesion, unity, and development. It provides a background to the nature of Nigeria’s federalism under military rule and how the opening of democratic space in the post-transition years has unleashed current demands for political restructuring. This is followed by analyzing several factors and the politics driving or obstructing demands for restructuring Nigeria’s federalism from 1999 to date. These include quests for decentralizing power, reforming the country’s fiscal federalism and revenue allocation system, the politics of zoning and power-sharing between geopolitical regions, and the festering citizenship and the national question. Based on the foregoing analysis, the chapter provides deeper insights into the protests against the Nigerian federation’s structural inequities and the clamor for political restructuring by v...
This chapter draws on concepts in political and social analysis to shed light on contemporary man... more This chapter draws on concepts in political and social analysis to shed light on contemporary manifestations of Pentecostal and Charismatic movements in the Nigerian public space. The central argument in the chapter is pursued through an examination of the manner in which the Pentecostal explosion witnessed in the Nigerian public space has played out over time. It has attempted to capture the extenuating circumstances under which Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity made an 'exit' and 'engaged' with the Nigerian public space. The central aim has been to use the urban space as an analytical space to understand the complex twists, turns and manifestations of Pentecostalism in Nigeria. The advent of a Christian president from the south offered opportunities to re-engage with the immediate political context. This has invariably heightened political instability, posed a challenge to national integration, and accentuated the Christian/South versus Muslim/North power struggle that is inherent in national politics. Keywords:Christian; Church; Muslim; national integration; Nigeria; Nigerian public space; Pentecostal; political
South African Journal of International Affairs, 2009
... corruption, and provide support for democratic processes in preparation for the 2011 election... more ... corruption, and provide support for democratic processes in preparation for the 2011 elections', was received as thinly veiled criticisms that have been rejected by some of the political elite in Nigeria, although not by Nigerian President Umaru Yar'Adua ... Chan-Fishel, 2007, p. 143. ...
ABSTRACT This article examines the 'cultural repertoires' of neo-Biafran separati... more ABSTRACT This article examines the 'cultural repertoires' of neo-Biafran separatist Igbo groups in south-eastern Nigeria, pointing to the ways in which cultural repertoires, narratives and emblems are deployed to forge a separatist ethno-political project in a multi-ethnic state. The neo-Biafran movement reveals the robustness of political resistance and the existence of multiple frameworks through which ethno-nationalist groups resist and challenge extant power structures of the state in the quest for self-determination. The article argues that ethnic groups have the capacity to initiate their own 'cultural repertoires' in order to construct group identity, identify forms of external identity (the 'other') and shore up the boundaries of their own collective group identity. Myths of origin, narratives of the past, images and symbols are rooted in certain cultural repertoires, and are elaborated, interpreted, invented and reinvented to produce political identities that are complex and fluid in the struggle for political power.
... This contrasts with the views of Chuks, a younger member of the movement in Lagos who asserts... more ... This contrasts with the views of Chuks, a younger member of the movement in Lagos who asserts that “all we want is Biafra and total independence now” (interview 19 Jan. ... See Henry Duru, “MASSOB: The Intrigues that Stalled the Sit-at-Home Order,” Sunday Champion, 6 Sep. ...
ABSTRACT This article focuses on recent reconstructions of Igbo ‘memory’ by the Movement for the ... more ABSTRACT This article focuses on recent reconstructions of Igbo ‘memory’ by the Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign state of Biafra (MASSOB). MASSOB is a second-generation Igbo separatist movement that draws on a collection of ‘memory repertoires’ to agitate for the self-determination and exit of the Igbo ethnic group from the Nigerian state into an alternative political and administrative arrangement known as the Republic of Biafra. The core issues relate to dual narratives generated by the Nigerian–Biafran War. While the state shapes the official history, memories and narratives of the war to suit its own vision, interests and politics, MASSOB contests these official views as the sole legitimate framework for remembering and interpreting the war, but still connects to the war as a war of Igbo national liberation. These contestations provide the context for the enactment of memory claims and counterclaims, and their association with political violence in contemporary Nigeria.
Page 1. 07-11/12/2008 Yaoundé, Cameroun CODESRIA 12th General Assembly Governing the African Publ... more Page 1. 07-11/12/2008 Yaoundé, Cameroun CODESRIA 12th General Assembly Governing the African Public Sphere 12e Assemblée générale Administrer l'espace public africain 12a Assembleia Geral Governar o Espaço Público Africano ...
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