Imperialism and Ethnic Politics in Nigeria, 1960-96

In the more than three decades of political independence, many African states have gone through several violent civil wars generated by ethnic animosities and intolerance. These wars have resulted in a total collapse of the civil society and a fragile social order that is often accompanied by organized pogroms as was recently the case in Rwanda. Today, the political picture of many African nations is characterized by the disintegration of the political structure and a disorganized national economy incapable of providing subsistence for the masses of the people. One explanation for this may be found in the role ethnicity continues to play in the new emerging states, the majority of these artificial state entities were put together and defined by the selfishness of former colonial powers, especially France and Britain. The on going human disasters, including famine, genocide, and massacres of innocent civilians in Rwanda, Burundi and elsewhere in Africa, shows clearly the severity of the ethnic issue in black Africa. There is no other place where this ethnic time bomb is more frightening than Nigeria, which already has gone through a major civil war. This book is an attempt to understand the role ethnicity plays in nation building and its implication for the instability of the neocolonial state in the developing world and Nigeria in particular.