A product of a long durée of history spanning thousands of centuries and plural ethno-cultural formation and relations, Nigeria was birthed as a sovereign state in 1960, but of course not as a nation. The task of building this fragmented entity into a nation, which social scientists have termed Nation Building process, was anchored Understanding Of Modern Nigeria on indigenous anti-colonial leaders who in turn bequeathed this project on postcolonial political actors.
Efforts at creating a nationalist leader out of the political actors from the twilight of Nigeria’s independence failed with the collapse of the federal system envisioned by some section of the political spectrum during this period. This structure was conceived to manage harmony in diversity.
But producing a symphony out of a cacophony is not a leisure enterprise. In this process, many events had evolved and many more still evolving, all shaping the place of the modern Nigerian state in the comity of nations as they christen the narratives that manifest this (peripheral) position at the national level. Undoubtedly, there is no shortage of scholarly, journalistic, and literary materials; including publications, theories, and perspectives, all illuminating several dimensions of the postcolonial challenges of the Nigerian state. Some have even gone to the extent of providing possible solutions to aspects of these hydra-headed gargoyle for consideration and implementation by policy makers. There is no question the extent to which the anti-intellectual culture that drives the leviathan and the huge dichotomy between the town and the gown, feed deep into this.
The Cambridge University Press publication, Understanding Modern Nigeria, by Professor Toyin Falola of the University of Texas at Austin, adds explicit insights into the above discussion. Explicit it is in the framework with which the text was written: Through 6 sections of about 24 chapters the Mwalimu of African history dissects modern Nigerian narrative with a deep sense of history which he has been teaching for over three decades in different locations and to generations of students and scholars of African history. Modernity, ethnicity, federalism, democracy, civil society, social media, public space, youth, gender, women, food, security, institutionalism, unemployment, under-employment, and Human Development Capital related issues, Niger Delta Oil, Boko Haram, and all myriads of themes that shape the everyday life reality in the modern Nigerian state are here given the insight of a scholar with a remarkable global standing with valuable propositions on possible policy consideration and implementation by the state.
As he mentioned in his preface, the project of building the postcolonial Nigerian state is a continuous never-ending one. It is in this light that more texts of this nature bringing nuances to the postcolonial narrative of the state should be expected in the now as well as in the future in which a revised edition of the text could be envisaged.
At the Trenchard Hall, University of Ibadan, scholars, students, policy makers, and interested public will be gathered to launch the official public debut of this publication, Understanding Modern Nigeria, on the 18th of this month, November, by 10 AM. Expectedly, this is an occasion to review the publication and hear from scholars, views about the Nigerian state in a critical junction and the possible ways forward.
