This House Has Fallen: Nigeria in Crisis Book

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 underdeveloping 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 definingly 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 (explored elsewhere by Ken Wiwa's In the Shadow of a Saint, a memoir of his father, Ken Saro-Wiwa), religious tensions between Muslims and non-Muslim communities, Sharia rule and the survival of the Igbo people.What elevates Maier's book beyond being merely highly competent journalism are his encounters with the Nigerian peoples, whose outrageous guile and passionate beliefs, whether in a religion, a tribe, an ethos or simply themselves, are what makes the country unique and vital. One marvellous episode sees a riot of thieving by police and soldiers as Obasanjo makes his speech, and words are looted as liberally, with the quick wit of the repressed. The future will tell which of Maier's scenarios will prevail--a new democratic order, the status quo of economic haemorrhaging, or an ethnic bloodbath--but "God is a Nigerian", or so the motto runs, and Maier holds out cautious hope that Nigeria will survive to fulfil something of its vast potential, before the tapestry unravels too far. --David VincentRead More