Product Description

On November 10, 1995, the Nigerian military government under General Sani Abacha executed dissident writer Ken Saro-Wiwa along with eight other activists, and the international community reacted with outrage. The response was quick, decisive, and nearly unanimous: Nigeria is an outcast in the global village. The events that led up to Saro-Wiwa's execution mark Nigeria's decline from a post-colonial success story to its current military dictatorship, and few writers have been more outspoken in decrying and lamenting this decline than Nobel Prize laureate and Nigerian exile Wole Soyinka. In this volume Soyinka, whose own Nigerian passport was confiscated in 1994, explores the history and future of Nigeria. He explains the shifting dramatis personae of Nigerian history and politics , arguing that "a glance at the mildewed tapestry of the stubbornly unfinished nation edifice" is necessary to explain where Nigeria can go next. In the process of elucidating the Nigerian crisis, Soyinka opens readers to the broader questions of nationhood, identity, and the general state of African culture and politics at the end of the 20th century. He examines the different ways in which a nation can be defined, and asks how these varying definitions impact the people who live under them. Soyinka concludes with a resounding call for international attention to this question: the global community must address the issue of nationhood to prevent further religious mandates and calls for ethnic purity of the sort that have turned Algeria, Rwanda, Bosnia, and Sri Lanka into killing fields.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #374495 in Books
• Published on: 1997-11-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 176 pages

Review
Nobelist Soyinka (Art, Dialogue, and Outrage, 1994; Ake, 1982; etc.) takes on the despotic regime of his native Nigeria in this series of scathing jeremiads. From its first days of nationhood, Nigeria has been plagued by an almost endless succession of violence, spectacular corruption (over $12 billion in oil revenues from the Gulf War just disappeared), and ethnic rivalries. The latest round of troubles began in June 1993, when national elections were voided by a repressive military coup. Soyinka himself went into exile, where he has served as a strong and constant protesting voice (even if, as he admits, he failed to vote in the elections). But the world took little note until the recent trumped up trial and hasty execution of writer Ken Saro-Wiwa along with eight other activists. But despite forceful protests and threats by other countries, the tacit fact is that Africa has been left to the Africans. Any solutions will have to be homegrown. So as Soyinka traces the roots of what went wrong in 1993, he also meditates on the meaning of nationalism and nationhood. This is a vital issue for a country as divided as Nigeria, its arbitrary borders enclosing innumerable tribes as well as three major religions. Soyinka's vague, half-hearted solution is what he calls an ethical "remapping." This is to be accomplished by a series of regional conferences in troubled parts of the globe like Nigeria. As Soyinka notes: "The history of many nations is so flawed that it screams constantly for redress." But as Canada has shown, even reasoned, ethical attempts at redress have proven difficult, although at least not fratricidal. Unfortunately, Soyinka's righteous, angry words are unevenly delivered. Often awkward, even strained, his prose has a rushed journalistic feel to it, certainly a far cry from the polish he displays as a playwright and memoirist. (Kirkus Reviews)

Financial Times
"a bold and stimulating book ... required reading for anyone who wishes to examine critically the present turmoil in Africa."

Moffat Ekoriko, The Observer
"a great work by a great writer on the grave travails of a potentially great nation"