Nigeria: A New History of a Turbulent Century, by Richard Bourne – A review

Nigeria is a place of superlatives. It is Africa’s most populous nation and its top oil producer. The continent’s largest economy also has one of its worst corruption problems. The output of the Nollywood film industry is staggering, as is the number of children who die yearly from malaria and the numbers displaced by Islamist terror group Boko Haram.

The outsize nature of all things Nigerian is in large part a result of the fact that a vast west African landmass defined as “Nigeria” — comprising 250 ethnic groups and hundreds of languages, split between Christianity and Islam, and created by British colonial decree 101 years ago — remains intact.

That in itself is remarkable, writes Richard Bourne, in Nigeria: A New History of a Turbulent Century (Zed Books, £12.99/$18.95). A senior research fellow at the UK’s Institute of Commonwealth Studies, he argues that “an existential question about the unity of this diverse polity has never quite disappeared”, and sets out to tell the nation’s story from its “birth” up to this year’s presidential elections — the first democratic transition of power since independence in 1960. His aim is to find out how “this manufactured state has . . . managed to survive” against the odds.

Many prominent Nigerians, including the great writer Chinua Achebe, have addressed versions of this question eloquently. Bourne nonetheless fills a gap for a one-stop history of the first century. Reading it on recent flights — both within Nigeria and en route to London — as I settled into a new job in the country, I was approached by several fellow travellers asking for a look. Some said they had been hoping to find something like it since last year’s centenary.

The title recommended by friends who had worked in the country when I first visited in 2011 was This House Has Fallen: Nigeria in Crisis, published in 2000, two years after the end of three decades of military rule. American journalist Karl Maier brought Nigeria to life with stories of its extraordinary people: the ruling elite but also the everyday people hustling to survive and in some cases thrive.

Bourne’s account likewise introduces readers to an array of characters who played critical roles in shaping the nation. Pan-Nigerian nationalist youth leaders from the 1940s; traditional Muslim authorities; breakaway generals from the Igbo ethnic group fighting for the secession of the south-eastern state of Biafra; and military rulers masquerading as democrats are just a few of the groups of individuals he describes.

Yet his work largely does not share the engaging anecdotal quality of Maier’s. Though some of the most important actors in modern Nigeria — such as Obafemi Awolowo, leading independence figure and political godfather of the Yoruba-speaking south-west — are traced over decades, there is a lack of texture and detail on him and other fascinating Nigerians who made history at home and overseas.

Meanwhile, Bourne relates a century’s worth of politics at a brisk clip, sparing little time to tease out answers to the question of how Nigeria has remained territorially intact — though it would be impossible for one book to contain leisurely descriptions of such a diverse and divided country — not least given 10 decades of war, coups, social movements and more.
Aside from a poignant and oft-cited quote from Achebe — that “the trouble with Nigeria” is a failure of leadership — readers are left without a conclusive answer to the original question of how the country survives as a whole.

The chronological format makes it easy to refer back to Nigeria’s big evolutions. And those following the country today will recognise similarities between now and Bourne’s description of President Muhammadu Buhari’s approach during his first turn in power as a military ruler in 1984-85. Then, too, the oil-dependent state was reeling from an economic crisis.

Bourne ends on an optimistic note: with this year’s peaceful transition of power, the country avoided fragmentation after one of the most tense periods in its modern history. A change in government, however, is unlikely to yield “magical results”, he writes, what Nigerians showed in that vote was “impressive resilience, with more “confidence in the future of themselves and their state”. It is a good thought to keep in mind as the nation navigates through uncertainties caused by low oil prices, and the new administration faces the monumental task of trying to clear out the rot in politics and government.

 

Maggie Fick

Fick is the FT’s West Africa correspondent.