Earlier this month I happened to have been involved in two unusual Nigerian events. The first was at the very core of London University, in the Chancellor’s Hall of the Senate House, that piece of brutalist architecture that could come straight from Stalin’s Moscow. It was the Emeka Anyaoku Lecture set up in 2001 at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, following a campaign involving eminent personages such as the Duke of Westminster. After having had two resident professors (Richard Crook and James Manor), the format was changed to make it a ‘visiting chair’, so what we heard was the “inaugural lecture” by the second visiting professor, the Nigerian Professor Eghosa Osaghae. He has had a distinguished international academic career beginning in Ibadan, where he was Director of the Centre for Peace and conflict studies, passing through Carter Centre of Emory University, USA the Universities of Transkei and then Cape Town, to Northwestern, USA, before finally settling at the Igbenidion University at Okada, Edo State where he is both Professor of Comparative Politics and Vice-Chancellor.
He is author of many learned articles, and a number of books, the best-known of which is The Crippled Giant: Nigeria Since Independence. Published in 1998, it covers the years 1960-1996, which means that it was written at the height of the Abacha dictatorship, still generally thought to have been the nadir of the country’s post-independence political experience. The book therefore needs to be seen in the context of the evolution of his thinking in the years since the return to civilian rule in 1999. Although some of this may be found in his body of writing in that period, the lecture contains interesting takes on how he presently sees the “crippled giant”.
As befits his interest in comparative politics as well as federalism, the title of his magisterial lecture demonstrates the scope of his thinking: “A State of Our Own; Second Independence, Federalism and the Decolonisation of the State in Africa”. This manages to embody astutely many of the ideas that have dominated broader thinking about Africa among its intellectuals on recent years. Although I may have to wait for the text of his lecture to be sure, I gained the impression that he feels that “second independence” in Nigeria, although not achieved, may have begun with the return to civilian rule in 1999.
His context, however, is African, and his logical thesis is that the State in independent Africa has failed to work because of having inherited colonial boundaries, and that for the most part despite conflict and civil war (rarely secessionist), the boundaries (the “State cast”) have essentially been maintained, engendering a crisis of legitimacy. This has been the impetus for the ”second independence” in the shape of a variety of federal, local or decentralised solutions. It is impossible here to explore the density of his arguments: one can only marvel at the coherence of his theorising, and to cherish the concrete examples he is able to provide. But listening to him is an incentive to return to his written work.
The second event at which I found myself was at the London Book Fair, the last to be held in soon-to-be-demolished Earls Court. The occasion was to publicise Port Harcourt’s year as UNESCO World Book Capital for 2014, which begins with a big launch ceremony of April 23. This was something of a breakthrough for the Rainbow Book Club of Port Harcourt. This has been making waves for the past four years in the forefront of a campaign to “Bring Back the Book”, in an undoubtedly uphill effort to persuade Nigerians into the habit of reading. The club has been the brainchild of Koko Kalango, who according to Jahman Anikulapo (one of Nigeria’s leading “cultural therapists”) was the “chief dreamer” of the project.
Unesco’s Director-General’s message said the project succeeded because it was so well presented, which was Koko’s doing. The Book Fair presentation featured mainly the unlikely double-act of one of Nigeria’s leading icons Wole Soyinka and the Governor of Rivers’ state Rotimi Amaechi, who admitted that it had taken some time for Koko to convinced him that the project was important, but adding that the city was now enthusiastically preparing to “host the world.”
Soyinka himself, praising the “visionary” Koko, supported strongly an initiative “in a society that has virtually given up”, and suggested that the project was even opposed in Abuja because it was in “dissident” country. Wole also referred to Boko Haram, asking how could any one fail to support this response to a movement that says “no books”? I found myself thrust into speaking about the planned Nigerian edition of my own book, which is now to be called Lagos City of the Imagination, to be published later this year by Cassava Republic in Abuja. I should have added that, by April 2015, Port Harcourt should also truly be able to lay claim to being a “city of the imagination.
Kaye Whiteman
