May it Please Your Honor : Letters of Petition as Historical Evidence in an African Colonial Context

This paper presents some preliminary conclusions drawn from an ongoing project which aims to collect and collate letters of petitions in colonial Nigeria as primary source for historians and other scholars. The goal is to show the potential use of petitions as a foundation for gauging African reactions and responses to colonialism focusing on the petitions that emerged during the Second World War in colonial Eastern Nigeria. The paper is based on the collection of petitions located at the National Archives of Nigeria at Enugu written by people living in the rural and urban areas in colonial Eastern Nigeria during the Second World War. Mainly addressed to District Officers in Colonial Eastern Nigeria from within the region, they reflect the concerns of individuals and groups as they relate to the crisis engendered by the Second World War and the policies and controls imposed by officials to bolster the British war effort

The Nigeria-Biafra War, Oil and the Political Economy of State Induced Development Strategy in Eastern Nigeria, 1967-1995

In recent years, the low agricultural productivity, food insecurity and environmental degradation have become more apparent in many African societies. These trends have threatened the farmers\u27 ability to increase productivity and to practice sustainable agriculture. The crisis in agricultural productivity is structural as it is demonstrated by the impact of the Nigeria-Biafra War and the emergence of the petroleum industry in the 1970s. This paper reveals that the agricultural crisis in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa has been misunderstood because the analysis often ignores how the ideology of state development interacted with local ecological conditions and peasants\u27 actions to structure the changes in peasant economies. In the case of Eastern Nigeria, the Nigeria-Biafra War (1967–1970) and the emergence of the petroleum industry as the most important contributor to national GDP challenged the economic ideology that sought to use agriculture as a driver of economic development

Agriculture, Environment, and Sustainable Development in Nigeria

Agriculture is the most critical economic activity in every society. It has historically remained the source of food that sustains the population and a source of wealth accumulation. This chapter looks at the intersection of environment, agriculture, and sustainable development. Whether it be crop production or animal husbandry, suitable agricultural production is dependent on a suitable and sustainable environment. This article looks at the link between the environment, agricultural productivity, and sustainable development. It also examines the link between contemporary agricultural crisis and environmental crisis and how both issues have posed a challenge to continued and future suitable, sustainable development

Biafra and the Discourse on the Igbo Genocide

There has been a reluctance or indifference to a systematic study and documentation of the Igbo Genocide in Nigeria. In the main, the reason has been due to official and non-official attempts to subvert a focus on an event in which more than one million Igbo were slaughtered through a process that was fomented, orchestrated, executed, and supervised by the Nigerian state