Richard Bourne has provided an excellent overview of the main political events of Nigeria’s first hundred years, but no deeper analysis of the reasons for which Nigeria has stayed together, according to LSE’s Bronwen Manby

Manby, Bronwen

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20.1.2017Book Review – Nigeria: A New History of a Turbulent Centuryby Richard Bourneblogs.lse.ac.uk/africaatlse/2017/01/20/book-review-nigeria-a-new-history-of-a-turbulent-century-by-richard-bourne/Richard Bourne has provided an excellent overview of the main political events of Nigeria’s first hundred years,but no deeper analysis of the reasons for which Nigeria has stayed together, according to LSE’s Bronwen Manby.Nigeria has long lacked an accessible and comprehensive one-volume history for the general reader. RichardBourne, a British author and former journalist with a long history of Nigeria-watching, seeks to fill the gap withthis swift round-up of the first century of Africa’s most populous country. Anyone without previous knowledge ofNigeria’s history would do well to start with his book, Nigeria: A New History of a Turbulent Century  for anintroduction to the complexities of its politics and to the characters that have shaped the development of thestate. Those who already know the history will find new details to savour.First created as a unit in 1914 by British colonial fiat, theconundrum of Nigeria has remained whether, and on what terms, itsdisparate parts should remain together. It is easy, and notinaccurate, to misread the subtitle of the book as relating to aturbulent country. Bourne provides a succinct chronological accountof developments over the first ten decades, in four sections of 25years each, covering the period of colonial rule, the transition toindependence and the early hopes of the new government, thedescent into civil war and succeeding episodes of military rule, andfinally what seems to be the increasing stabilisation of democracyafter the last general ceded power in 1999.The author dispenses with any more than a few pages of pre-colonial background, necessary to establish the reasons why theBritish were in possession of the territory in the first place, andstarts the real narrative from the moment Lord Frederick Lugardannounced the creation of Nigeria from an amalgamation of whathad been three separate units under British control—thelongstanding Colony of Lagos and the Protectorates of Northernand Southern Nigeria awarded to Britain at the famous Berlinconference of 1884-85.The account of the colonial period sets the tone of the history tocome, concentrating on politics at the centre, on the machinationsof colonial officials, and subsequently of politicians, generals and other leaders with name-recognition, trying toestablish control of the apparatus of government. There are excursions into the role of Nigeria in Africa and thewider world (informed by Bourne’s insights as former Deputy Director of the Commonwealth Institute andfounding director of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative), and some notes on economic and socialaffairs, but for the most part, this is history as the work of Great Men (barely a woman gets a name check if not awife).The final chapter—apart from an afterword added in April 2015 following the election of Nigeria’s current head ofstate, President Muhammadu Buhari—consists of a set of thematic reflections on politics as business, the role ofethnicity and religion in Nigerian politics, “oil, inequity and poverty”, and the continuing threats to national unity.1/2When setting out on a history of this type, there is inevitably a choice to be made about the overall approachand, equally inevitably, a lot of potential material must be discarded. For this reader, however, the decision toconcentrate on a rapid-fire description of the succession of events in central politics means that the opportunityto consider the underlying currents in Nigerian history has been missed. The last chapter is a tantalisingsummary of some of these larger themes, but falls short of providing such an analysis. Some of the detail in theaccounts of political developments could have been sacrificed to provide space for chapters on the nature of thepre-colonial governments in the territory of what is now Nigeria, and the continuing influence of these institutionstoday; on the central role of the political economy of oil on the development of the state; an inevitably relateddiscussion of corruption and the role of money in politics; a much deeper look at the impact of religion (especiallyChristianity and Islam), and the ways in which both religion and ethnicity have been mobilised and refashionedover the ten decades of the country’s existence; an analysis of regionalism, rebellion, and the attempts to usevaried constitutional arrangements to manage these divisive tendencies; and finally a collection of the variousasides on foreign policy into a discussion of Nigeria’s continuing importance for the African continent today.In short, Richard Bourne has provided an excellent overview of the main political events of Nigeria’s first hundredyears. What is missing, however, is a deeper analysis of the reasons for which Nigeria has stayed together andthe different actors, institutions and trends that continue to stoke the centrifugal and centripetal forces that havekept the country in unstable equilibrium.Nigeria: A New History of a Turbulent Century by Richard Bourne . Richard Bourne. Zed Books. 2015Bronwen Manby (@BronwenManby)  is a Visiting Senior Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Human Rightsat LSE. The views expressed in this post are those of the author and in no way reflect those of the Africa at LSEblog or the London School of Economics and Political Science.2/2

Book review: Nigeria: a new history of a turbulent centuryby Richard Bourne

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