Publisher's Synopsis
The country today known as "Nigeria" has a problem of identity in its (i) very existence, and (ii) worldview. There is no question that "Nigeria" exists as both a legal entity and a physical entity. It has defined geographical boundaries (although it occasionally gets into disputes regarding these boundaries). The country is recognised as a territorial-State by the United Nations and therefore has legal globally acknowledged Sovereign status. The problem of "Nigeria" therefore - it is a 'problem of' rather than a 'problem with' - is as simple as to ask if "Nigeria" the legal entity is a geo-social reality within its geographical expanse that is undisputed. So, the "Nigerian" problem is two-fold; the geographical expanse and the name "Nigeria" itself. Both the geographical expanse and the name are an inheritance from the British colonial master. Thus, the geographical expanse of "Nigeria" was founded on the preferences of the master, and not on the reasoning of the human populations constituting the country. The late Beko Ransome-Kuti, the late Chukwuemeka Odumegu Ojukwu, and General Abubakar A. Atofarati have commented on the incongruity of the peoples of "Nigeria" within the geography of "Nigeria." In its geographical expanse lays the question of "Nigeria" as a geo-social reality. "Nigeria" is today continued in name, and by this fact we are introduced to the "Nigerian" ingestion of the Western worldview. If the Westerner designed "Nigeria" the way it had then the Westerner had superior reason to do so. If the Westerner gave a certain geographic construction the name "Nigeria" then the Westerner had superior justification for choosing the name, never mind that the name was invented. The 'West as the Superior' is so ingrained in the "Nigerian" psyche - as in the African psyche in general - that this attitude comes alive even in every day use of language; borrowed and indigenous. We have an illumination here in the 'Nigeria" movie industry being called "kanowood" or "kannywood" or "nollywood." This swallowing and regurgitation of the Western worldview are what wa Thiong'o would recognise as his "cultural bomb" of imperialism. I call this "cultural bomb" the acculturation of the colonised. The colonizing world view is luminous (i) in "Nigeria" grapple, since independence, with sustaining the inherited status quo whose raison d'etre has expired and (ii) with "Nigeria," albeit a geographical as well as a legal entity, not being a locus of reference in any measure for its variegated geographic populations because of its rigidity in sustaining the inherited status quo.
