There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra

1. Chinua Achebe Foundation interview: Gowon in conversation with Pini Jason, 2005.

Part 4

Nigeria’s Painful Transitions: A Reappraisal

1. Robert I. Rotberg, Nigeria, Elections and Continuing Challenges (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 2007).

West Africa, iss. 4321, iss. 4328–31 (London: West Africa Publishing, 2002) reports:

The Nigerian elections are shaping up as a possible contest of ex-military leaders seeking to recycle their personal relevance, and they all appear to have substantial followings among the civilian political elite.

The News, vol. 28 (Lagos: Independent Communications Network, Ltd., 2007): noted:

Nigerian politics is becoming more disappointing by the day. Instead effacing issues and ideology, our leaders are busy fighting among themselves to be in power just to satisfy their bloated ego and retain their loot.

2. Osita G. Afoaku, “The Politics of Democratic Transition in Congo (Zaire): Implications of the Kabila ‘Revolution,’” Journal of Conflict Studies XIX, no. 2 (Fall 1999), published by the Gregg Center for the Study of War and Society, University of New Brunswick; Smith, Genocide and the Europeans, p. 71; interviews and discussions with several African and French historians and intellectuals; Pfister, Apatheid South Africa, pp. 52–53.

3. In a House of Commons speech made on November 11, 1947; cited at http://wais.stanford.edu/Democracy/democracy_DemocracyAndChurchill%28090503%29.html.

4. The data on the scale of corruption in Nigeria is for the forty years since independence, 1960–2000. Daniel Jordan Smith, A Culture of Corruption: Everyday Deception and Popular Discontent in Nigeria (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), p. 131; Chinua Achebe, “Open Letter to President Olusegun Obasanjo Rejecting the Commander of the Order of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (CFR),” October 15, 2004; Virginia Baily and Hoskins, Veronica, eds., Africa Research Bulletin: Political, Social, and Cultural Series 42 (2005–2006); Felix Ukah, Anambra Political Crises: Eye-Witness Account (Anambra, Nigeria: Computer-Edge Publishers, 2005).

5. Elie Wiesel, The Kingdom of Memory: Reminiscences (New York: Random House Digital, 2011).

State Failure and the Rise of Terrorism

1. “The Failed States Index, 2011,” Foreign Policy (July/August 2011); http://www.foreignpolicy.com/failedstates.

2. Quotation of Professor Robert Rotberg in James J. F. Forest, Countering Terrorism and Insurgency in the 21st Century: International Perspectives. Combating the Sources and Facilitators, Vol. 2 (Westport, CT: Praeger Security International, 2007), p. 97.

3. Ibid.

4. R. Borum, “Understanding the Terrorist Mind-set,” FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin (July 2003), pp. 1–10, and as discussed in Michael A. Bozarth’s PowerPoint presentation, “Genesis of Terrorism: An Exploration of the Causes of Terrorism and of the Conditions That Produce Them,” Department of Psychology, University of Buffalo. Copyright 2006

5. A Hausa term that is loosely translated into English as “Western education is a sin.”

6. Farouk Chothia, “Who Are Nigeria’s Boko Haram Islamists?” BBC Africa Service, January 11, 2012; http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13809501.

AFTER A WAR

1. Chinua Achebe, Collected Poems (New York: Anchor Books, 2004).

Postscript: The Example of Nelson Mandela

1. Equatorial Guinea is Africa’s third-largest oil producer, after Nigeria and Angola. It has the highest per capita income on the African continent and is ranked twenty-eighth in the world. According to the Organization for Economic Development (OECD): “[A] household survey for poverty evaluation (EEH) carried out by Equatorial Guinea in 2006 [found that] 76.8 percent of the population is poor, which translates into a head-of-household poverty ratio of 66.4 percent. This is a very poor ratio for a country where average income per capita was greater than USD 20 000.” The scale of corruption in that country is staggering. This story should be particularly enlightening: Angelique Chrisafis, “France Probes Africa’s Big Spenders,” Mail and Guardian, February 10, 2012, http://mg.co.za/article/2012-02-10-france-probes-africas-big-spenders/.

See also: BBC News, “President’s son buys $35m US home,” November 8, 2006, http://news.bbc.co.Uk/2/hi/africa/6129992.stm; “A Murderous Dictator, His Rapper Son and a $700m-a-Year Oil Boom,” The Independent, March 16, 2004, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/a-murderous-dictator-his-rapper-son-and-a-700mayear-oil-boom-6172555.html.

Appendix: Brigadier Banjo’s Broadcast to Mid-West

1. www.dawodu.com/banjo.htm.

INDEX

The page numbers in this index refer to the printed version of this book. To find the corresponding locations in the text of this digital version, please use the “search” function on your e-reader. Note that not all terms may be searchable.

Abimbola, Wande, 27

Abrahams, Peter, 53