Nigeria Without Nigerians? ― Boko Haram and the Crisis in Nigeria's Nation-building

If "nation" refers to "a community or communities of people who share a common territory and government and feel that they are one or ought to be one," as Adibe (political science, Nasarawa State U., Nigeria) suggests, then they should be understood as "imagined communities" that are socially constructed. In Nigeria, he argues, this social construction of the nation has in many ways failed, in large part due to the conscious efforts at nation-building that have resulted in increased balkanization from efforts to counter fears of majority tyranny. As the "de-Nigerianisation" process continues, he contends, people negotiate meaning for their existence in identities that are hostile to the state as the cause of their alienation from the national project. Boko Haram, seen by many in the West as simply another jihadi group hardly to be distinguished from al Qaeda or other violent Islamist organization, he argues, should be understood as a product of this quest for identity in the wake of the failure of the national project. Annotation c2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)