No longer at ease: intellectuals and the crisis of nation-statism in Nigeria in the 1990s

Abstract

This paper is hinged upon a critical examination of the history of intellectuals and nation-statism in Nigeria since independence in 1960. Its point of departure is the analysis of the role of intellectuals in interrogating the post-independence integrative nation-state project in Nigeria that became immersed in crisis in the 1990's. This crisis was characterized by the re-emergence of ethnic-nationalism, ethnic militia, the legitimacy crisis of the federal government, calls for a sovereign national conference, and struggles for self-determination and local autonomy by the ethnic groups, particularly those of the Niger Delta. What factors led to the intellectualization of ethnic nationalism as a critique of the hegemonic nation-state project? How could intellectualism that was instrumental to Nigerian nationalism at independence now become instrumental to the raising of the spectre of national disintegration three decades later? This study also explores the historiography of the nexus between organic intellectuals, identity movements and politics in Nigeria, and how this has fed into the re-definition of the nationalist struggles in Nigeria in the 1990’s. In the final analysis, the implications of the tensions between intellectualized “micro-nationalism” in Nigeria and the imperatives of national unity and Pan-Africanism in an era globalization come under critical review.