Ordering life and law in a besieged African secessionist state

Abstract

Samuel Fury Childs Daly’s A History of the Republic of Biafra: Law, Crime, and the Nigerian Civil War focuses on the remarkable legal inner workings of the postcolonial African secessionist state of Biafra (1967-70). Drawing from extensive and original archival research, ranging from official archives to previously abandoned local court backrooms, interviews, and private collections, Daly considers the complex and troubled phenomenon of criminality during and after the Nigerian Civil War by tracing how Biafran law itself morphed and expanded under war conditions to incorporate the extraordinary. Law was not practiced as simply an enforcement of abstract rules but rather a mediating force amongst desperate citizens during brutal times; Biafran judges, lawyers, soldiers, and civilians remained consistently committed to the legal system and state-building despite dire and violent war conditions. Daly traces the production of criminality as a legal category, social problem, and public anxiety through the Nigerian Civil War and its aftermath, ultimately situating Nigeria’s contemporary international reputation for fraud and violent crime in the context of being a postwar society.