1 - Narrating Postcolonial Nigeria

Summary

“Narrating Postcolonial Nigeria” sets the pace for Understanding Modern Nigeria by providing backgrounds to the both the existing and emerging narratives of Nigeria as a state, especially as it navigates its post/modern manifestation. This discourse takes on the various explications of postcolonialism to contextualize the narrativity broadly and adequately, and provide an understanding of Nigeria through a diachronic examination of its conception and projections. From literature and history in the humanities to economics and politics in the social sciences, this chapter focuses on how postcolonial temperaments differ (and align) across fields, regions, and histories of Nigeria, and, of course, how they contribute to the overarching narratives of how Nigeria is grappling with its postcolonial and post/modern transitions. Providing a summation to the issues, challenges, and solutions engaged in Understanding Modern Nigeria, this chapter provides insight into the most dominant narrative preoccupations of postcolonial Nigeria, among which are ethnicity, governance, democracy, and development. These interconnected frames explain the complications that shape the daily lives of Nigerians, but most importantly, create spaces for purposive reframing which help to channel an enabling path toward an enhanced development of Nigeria within the order of globality, especially as Nigeria plays a major role within the broader frame of Africa.