Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Nigeria Civil War'

Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2012.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Nigeria is a country that has witnessed ongoing – albeit sporadic – violent conflict since its independence in 1960 from Britain. A brutal civil war, known as the Biafra war, lasting from 1967 to 1970, was not to end social tensions in this ethnically diverse country. Violent conflict has been an ongoing reality since the end of the Biafra war in 1970. In addition, Nigeria has exhibited substantial environmental degradation and resource scarcity during this time. Hence, this study assesses whether environmental degradation and resource scarcity are independent causes of domestic violent conflict in Nigeria since the end of the Biafra war. Additionally, rich reserves of natural non-renewable resources – in particular the prevalence of oil – are analysed vis-à-vis the degradation and growing scarcity of renewable resources in order to consider the impact both these aspects have on post civil war conflict in Nigeria. In order to achieve this, this study concerns itself primarily with causation. It considers two aspects in this regard. Firstly, it evaluates the assertion that the environment is an independent cause of conflict. That is to say, it investigates the notion that the environment impacts independently on human behaviour. Secondly, it examines the components of the social structure that create conditions that manipulate the environment in such a way that conflict is the ultimate outcome. This study asserts that the agency-structure composite is important to understand in order to examine violent conflict and its relationship with the environment in Nigeria. This relationship-structure-cause premise is examined by using a complex theory framework. Consequently, importance is placed on the causal relationship between violent conflict, environmental degradation and scarcity, natural non-renewable resource dependency and the social, economic and political milieu in which this transpires. This study ascertains that severe environmental change can only be considered a cause of conflict when its impact is considered with other important factors such as economic and political anonymity, which – for the most part – create the milieu in which subsequent violent conflict is the outcome.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Nigerië is 'n land wat deurlopend kan getuig, alhoewel sporadies, dat daar sedert sy onafhanklikheid van Brittanje in 1960, geweldadige konflik was. 'n Brutale burgelike oorlog wat geduur het vanaf 1967 to 1970, het geensins die sosiale spanning ge-eindig vir hierdie etniese diverse land nie. Gewelddadige konflik is 'n deurlopende werklikheid sedert die einde van die burgeroorlog in 1970. Daarbenewens het Nigerië uitgestaan vir hul aansienlike agteruitgang van die omgewing en hulpbron-skaarste gedurende hierdie tyd. Vandaar hierdie studie om te bepaal of die omgewing se agteruitgang en hulpbron-skaarste 'n onafhanklike oorsaak is van binnelandse geweldadige konflik in Nigerië, sedert die einde van die burgeroorlog. Daarby, ryk reserwes van natuurlike nie-hernubare hulpbronne, in die besonder die voorkoms van olie wat betref die agteruitgang en die toenemende skaarsheid van hernubare hulpbronne, word ontleed ten einde die impak van hierdie twee aspekte op post-burgeroorlog konflik in Nigerië te oorweeg. Ten einde dit te bereik, gebruik hierdie studie oorsaaklikheidsleer. Daar is twee aspekte in hierdie verband wat in aanmerking geneem word. Eerstens is die bewering dat die omgewing die onafhanklike oorsaak is van konflik. Dit wil sê, dit ondersoek die idée dat die omgewing 'n onafhanklike impak het op menslike gedrag. Dit ondersoek, tweedens, die komponente van die sosiale struktuur wat die omstandighede skep wat die omgewing op so 'n wyse manipuleer, dat konflik die uiteindelike uitkoms is. Hierdie studie beweer dat die agent-struktuur verhouding belangrik is om te verstaan ten einde geweldadige konflik en die verhouding met die omgewing in Nigerië te ondersoek. Hierdie verhouding-struktuur-oorsaak uitgangspunt is ondersoek deur gebruik te maak van 'n komplekse teorie raamwerk. Gevolglik word die belangrikheid geplaas op die oorsaaklike verband tussen gewelddadige konflik, die agteruitgang van die omgewing en skaarsheid, nie-hernubare afhanklikheid en die sosiale, ekonomiese en politieke milieu waarin dit voorkom. Hierdie studie stel vas dat ernstige omgewingsverandering slegs oorweeg kan word as 'n oorsaak van konflik as die impak daarvan oorweeg word met ander belangrike faktore soos ekonomiese en politieke anonimiteit, wat, vir die grootste deel, die omgewing skep waarin die daaropvolgende geweldadige konflik die uitkoms is.

Since the end of the Nigcria-Biafra war in 1970, political and social theorists, journalists, and scholars have discussed the significance of the war and the major players. Yet one perspective is often omitted, and that is the experiences of women and the roles they played during the war. This thesis begins to unearth some of those hidden narratives through the use of in-depth interviews with seven Biafran women who lived during and survived the Nigeria-Biafra war. Their stories about the importance of their ethnic and religious identities, their roles and experiences during the war, their encounters with death and refugees, and their discussions of a generational shift are important parts of some of the unearthed narratives.

This thesis is a study of a Christian movement among the Igbo people of Eastern Nigeria from its origins in the Civil War Revival (1967-73) to the present. It argues that the success of the revival depended upon a balance between supply and demand. Colonial legacies, Western missionary endeavours, decolonisation, and civil war not only created new religious demands, they contributed to the formation of a missionary fellowship, able to exploit the disorder of Igbo society and the failure of existing religious options to fulfil traditional aspirations. The thesis shows that during its formative period the revival’s Pentecostal progeny also benefited from this missionary impulse, and the flexibility of Pentecostal spirituality, which enabled it to adapt to meet consumer demands. It examines the way the movement has evolved since the 1970s, and argues that the decline of its missionary impulse, combined with a paradigm shift from holiness to prosperity teaching, and a propensity to schism, have imposed limitations on its potential as an agent of transformation. Finally, it shows that during the 1990s, a further shift has occurred towards a theology of socio-political engagement, and examines the implications of this for the movement’s identity and influence in a pluralistic society.

Lors de l’été 1968, des images d’enfants décharnés, souffrant de maladies dues à la malnutrition affluent dans les médias occidentaux. Elles proviennent de la région sud orientale de la Fédération du Nigeria, qui a déclaré son indépendance une année auparavant sous le nom de République du Biafra, où se déroule une guerre civile qui oppose les troupes fédérales aux indépendantistes biafrais. L’émotion suscitée en Occident par les représentations du conflit et de la famine qui l’accompagne engendre la mobilisation de diverses organisations humanitaires, qui mettent sur pied des opérations de secours internationales destinées aux populations civiles. Encore peu étudiées par l’historiographie, la crise du Biafra et les réponses qui y sont apportées par les acteurs occidentaux sont l’objet de cette thèse. La recherche examine tout d’abord comment une guerre civile africaine prend la dimension d’une crise humanitaire internationale. Pour ce faire, elle analyse tant la situation sur place que les acteurs de son internationalisation et ses représentations. Ensuite, afin d’appréhender les opérations de secours dans leur complexité la thèse étudie le processus d’élaboration et le déploiement des réponses occidentales à la crise, ainsi que leur réception au Nigeria dans un contexte post-colonial. Enfin, la thèse questionne les principaux éléments qui ont fait du Biafra un moment charnière de l’histoire de l’humanitaire et met en lumière les reconfigurations des discours et des pratiques de l’aide humanitaire qui s’opèrent à la fin des années 1960
In the summer of 1968, pictures of emaciated children, suffering from diseases due to malnutrition, poured in western medias. They came from the eastern region of the Federation of Nigeria, which had proclaimed its independence one year before and taken the name of the Republic of Biafra. War and famine that were taking place in the region generated widespread concern in the West, where humanitarian organizations decided to set up international relief operations to help alleviate the suffering of the civilian population. Still understudied by the historiography, the crisis in Biafra and the mobilization of western organizations are the subjects of this PhD. Firstly, the dissertation examines how an African civil war became an international humanitarian crisis. To this purpose, it analyses the situation in the ground, the actors of its internationalization and how it was represented. Secondly, in order to grasp the complexity of humanitarian aid, the dissertation studies the elaboration and the deployment of the relied operations, as well as their reception in Nigeria in a post-colonial context. Finally, the thesis questions why Biafra is usually considered as a turning point in the history of humanitarianism. By so doing, it sheds light on the reconfigurations of the discourses and practices of humanitarian aid that took place in the late 1960’s

Le thème de la guerre civile au Nigéria de 1967 à 1970, aussi appelée guerre du Biafra reste un thème majeur de la littérature nigériane. Les évènements qui ont amené au conflit au lendemain de l’indépendance du pays montrent une période post-coloniale encore marquée par les maux de la construction nationale des anciennes colonies que sont le régionalisme, la religion et le problème ethnique. La fin du conflit en 1970 inaugure une ère de mutation des problèmes d’avant la guerre qui perdurent avec la succession des différents régimes au pouvoir. De plus, le conflit devient un sujet tabou à effacer des mémoires autant que de la mémoire collective nigeriane.Après la première vague des écrivains à majorité Igbo qui ont écrit sur le conflit, tels que Chukwuemeka Ike avec Sunset at Dawn (1979), Buchi Emecheta (1983), Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie reprend le thème de cette guerre sans apologie. Cette nouvelle façon d’écrire le sujet de la guerre du Biafra se veut thérapeutique et réconciliatrice.Ce travail analyse le traitement de la guerre du Biafra à travers le prisme de la Déesse Mammy Water, divinité de la cosmologie Igbo. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie appartient à la communauté Igbo
The theme of the Nigerian civil war which lasted from 1967 to 1970, also called the Biafra war remains one of the major theme of the nigerian literature. The events that led to the war after the country’s independance point to a post-colonial period where national building is still worked up on along ethnic and religious lines. In 1970, the end of the conflict starts a new era still affected by all the issues that led to the war still visible in the different regimes leading the federation. Moreover, the conflict became a taboo topic that needed to be erased from individual as well as the nigerian collective memory.After the first wave of writers mainly from Igbo descent who wrote about the war such as Chukwuemeka Ike with Sunset at Dawn (1979), Buchi Emecheta (1983), Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie takes up the theme of the war unapologetically. Her way of writing the war ultimately wants to be the therapeutical and inclusive for all nigerians.This study analyzes the Biafran war through the prism of Mammy Water, the water goddess in the Igbo cosmology. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie belongs to the Igbo community

This study examines the Biafran secession of 1967-1970 and how the secessionist government constructed a Biafran identity in its campaign to gain international support for Biafra’s permanent separation from Nigeria. The introductory chapter outlines the role of identity in Nigeria’s twentieth-century political history and discusses the scholarly literature addressing questions of national and ethnic identity and on the Biafran secession. The thesis then provides a historical framework for discussing the evolution of Nigerian political identities and the failures of Nigerian leaders to build a Nigerian nationalism among the region’s numerous identifiable groups in the colonial and early independence eras. Subsequent chapters analyse the Biafran government’s attempts to elide the inherent instability of identity and overcome the dynamic process of identity formation in Nigeria by constructing and promoting a fixed Biafran identity based on cultural characteristics and historical experiences that allegedly distinguished and united the diverse peoples of the secessionist region.

The purpose of this dissertation is to utilize a historical comparative analysis to examine how capitalism influenced the growth of the nation, its effects on culture, politics and the economy. The study will examine the shift of the economy under varying governments (civilian, presidential and military), as well as the economic effect of an oil economy on the politics and development of the country. This dissertation included an analysis of the historical implications of imperialism as well as the current implications of foreign interference. The research further explored the historical effects of colonialism on a newly independent nation attempting to govern and unite different ethnic groups as one nation as well as the effects the discovery of oil had on the precarious undertaking of establishing and maintaining democracy. This dissertation found that after independence the country shifted its focus in the agriculture sector from production for consumption to export for capital gains. This shift led to infrastructure development such as building roads, railways, and other essential structures for the transportation and exportation of cash crops. The downside in the shift from consumption crops to export crops was the occurrence of food shortages during the seventies. The discovery of oil in 1956 also changed the direction and strength of the economy and eventually led to an unstable and under-developed nation. This dissertation will also examine the initiatives towards development and national unity as the nation struggles to stabilize economically and politically.

Thesis (M.A.) -- University of Maryland, College Park, 2005.
Thesis research directed by: History. Title from t.p. of PDF. Includes bibliographical references. Published by UMI Dissertation Services, Ann Arbor, Mich. Also available in paper.

Far from having only marginal significance and generating a ‘subdued’ response among African Americans, as some historians have argued, the Nigerian Civil War (1967-1970) collided at full velocity with the conflicting discourses and ideas by which black Americans sought to understand their place in the United States and the world in the late 1960s. Black liberal civil rights leaders leapt to offer their service as agents of direct diplomacy during the conflict, seeking to preserve Nigerian unity; grassroots activists from New York to Kansas organised food-drives, concerts and awareness campaigns in support of humanitarian aid for Biafran victims of starvation; while other pro-Biafran black activists warned of links between black ‘genocide’ in Biafra and the US alike. This thesis is the first to recover and analyse at length the extent, complexity and character of such African American responses to the Nigerian Civil War. Drawing on extensive use of private papers, activist literature, government records and especially the black press, it charts the way African Americans conceptualised, over time and in complex ways, their varied understandings of issues such as black internationalist solidarities, territorial sovereignty and political viability, humanitarian compassion and great power realpolitik, as well as colonial and neo-colonial influence in Africa. The thesis initially explores the longer twentieth century history of African American engagement with Nigeria by way of establishing context, before providing in-depth analysis of the key initiatives and events that comprised African American engagement with the civil war. Chapters move chronologically and thematically to discuss direct diplomatic efforts to broker peace, African American responses to alleged genocide in Biafra, the rise and fall of pro-Biafran political support, and the latter’s loss to what emerged as a stronger political bloc of those supporting Nigerian political unity. Situated methodologically and historiographically at the intersection of scholarship on black internationalism and the international history of the Nigerian Civil War, this thesis demonstrates the way the civil war not only provoked intense activism, but did so in ways that fundamentally connected with the central ideas, themes and concerns of the black freedom struggle in the United States.

This dissertation is concerned with the representation of the human and of the relationship between sovereignty and subjectivity in Nigerian literature. It argues that the Nigerian postcolony is portrayed in the texts under investigation as a site of perpetual emergency, where a progressively more vivid biopoliticisation of politics sanctions the reduction of the postcolonial (non-)citizen to what Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben has termed “bare life” – a form of life that, exposed to sovereign violence, or caught in the sovereign ban, may be killed without committing homicide. Concentrating in particular, but not exclusively, on contemporary fiction writing, this dissertation aims at examining the aesthetic strategies adopted by a number of postcolonial writers in order to signify the lack of rights protection all too often suffered by the postcolonial (non-)citizen. It will be pointed out that an imagery of war is often employed to describe postcolonial Nigeria as a country where the state of exception and the withdrawal of constitutional protection have become the rule. This study thus will not only investigate the depiction of the Civil War of the late 1960s, but will also show that Nigeria’s fractured post-war times are often configured in terms that recall the Foucauldian definition of politics as “the continuation of war by other means.” Part One, “The Exception,” aims at analysing the portrayals of moments of state emergency declared in the context of armed struggle. The first chapter is devoted to the discussion of a selected number among the numerous works that, ever since the 1970s, have enlarged the rich corpus of Nigerian Civil War literature. Chapter Two provides a cross-disciplinary, comparative reading of two war novellas which narrate an unnamed conflict and which, through the depiction of their young protagonists, contribute to the heated debates regarding the figure of the child soldier. As indicated by the title of Part Two, “The Rule,” I will then discuss how war – a period of emergency conducive to the supposedly momentary suspension of the rule of law – is presented as becoming the rule in the normal abnormality of post-war dictatorial Nigeria. In this context, particular attention will be devoted to the literary representation of two sites, namely the autocrat’s overcrowded jail and the dysfunctional postcolonial family, where, it will be argued, the phenomenon of the perpetuation of the exception acquires great visibility. Part Three, captioned “Camps on the Move,” investigates texts recounting the lives of combative women who, either victims or accomplices of illegal practices, do not resign themselves to their superfluous status within the biopolitical hierarchies produced in the context of ‘war-scapes’ of unending exception. It will be noticed that the characters’ ambitions of upward social and ontological mobility are often reduced to a horizontal movement between Agambenian ‘camps,’ between conditions of essential invisibility, and abandonment, before the law. The texts under examination, however, do not only protest their protagonists’ exclusion from an effective regime of rights, and thus, paradoxically, from humanity itself. By highlighting without resolving the paradox itself, they also invite to resignify and expand the concepts of the universal and of the human, underscoring the need for an agonistic, future-oriented reconfiguration of the human rights paradigm and of the relationships between the individual and the state
La tesi analizza le raffigurazioni dell’umano e del rapporto tra sovranità e soggettività nella letteratura nigeriana anglofona. Concentrandosi in particolar modo sulla narrativa di recente produzione, il lavoro parte dall’osservazione di come la Nigeria postcoloniale venga dipinta nelle opere in esame quale luogo di eccezione permanente, i cui soggetti, più sudditi che cittadini, sono sovente ridotti a quel che il filosofo Giorgio Agamben ha definito “nuda vita”: una vita esposta alla violenza sovrana, o al sovrano abbandono, che diventa sempre più impunemente uccidibile. La tesi discute quindi le strategie adottate da più generazioni di scrittori nigeriani dal post-indipendenza a oggi per fornire un’elaborazione, estetica ed etica al contempo, delle declinazioni possibili del vivere umano nello stato d’eccezione e della mancata tutela diritti fondamentali. In questo senso, essa rileva come le opere prese in considerazione facciano ampio uso di un immaginario di guerra e conflitto e registra non solo la riscrittura, a volte astraente, della sanguinosa Guerra Civile di fine anni Sessanta, ma nota altresì che molti dei momenti (pseudo)democratici nella storia del paese vengono configurati in termini che ricordano la definizione foucauldiana di politica come “guerra continuata con altri mezzi”. La prima parte, “The Exception”, esamina la rappresentazione di momenti di emergenza pubblica dichiarati nell’ambito di un confronto armato. Il primo capitolo si sofferma su una selezione delle molte opere che, fin dagli anni Settanta, hanno proposto una narrativizzazione della Guerra Civile. Il capitolo successivo fornisce invece una lettura in chiave comparata e interdisciplinare di due brevi romanzi che raccontano un conflitto non nominato e contribuiscono, attraverso la descrizione dei due giovani protagonisti, all’acceso dibattito internazionale riguardante la figura del bambino soldato. La seconda parte, dal titolo “The Rule”, considera opere che narrano del fallimento democratico dello stato nigeriano, sottolineando come l’eccezione e la sospensione costituzionale diventino regola nella normale anormalità della Nigeria dittatoriale del dopoguerra. Particolare attenzione viene dedicata, in questo contesto, allo studio della raffigurazione di due spazi, quelli della prigione di regime e della famiglia postcoloniale, all’interno dei quali questo fenomeno assume evidente riconoscibilità. La terza parte, intitolata “Camps on the Move”, analizza romanzi che raccontano di donne combattive che, vittime o complici di pratiche illegali, tentano di contrastare la loro dichiarata superfluità all’interno delle gerarchie biopolitiche che si sviluppano nei ‘panorami di guerra’ a cui il titolo della tesi fa riferimento. In questo contesto, il capitolo conclusivo rileva come i desideri di mobilità verticale, sociale e ontologica, dei personaggi tendano a risolversi in un movimento orizzontale tra ‘campi’ agambeniani, tra condizioni di sostanziale invisibilità, ed abbandono, di fronte alla legge. Si nota infine che i testi studiati non si limitano a denunciare la riduzione dei loro protagonisti a uomini e donne che, secondo la formulazione di Hannah Arendt, non avendo “diritto ad avere diritti” sono paradossalmente esclusi dall’umanità stessa. Ponendo l’accento sul paradosso, senza peraltro risolverlo, essi invitano anche un continuo, ed indispensabile, lavoro di ridefinizione ed espansione delle categorie dell’umano e dell’universale, sottolineando la necessità di riconfigurare il paradigma dei diritti umani e i rapporti tra individuo e stato

The Nigerian civil war (1967-1970) represents a tragic chapter of African history. This brutal conflict was predominantly studied by male historians and novelists, offering a limited perspective of events. Though women and children comprised the majority of war casualties, very rarely were their experiences discussed in male-authored texts, and women's own war writings were largely dismissed or heavily criticized by male critics. The aim of this thesis is thus to examine the war literature written by three Igbo women writers belonging to different generations of Nigerian authors namely Flora Nwapa's Never Again (1975) and Wives at War and other Stories (1980), Buchi Emecheta's Destination Biafra (1982) and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun (2006). The purpose is to show how each novelist decides to tackle this sensitive subject and, ultimately, to foster a comparative analysis of their writings. Overall, through my thesis, I aim to shed light onto the female experience during the Nigerian civil war in order to underscore the strength and resourcefulness of Nigerian women who remain the unsung heroines of this conflict.

Kein anderes Thema hat die nigerianische Literatur so dominiert wie der nigerianische Bürgerkrieg, in dessen Verarbeitung sich verstärkt auch Autorinnen einmischen. Die Dissertation evaluiert 34 Texte von 16 nigerianischen Autorinnen - 12 Romane und 22 Kurzgeschichten - und analysiert sie als Gesamtkorpus, in dem die Texte miteinander und mit der Männerliteratur einen Dialog um den Bürgerkrieg führen. Die Autorinnen wenden bei ihrem "war talk" literarische Strategien wie "re-reading" und "re-writing" an, das Neu-Lesen, Fort- und Umschreiben der Texte und Diskurse des "Zentrums", durch die nicht nur die Blindstellen eines von Männern dominierten literarischen Diskurses sichtbar werden, sondern durch die auch der Prozess des Aushandelns der Geschlechterverhältnisse sowie des Krieges selbst erfolgt, seiner Ursachen, Auslöser und Folgen. Die Autorinnen stellen den Krieg als "sexuelle Unordnung" dar, als Geschlechterkrieg. Die Untersuchung zeigt, dass bei der Verortung der Perspektive der Autorinnen neben Geschlecht, ethnischer Zugehörigkeit auch andere Faktoren, wie Alter, Race, Grad der Distanz oder Nähe etc. berücksichtigt werden müssen, um vorschnelle Festschreibungen zu vermeiden. Hierbei spielen die Paratexte eine wichtige Rolle, in denen die Autorinnen sich persönlich zum Krieg äußern. Die Arbeit bewegt sich an den Schnittstellen mehrerer Disziplinen: Literatur, Historiographie und Geschlechterstudien. In der Einleitung werden die theoretischen Prämissen im Kontext von Krieg, Geschlecht und literarischer Repäsentation behandelt. Das 1. Kapitel ist dem historischen Kontext des Bürgerkrieges, einschließlich der Rolle der Frauen darin gewidmet. Im 2. Kapitel geht es um die Darstellung des Krieges, des Selbst- und Feindbildes sowie der Zukunft. Das dritte Kapitel handelt von der Beziehung zwischen Bürger- und Geschlechterkrieg, vermittelt durch das Medium literarischer Text. Die Zusammenfassung der Ergebnisse und der Ausblick auf zukünftige Forschung erfolgt im Schlussteil. Der Anhang enthält ein vorläufiges Verzeichnis der gesamten Frauenliteratur über den nigerianischen Bürgerkrieg.
No other topic has dominated the Nigerian literature as much as the Nigerian Civil War and female authors increasingly interfere in its literary representation. The thesis evaluates 34 literary texts by 16 female Nigerian authors - 12 novels and 22 short stories - and analyses them as distinctive corpus whose individual texts are in a state of dialogue both with each other and with texts from male authors. The female authors use, in their "war talk", literary strategies like "re-reading" and "re-writing" of texts from the "Centre". On the one hand, these strategies enable them to make the blind spots of a male dominated literary discourse apparent/visible on the other hand, they facilitate the negotiation of gender relations and of the war itself, its causes, trigger points and consequences. The female authors represent war as "sexual disorder", as gender war. The study shows that in order to be able to locate an author''s perspective (and to avoid rash conclusions) it is essential to consider the different factors determining it - besides ethnicity and gender, also age, race, the grade of emotional involvement or distance etc. It is in this regard, where the paratexts play an important part, as in these authors express their personal views and comments on the war. The thesis is located at the interfaces of several disciplines: literary, historical and gender studies. The introduction deals with the theoretical backgrounds in the context of war, literary representation and gender. The first chapter is dedicated to the historical context of the Nigerian Civil War including the role of women. The second chapter looks at the paratexts, different representations of the war''s causes, the self-image, the enemy''s image and the future. The third chapter finally deals with the question how the relationship between Civil War and gender war is negotiated/conveyed through the medium of the literary texts. In the conclusion the results are summarized and prospects for future research are discussed. The appendix contains a preliminary bibliography of all literary texts on the Nigerian Civil War written by female authors.

‘Sons of the soil’ conflicts seldom intensify above a low level of intrastate violence. Although frequent, they tend to remain small in scale, which has contributed to a lack of scholarly understanding about why some Sons of the soil conflict yet intensify more than others. Taking the role of the state into account, this study aims to investigate the causes for intensification in these conflicts. With a neoclassical realist approach, domestic factors behind the causal process of conflict intensification are unearthed, thereby investigating further the action-formation of the government threat perception. It leads the study to test the following hypothesis: A Sons of the soil conflict is more likely to intensify if the government misperceives the threat the conflict constitutes. Through a comparative process tracing analysis of Sons of the soil conflict intensity in Mali and Niger, 2006-2012, findings suggest that certain domestic factors at the state level cause a significant variation in the outcome. Actual low threats of Sons of the soil conflict may in fact be intensified due to state misperceptions.

Les guerres civiles en Afrique sont multiples, désastreuses et multicausales. Cependant les analyses privilégient fréquemment les causes identitaires liées à l‟ethnique ou à des faits historiques. Il est proposé ici, une analyse différente par une approche économique. Si au sens de l‟économie classique ou néoclassique, les ressources naturelles sont une dotation constituant un avantage absolu ou comparatif, en Afrique, elles contribuent à alimenter les guerres intra-étatiques pénalisant ainsi tout effort de développement. L‟exploitation d‟uranium au Niger, loin de permettre une performance économique grâce aux revenus qu‟elle génère, représente a contrario une double source de « malédiction » : Conforme au « syndrome hollandais » accompagné de la médiocrité économique qui le caractérise mais constitue également un enjeu autour duquel se fonde la rébellion armée
The civil wars in Africa are multiple, disastrous and multicausal. However analyses privilege frequently the identical causes connected to the ethnic or to the historic facts. It is proposed here, a different analysis by an economic approach. If in the sense of the classic or neo-classic economy, natural resources are an endowment constituting an absolute or comparative advantage, in Africa, they contribute to feed the intra-state wars punishing any effort of development. The exploitation of uranium in Niger, far from allowing an economic performance thanks to the income which it generates, represents a double source of "curse": in compliance with the "dutch disease" accompanied with the economic mediocrity which characterizes it but also constitutes a stake in which bases the armed rebellion

This dissertation brings together the history of law in postcolonial Nigeria with the history of the Nigerian Civil War (1967-1970), analyzing how wartime violence shaped crime and the ethics surrounding it. Using legal records from the Republic of Biafra’s courts, I examine how the secessionist state was governed, and how armed robbery and other criminal activities became means of survival there in the context of the fighting. These cases reveal how Biafrans and their government negotiated what kinds of survival tactics, many of them “criminal,” were permissible or ethical in the context of the war and the humanitarian crisis attending it. Biafra’s courts also became a space where individuals could assert themselves as moral actors in the face of political ataxia and enormous humanitarian strain. The war shaped Nigeria’s postcolonial experience profoundly. As in many conflicts, acts of violence and deception became ordinary – in some cases honorable – when surviving and winning the war trumped all other considerations. When the fighting ended in January 1970, the practices that Biafrans had used to endure the war did not end with it. In the years that followed, fraud and armed violence would become major features of life in reunified Nigeria. Biafra had declared independence in the name of preserving law and order, but the result of the war was to create conditions in which forms of illegality that would later become endemic – forgery, armed robbery, and the body of fraudulent activities known as “419” – could take root. For this reason, the Biafra War is an important episode in both the history of Nigeria after independence, and for the larger study of the dialectics of law and disorder in contemporary Africa.

This dissertation explores questions of African literature and international law through the lens of the Nigeria-Biafra war (1967-1970). A defining trauma of modern Nigerian history, the war produced a rich and sustained vein of writing that stretches from the late 1960s through the present day, encompassing canonical Nigerian novels as well as a number of British and diasporic texts. Drawing on both literary and legal theory, I argue that this body of work mobilizes particular literary features—including narrative, analogy, allegory, and genre—to articulate both familiar and innovative logics of sovereignty. The structure of the project is primarily conceptual and loosely chronological. The first half explores narratives of development in relation to international law’s standard of civilization, focusing on British colonial writing (Chapter 1) and postwar allegorical novels (Chapter 2). The second half attends to how narrative fiction formally registers mid-20th century developments in international law, focusing on writers' use of analogy as a mode of theorizing genocide (Chapter 3) and the role of genre fiction in imagining economic sovereignty (Chapter 4). Throughout, I show how novelists pick up and transform literary tropes first articulated in wartime journalism, propaganda, and activist pamphlets.

This project looks at the ways the Biafran Government maintained their war machine in spite of the hopeless situation that emerged in the summer of 1968. Ojukwu’s government looked certain to topple at the beginning of the summer of 1968, yet Biafra held on and did not capitulate until nearly two years later, on 15 January 1970. The Ojukwu regime found itself in a serious predicament; how to maintain support for a war that was increasingly costly to the Igbo people, both in military terms and in the menacing face of the starvation of the civilian population. Further, the Biafran government had to not only mobilize a global public opinion campaign against the “genocidal” campaign waged against them, but also convince the world that the only option for Igbo survival was an independent Biafra. Thus it is not enough to look at the international aspects of the war, or to consider the war on a strictly domestic level. By looking at both the internal and external factors that shaped the Biafran propaganda machine and the Biafran war effort and how these efforts influenced international support and galvanized internal resolve to continue fighting, we can see how the Biafran war effort was able to last for twenty months after the fall of Port Harcourt. Recent scholarly and political work, uncovered documents, and the new plethora of memoirs on the Civil War provide us with a veritable treasure trove of data and analysis with which to study the issue of Igbo nationalism and a unique opportunity to create a new vision of secessionist conflict in Africa. This work will thus provide a step in moving away from the long accepted “Tribalism” paradigm that has so long pervaded not only the study of post-colonial Civil Wars in Africa, but more importantly, the discourse in looking at ethnicity, violence and national identity across the continent. Further, by analyzing the ways that the Biafran propaganda machine operated on a nationalist level, we can see the effects of Biafran secession on the broader Igbo national consciousness and the Igbo national movement, as well as on subsequent political movements in Nigeria.
text

Amidst the confrontation between the East and the West Bloc during the Cold War, the decolonization of Africa created an entirely new ideological battlefield for these two sides to compete with one another for power and influence. The Federal Republic of Germany, having been allowed to rearm its military less than a decade prior, sought to gain influence in Nigeria and Tanzania by providing them with military aid. However, in both cases it failed to fulfill its promises of aid. Through the examination of these case studies, this study argues that the Federal Republic’s ability to provide effective military aid to non-NATO countries was limited due to the combination of its cautious foreign policy and the dynamic political landscape of the countries to which it offered aid. Formerly classified government documents and newspaper articles constitute the majority of this study’s source material. While current historiography focuses on the impact of the Cold War superpowers in regions outside of Europe, less attention has been given to the important roles that smaller powers such as the Federal Republic have played. By analyzing a smaller global player, the goal of this study is to complicate the notion of the Cold War being binary in nature. Furthermore, it aims to illustrate the political tightrope that the Federal Republic walked when conducting military aid which stemmed from the legacy of its violent past and its status as a divided nation.

The essence of this thesis is to explore the role of Nigeria, West Africa's hegemon, in the intervention efforts by the Economic Community of West African states (ECOWAS) through its Cease-fire Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) in both Liberia (1990-1997) and Sierra Leone (1993-2000). While the thesis has sought to understand the leading role played by Nigeria in first establishing the ECOWAS and being the primus motor for its functions, I have also attempted to analyse the rationalities for the transformation of ECOWAS from a purely economic integrative scheme to a security organisation. While the economic agendas for ECOWAS have not changed, the argument in this thesis is that security related issues and realities have taken precedence over the original economistic agendas. One of the thesis' major arguments is that the nature of results attained in both Liberia and Sierra Leone are different because of (a) the leadership role of Nigeria and (b) the nature of international responses and contributions to the resolution of these conflicts. In the thesis, I argue that in the Liberian case, Nigeria took a more domineering leadership role albeit tinged with the characteristics of the actions of a benevolent hegemon. Here, Nigeria through different processes either through leadership, consensus-seeking processes and dialogue managed to get other ECOWAS states to coalesce around its leadership. However, in Sierra Leone, Nigeria's leadership role was not permitted to unfold. The resultant effect was the shift from NIFAG to ECOMOG and eventually "rekindling hatred" of these troops as UN troops. This thesis has pointed to the utility of sub-regional organisations in resolving conflicts and demonstrates the need for further study.
Political Science
DLITT ET PHIL (INT POL)