Nigeria: Background to Nationalism

Any study of the recent political history of an emergent African state can, at this stage, be no more than exploratory. This is par¬ ticularly true when one attempts, as I have done, to analyze the rise and growth of a phenomenon such as nationalism in a country the size of Nigeria. Data are too fragmentary and contradictory, passions are still too intense and perspectives too distorted to per¬ mit broad generalizations and firm conclusions. An exploratory study, therefore, invites, and ought to provoke, corrections in fact and in judgment; indeed, it is but an invitation to further research. This book claims to be no more than an introduction to selected aspects of the political history of modern Nigeria.