The nationality question
By Obi Nwakanma What does it mean to be a Nigerian? This question may seem clearly resolved in the Nigerian constitution: anyone born, whose forebears as at October 1 1960, had roots in any portion of the land which as at January 1914 became amalgamated as the Union of the old protectorates of Southern and Northern Nigeria. Such a person is a Nigerian by birth and has every right pertaining thereto that affiliation guaranteed under the bill of rights. But there are cleavages in the national imagination that make this question increasingly unresolved and academic. It also leads to that question “what is a nation?”; in fact, “when is a nation” to quote Soyinka in his book, The Open Sore of a Continent which in critical ways further problematizes that question. Classical theorists of nation have described the “nation” as a system of affiliations, whose soul is at its most pristine, the kin, but at its most complex a broader network of principles beyond the primordial boundaries. “National...