Rethinking Pan-Africanism and Nationalism in Africa: The Dilemma of Nation-Building in Nigeria
Year: 2015
Type: article
Abstract: After over fifty years of independence, many African states are steeped in the crisis of nation-building.Many have either witnessed sectarian violent conflict or are currently going through one.This has impacted negatively on socio-economic development across the continent.With many African states either failing or at the verge of failing, the future of nation-building in Africa appears not only bleak but also gravitating towards a justification of the thesis of colonisation that Africans are incapable of developing state systems without the intervention of the outsider -the West.Some scholars have blamed territorial nationalism for the nation-building deficit in Africa.Nigeria, the most populous nation of blacks in the world, is a typical illustration of a state currently steeped in the crisis of nation-building in Africa.This study interrogates her nation-building experience with a view to locating the roots of the problem and suggesting possible ways of fixing it.It finds that at the heart of the crisis of nation-building is the absence of an enabling political ideology.The study argues that the ideologies of nationalism and Pan-Africanism are not necessarily antithetical but mutually reinforcing.Consequently, the failure of nation-building in Africa as illustrated by the existential reality of Nigeria is the failure to realize the complementarities of nationalism and Pan-Africanism as ideologies of nation-building.It is recommended therefore that Nigeria and other African states should adopt Pan-Africanism as their political ideology as a way out of the crisis of nation-building in the twenty-first century.
Source: Historical research letter
Language: English
Subfield: Anthropology
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2204052014