A fallen house

A fallen house

I must begin today's meditations by confessing that my title is a paraphrase, borrowed from a strikingly perceptive book on Nigeria. That 327-page book, aptly titled This House Has Fallen: Midnight in Nigeria, and written by Karl Maier, an American-born journalist who now makes his home in London, ought to be read by any Nigerian who wishes to come to grips with the bizarre compulsions of our country's political experience. Imagine my delight, then, at learning recently that the book is available at Glendora Bookstore in Ikoyi.

This House Has Fallen (published by Public Affairs, New York, ISBN 1-891620-60-6), is that rarity of a book: a highly readable, meticulously researched and judicious political biography of Nigeria. Mr. Maier, who spent a few years in Nigeria as a foreign correspondent, has written an account whose insights and truths are bound to resonate in Nigeria and outside for a long time to come.

For many in the outside world, Nigeria is simply the oil-rich West African nation that holds the largest population of blacks in the world. But it is, as we all know, much more than that. Nigeria has long puzzled outsiders and baffled its own citizens. In his nuanced, richly detailed, and ambitiously conceived book, Karl Maier manages to show why. Combining deft reporting with an astute analytical mind, he conveys a sense of the paradox of Nigeria, a nation conceived in hope but nurtured mostly by its own leaders into hopelessness.

From 1986 to 1996, Maier served as Africa correspondent for The Independent newspaper in London. If the sharp insights in This House Has Fallen is any measure, Maier must have looked hard and listened well during his stint in Nigeria. That initial doubt was informed by experience. After all, I have read quite one or two awful books written by other correspondents after they had finished their assignment in Africa. Often, those books are redolent of a certain air of superiority and mockery. Dense with anecdotes whose real import failed to permeate the sensibility of these would-be writers, the books impressed you as the work of addled tourists. In the sheer superficiality of their observations, for example, one was reminded of the proverb that a tourist is a person with wide eyes but who sees little.

To my great relief, Maiers book proved that he did not approach his assignment with the mind of a tourist. As one read the book, one saw much evidence that the author, quite simply, takes Nigeria and Nigerians seriously.

He has taken care to talk to the principal actors in Nigeria's recent political dramas. His interview with Ibrahim Babangida and the conclusions he draws about the mans role in Nigeria's betrayal constitute, in my view, one of the books achievements. Throughout the book, Maier presents us with such vignettes of analysis and reportorial insight. In addition to examining his subject through extensive interviews with the likes of IBB, Gani Fawehinmi, Governor Sani of Zamfara, Frederick Fasehun, Ganiyu Adams and Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, Maier travelled the length and breadth of Nigeria to ensure that his book contains the voices of ordinary Nigerians, those men and women who bear the brunt of the ruling elites idiocy.

The result is an often bristling book, seething with anger and, frequently, despair. He goes to the heart of the deep disaffection in the Niger-Delta. Nobody who reads this book can fail to see the monumental injustice done to the oil-producing minority groups. It is a wrenching indictment, a sober documentation of ecological disaster and state terrorism on a scale that would stir the most placid conscience.

Equally impressive, for me, is Maiers treatment of the rash of fervent and also deformed religiosity that has gripped Nigeria. His reporting on this phenomenon is astute, nimble and hilarious. He strives to underline the connection between the draining of the country's hope and the emergence of evangelical shamans and wonder-doers as well as Islamic savants of dubious piety. As Nigerians face hopelessness, they clutch, with increasing intensities of desperation, at any passing illusion, whether it be the Islamic premise that every deed (including massive thefts by political leaders) is divinely determined or the neo-Christian magic purveyed by clever dealers in fake miracles.

Through its energetic portrayal of events, Maiers book captures the tumult and pulsation of Nigerian life and experience. In chronicling the miasma of military repression, corruption, religious as well as ethnic violence, this book lives up to the apocalyptic metaphor of its title. Maiers understanding of contemporary Nigerian political crises is considerable. So, too, is his grasp of the historical roots of Nigeria's malaise. In fact, the books distinction lies in the authors ability to be both a reporter and a historian at once. Nigeria is such a maddening place that limning its improbable convulsions would be difficult enough. This book not only succeeds at that task, it also plumbs the historical depths.

Maiers approach, appropriate to the unwieldy tableau of his subject, is to zero in on extraordinary events in Nigeria's drama. Such moments include the annulled presidential election of June 12, 1993, the groaning of the Ogoni people, the environmental devastation and economic depression of the oil-producing Niger Delta area, the increasing use of violence as a tool for political negotiations, nascent separatist impulses, the rise of fundamentalist Islamic and Christian sects, and the obsessive kleptomania of Nigerias leaders, civilians and (especially) military.

In the hands of a less confident writer, the canvas would appear cluttered and unsteady. Worse, it would be a depressing read. Maiers judicious sensibility holds the book together. He offers us an often despairing look at Nigeria, but we don't sense that he wears a mocking grin or a smirk of superiority. Instead, he underlines the robustness and resilience, the sheer ebullience and theatre as well as the hope and promise of people who have been ill-served by self-doubt and cynicism.

This House Has Fallen stands as powerful testimony to a human drama that defies logic and comprehension. I doubt that a Nigerian would have been able to write this book, admirable in scope, lucid in its reporting, measured in its judgments, unsparing in its depiction of a dream betrayed, incisively witty in places, and held together, above all, by the authors firm vision of Nigeria as far too important a country to be abandoned to its hazardous ways. A Nigerian writing the same book would have been overwhelmed, I suspect, by the tragic ambience of the chronicle. Karl Maier has done a wonderful service by pointing us to the fragile foundations of what some of us proclaim a settled nation. We must read this book then make the act of choice to which it challenges us: Do we want to save this nation and ourselves, or do we wish it (and us) to go to hell?