AFRICAN STATES AND NATION-BUILDING IN THE CONTEXT OF MODERNITY,

DECOLONIZATION, AND GLOBALIZATION

MARTIN F. ASIEGBU
Department of Philosophy
University of Nigeria, Nsukka

Preamble
If modern nation-states, presently, focus on achieving greater nation-building, it is because,
among other reasons, previously most popular models of nation-building have failed in the face of
new problems and challenges. Some of these include the problems of refugees, immigration,
integration of subdued minorities, the rise of new fanatical Islam, terrorism etc. Earlier on, modern
states’ nation-building policies bought into dominant majority nation-building model, forcing
minorities to adopt dominant majority identity.1 However, the subdued minorities have taken
advantage of the universalized global modernity to press for self-determination and political
autonomy. In Africa, nation-building runs up against peculiar difficulties associated with colonial
modernity, decolonization and globalization. Except in few African states, like Somalia, which
possess homogeneous ethnic population, common culture, and religion, modern African states’
nation-building raises anew the issue of the different African ethnic groups dispersed across different
African states and territorial boundaries.
Already at independence, it was obvious, even to the colonial powers, that the fragmented
African ethnicities, making up modern African states, pose one of the greatest challenges to emergent
African states. For, if we believe that there exist an “upward of 5000-8000 distinct ‘peoples’ or
‘nations’ composing various modern states2, more than half the number is found in Africa, if one ever
took count of African ethnicities. Consider, for instance, the country, Nigeria.
Composed of, at least, 250 ethnic groups many of her citizens entertain, on and off, serious
fears about its unity and continued existence as a nation. While some of her citizens actively discuss
Nigeria’s disintegration, others wish it were soon. In popular consciousness, the disintegration of the
country is a lively subject of discussion. The ex-Military Head of State - Yakubu Gowon - had, as his
political cliché the slogan, “to hold Nigeria together is a task that must be done.” If Gowon entertained
the view in the time of Nigeria’s civil crisis, an ex-US Ambassador to Nigeria gave the country 15
years to disintegrate. In his review of Soyinka’s Open Sore of a Continent: A Personal Narrative of
the Nigerian Crisis, Crawford Young(1996) noted the gnawing question at the heart of Nigeria’s
founding fathers, the question that today constitutes “a running debate in the popular consciousness
of the Nigerian citizens.” Young remarks, “The three towering figures of Nigeria's early years of
independence - Obafemi Awolowo, Nnamdi Azikiwe, and Sir Ahmadu Bello - had all at some point
in their careers expressed doubts about preserving Nigeria as one country.”3 In 1947, he emphasized,
“Awolowo even commented that Nigeria was not a nation but "a mere geographic expression."
For most African states, multiple ethnicities remain their highest hurdle to a successful nation-
building. Chinua Achebe’s (1983) view is valid both for his home country, Nigeria, and for other
African states. Achebe writes, "We have lost the twentieth century,"4 he regretted, while asking, "are
we bent on seeing our children also lose the twenty-first?" If the Europeans were responsible for the
horrible events of 20th C Africa – events like the trans-Atlantic slave trade, colonialism, imperialism,
European supremacist ideology etc. Achebe (1986) opines that the present generation of Africans had
better taken their destiny into their hands so as not to torpedo the ship of the 21st C Africa.
One, often, comes across the view in literature that modern African states have no reason to fail
in nation-building if such highly ethnicized modern European states like Germany, France, Italy,
succeeded in integrating their various ethnic groups into a modern nation-building states.5 Such a
view makes the audience believe that Africa’s problem of nation-building has to do solely with lack
of political will and the choice of the policies, and strategies put in place to achieve nationhood. Major
proponents of the view, further, reject the emphasis that some Africans give to the thoughtless attitude
of European imperialist powers. The imperialist powers, mindlessly, carved up Africa into modern
states without regard for the different ethnic populations. In what appears to support Berman (2004),
Emerson (1961) argued that Africa posed an awkward problem in spite of the conduct of the European
imperialists. The problem was: however one carved up Africa, Emerson maintained, one would rarely
avoid splitting up homogenous ethnic groups. Hence, he concluded, Africans need not hold the
European imperialist powers responsible for Africa’s problems, much less for those of nation-
building. Yet, this claim of Emerson contradicts his previous statement - that the colonial imperialist
powers did not expect African states to last long because of the divided ethnicities composing the
modern states of Africa. By seeking to exonerate the imperialist behavior, Emerson saw nothing
wrong in the European balkanization of Africa. For a political scientist of his renown, the Africans
had no legitimate right to negotiate their territorial boundaries, and identities. They needed, of
necessity, European powers to effect such an exercise. The truth of his position, strictly considered,
is seen in the consequences that such an usurpation have engendered in Africa! As early as the
independence, pioneer African leaders perceived the huge threat that multiple non-homogeneous
ethnicities to fledgling modern African states. In his electoral campaign of 1960, for instance,
President Houphouet Biogny of Côte d’Ivoire expressed great concern about the unity of the ‘tribes’
as a precondition to the unity that Pan-Africanism advocated.6
That the African states have lasted so long in spite of the expectations of the imperialist powers
ought not be lost to those thinkers who hold up some European countries as Africa’s models of nation-
building. European ethnicities negotiated their identities through conquests, treaties, marriage
contracts etc.7 By these means, those ethnicities actively decided their fate. Thus, the sense of
nationhood arose more easily among the different identity groups. Not so with African identities and
ethnicities. European imperial powers did not permit such a luxury to African ethnic groups or
‘tribes.’ They sliced up homogenous ethnicities and merged irreconcilable others. It is, therefore,
preposterous for any thinker not to perceive the possible impact of such an artificial creation on
nation-building programs of modern African states. Even if African ethnicities do not, as Berman
argues, replicate the ‘stagnant,’ non-dynamic, primordial ethnicities, it is, nonetheless, a cavalier
disregard for truth to ignore, either partly or wholly, the impact that European balkanization of
African ethnic groups has on African states’ attempts at nation-building.8 Even if European modern
states, composed of innumerable ethnicities by the 17th Century9 succeeded at nation-building, it
hardly provides sufficient reason to hold them as ideal for African modern states. Without prejudice
to their success, these modern states are, at present, embarked on wide-ranging policies aimed at
nation-building in spite of themselves. Worse still their success provides no sufficient reason for
Joseph’s claim that “overthrowing the colonial order has since proven much easier [for Africans] than
replacing it with viable nation-state.”10
Joseph’s statement, for all its logic and obviousness, fails to take cognizance of the initial goal
and resolution of All-African Peoples Conference at Accra in December 1958. The Conference had
resolved to readjust the “artificial frontiers drawn by imperialist powers to divide the peoples of
Africa, particularly those which cut across ethnic groups and divide people of the same stock.”11 If
the Pan-Africanist movement failed to carry out this resolution, it was not because, as Emerson
suggested, redrawing the territorial boundaries would lead to “further disintegration and chaos”12 on
a large scale. Neither was it because of the differing perspectives of pioneer African leaders, nor
because some previous African kingdoms and empires would lay claim to their former territories.
The resolution was suppressed because European imperial powers vigorously opposed it, disrupting
the entire process and its operation in their own interests. Those powers campaigned against the idea
forcefully because they feared that the event would force them to lose their specific colonies and areas
of influence. The colonial powers awaited the disintegration of African states after those powers
granted independence to African states. Some colonialists simultaneously predicted the collapse of
those African states. That African states still survive remains a great surprise to those powers.
The context of nation-building of African modern states is defined by decolonization,
modernity, and globalization. This context raises problems peculiar to modern African states. These
problems are issues of leadership and the political will to pursue nation-building, citizenship, cultural

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diversity, access to the state’s resources, democratization, territorial boundaries, religion, cultural
diversity, language and a lot more - all these give peculiar coloration to nation-building in Africa.
The paper shall discuss some of these issues in the context of colonial modernity, decolonization, and
globalization since this context defines, we argue, the meaning, influence, and progress of modern
African nation-states. By discussing these issues within the given context, we are discussing the
program of nation-building of modern African states.

Pre-Colonial African Nations and Nation Building

A good number of theorists about Africa’s nation building emphasize that pre-colonial Africa
was dotted only with negligible ethnic nations; that the nations originated with colonial introduction
of modernity13. This would mean that African kingdoms and empires never engaged, if at all, in nation
building. In other words, such kingdoms and ethnic nations like the Benin kingdom, the Asante
empire, the Wolof etc. did not pursue nation building. Yet, these kingdoms and empires had
specifically defined territorial boundaries; possessed standing armies, and boasted of the same
religion and, in majority of cases, a common language. In spite of these features, some of these
theorists claim that those ethnic nations did not engage in nation-building; that they remained
disparate entities on their own. Although those kingdoms and ethnic nations arose through conquests
and wars, and pursued, in their own fashion, a common purpose and nationhood, those theorists insist
that those kingdoms pursued no common goals and purposes. Simply, they had nothing doing with
nationhood. Such a view exemplifies the colonial misunderstanding that Africa was no more than a
concatenation of ‘tribes’, and not nations.
Although Africa is known for her conventional multiethnic nations, African nations existed
in pre-colonial period. The unreasoned European restructuring of territorial boundaries forced African
ethnic nations to reconfigure their identities and communities in response to colonial modernity.
Colonial powers, on their part, never aimed at nation-building, else they would have sought to “break
down [ethnic] barriers”14 that divided African ethnic nations to facilitate nation-building processes.
Instead, these powers exploited Africa to maintain, as France and Britain especially did, their
metropolis in Europe. Refusing to put the requisite structures in place, the colonial powers awaited
the collapse of the neophyte African nations-states. This state of affairs certainly inspired
Nolutshangu’s view that European imperialist powers anticipated from Africa the impossible - that
“out of the debris of failed colonialisms, unitary states and nations were summoned to emerge.” As a
result, when those artificial creations of nation-states persevered, the false prophets of African doom
did not believe their eyes. And so, colonial administration never pursued nation-building as a state
goal in Africa. We begin our discussion with what appears the least obstacle to nation-building in
Africa, one of the major obstacles to nation-building in Africa: the patronage framework. We shall
discuss it in the context of the colonial introduction of modernity.

Colonial Modernity and the African Ideology of ‘Big Man’ and Patron Clientelism
The Patronage system depicts a framework largely present in nearly every society.
Characteristically personal, the system is ‘social framework of trust’15 illustrating the patron-clientele
relationship. Such a network of relationship binds people together in mutual ties of benefits,
obligation, loyalty and support. In dispensing access to the state, the principal source of wealth and
power, colonialists relied heavily on the framework, for instance, in the appointment of their African
collaborators. Mamdani16 refers to the colonial organization of the structure of these collaborators at
various levels as “decentralized despotism.” In spite of the benefit of the system, agents of colonial
modernity dealt the clientage system a deadly blow when they characterized the patronage system as
illustrative of a corruption framework.
Aware that colonial modernity mediated new sources of power and wealth, the African
collaborators competed for the opportunities that this modernity offered. Although this struggle for
recognition issued from individuals, it (the struggle) became more meaningful on the level of ethnic
nations. Various ethnic groups became forced to renegotiate their boundaries, some had to abide by

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the boundaries the colonial powers established, some others had to adopt and incorporate the new
identities. African ethnic identities and communities, who could not sufficiently challenge the
colonial powers, resorted to the politics of the ‘Big man’ to access the resources and wealth of the
state. African collaborators of the colonialists perceived the patronage-clientelism primarily as a
means of attracting state resources to their ethnic communities, and secondarily, as a means of
promoting self aggrandizement. Hence, where it proved advantageous to them, the political elites
resorted to the patronage system. Its immense effect on African societies led to the development of
what Ekeh17 referred to as dual loyalty. The aloof and non-committal attitude of the faceless colonial
state in contrast to the caring, positive, and outgoing attitude of the ethnic nation gave rise to African
nationalism.
Understandably, the fraternal considerate attitude of ethnic nations to their member
commanded the support, loyalty and obligations of the members. However, such an attitude alone did
not generate African nationalism. Other attitudes like the bureaucracy of the colonial state, the
capitalist nature of its market economy, the sometimes bitter contest and competition for access to
the wealth and resources of the state18 contributed to the origination of African nationalism. The
immediate benefit of nationalism surfaced unflinchingly in the African demand for independence.

Decolonization and Nation-building

The decolonization era began with the independence of African states. By the 1960s, most
African countries had gained their liberation. African pioneer leaders set down to restructure the
colonial institutions of modernity in an attempt to construct a new Africa. Motivated by the nationalist
ideology, the leaders pursued wide-ranging, all-inclusive nation-building policies. They pursued
national projects and sought to lift their citizens out of poverty and ignorance. They fought to provide
the citizens with basic amenities of portable water, good transportation, and Medicare. These projects,
undertaken nationally, revealed the importance of the nation in the visions of the leaders. Rather than
the prevailing European ideologies of Marxism and Socialism, African leaders all privileged African
socialist framework. African socio-political frameworks emphasized African values. While Nyerere19
emphasized familyhood - “Ujama,” Nkrumah20 Africanized Marxism to construct the ideology of
consciencism etc. Guided by nationalism, they sought to integrate African ethnic groups in the new
African states.
While some leaders embarked on massive construction of national identities like Burundi and
Uganda, which abolished their traditional Kings as Heads of State in 1966 and 1967 respectively,
others bent backwards to the tempting ethnic influences. This led to President Samore Michael’s
remark that “for the nation to live, the tribe must die”21. Some leaders were taken in by the demands
of their ethnic groups. Since the elections saw the electorate voting along ethnic lines, governance
became highly ethnicized, compounded especially with the clientele systemic framework. As a result,
some leaders became awash with traditional titles. This turn of events derailed the policies of nation-
building of some governments. While the United Nations promoted a Federated Ethiopia and Eritrea
in 1950, for instance, Haile Selessie, in 1962, abolished it. In a similar move, President Nimeri of
Sudan nullified the Southern Regional government formed after the 1972 Addis Ababa Peace
Agreement.
One of the prominent features of the decolonization era was the suppression of political
opposition and the promotion of a single political party - the ruling party - as the mega party. The
opposition either had to belong to the mega ruling party or risked being viewed as anti-state actor,
since the ruling party portrayed itself as the state’s emblem of unity. Thus, as early as the
independence, pioneer African leaders had to grapple with the problem of ethnicity in nation-
building. Really, all Francophone African countries pursued one-party system of government.22 In
Anglophone Africa, one notes a similar development. Nkrumah insisted that “Ghana is CPP and the
CPP is Ghana.” When Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia pronounced Zambia a one-party state in 1972,
opposition arose along ethnic lines.
African governments’ policies, besides nation-building, intimately betrayed a concern for
decolonization. This led to a good number of changes. While most of the changes aimed at effacing
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evident colonial trademarks littered over African states, others sought to produce nation-states.
President Nyerere of Tanzania, for instance, in 1973 moved the capital, Dar-es-Salaam, situated at
the coastal region, to Dodoma, much at the centre of the country. He reasoned that the capital was
not a possession of any ethnic group nor should it retain the name given it by the colonial regime. In
a similar move, President Banda of Malawi relocated the capital to Lilongwe in 1965, while Nigeria’s
President Yakubu Gowon supervised the seminal plans to move the capital from Lagos to Abuja, a
move that eventually became completed during later regimes.
If the above named countries relocated their capitals, others renamed theirs for the same
purpose. While President Tombalbaye of Chad preferred the African name, N’Djamena, to the name
of a French army officer, Fort-Lamy, Mozambique opted for the name of the river - Maputo - than
maintain the name of a Portuguese explorer, Lourenço Marques. Since citizens of many countries
attach great importance to national symbols like flags, currencies, names of their countries, changing
any of these symbols do have a great impact on the citizens themselves. Aware of their influence, the
postcolonial African governments resorted also to changing their currencies mostly taken over from
their colonial masters. If Ghana preferred the Cedi to Ghanian Pound Sterling, Malawi opted, in 1965,
for Kwacha just as Zambia. Nigeria has Naira, Sierra Leone the Leone while Botswana in 1976
changed to Pula. If these changes seemed superficial, some countries introduced National Service
Scheme to indicate a broader nation-building. In 1961, Côte d’Ivoire introduced National Service
Scheme just as Sudan and Nigeria.
Largely, when thinkers allude to nation-building, they mostly call attention to a country’s
possession of a common religion, a common language, a common culture etc. Some thinkers go as
far as identifying communities speaking a common language with nations. Most colonies either
adopted the languages of their colonial masters or they combined them with some African language.
In this regard, Nyerere notably declared Swahili, Tanzania’s national language in 1967. At
independence, two colonial languages divided Somali - English and Italian. Religion is a powerful
force in Africa. While most countries in North Africa reveal an overwhelming percentage of Islam,
Mauritania in 1985 and Comoro in 2001 decreed Islam a state religion. Whereas Sudan incorporated
Sharia into the country’s legal code in 1983, Emperor Haile Selessie of Ethiopia declared the
Ethiopian Church a national religion. Despite the religious dimension of the 2011 post-election
rumblings, Nigeria remains a secular state. Nonetheless, differences among the various ethnic groups
provided the military a loophole to seize power and enthrone about the most retrogressive periods in
African politics.

The Military Era

The overthrow of Togo’s President Sylvanus Olympio in a military coup in 1963 initiated the
rise of an overwhelmingly corrupt military era in Africa. The distinctive political development
infested the entire Africa and held it hostage until late 1990s. The frequency of military coups at the
time saw the Francophone Africa at the forefront. Benin Republic was, by far, ahead of Nigeria, the
avantguard Anglophone state. A good part of Nigeria’s leadership saw military rule ‘writ large’ in
her history. After the initial coup of 1966, barely six years after her independence, the ethnic
misgivings and other factors threw the country into civil war. The military never gave up power until
1979. Rarely had Obasanjo’s military regime supervised a transition to civilian rule than the military
overthrew the civilian regime of President Shehu Shagari. By 1999, the country had retrogressed by
two decades of military rule. Now under democratic rule, thinkers like Joseph23 argue that leaders,
like Obasanjo, who re-emerged as a civilian after retiring from the military, would hardly qualify as
a ‘civilian.’
The head of the military junta, Mathieu Kérékou, held Benin Republic to ransom for a long
period of time as its military leader. Not until the state capacities and institutions broke down
completely did the international financial institutions intervene. A national conference in February,
1990, wrenched sovereign powers from Kérékou and instituted a transition government. Another
military-generated crisis overtook Ivory Coast (Côte d’Ivoire) in 2010. President Laurent Gbagbo, a

5
previous military commander in Ivory Coast military, sloughed off his military uniform to become
President. Defeated by his archrival, President Alassane Ouattra, Gbagbo rejected the November
2010 Presidential election results and threw the country into a political impasse. The standoff
embroiled the entire country in a hopeless conflict that claimed lives of innocent citizens.
All things considered, the military forcefully expelled the politicians under the pretext that the
corrupt ‘big man’ had ethnicized the state and its institutions. Posturing as new agents of national
unity, the military succumbed to a profligate lifestyle. Espousing state-focused patronage system, the
military elected themselves into advantageous, dominant positions where they were never held
accountable to anyone, not even the state. Ever before their accession to office, African military were
poorly equipped. Since the turn of fortunes, state budgets expended enormously on military
equipment and armaments. Peculiar to military rule is its laissez-faire attitude to nation-building. If
the civilian governments pursued nation-building, sometimes in a less aggressive manner, the military
shelved nation-building policies altogether. They discarded the political ideology of development that
the political elites pursued. The military rarely dedicated the revenues of the state to nation-building.
Unrest, pro-democracy protests, the rise of civil societies, muscling the opposition etc. characterized
that era in Africa.

Democratization and Nation-building

Joseph epitomizes two essential challenges that faced pioneer African leaders after the
independence. He represents them thus:

It was once assumed that the first cohort of postcolonial leaders in Africa, who dismissed
incipient pluralist systems, would use their authority to build nations out of their diverse
societies and strong states out of the bureaucracies that the colonial powers had left behind.
Generally, they did neither. 24

Joseph25 describes the democratic processes in Africa as denoting a “tortuous trajectory.” He isolates
the three types of contemporary rulers of African states as follows - (1) autocratic; (2) democrats, and
(3) a middle of (1) and (2). If Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia, Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan, Isaias Afwerki
of Eritrea illustrate the autocrats, and John Kufuor of Ghana, Amadou Toumani Touré of Mali, Jakaya
Kikwete of Tanzania represent the democrats, Obasanjo’s regime in Nigeria occupied the third place
– the middle of the first two26. The ‘upsurge of democracy’27 in Africa of the 1990s represents
Huntington’s28 ‘third wave of democracy’ in Africa. This continent alone, Soyinka maintains, is the
sole region where the popular ‘demand for democracy far exceeds the supply.’ About Nigeria, the
Nobel Prize winner asserted, “the Nigerian people have always approached democracy, and the elites
have always pushed them back”29
In 1997, Bratton and van de Walle (1997:79) provided the statistics of the varying degrees of
democratization in Africa. Accordingly, of 47 African countries, which operated multi-party systems
in 1989, 5 were under military rule, 29 held on to one-party civilian rule, 2 (Namibia and South
Africa) were white settler regimes. By the end of the decade, 16 countries elected new governments,
while 24 blocked reforms or manipulated the elections to remain in power. The demand for
democratization in Africa derived from two sources: the United States of America (USA) and the
International Finance Institutions (IFI). These forced African states to democratize since they
(USA/IFI) apprised themselves of the decaying state of affairs prevalent in modern African states.
These intitutions and the USA were quite aware of the grievious danger that African states, which
had lost their legitimacy with their populations, posed to the world. Africa revealed an awful image
of a continent made up of weak states, inter-ethnic conflicts and hostilities, corrupt leaders, huge
refugee population, disrespect for territorial integrity, insecurity, peace-keeping operations, etc.
Events in the continent bear this out. Britain’s military had to oversee the return of peace in the war-
torn Sierra Leone between 2000 and 2002; the United Nations Peace-keeping Operations were
indispensable in Liberia, Côte d’Ivoire, the Horn of Africa, and presently the Sudanese Darfur region.
All through the democratization period, the contribution of the leadership to nation-building
is reflected in the view that “the democratic character of many African political systems fluctuates
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according to the whims of their leaders ….”30 A definite feature of African leaders, at the time, was
their attempt to perpetuate themselves in power. Defeated in a referendum to extend his powers,
Kenya’s President Mwai Kibaki in 2005 accepted defeat. But the crisis of 2007 occluded the gains of
democracy intiated in 2005. Kenya’s 2007 Presidential election produced a standoff between Kibaki
and Odinga that led to intercommunal strife. It was about the worst tragedy of electioneering in
Africa. It had USA and other bodies seeking to enthrone two Presidents at the same time so as to
obviate hostilities. In what appears to resemble Kenya’s situation, the Zimbabweans in 2000 defeated
Mugabe’s ultimate quest to extend the powers of his regime. The reaction, thereof, led to his
confiscation of lands, brutalization of the opposition, and he even exiled some others.
The defeat of President Obasanjo’s quest for a third term registered the biggest gain of
democracy in the populous nation, Nigeria. Obasanjo’s greatest undoing was his miscalculation and
overconfidence that the Senators were solidly behind him. The other contributing factor was the
leadership vision of the Senate President, senator Nnamani, who urged the Senators to vote in ‘your
father’s name.’ The failure of Obasanjo’s third term bid is comparable to another yet ex-military Head
of State, Buhari’s inebriate desire to rule Nigeria for a second time. Defeated at the pools, Buhari
rejected the 2010 Presidential election results, which attitude engineered the Moslem North to rise
violently against their fellow citizens. In all these, nation-building suffered the most and the citizens
became divided along ethnic lines.
Waves of protest, spanning the years between 1988 and 1992, cut across various cadres of
African societies. The protests were popular. The spread of the protest movements, whatever their
leadership, expressed the importance of the nation in popular consciousness. It involved Students’
Associations, trade unions, civil servants, professional organizations etc. The diminishing economic
resources of various states exacted a stiff economic toll on the population. It led, eventually, to
protests demanding economic reforms. The protests, however, did not focus only on deteriorating
economic fortunes of the different states. From preoccupation with the economy, the protests veered
off into urgent quests for political reforms and civil liberties. Whereas previously, a negligible number
of Africans rarely took any political interest in the happenings of their states, preferring to leave the
issues of the state to their leaders, the waves of protest overturned this nonchalant attitude. Civil
societies were born. Nearly, all Africans became concerned about the ways the leaders ran the affairs
of the nation. In this way, the protests raised the political consciousness of the Africans. Nationhood
grew in popular consciousness and Africans came to perceive the state as theirs and the sole way of
expressing this consciousness.31
Thus, in about 11 Francophone African states, the protests led to national conferences,
constitutional reforms, multi-party and presidential elections, the rise of civil societies etc. In Benin
Republic, the military junta Mathieu Kérékou was driven out of office. President Mobutu proved
more astute. He prevented the implementation of the conclusions of the National Conference much
like Obasanjo, who selected a committee rather than allow a national Conference to run its course. In
Anglophone African states, especially Nigeria, Ethiopia, and South Africa, constitutional reforms
became a primary preoccupation of the protest movements. Those reforms involved largely
restructuring the different constitutions for a more peaceful integration of different ethnic groups.
These countries tinkered with various forms of federalism. Ethiopia privileged Ekeh’s32 model
of governance and made ethnicity the basis of its federalism. In Nigeria, the political discourse
centered on a demand for a new constitution to replace the 1979 constitution in vogue. Nigerians
awaited the new constitution that would take into consideration several issues of national disquietude
– the federal principle of revenue allocation, the issue of citizenship and indigeneity, the question of
access to state resources, the boiling problem of the Niger Delta, and the creation of more states. Most
Nigerians agreed on the unity of the nation – one Nigeria. Considered in this way, the idea of
nationhood appeared to have grown in the consciousness of the people. South Africa preferred what
Berman33 referred to as the “devolved union” model of governance that emphasized a strong centre.
All things considered, the reforms had a singular purpose: they aimed at a greater integration of
different ethnicities and pointed to a growing popular awareness of nation-building. The

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democratization fervor ebbed by the end of the 1990s. However, the aggressive preoccupation with
globalization and economic reforms had already begun with the democratization process.

Globalization, Neo-liberal Reforms and Social Decay of State Institutions

The neo-liberal reforms (SAP), which African states undertook under pressure, proved
catastrophic. The reforms threw overboard all the efforts of the African states at economic
development and nation-building. The reforms privileged free market all too narrowly. The
International Financial Institutions (IFI) sold to African states the idea of the phenomenally
progressing economic models of the ‘Asian Tigers’ (Stiliglitz ). Impelled by the promise of rising
foreign investments, which was to lift their citizens out of poverty, encourage huge developments and
create jobs, African governments swallowed the bait and embarked on neo-liberal reforms. Yet, the
reforms proved to be no more than a part of the globalization of capitalist system. Imposed from
outside as conditions for aid and financial assistance to African states, these reforms bit deeper,
harsher and more astringent on African states. The reforms were a package of Structural Adjustment
Program (SAP). Essentially, SAP consisted of a devaluation of each state’s currency, scrapping
accessible basic services that some states provided their citizens. The states, thus, gave up on free
education, health programs, and also on their percentage shares in state-owned companies; they had
to privatize public corporations, and charge fees for state-sponsored services that benefitted the
public.
Ferguson34 considers the reforms as the “steepest economic inequalities seen in human
history.” Since the reforms generated a gradual deterioration of state capacities and its social
institutions, the states could not cater for the social welfare of their citizens. As a result, the rich-poor
gap widened. Abject poverty, overpopulation, HIV/AIDS pandemic, and environmental pollution in
the cities constrained African states to disavow all socio-economic, and development projects meant
for the good of the citizens. Nation-building policies and projects received little or no attention.
Without exception, African states, which pursued the recommended neo-liberal reforms had their
economies go downhill in a gallop. Most illustrative of this claim is Côte d’Ivoire. Of all African
states, Côte d’Ivoire had a viable and progressive economy. Actually, economists referred to the
country as ‘the economic miracle of Africa.’ Yet, her pursuit of the neo-liberal reforms jolted her
progress economically. By the end of 1980s, her economy had taken a sharp decline. Nearly, All
African states suffered the same fate. Berman represents the economic state of affairs prevalent in
Africa, at the time, graphicaly thus:

In 1976 the per-capita GNP of sub-Saharan Africa was 17.6% of the world average, but
dropped to 10.5% by 1999. The average GNP per capita in African states almost 10%
between 1970 and 1998, while the continent’s share of global economic activity was only
1.1%, despite having 10% of world population. Rather than neo-liberal reform bringing
predicted increases in foreign investment, Africa received only 0.6% of the world total
population.35

The effects of SAP penetrated every nook and cranny of African society, cutting deeply into
the fabric of the society. Governments severely reduced their workforce and defaulted on the payment
of public officers and civil servants. State governments and their ministers diverted the foreign
donors’ aids into personal funds. Faced with the HIV/AIDS pandemic, for instance, very few African
state governments could address the crisis-level of the disease. The impact of SAP on African states
created on the world the impression that African governments do not “invest on their people” (cf.
World Report on Millenium Development Goals). State and public institutions declined rapidly. Most
African states were not just ‘weak states,’ they became embroiled in conflicts and disorder. Described
as a “frontier” region, African continent became an arena where nothing works, except the culture of
corruption. The effect of SAP on African economies affected the patronage framework as well.

Neo-liberal Reforms and Access to State Power and Resources

8
 The continuous slumping of the economy of African states induced, sometimes, a ferocious
struggle for the states’ declining resources. Where neo-liberal reforms indented the state workforce,
it also clipped the wings of the patronage system. Unable to maintain the network of their clientels,
the patrons found their influence dwindling. If the common man pawned on the patron for the crumbs
of bread falling of the patron’s table, the severe-biting reforms had the stooges rebel against their
masters. Denied equal access to the state resources, the lackeys began addressing adverse criticisms
against patronage network. The erosion of state institutions and the deteriorating patronge system,
led eventually to violent conflicts, increase in crime wave, social unrest and violence. Frustrated,
jobless citizens ‘criminalize’ the state, instilling fear and terror on the citizens. Social violence spread
widely, forcing some patrons to raise personal securities. Others elicited the protection of state
security agents. Armed robbery and kidnapping became popular in some regions and impelled capital
flight in those regions. The youth not only spear-headed criminally violent activities, more
importantly is the nature of the violent crimes. Gruesome, particularly revolting and loathsome, the
nature of those violent activities compelled Western media to perceive them in a wrong light.
Narrow and simplistic, Western media’s view obscures a number of complex issues
indispensable for an adequate grasp of the degenerating relationship between the state and the
citizens. The Rwandan genocide much as the Balkan genocide provides handy examples. The
genocides reproduce a grim global record of state-sponsored and organized violence. These hideous
events as well as multiple others, Bauman insists, illustrate the depraved bequest of colonial
modernity. Contemporary conflicts in Africa, Berman36 concludes, are traceable to the “political
economic legacies of the colonial experience and its characteristic harsh and routine use of coercion
against the subject population.” The state pitches herself against the citizens, in these violent, state-
sponsored criminal activities.

Citizenship and Nation-Building

The purpose of government is the welfare of the citizens since a contract exists between the
state and the citizens.37 The impact of neo-liberal reforms engineered the protest movements that
urged the citizens’ demand for economic and poltical reforms. The reforms produced particularly
new conceptions of citizenship. If Ekeh’s38 model of two publics in Africa were anything to go by,
then neo-liberal reforms gave rise to an understanding of citizenship, much different from the formal,
mostly common idea of citizenship. This is the concept of “ethnic citizenship”. This idea refers to an
exclusive conception of citizenship that privileges the indigenes over ‘settlers’ and foreigners. It
defines its ramification by excluding those individuals that do not belong, by birth, to a specific ethnic
group. The exclusive idea of citizenship is ‘ready-to-hand,’ to use Heidegger’s39 expression, to
disqualify an opposition candidate at elections.
The meaning of citizenship, its reference and who belongs to a particular nation are significant
issues to nation-building since they are pivotal to ethnic conflicts. In the wake of democratization,
citizenship and membership of an ethnic nation became ethnicized. People disputed themselves along
these lines once it had to do with elections. To stand for an electoral office in a constituency within
an ethnic nation, one is required to be a native of that ethnic nation. To block an opposition, his
identity as a native of an ethnic nation is questioned, and with it is one’s eligibility, that is, his right
to contest the electoral post. Such disputes constitute a ploy to eliminate strangers from contesting
for office for fear that the non-natives might upstage the indigenous peoples of an ethnic nation.
People, also, dispute the participation of non-natives in an NGO-project located within an ethnic
national territory. Which project need be sited in what region also provokes ethnic conflicts.
In Francophone Africa, ethnicized citizenship has successfully provoked conflicts of
autochthony (‘son of the soil’ syndrome). Such conflicts devolve around “recognition of the
authenticity of communal and individual membership” in an ethnic nation.40 Struggles of autochthony
seem to define “criteria of identities.” It relies heavily on “discourses of exclusion of individuals”
based on “socio-cultural territorial boundaries, circumstances, of mobility, immigration,
urbanization, mixed ancestry within a diverse population.” Often, autochthonous crisis derives from
xenophobia, some “sense of victimization” and targets innocent victims and people of contested
9
identities. In Nigeria, most religious conflicts in the North selectively target Nigerians of the South-
East, sometimes, people of the Middle Belt and Christians. That was the case in the recent post-
election violence in Northern Nigeria. Apart from a few Muslim members of the Peoples Democratic
Party (PDP), all others were selectively targeted. In the 2011 revolution, which ousted Gaddhaffi of
Libya, the rebels targeted the black Africans of the sub-Saharan Africa under the guise of Gaddhaffi
supporters. Yet Gaddhaffi earned his good name with the European Union (EU) at the expense of the
black immigrants headed for Europe.
In Côte d’Ivoire, the crisis of 2001-2002 raged over the ethnicized citizenship. It was a conflict
over access to land and definition of a true Ivorian citizenship vis-a-vis foreigners and settlers. At the
time, the government established the National Operation of Identification that required the Ivorian to
return to their ethnic homelands to be identified as ‘true’ Ivorians. At the village, the local notables
identified the individuals as true Ivorian citizens. Once registered, the individual acquired the rights
to stand for an electoral office; and the right to land.41 The criterion for defining a true Ivorian was
no other than “ivoirité,” whatever that meant. Citizenship conflict in Côte d’Ivoire served as a
measure to muscle the opposition at elections. In Zaïre, Rwanda, and Burundi, the citizenship
struggles merged with autochthony conflicts. From 1997 to 1998, autochthony and citizenship
became major issues in a conflict that tended to degenerate into the 1957 Rwanda pogroms.
In some Anglophone states, conflicts over land and citizenship are gradually gaining the
greater part of the people. In Kenya’s 1992, 1997, and 2008 elections, these issues served as a strategy
to exclude non-indigenous or foreigners from actively standing for electoral offices.42 The 2008
outbreak of violence in the “rainbow” nation - South Africa - targeted the immigrants and refugees
from neighboring Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Nigeria etc. The victims were denounced as perpetrators
of crime and HIV/AIDS carriers. In the era of globalization, economic decline and restricted access
to state resources, politics of authenticity has turned into xenophobia, the underside of democratic
nationalism.43

Conclusion

Postcolonial Africa has disappointed the high hopes of its admirers.44 Simon generalized the
disappointed expectations about the liberated Zimbabwe to Africa as a whole. He writes,

When the blacks rebelled and won their war in 1979, they looked forward to a plenty and
competence that existed nowhere else in Africa, even in South Africa. . . . But paradise has
to have a superstructure, an infrastructure, and by now it is going, going - almost gone.
Zimbabwe could have been an example to all of Africa.45

If Africa is a disappointed hope; if she dons an upsetting visage of a conflict-ridden and disenchanting
continent, one need not forget that nation-building is, as Berman expresses it, “an unfinished project.”
If relatively stable modern states in the West aggressively embark on nation-building, at present, it is
because nation-building is an unfinished project. The surprising feature of African states is their
resilience, in spite of the portentous conflicts. Despite multiple interethnic conflicts derailing the
policies of these states in Africa, the states have not disintegrated. The resilience of modern African
states is attributable to the firm belief and commitment of Africans in African states. What this means
is that the idea of nationhood waxes stronger in popular consciousness of the African. Different ethnic
groups may not urge for self-determination and political autonomy, although they may compete for
access to state resources and offices. However, quests for self-determination does not necessarily
urge nation-building. Kymlicka46 lets his audience entertain such a view when he insists that conflicts
arise among African ethnic groups for access to state resources rather than for demand for political
autonomy. With many ethnic groups, nation-building depends on an adequate integration of these
ethnic groups into a united nation. If we follow Joseph47, nation-building without democratization
would be as good as pursuing a mirage. Yet, democratization without ethnicity seems impossible in
Africa, what with the African’s emphasis on one’s ethnicity.

10
 Political elections in some African states, in the wake of democratization, totally failed to
douse the minority fears about ethnic majority domination model of nation-building and access to
state resources. Thus, rather than mitigate corruption and break up the patronage system,
democratization hyped it the more. In Ghana, a sub-Saharan state noted for its successful elections
since 1992, for instance, the electorate voted along ethnic lines48; and this, in spite of the deep
involvement of civil societies and other socio-cultural institutions like the Church, trade unions,
universities, professional organizations. Elections in Africa may not do without the ethnicity. This
because ethnicity affords the political class a level ground to enforce ethnic bloc voting via the
patronage network.
In this paper, we have examined how nation-building progresses in Africa’s war-torn modern
states. The context of colonial modernity, decolonization, and globalization exposes other factors
indispensable to nation-building. These factors include leadership, citizenship, democratization,
religion, and culture. How they affect nation-building was our preoccupation in the foregoing body
of the paper. About African nation-states, which pursue nation-building, Berman remarks,

The nation-states of Africa as those elsewhere, are continuously unfinished projects,

contingent outcomes of universalized social forces of globalized modernity and their own
distinctive cultural diversity, mediated by idiosyncrasies of the colonial experience. African
nations are both reflected shadows of Western nation-states, the real historical nation-states,
rather than the idealized forms used to assess the failures of non-Western nations and are a
potent of challenges posed to all nations by contemporary globalization and the current world
crisis.49

ENDNOTES
1
W. Connor, “Nation Building or Nation Destroying?” in World Politics vol. 24 (3), April 1972, pp. 319- 355.
2
W. Kymlicka, “Nation-Building and Minority Rights: Comparing Africa & the West” in Berman, D. Eyoh, and W.
Kymlicka, Ethnicity and Democracy in Africa. Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2004, pp. 54-71.
3
C. Young, “The Impossible Necessity of Nigeria: A Struggle for Nationhood.” Foreign Affairs, 1996,
4
C. Achebe, The Trouble with Nigeria. Enugu: Fourth Dimension, 1983, p. 4.
5
W. Kymlicka, ibid.
6
R. Emerson, “Crucial Problems Involved in Nation-building in Africa.” In The Journal of Negro Education, vol. 30
(1960), pp. 193-205.
7
B. Berman, “Ethnicity, Bureaucracy and Democracy: The Politics of Trust.” In B. Berman, D. Eyoh and W. Kymlicka
(eds.), Ethnicity and Democracy in Africa. Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2004.
8
B. J. Berman, “Ethnicity and Democracy in Africa.” JICA-RI Working Paper, no.22, November 2010.
9
W. Kymlicka, op. cit, pp. 54-71.
10
R. Joseph, “Nation-State Trajectories in Africa.” Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, Spring/Winter 2003,
pp. 13-20.
11
R. Emerson, op. cit., p. 193.
12
Ibid., p. 194
13
Confer Emerson 1960 and Kymlicka 2004.
14
R. Emerson, op. cit., p. 195.
15
B. J. Berman, “Ethnicity and Democracy in Africa”, op. cit.
16
M. Mamdani, Citizens and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism. Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1996.
17
P. P. Ekeh, “Colonialism and the Two Publics in Africa: A Theoretical Statement.” In Comparative Studies in Society
and History, vol. 17(1), 1975, pp. 91-112.
18
B. J. Berman, “Ethnicity and Democracy in Africa”, op. cit, p. 10
19
J. K. Nyerere, Ujamaa: Essay on Socialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971
20
K. Nkrumah, Consciencism: Philosophy and the Ideology for Decolonization, Monthly Review Press.
21
M. Mamdani, Citizens and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism. Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1996, p. 135
22
J-P. Bayart, Politics of the Belly: States in Africa. Michigan: Wile, 1973, p. 128

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23
R. Joseph,
24
R. Joseph, “Nation-State Trajectories in Africa.” Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, Spring/Winter 2003,
pp. 13-20. Also confer R. Joseph, “Africa: States in Crisis,” Journal of Democracy, vol. 14 (3), 2003, pp. 159-170
25
Ibid.
26
Ibid.
27
Ibid.
2828
S. P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century. University of Oklahoma, 1991
29
(cf “Nigeria 2007: Political, Social and Economic Transitions,” www.northwestern.edu/african-studies/Nigeria2007-
ConferenceReport.pdf) quoted in Joseph 2003:99ftn12).
30
R. Joseph, “Africa: States in Crisis,” Journal of Democracy, vol. 14 (3), 2003, p. 159
31
Confer C. Young, “The Impossible Necessity of Nigeria: A Struggle for Nationhood.” Foreign Affairs, 1996. See also
M. Bratton and N. van de Walle, Democratic Experiments in Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997
32
P. P. Ekeh, (1990) "Social Anthropology and Two Contrasting Uses of Tribalism in Africa," Comparative
Studies in Society & History 32(4), 1990, pp. 660-700. (NOT 1971)
33
B. J. Berman, “Ethnicity and Democracy in Africa”, op. cit.
34
J. Ferguson, Global Shadows: Africa in Neoliberal World. Durham: Duke University Press Books, 2007
35
B. J. Berman, “Ethnicity and Democracy in Africa”, op. cit.
36
Ibid., p. 19
37
T. Hobbes, The Leviathan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.
38
P. P. Ekeh, “Colonialism and the Two Publics in Africa: A Theoretical Statement.” In Comparative Studies in Society
and History.
39
M. Heidegger, Being and Time (tr. J. Macquarie and E. Robinson). New York: Harper & R0w Publishers, 1962.
40
B. J. Berman, “Ethnicity and Democracy in Africa”, op. cit. p. 26.
41
P. Geschiere, The Perils of Belonging: Autochthony, Citizenship and Exclusion in Africa and Europe. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2009, pp. 98-117.
42
J. Lonsdale, “Soil, Work, Civilization and Citizenship in Kenya.” Journal of Eastern African Studies 2 (2), July 2008;
S. Mueller, “The Political Economy of Kenya’s Crisis” in ibid.; D. Anderson and E. Lochery, “Violence and Exodus in
Kenya’s Rift Valley 2008: Predictable and Presentable?” in ibid.
43
J. Crush, “The Dark Side of Democracy: Migration, Xenophobia and Human Rights in South Africa”, Special issues
2. International Migration 38 (6), 2001, pp. 103-133.
44
C. Achebe, The Trouble with Nigeria, op. cit.
45
P. Simon, “Nigeria Has Huge Problems; Also Huge Potential” This Day, 11 November 2002, p.80.
46
W. Kymlicka, op. cit, pp. 54-71.
47
R. Joseph, “Africa: States in Crisis,” Journal of Democracy, vol. 14 (3), 2003, p. 159.
48
H. Jockers et al, “The Successful Ghana Election of 2008: A Convenient Myth? Ethnicity in Ghana’s Elections
Revisited.” German Institute of Global and Area Studies. Working Papers no. 109 (September, 2009
49
B. J. Berman, “Ethnicity and Democracy in Africa”, op. cit.

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