Nigeria

In his new book, Wole Soyinka fears Nigeria may be a farcical illusion. But unity is better than ethnic violence.

There is always something new out of Africa," said the ancient Greeks, as recorded by Pliny the Elder. The contemporary Africa-watcher, however, might be forgiven for wondering whether it is not all more of the same. In 1984, as in 1983, events in southern Africa and the devastating drought and famine which cost the lives of countless tens of thousands again dominated the year. For Nigerians, the new year began with yet another military government, which had ousted the elected civilian administration on the last day of 1983. In Chad, civil war ground on with no solution in sight. Libya's unpredictable leader, Colonel Muammar al-Qaddafi, continued to make headlines with stories ranging from the killing of a British policewoman in London to his dabbling in the affairs of Chad and other countries. At the United Nations, the controversy over Namibia continued to set records as the longest running debate in that organization's history. And U.S. suggestions that its policy of "constructive engagement" with South Africa was succeeding continued to be greeted with skepticism in many quarters.

For much of Africa this year, immediate threats to survival dominated national agendas. In the extreme north and south, Libya and South Africa attacked the territory of weaker neighbors. Less noticed but far more widely devastating, a harsh drought destroyed crops across the continent, confronting more than 20 million people with the prospect of starvation. Declining rates of per capita food production over the last decade, coupled with escalating debt and falling returns on exports, left many African states at the margins of existence--at least according to Western calculations. And at year's end, a military coup abruptly ended four years of American-style democratic government in Africa's largest nation, Nigeria, renewing fears about political upheaval throughout the continent.

At least one African in four is a Nigerian; there are more Nigerians than Germans or Frenchmen or Britishers. Nigeria is now America's second-largest supplier of crude oil. Yet most Americans know nothing of this vast country, or if anything, only that there was a bloody civil war a few years back.