Teaching Comparative Government and Politics

Friday, May 02, 2014

Cleavages in Nigeria are still very wide and powerful

It's been nearly 50 years, and the civil war in Nigeria still holds great political power. Other cleavages in the Middle Belt and in the north east are also powerful and dangerous. How best to reach resolutions to the problems caused by these ethnic cleavages?

Half of a Yellow Sun film delayed by Nigeria censors

Nigeria's film board has delayed the release of Half of a Yellow Sun, a film about the Biafran war…

The film is based on a novel by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie about the 1967-70 civil war, in which more than a million people died.

Aliyu Tanko, from the BBC Hausa service, says that more than 40 years after the end of the war, the subject remains extremely sensitive in Nigeria.

Some fear the film, which is seen as sympathetic to the Biafran separatist cause, could stoke up ethnic tensions, he says…

The director… said the film raised issues which Nigeria badly needed to discuss.

"One of the reasons Nigeria is more divided today - 40 years after the end of the war - than it was before the war started, is because we have refused to talk about the elephant in the room."

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