This book is about Nigeria's oil and gas-rich Niger Delta region: --how its peoples: the Igbo, Ijaw, Ibibio, Efik, Ogoni, Annang, etc evolved over the years; with the Igbo, as the main ingredient in the evolution process --how ethnic and regional rivalry, occasioned by petty jealousies and envy threatened their very existence in1966-1969, and led to Biafra --how greed and the gross abuse of state power by Northern Nigeria-controlled military dictatorship in 1966-1999 turned the once prosperous region into a living nightmare. The peoples are emasculated, communities/villages sacked, perceived freedom fighters persecuted and killed, including the writer/environmentalist, Ken Saro-Wiwa, who was hanged in 1995. This book reminds Nigeria and the world of Biafra, and calls for fundamental changes in respect of the Niger Delta, to avoid the mistakes that led to Biafran secession in 1967. It is also a Unity call to the East.

This book is about Nigerias oil and gas-rich Niger Delta region: --how its peoples: the Igbo, Ijaw, Ibibio, Efik, Ogoni, Annang, etc evolved over the years; with the Igbo, as the main ingredient in the evolution process --how ethnic and regional rivalry, occasioned by petty jealousies and envy threatened their very existence in1966-1969, and led to Biafra --how greed and the gross abuse of state power by Northern Nigeria-controlled military dictatorship in 1966-1999 turned the once prosperous region into a living nightmare. The peoples are emasculated, communities/villages sacked, perceived freedom fighters persecuted and killed, including the writer/environmentalist, Ken Saro-Wiwa, who was hanged in 1995. This book reminds Nigeria and the world of Biafra, and calls for fundamental changes in respect of the Niger Delta, to avoid the mistakes that led to Biafran secession in 1967. It is also a Unity call to the East.

Although the Igbo constitute one of the largest ethnic nationalities of Nigeria and the West African sub-region, little is known about their political history before the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. This book is a pioneer study of the broad changes Igbo political systems have undergone since the prehistoric period.

The Igbo are one of the most populous ethnic groups in Nigeria and are perhaps best known and celebrated in the work of Chinua Achebe. In this landmark collection on Igbo society and arts, Toyin Falola and Raphael Chijioke Njoku have compiled a detailed and innovative examination of the Igbo experience in Africa and in the diaspora. Focusing on institutions and cultural practices, the volume covers the enslavement, middle passage, and American experience of the Igbo as well as their return to Africa and aspects of Igbo language, society, and cultural arts. By employing a variety of disciplinary perspectives, this volume presents a comprehensive view of how the Igbo were integrated into the Atlantic world through the slave trade and slavery, the transformations of Igbo identities and culture, and the strategies for resistance employed by the Igbo in the New World. Moving beyond descriptions of generic African experiences, this collection includes 21 essays by prominent scholars throughout the world.

Exuberant storytelling full of wry comedy, dark history, and devastating satire—by the celebrated and original author of the #1 New York Times bestseller, Say You’re One of Them. From a suspiciously cheap Hell’s Kitchen walk-up, Nigerian editor and winner of a Toni Morrison Publishing Fellowship Ekong Udousoro is about to begin the opportunity of a lifetime: to learn the ins and outs of the publishing industry from its incandescent epicenter. While his sophisticated colleagues meet him with kindness and hospitality, he is soon exposed to a colder, ruthlessly commercial underbelly—callous agents, greedy landlords, boorish and hostile neighbors, and, beneath a superficial cosmopolitanism, a bedrock of white cultural superiority and racist assumptions about Africa, its peoples, and worst of all, its food. Reckoning, at the same time, with the recent history of the devastating and brutal Biafran War, in which Ekong’s people were a minority of a minority caught up in the mutual slaughter of majority tribes, Ekong’s life in New York becomes a saga of unanticipated strife. The great apartment deal wrangled by his editor turns out to be an illegal sublet crawling with bedbugs. The lights of Times Square slide off the hardened veneer of New Yorkers plowing past the tourists. A collective antagonism toward the “other” consumes Ekong’s daily life. Yet in overcoming misunderstandings with his neighbors, Chinese and Latino and African American, and in bonding with his true allies at work and advocating for healing back home, Ekong proves that there is still hope in sharing our stories. Akpan’s prose melds humor, tenderness, and pain to explore the myriad ways that tribalisms define life everywhere, from the villages of Nigeria to the villages within New York City. New York, My Village is a triumph of storytelling and a testament to the life-sustaining power of community across borders and across boroughs.

History of The Urhobo People of Niger Delta is the most comprehensive compilation and study of various aspects of the history of the Urhobo people of Nigeria's Niger Delta. It begins with an examination of the prehistory of the region, with particular focus on the Urhobo and their close ethnic neighbour, the Isoko. The book then embarks on a close assessment of the advent of British imperialism in the Western Niger Delta. History of The Urhobo People of Niger Delta also probes the arrival and impact of Western Christian missions in Urhoboland. Urhobo history is notable for the sharp challenges that the Urhobo people have faced at various points of their di?cult existence in the rainforest and deltaic geographical formation of Western Niger Delta. Their history of migrations and their segmentation into twenty-two cultural units were, in large part, e?orts aimed at overcoming these challenges. History of The Urhobo People of Niger Delta includes an evaluation of modern responses to challenges that confront the Urhobo people, following the onrush of a new era of European colonization and introduction of a new Christian religion into their culture. The formation of Urhobo Progress Union and of its educational arm of Urhobo College is presented as the Urhobo response to modern challenges facing their existence in Western Niger Delta and Nigeria. History of The Urhobo People of Niger Delta extends its purview to various other fragments of the Urhobo historical and cultural experience in modern times. These include the di?culties that have arisen from petroleum oil exploration in the Niger Delta in post-colonial Nigeria.