This House Has Fallen: Midnight in Nigeria [Anglais] [Relié]

"We... ignore Nigeria at our peril," warns Maier, a journalist who was stationed in Africa for more than a decade (as a London Independent correspondent). Nigeria, the tenth most populous country in the world and the sixth largest oil producer, is home to more than 300 distinct ethnic groupsAand it is a society in total chaos. Billions of dollars have flowed into Nigeria in exchange for oil, yet most people live in grinding poverty; meanwhile, ethnic and religious strife threatens to split the country apart, and years of ineffectual and corrupt military rule have resulted in a lack of health and educational services. In painting an often depressing portrait, Maier (Into the House of Ancestors) argues these facts have combined to create civil disorder and despair in the country that is possibly the most important on the African continent. Maier untangles Nigeria's political and social chaos for readers by talking to individual NigeriansAdesperately poor Igbos, angry taxicab drivers, military and religious leaders, businessmenAand creating out of these encounters a compelling narrative, though one that fails to cohere at points when it feels as though Maier has pasted together old articles with the glue of historical background. In an effort to learn something about Nigeria's hopeAand despairAfor the future, he writes about Ken Saro-Wiwa, the Ogoni activist who was hanged by the government; about a doctor/hotel owner who is also the founder of a political party; and about angry young revolutionaries who no longer have any faith in the system. Throughout, Maier puts a human face on a disheartening situation that seems remote and impersonal to most Americans. Maps. (July)
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"To most of us Nigeria is a mysterious country, hot, scary and a long way off. Cooly, clearly, Maier tells its extraordinary story; sometimes horrifying, often hilarious, never boring. If it offers little hope for Nigeria, this book inspires admiration for the resilience, resourcefulness and humanity of Nigerians. The best book on contemporary Africa for years."

Maier (author of the internationally well received Into the House of the Ancestors, 1998) explores the promise and paradox of Nigeria, a nation of fractious ethnic groups, legendary corruption, and bountiful resources, overseen by dictators for all but 10 years since its independence in 1960. Maier, a reporter who was based in Nigeria for 10 years, recounts the history of this nation cobbled together from British colonial interests in its formative years and dominated by international oil interests in more recent years. This checkered past is reflected in the ethnic tensions among the Yoruba, Ogoni, Ijawi, and other tribes as well as by the tension between Christians and Muslims. Maier discusses Nigeria's struggle with democracy; he conducted extensive interviews with Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, who came to power in a military coup in 1985 and led a repressive regime until 1993, when his hand-picked successor, Moshood Abiola, was elected. Babangida later annulled the election, and Abiola eventually died in solitary confinement. Maier also interviewed the father and son of Ken Saro-Wiwa, writer and political activist, hanged by Babangida's military. This is a revealing look at a complex and troubled nation, the largest trading partner the U.S. has in Africa. Vanessa Bush
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Vivid scenes from a potential meltdown, as veteran Africa reporter Maier (Into the House of the Ancestors, 1997) gives the history of Nigeria and suggests that regional tensions and pervasive corruption threaten its survival.Like many journalists, Maier is at his best when reporting on events or interviewing newsmakers and ordinary citizens. He is less successful at making those incisive connections that transform reportage into history. Nigeria, which he describes as perhaps the largest failed state in the Third World, was only formed in 1914, when the British united the tribes of the Niger delta with those of the north and central region. These tribes had, and continue to have, little in common: the northerners are mostly Muslim and (because they dominate the military) have led most of the post-independence governments that seized power unconstitutionally. Delta tribes like the Ogoni were once enriched by trade--first in slaves and then in palm oil--but they have lately failed to benefit from the oil discovered in the region. The central tribes, mostly Christian, resent the role of the northerners in the coups that have roiled Nigeria, and their efforts to establish Muslim law--the Sharia. Maier visits each region and talks with its leaders and community activists. He meets General Babangida (whose decision to annul elections in 1993 provoked a national crisis) and the family of noted writer and Ogoni activist Ken Saro-Wiwa (who was executed in 1995 despite an international outcry). He notes that although Nigeria has earned $280 billion from its oil, at least half the population is poor and lacks access to clean water. Literacy is below that of the Democratic Republic of Congo, and a wealthy ten percent enrich themselves at the expense of the rest. The current ruler, former General Obasanjo, was democratically elected in 1999, and Maier believes (although he is unable to convey much conviction after this depressing litany) that he represents Nigeria's last chance to avoid falling apart.A quick and lively study that doesn't dig too deep. -- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

"If you care about Africa, if you are fearful for its future, baffled by its complexity, astonished by its resilience, read This House Has Fallen by Karl Maier . . . Few reporters can match the author's capacity to get to the heart of a nation and assess the hopes and fears of its people. "

To understand Africa, you have to understand Nigeria, and few Americans understand Nigeria better than Karl Maier. In the tradition of Philip Gourevitch's bestselling We Regret to Inform You... and Redmond O'Hanlon's No Mercy, This House Has Fallen is a bracing, disturbing, evocative report on the state of Africa's most populous, potentially richest, and most dangerously dysfunctional nation.

Each year, with depressing consistency, Nigeria is declared the most corrupt state in the entire world. A nation into which billions of dollars of oil money flow, Nigeria's per capita income has dramatically fallen in the past two decades. All of the money has been stolen by elites. Also stolen has been democracy. Nigeria's leaders tend to elect themselves, often with the help of a gun. Military coup follows military coup. A rare democratic election is often merely a prelude to the next seizure of power by a general who wants greater access to the state's rapidly depleted vaults. A country of rising ethnic tensions and falling standards of living, Nigeria is a bellwether for Africa. And yet some think it is on the verge of utter collapse, a collapse that could overshadow even the massacres in Rwanda.

A brilliant piece of reportage and travel writing, this book looks into the Nigerian abyss and comes away with insight, profound conclusions, and even some hope.

From 1986-1996, Karl Maier was the Africa correspondent for The Independent newspaper in London and a contributor to The Economist and The Washington Post. Since then he has written two books on Africa, Angola: Promises and Lies and Into the House of the Ancestors, which received glowing reviews internationally. He lives in London.

Onitsha was often touted as the biggest trading center in West Africa, which, given that raucous bargaining was a way of life up and down the Atlantic coast, was saying something. At the market in Onitsha, went one story I heard a few years back, you could purchase a used Boeing 747 jet engine in working order.

Onitsha's fame for outright lawlessness had earned it the reputation among some visitors as the worst city in the world, although of late the southeastern oil town of Warri, the scene of two years of violent ethnic clashes between Itsekirris and Ijaws, has probably stolen that dubious title. A BBC colleague had a rather unsettling experience in Onitsha one evening when he told the receptionist at the hotel in which he was staying that he was going to take a walk. "You can't do that," she said, "it's too dangerous." After he insisted that nevertheless, he was going out, she asked him with a straight face to settle the bill before he left. He refused and left the hotel but turned back almost immediately after gunfire erupted just around the corner.

The sheer dilapidation of its roads can take one's breath away. Jude Okafor, my taxi driver, and I entered Onitsha from the east in search of Port Harcort Road, not to be confused with the road to Port Harcourt. Arriving in the center of Onitsha was to meet raw bedlam face to face. The pandemonium of cars, buses, and motorbikes with horns at full volume, occasionally a heard of cattle led by nomadic Fulanis, and a stifling heat quickly left one's head spinning. Drivers in Onitsha took quite literally the admonition on the sign boards to "horn before overtaking" and they cut in and out of traffic with razor-like margin you could shave with. Markets of thousands of people spilled into the streets with no discernable rhyme or reason. Jude, an Igbo accustomed to the calmer realms of Enugu and Abuja, gripped the wheel in a spasm of panic and occasionally mumbled about how "uncivilized" the place was. By comparison, Lagos seemed rather placid.

We asked our way three times and received three different sets of directions, all provided with the air of total confidence. Finally we found the route. It involved reaching the road to Port Harcourt. Unfortunately, it had rained within the past hour. Up ahead was a pool of water deep enough to submerge the engine of an average sedan. For a moment Jude froze. "My car! I can't go there," he said indignantly, before turning his head to look out the back window at a menacing onrush of traffic. "Okay, okay, we are going. We are going!" He shouted more than anything else to fortify his courage.

Quite ingeniously, he piloted our car onto the edge of an ad hoc garbage dump of overwhelming rankness. Its height of at least seven feet reached the bottom of a sign that warned against urinating, defecating, or dumping rubbish anywhere in the area. Jude revved the engine and roared into the pond, lifting his legs from the pedals as he did in case water rushed inside. For an instant, there was the sensation that we were floating.