Encountering the Nigerian State

WADE ADEBANWI is Assistant Professor of African Studies at the University of California, USA.   EBENEZER OBADARE is Assistant Professor of African Studies at the University of Kansas, USA. He is the recipient of the MacArthur Foundation award and considered a rising star in African studies.

"Those looking for standard versions of nascent democratization, the weak or failing state, familiar models of state-society relations, or the liberating and liberalizing effects of civil society should look away! Imaginative, erudite, and thought-provoking, this is the sort of sustained engagement with the space between state and citizens that the study of Nigeria has been crying out for." - David Pratten, Director, African Studies Centre, Oxford University "How do those who inhabit the often conflicted, turbulent, and chaotic worlds of postcolonial Africa apprehend those, inside and outside of the state, who exercise power to the point of excess or violence? Why has the Nigerian state in particular, occupying such a crucial space in the lives of all Nigerians, seemingly lost its restorative and redemptive powers for the Nigerian masses and middle classes? In their magisterial collection of essays, Adebanwi and Obadare offer some provocative, exciting and often counter-intuitive answers to these and other questions. Here is a book to savor, one which takes the notion of Nigerian lifeworlds very seriously whether in the slumworld of Maroko or on city streets with student protestors. At a moment (once again) when the future of Nigeria seems in question, here is a pathbreaking and foundational collection of essays by a posse of first rate intellectuals and scholars who have much to say about what that future might hold. A tour de force." - Michael Watts, Class of 63 Professor, University of California, Berkeley

• Excess and Abjection in the Study of the African State; E.Obadare & W.Adebanwi Deconstructing 'Oluwole': Political Economy at the Margins of the State; O.Ismail The Spatial Economy of Abjection: The Evacuation of Maroko Slum in Nigeria; S.Folarin 'Rotten English': Excremental Politics and Literary Witnessing; S.L.Lincoln The Perils of Protest: State Repression and Student Mobilization in Nigeria; B.Akintola Vocalizing Rage: Deconstructing the Language of Anti-State Forces; A.Olusola Olaniyan The Subaltern Encounters the State: OPC-State Relations 1999-2003; O.Olarinmoye The State as Undertaker: Power and Insurgent Media in Nigeria; A.Olukotun From Corporatist Power to Abjection: Labour and State Control in Nigeria; E.Remi Aiyede When the State Kills: Political Assassinations in Abacha's Nigeria; I.Olawale Albert The Sharia Challenge: Revisiting the Travails of the Secular State; R.Suberu Koma: A Glimpse of Life at the Edges of the State; M.Kabir Isa References