This House Has Fallen
by Karl Maier
PublicAffairs
What's killing Africa?
AIDS, civil war, economic collapse, corruption and ethnic feuds have run rampant across the continent, turning an ever-growing parade of poor but hopeful nations into wastelands of suffering. From the sharp, desperate terror of Sierra Leone, to the genocidal horrors of Rwanda, to the broad oozing misery of the mighty Congo, Africa suffers, and Nigeria suffers with it.
"This House Has Fallen: Midnight in Nigeria" is a guided tour through an exhausted nation of bitterly divided peoples. Author Karl Maier, a former Africa correspondent for The Independent, roams Nigeria from the mostly Muslim north to the Christian/animist south. Maier's prose is clean and crisp, and he covers his topic with an air of authority tempered by bewildered concern.
To make sense of the labyrinthine patterns of feuding, alliances and hatreds that steep the vast, diverse country of Nigeria, Maier must sort ethnicity from religion.
Maier charts the country's decline from its hopeful post-independence days through a series of military coups, dictators and internal struggles, the most violent of which was the 1966 Biafran War. This conflict, the first African struggle to capture the imagination and pity of the world and bring in global charity, pitted the eastern Igbos in a separatist struggle against the remainder of the nation, with the bulk of Nigeria's oil fields as the prize.
The rest of Nigeria's story is best told from the perspective of the various strongmen — generally military men — who have run the country through the decades. It is here that Maier's particular skill for description pays its biggest dividends.
Maier's great strength is his ability to paint personal portraits. From a southern Christian faith healer to an Islamic zealot, to clan chieftains struggling against the advent of new ways, Maier renders personalities in clear, colorful strokes. This puts human faces on problems like the rivalry between the mostly Islamic Hausas and the generally Christian Yorubas, and the struggle of the tiny Ogoni ethnic minority to recover a fair share of the oil pumped off of its land by international petroleum concerns.
"This House Has Fallen" is an excellent book as a result, but it doesn't tackle the entire task laid before it. Philip Gourevitch, in his book "We Wish to Inform You..." painted a similar portrait of an African nation in chaos - but he followed the threads of Rwandan misery as far as they went, and found himself confronting the sins of Washington, D.C., and Paris. While Maier does touch upon issues like transnational corporate exploitation, he seems to imply that most of Nigeria's problems stem from a corrupt government and a generally cynical populace that lacks the hope or moral fiber to reform its leadership.
While it's probably an oversimplification to lay Nigeria's problems at the feet of England (its colonial power), America and Continental Europe, there's little doubt these nations have failed to effectively confront Nigeria's needs, and have, through their collective demand for oil, done much to prop up some of the country's most irresponsible and violent leaders.
This aside, Maier's energy is well spent — "This House Has Fallen" is an impressive, eminently readable offering for anyone who wants to get behind the tragic headlines and understand the vital heart of West Africa. His writing deftly captures the humor, enterprise and zest for life possessed by most Nigerians, and he testifies to their resilience in the face of seemingly intolerable condiditions.
If Nigeria is to pull itself back into realm of viable nations, the world will need to help. And if we are to help, it's best that we're well educated about its history and unique problems, something that many American leaders and diplomats aren't, as evidenced by a few choice quotes cited by the author. "This House Has Fallen" is a strong tool for those who would try to understand a mighty nation in chaos, struggling to pull itself together.
— James Norton (jrnorton@flakmag.com)
