WEST AFRICA REVIEW ISSN: 1525-4488

Olúfëmi Táíwò

Oftentimes, delays are terrible things. They can be even more so for an online journal like ours that endeavours to shorten the turnaround time for interventions in critical issues affecting the constituency that we serve. What is more, when such interventions concern current events, such delays can be more than a mere inconvenience. While we do not wish to justify the long hiatus between the last issue of this journal and this one, we are pleased to note that the interventions published in this issue remain topical and, we daresay, probably correct in their analyses. This makes a big difference for all journals that wish to accommodate analyses of current events without becoming a magazine in the process. Needless to say, our readers remain the ultimate judges.

The current issue contains a preponderance of contributions on or about Nigeria. This is a pure accident but not one that is unwelcome, given the importance of the country in the subcontinent and the vibrancy of its intellectual culture. In the first contribution, Olúfëmi Táíwò looks at the issue of the role of intellectuals in Nigerian politics and public policy making. He argues that at the present time the best option is for Nigerian intellectuals to disavow any direct role in politics and public policy making, given the dismal, often pernicious, consequences of their current involvement not only for politics and public policy making but, more importantly, for their vocation.

There are two contributions on the April 2003 Nigerian general elections. The elections marked a rare occasion in the history of the country’s chequered history when there has been a peaceful transition from one civilian elected regime to another. The last time the country tried in 1983, the military ended the tenure of the succeeding regime after only three months in office. Thus, it is to be expected that the elections would rivet scholars’ attention. We offer here two analyses by two eminent Nigerian intellectuals. Chief T. A. Akinyele lauds the elections as a watershed in the country’s history; one that explodes a few myths that have hitherto dominated thinking about Nigerian politics among both intellectuals and ordinary folk alike. In his piece, Wole Soyinka argues that the elections and their outcome are a cynical denigration of the popular will and, for that reason, a travesty.

Odia Ofeimun offers a piece on the Nigerian film industry. At the time that we accepted to publish Ofeimun’s piece, we were not aware that a film festival in New York was planning to recognize ‘Nollywood’, as Nigeria’s film industry is now called, and honour one of its most important pioneers: Tunde Kelani. We are happy to join the small number of scholarly publications taking seriously the growing Nigerian film market and making its strengths and weaknesses known to a wider critical scholarly audience.

In their piece, Asare and Wong present a comparative analysis of the experiences of Ghana and Malaysia in the movement towards development. They give us some explanation for the divergent paths that the two countries have taken towards development that have seen Malaysia become an economic powerhouse and Ghana, with a comparable if not better take-off conditions at independence, remaining in the ranks of poor countries.

Ayo Keheinde’s essay examines how postcolonial writers have appropriated and reconstituted the English language in their texts through some linguistic processes which include loan words, loan coinages, loan blends, pidginization, code switching and the like.

In his piece on Côte d'Ivoire, Siendou Konate examines Ivorian identity and how the political deployment of the concept of ‘Ivoirité’ led to violence in the country. And a contribution on aesthetics by T. K. Biaya rounds off the substantive articles in this issue.

In another excerpt from the archives we present a piece from Dr. James Africanus Beale Horton regarding the Republic of Liberia. Given the recent history of Liberia, Horton’s prognostication does offer some food for thought in its uncanniness even though it was written 130 years ago.

Copyright © 2004 Africa Resource Center, Inc.

Citation Format

West Africa Review: Issue 5, 2004