The Open Sore of a Continent

by Wole Soyinda

Published 12 September 1996
This is an exploration into the history and future of Nigeria. In the process of elucidating the Nigerian crisis, the author opens readers to the broader questions of nationhood, identity, and the general state of African culture and politics at the end of the 20th century. He examines the different ways in which a nation can be defined, and asks how these varying definitions impact the people who live under them. The book concludes with a call for the global community to address the issue of nationhood to prevent further religious mandates and calls for ethnic purity of the sort that have turned Algeria, Rwanda, Bosnia and Sri Lanka into killing fields.