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The Politics and Poetics of Ethnic Bordering: Chukwuemeka Ike's JOURNAL OF BORDERLANDS STUDIES https://doi.org/10.1080/08865655.2019.1571936 The Politics and Poetics of Ethnic Bordering: Chukwuemeka Ike’s Sunset at Dawn Mary J. N. Okolie English Department, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa ABSTRACT KEYWORDS The vastness of politics as a subject of discourse can best be grasped Border; ethnicity; identity; in border studies because politics encompasses both spatial and inclusivity; Chukwuemeka Ike imaginary borders that distinguish one nation/state from another. The existence of spatial borderlines creates territorial demarcations that differentiate geopolitical settings within which policies that establish national identity are forged. But where the disparity in policy exists, national identity tends to fall apart. This is the case with Nigeria whose national identity was built on a questionable colonial policy which neglected the diversity of interests and cultures among the various ethnic groups hastily amalgamated into a single political entity. Literature grapples with political complexity and makes it easily comprehensible through narrative performativity. Chukwuemeka Ike’s novel Sunset at Dawn delineates the intricacy of bordering and debordering that shaped (and continues to shape) the Nigerian nation. I argue here that the identity formation in Nigeria is largely a function of the tensions that characterize both spatial and ideological borders of ethnicity, highlighting the novel’s exposure of the nuances of socio-spatial negotiation which calls for ethnic inclusivity in nation-building. Introduction The notion of ethnic borders is both symbolic and spatial, suggesting a correlation between ethnicity as a social construct and geo-political demarcations. In Nigeria for instance, ethnic groups are geographically dispersed and the borders between ethnic groups seem to be clearly mapped. In Nigeria, there are three major ethnic groups – Hausa, Yoruba and Igbo – and more than 300 minor ethnic groups. However, literary rep- resentations which involve the performativity of border spaces expose the complexity of ethnic bordering. Chukwuemeka Ike’s Sunset at Dawn (2014) delineates and simul- taneously challenges ethnic bordering. It shows the making and the unmaking of ethnic borders through characters’ identity negotiation, occasioned in the literary instance of the novel by the Nigerian-Biafran war. The paper examines the tensions that characterize the in-between spaces of ethnicity which affect individual and communal identity and belonging. Thus, while historical documents relate ethnic divisions, the novel captures the possibilities and intimacies of ethnic interaction and identity formation, exposing CONTACT Mary J. N. Okolie [email protected] © 2019 Association for Borderlands Studies 2 M. J. N. OKOLIE the nuances of socio-spatial negotiation, thereby calling for ethnic inclusivity in nation- building. By engaging a novel that speaks to national concerns, this paper examines how narra- tives conceptualize and engage the lived experience of shifting borders – the social and ethnic distinctions – that attend historical changes in the national and ethnic sphere. It examines the characters’ ability to negotiate their identity at the point of confrontation with spatial shifts and with socially and culturally created divides. Thus, it suggests an alternative imagining of ethnic borders and identity in the text – one that takes into account the complex, emotional, psychological and social experience of resisting or main- taining a delimited identity while living in a border zone. This paper also highlights that borders in Nigeria (and elsewhere in Africa) function differently to the traditional borders discussed by established border scholarship. This is primarily due to the complex, shifting and entangled nature of borders in Africa – borders which came about as a result of colo- nialism – and are marked by social and cultural distinctions such as language, ethnicity and religion. Consequently, while a great deal of work has been undertaken in literature using the frameworks of postcolonial studies, conflict and trauma studies, memory studies, ecocriticism, cultural studies and so on, my paper draws from the perspective of border criticism which very few literary studies in Africa, to date, have employed as a primary lens. Moreover, since this paper focuses on inter-ethnic strife with the Nigerian civil war as the temporal setting, it is necessary for the sake of contextualization, to briefly recapture the historical period that builds up to the civil war. The Politics of Ethnic Bordering: From the Scramble to the Civil War (1885– 1970) From the moment Britain was officially apportioned the territories originally known as the Colonies on the Niger in the wake of the 1885 Scramble for Africa, the physical boundaries of the country that would later become known as Nigeria had transformed through bor- dering, rebordering and debordering. Before 1906, the three British territories on the Niger – Lagos colony (mostly populated by the Yoruba ethnic group), Northern Protectorate (mostly populated by the Hausa-Fulani ethnic group) and Southern Protectorate (mostly populated by the Igbo ethnic group) – that make up present-day Nigeria had existed as independent territories, each administered by a British representative called the High Commissioner. The independence of these territories was evidenced by policies that regulated inter-territorial transactions (Geary 1965, 238–9), sustaining the powerful alienation of the regions from each other “except for uneasy party alliances at the Federal Assembly in Lagos which provided a veneer of unity but could not conceal the deepening external and internal divisions” (Ikiddeh 1976, 162). On 26 February 1906, the first act of debordering was carried out by the Governor of the Lagos Protectorate and Southern Protectorate, Sir Walter Egerton, resulting in the merging of the two Protec- torates, named the Southern Protectorate (Geary 1965, 123). Consequently, between 1906 and 1914, Nigeria operated two independent territories: the Northern and the Southern Protectorates. Finally, on January 1 1914, a total debordering of the internal physical boundaries that separated the Northern and Southern Protectorates was achieved and Nigeria was officially JOURNAL OF BORDERLANDS STUDIES 3 created as one country under British colonial rule with Sir Frederick Lugard acting as the first Governor General. This amalgamation was essentially for administrative and trade convenience, as Britain recorded “astonishing progress and prosperity” (Geary 1965, 50, 124) and a massive rise in revenue eight years after the amalgamation. Consequently, there was no consideration for the geographic and ethnic composition of the territories and the inhabitants, evident in the colonialist’s claim: “the progress achieved was not by any way of conquest, the land and the people were ours for the taking, and the Secretary of State gave orders” (Geary 1965, 1). What is absent from this account, of course, is any consideration of the indigenous people affected by the colonial management of Nigerian physical and ethnic borders which continued till Independence in 1960 and beyond the Independence. Hence, in 1939 there was a reversion to three ethno-regional divisions, then named the Provinces of the North (Hausa), the West (Yoruba) and the East (Igbo) in consideration of the three major ethnic groups. In 1954, after a constitutional confer- ence held in Lagos, the federal territory of Lagos and Southern Cameroon were created out of the three provinces, thereby dividing Nigeria into five parts with federal status (Burns 1972, 16; Ekundare 1973, 13). In addition, the Mid-Western Region was created on August 9 1963 (Burns 1972, 17). During this period, the geographical definition of the internal borders of the three major ethnic groups that make up Nigeria remained unstable because territories with exclusive territorial and cultural characteristics were forced to amalgamate. Many critics have asserted that Nigeria is founded on arbitrary contract and irrational bonding which continues to threaten the unity of the nation, after more than a century of existence. Sir Ahmadu Bello, the then Sardauna of Sokoto, one of the very prominent leaders of the Northern People’s Congress (NPC), described the amalgamation as “the mistake of 1914” (Pereira and Ibrahim 2010, 923). This mistake is aptly described by Obi Nwakanma (2008, 2) as the “colonial fiat” that willed into being the Nigerian nation – a nation which, in Ntieyong U. Akpan’s(1978, 19) terms, is “fragile and superfi- cial”, owing to its artificially imposed foundation. For Adebanwi and Obadare (2010, 388) as well as many other critics of the Nigeria amalgamation, the consolidation of territories evidence “colonial violence and metropolitan arbitrariness”. The arbitrariness of the national boundaries and heterogeneity of the citizens, traditions, cultures, and languages of the three major, and multitude of minor ethnic groups, have remained a flashpoint of internal divergence in terms of inter-ethnic relationships in Nigeria. Worthy of note, with respect to ethnic politics in Nigeria, is the contribution of Lugard’s administrative formula in enhancing the spirit of ethnicism in the new nation. Lugard’s imposition of the administrative and judicial system of the North (which was formerly under his administration) on the South after amalgamation, exercised a long-term effect on the political development of the nation (Crowder 1986, 29) and gave rise
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