The book argues that the non-systematic closure of the civil war has generated memory lapse which has given rise to social conflicts and dissension in the socio-geographical region of the erstwhile Biafra republic. These conflicts in the contemporary history of Nigeria include the persistent Niger Delta oil conflict and recurrent struggle for the realization of a sovereign state of Biafra. In effect, these conflicts are products of structural bias and distributional injustice; and both can be related to the social memory lag of the civil war and weak Nigerian state.
The book traces how memory is produced and disseminated within social groups in Southeastern Nigeria, which is the theater of both the civil war and youth-driven oil conflict in the Niger Delta. While these conflicts have without doubt benefitted from memory lapse of the past, they have equally drawn momentum from ethnicity which has significantly and negatively affected the role of the state.
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