Please be advised: This event will premiere LIVE on this page at 9:00 a.m. EST, Wednesday, January 27.
Nigeria, the “Giant of Africa,” is projected to have the third-largest population in the world by the end of the century. While Nigeria has occasionally made international headlines because of Boko Haram attacks or, more recently, protests against police brutality, Western media coverage remains intermittent and simplistic.
According to John Campbell, the Ralph Bunche senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and former U.S. ambassador to Nigeria, American policymakers have neglected and misunderstood this dynamic country. In his new book, Nigeria and the Nation-State: Rethinking Diplomacy with the Postcolonial World, Ambassador Campbell argues that persistent problems of ethnic violence, weak governance, and endemic corruption are all products of the Nigeria’s conception as an arbitrary colonial entity. To address these challenges and build more durable ties with this strategically important country, Campbell urges U.S. officials to stop projecting their own image of the nation-state onto Africa and embrace a more decentralized approach to diplomacy.
Join Ambassador Campbell and Hudson Institute Research Fellow James Barnett for a discussion of contemporary Nigerian politics, the challenges of post-colonial state-building, and the future of U.S.-Nigeria relations.
