
This Present Darkness
A History of Nigerian Organized Crime
Stephen Ellis(Author)
OUP India (Publisher)
Published on 1. July 2016
Book
Hardback
256 pages
978-0-19-049431-5 (ISBN)
Description
"Nigeria and Nigerians have acquired a notorious reputation for involvement in drug-trafficking, fraud, cyber-crime and other types of serious crime. Successful Nigerian criminal networks have a global reach, interacting with their Italian, Latin American and Russian counterparts. Yet in 1944, a British colonial official wrote that 'the number of persistent and professional criminals is not great' in Nigeria and that 'crime as a career has so far made little appeal to the young Nigerian'. This book traces the origins of Nigerian organised crime to the last years of colonial rule, when nationalist politicians acquired power at a regional level. In need of funds for campaigning, they offered government contracts to foreign businesses in return for kickbacks, in a pattern that recurs to this day. Political corruption encouraged a wider disrespect for the law that spread throughout Nigerian society. When the country's oil boom came to an end in the early 1980s, young Nigerian college graduates headed abroad, eager to make money by any means. Nigerian crime went global at the very moment new criminal markets were emerging all over the world"--
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New Delhi
India
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Dimensions
Height: 223 mm
Width: 148 mm
Thickness: 32 mm
Weight
529 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-049431-5 (9780190494315)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Professor Stephen Ellis, PhD, was Desmond Tutu Professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the VU University, Amsterdam, and author of, inter alia, The Mask of Anarchy: The Religious Roots of the Liberian Civil War, Worlds of Power: Religious Thought and Political Practice in Africa, Madagascar: A Short History, and Season of Rains: Africa in the World, all available from Hurst.