When looked at through the lens of official statistics, press headlines about insecurities, global rankings putting Nigeria at the bottom of the table – you would very likely conclude that Nigeria should be a failed state … or even if not a failed state, it is highly likely to become a failed state in the near future.
This conclusion – as argued by us (About Us) would in fact be wrong. Every day millions of Nigerians go about their daily business (not in easy circumstances to be sure, but Nigerians are resilient). Nigerians are trying to build a business, earn their living, get an education, find a spouse, raise their children, and – certainly world-class in this dimension – party.
And this is the central question we are trying to answer: why is Nigeria not a failed state?
Our hypothesis – which we want to test by seeking input from you and then hopefully gather into a book – is that Nigeria is not a failed state because Nigerians have self-organised in the absence of a functioning public sector. That is, Nigerians organise their own security, their own power, their own education, their own healthcare, their own infrastructure, their own future. And they self-organise at every scale – individual, group, State, National – and
in every sphere of human life.
Here is the first chapter of the proposed book, Nigeria – the state that refuses to fail. Chapter One (1)
