The Third Wave of Historical Scholarship on Nigeria

Book excerpt: This festschrift in honor of Professor Ayodeji Olukoju, one of Nigeria’s brightest historians, brings together scholarship representative of the third wave of historical scholarship on Nigeria. Olukoju, a pioneering historian of Nigerian maritime history, also produced significant revisionist scholarship in the areas of economic, urban, and infrastructure history. The contributions in this volume epitomize the groundbreaking directions of his career; they are marked by a search for new explanations and venture into uncharted terrain in Nigerian history. Aside from its critical engagement of Olukoju’s impressive scholarship, this volume presents chapters on such underresearched aspects of Nigerian history as sexuality, children and youth, crime, memory, and HIV/AIDS. It offers historical explanations of a host of development challenges confronting Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, and resilient reinterpretations of the place of history in nation building. The contributors, pioneering experts in their various subfields, bring their research and teaching experience to the fore and deploy neglected data as they unfold topics that shed light on Nigeria, its peoples, and cultures. They show that history, both as a daily practice and as an academic endeavor, remains vital as Africans seek solutions to the continent’s critical development challenges.