BOOK REVIEWS
(1) Nigerian Pplitical Parties: Power in an Emergent African Na-
     tion by Richard L. Sklar Nok Publishers International 1983 edi-
     tion, 578. pp.
(2) Violence and Politics in Nigeria: The Tivand Yoruba experience
     by Remi Anifowose Nok Publishers Internationill 1982J 354.
     pages
      These two books are on aspects of Nigerian'politics.       Both are published
by a budding Nigerian. Publishing House and reflect one direction of scholarly
work on Nigeria in the past two'decades. African politics in general and Nigerian
politics in particular reflect the recent crisis of the relations between the Afri-
can states and the people because by and large colonialism excluded the broad
masses from elements of formal political organisations. Within the state the
elementary efforts by social groups to engender political parties and electoral
forms excused intellectual interest. This interest was most pronounced in the
modernisation school of thought of the American Political Science Associa-
tion. Modernisation theory as theoretical construct was the guide post to study
African states for the students of African politics were to help to shape the in-
tellectual tradition of modernisation to guide Mrican Scholars. In a sense the
two books, one by an American scholar and the other by a Nigerian political
scientist reflect this trend. Unfortunately modemisation theory remained a graft-
ed product for the liberal democratic forms of government on which the new
political institutions were to be build were never in place. So even before Sklar's
book on parti~ was being read the violence and militarism of Nigeri~ Society
had already dictated the urgent need for new tools of analysis.
       Sklar's work dramatised the crisis of modernisation theory for not even
with a new introduction of this massive book of 578 pages was the reader pre-
pared for the brushing aside of civilian political parties by the coup and bloody
civil war of 1966-1970. After five military coups by 1984, students of Political
Science need to be able to understand the political process beyond the ambi-
tions of leading personalities in society. Rigorous analysis is required to lay bare
the processes which give rise to political forms including political organisations
such as parties or non party forms such as military rule. Such analysis enable
the students of politics to penetrate political forms and hence not to be sur-
prised by changes of personalities at the helm of state power.
      These questions have become more urgent in a period when the structural-
ism of the behavioral school of American political Science seeks to rear its head
again after the period of military rule undermined the ideas of nation building
and modem political institutions. Is it possible to say that the process of politi-
cal change in Nigeria in the past twenty years has rendered Sklar's work super-
ficial if not out of step with the social reality? .Some may want to make this
conclusion but it may best be done by historians. In one way it is fair to say
that the massive documentation on the leading personnages of Nigerian polit-
ics in the heady days of anti-c-olonialism does not prepare the reader for the
 forms of political ¥bitration which were later entrenched in Nigeria.
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            The organisation of the book follows the s~ructural functional methodol- .
     ogy of the author. The book is divided into three parts. Part I the 'Rise of po-
     litical parties', Part II 'Studies in power and conflict' and part III 'Party structure
     and social structure'. These formally divided parts do not draw from the polit-
    ical economy of the society to be able to shed light on which social forces were
    at the forefront of the parties and whether they could sustain these parties. Hence
    while the reader could hardly disagree with the wealth of background informa-
    tion on intercommunal links, one may question the relevance of much of this
    information.
           A rigorous analysis of colonial rule would have been necessary including
    the effects of colonial political divisions and colonial ideologies. This is a neces-
    sary recourse for one of the underlying assumptions of the book was that
    colonialism was a modernising force. Such theoretical clarity would help one
    to digest the wealth of empirical data marshalled for the book. As a documen-
    tary evidence of a period of Nigerian political history, this book is without rival.
    The problem is how this evidence argues the case for political parties.
           A crucial question which can be legitimately posed is, to what extent did,
    a generation of Nigerian politics scientists internalise Sklar's meth09 of study-
   ing the politics of personalities and centralising the politicisation of ethnicity?
   This question arises from the way in which the second book attempts to follow
   the method of Sklar,           in the theoretical frame and in the analy.tical form.
   Remi Anifowose's book on violence and pOlitics brought out the violence which
   was not present in Sklar's work but without a proper explanation of why this
   violence. developed. An analytical introduction on violence was contradicted
   in the main body of the book which demonstrated the theoretical muddle of
   the work. In the end all forms of violence, whether by the oppressor or the
   oppressed, are presented in the same way. Hence the anti-colonial workers revolt
   is presented as similar to the intra-class violence fomented by the petty bour-
   geoisie. Tracing the political turbulence in the Tiv division            . and Western
   Nigeria, the author utilises the formal techniques of polling and surveys to draw
   up his analysis of violence in politics.Unfortunately       there is no coherent thread
   which shows why violence should have occured; In terms of organisations, the
  bo9k follows from the theoretical explanation of violence to give a background
  to the Tiv and then a chapter on the explanation for the violence. The same
  formula is followed for the Yoruba.
          Like Sklar's work the book brings together some of the behavioural tools
  on belief system traditions and voting patterns but without elucidating the class
  basis of these facts. In Nigeria the evolution of class differentiation has been
  a long and deep process. The book does not show to what extent the violence
• was orchestrated by emerging forces. Without this the reader has to fall back
  on the image of the tradition of the societies where tribal loyalties superseded
  other class ties. Even if this were the case, the author does not analyse the rela-
  tionship between class formation and ethnic identification. Yet by default the
  author )1inte4 at !WIPeof the .contradictions when he alluded to the catlks of
  electoral conflict (pp. 238) the struggles over scholarship, contracts, loans to
  farmers and the issue of licences io traders ..
          The author in the preface of his book Jives credit to the work of Sklar.
 TIlls showed up in the body of this work. However,.while Sklar's book was
 written before the carnage of the civil war of 1966-1968~.Anifowose's work was
 written after the war and three coups. tat. This sbOuld have afforded the author
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 some time to reflect on the toois of analysis of SIdar and its inability to seC'
 beyond personalities. Moreover the squandering of the petro-dollars and the
 chaotic capital accumulation in Nigeria may now lead othe£ students of Nigeri-
 an politics to seek to develop new tools of analysis. Both books under review
 expose the limits of bourgeois theory. They show that idealist conceptions of
 politics must be linked to the social reality of the forms of class truggle arising
 from the location of Africa in the international division of labour.
 Horace Campbell.
 Department of political Science and Public Administration. University of Dar es Salaam.
 Review: Hans Hedlund & Mats Lundahl, Migration and Change.
 in Rur-fl; Zambia. Scandinavian Institute of African Studies,
 Research Report No. 70, 1983. pp. 107.
    Studies of migration in Africa abound in the literature these days, with very
 few such studies revealing anything new. This small volume, a report of research
 conducted in Eastern Zambia in the mid-1970's, approaches the topic yet again,
 but with a difference. Instead of focussing on migrants (and their activities,'
 etc), Hedlund and Lundahl revers~ the focus and ask how migration has ef-
 fected those who remain behind in the rural areas!
       Chapter 2 is a discussion of theoretical models which have been used in
 the study of migration. Despite raising some interesting issues concerning the
 rural poor and women, the authors apparently accept a modified version of
 the Harris-Todaro migration model (which stresses the economic rationality of
 the migrant) and the utility of static models in general to explain an extremely
 complex situation in which the nature and scope of economic opportunities have
 changed dramatically o,:"er the last 50-60 years in Zambia.
       Chapter 3 then attempts to briefly set out the relation between traditional
 agriculture (chitemene) and patterns of migration. The system of reserves created
 by white settlers and discriminatory market practices (affecting corn) had the
 effect of concentrating too latge a population on too small an area with a con-
 sequent decline in household production and rural malnutrition. At the same
 time, however, the Copperbelt was developing as a major centre for wage labour
 and ushered in massive rural-urban migration w~ch has, over the decades,
 changed in nature from temporary to permanent migration.
       The pressures for migration out of Chipata (the area studied) were con-
 siderable and have resulted in a rural population in which men of productive
 age are absent and one third of all households are headed by women. In gener-
 al, the authors have made a case for the development of small-scale rural
 producers which is taking place within the context of rapid social differentia-
 tion of the rural areas. Chapter 5 attempts to present a static model predicting
 the consequences of rural-urban migration upon the district. While interesting,'
 this model contains too many simplifying assumptions (which the authors not~
  and overly formalises what in fact is a complex process by which capitalism
 has penetrakd pre-capitalist agriculture creating the basis for rural underdevelop-
 ment and rural poverty. The data used to illustrate the model is very interesting
  and demonstrates their hypothesis that rural-urban migration .has resulted in
.declining per cai>ita incomes because of the shortage of male agriculture. labour .
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