Environmental sanitation in Nigeria: colonial and contemporary
The state's preoccupation with sanitation reached a peak in 1985 during the latter months of the Buhari regime. Environmental sanitation was chosen as the theme for the fifth phase of the war Against Indiscipline (WAI), which was launched in Kano on 29 July 1985 by the then Chief of Staff, Supreme Headquarters, Major-General Idiagbon. He announced that a one million naira prize would be awarded for the cleanest capital.
A Case Study of Disease and Culture in Action: Leprosy Among the Hausa of Northern Nigeria
In an earlier theoretical paper1 it was postulated that no culture, irrespective of its degree of simplicity or complexity, functions without a range of medical knowledge and beliefs, practices and practitioners. It was advanced that this medical constellation does not operate in a chaotic or haphazard manner, but rather that it may be appraised as a system—a system of medicine. It was further postulated that all systems of medicine, again irrespective of the degree of simplicity or complexity of the cultures, do not perform in a chance, meaningless fashion, but rather that they operate within a definite range of behavior. The interaction of culturally different medical practitioners, diagnoses and treatments, accordingly, need not be an individualistic, subjective affair; it can be appraised and calculated by rational scientific methods allowing for effective prognostication. In a series of papers this reasoning was tested in one particular cul-ture area, the Middle East,2 and a paradigm was structured c...
Continents of Liberty: Emerson and Gerald Vizenor’s Chair of Tears
Ralph Waldo Emerson protested what came to be known as the Trail of Tears in a public letter to President Martin Van Buren in 1838. Th e Cherokee Nation, he argued, had been cheated by a “sham treaty” (Emerson, “Letter” 50), the will of the people ignored, and a false acquiescence to removal written into law. In making a passionate appeal to the highest “chair” of the land, Emerson underscored the great political and moral stakes involved: