The Great Unravelling

ver since the end of Nigeria’s three-year civil war in 1970—a costly conflict that consumed an estimated three million lives—the nightmare scenario for the national defence and security establishment has always been a similar conflagration. In the elite imagination, the absolute worst that could happen would be a reprise of the war. Pundits and politicians alike habitually invoke the spectre of such bloodshed as a sort of national Armageddon. The expectation is

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