Gutek Chap. 18

I have to be honest in saying that this chapter somewhat bored me, but only because the person I interviewed was from Nigeria and his account was much more exciting! Fortunately there were a few new things that I learned or that caught my attention. One is the distributions of age in Nigeria: only 2.8% over 65 and a median age of 18. For one, I did not know that a median age of 18 was possible. This demonstrates a huge population boom or a huge increase of early deaths. The huge population boom seems likely since Gutek mentioned that there was a government idea for a 4-child per family policy (compare this to the 1-child rule in China!) However, I also believe there must be a rapid increase in early deaths due to AIDS, malaria, and other diseases (potentially even from dirty water/air because of Nigeria's lax environmental protection). Interesting enough, my interviewee said that a few of his great grandparents are still alive. In his family and surrounding village, most people live to their 100s or at least 90s because they eat locally grown healthy food and stay very active. However, in other regions or nowadays this may be drastically affected by viruses/diseases.

Another interesting piece was the effort of Nigerian planners to include study of Nigerian history and culture as a way for nation building/unity. As Gutek states, "The problem, however, has been to create a shared national history where none existed." This statement could not be more true. If someone asks us what happened in the 1800s in the U.S., we would be able to tell them about a few key aspects pretty easily. However, my interviewee was not able to tell me much about Nigerian history past his own mother's and father's experience and the oral tradition of his Yoruba village. This is because Nigeria did not exist until the 1800-1900s when it was colonized by the British. How can you teach history when there was no history? How can you teach "Nigerian culture" when it is really 250 different cultures?

One last note is that I thought it was interesting that the political structure of Nigeria mimics the U.S. with a president/chief of state and elected by popular vote for 4-year terms, when it was a nation colonized by the British. However, this system seems to be working out pretty well for Nigeria since the successful term of Obasanjo. But in the recent election as expected there were many issues with counting the votes and corruption.