Nigeria, despite being the African country of greatest strategic importance to the U.S., remains poorly understood. John Campbell explains why Nigeria is so important to understand in a world of jihadi extremism, corruption, oil conflict, and communal violence. The revised edition provides updates through the recent presidential election.

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Campbell (Nigeria: Dancing on the Brink), a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and former ambassador to Nigeria, documents the prospects and pitfalls facing Africa’s most populous country in this well-informed and highly specialized account. Chronicling the precolonial, colonial, and postindependence periods, Campbell cogently argues that Nigeria, divided by multiple languages, ethnicities, and religions, lacks a strong national identity . . . Packed with insider details of foreign policy-making and deep dives into Nigeria’s demographics and political history, this expert treatise will resonate with readers well-versed in the subject.

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Campbell’s main argument here is that American diplomacy toward Nigeria should cease to operate on the assumption that Nigeria is a “traditional” nation-state and should instead treat it more as a “prebendal archipelago” of loosely connected elite interests with largely predatory relationships to the national government.... the call from a former US ambassador to steer American diplomacy away from humoring a chronically corrupt and ineffective state and toward assisting Nigeria’s “better angels” engaged in anti-corruption and pro-democracy movements is a welcome intervention. Recommended.