[Access article in PDF]

Lessons from Biafra:

The Structuration of Socially Relevant Science in the Research and Production Directorate*

Chikwendu Christian Ukaegbu

University of Wyoming

Abstract
Africa's dismal economic performance is directly attributable to its weakness in the production and use of modern technology. Even Nigeria, a country with immense human and material resources, coupled with significant scientific infrastructure, has not yet been able to manage the all-important technological leap forward. The situation was different in Biafra (1967–70), when indigenous scientists and engineers performed socially relevant science without the preconditions conventionally perceived as necessary for technological development. Anchored in structuration theory, this article explores the sociology of scientific and technological practice in Biafra, outlines the achievements of Biafran scientists and engineers, and offers explanations of why the Biafran technological success has not been replicable in post-civil war Nigeria. Discussion concludes with a suggestion for development-driven geopolitical restructuring.

The literature on development, especially from the 1960s through the 1980s, has emphasized several perceived obstacles to technological development in [End Page 1395] developing countries, including a weak base of indigenous science and technology, scarcity of research and development institutions and activities, low public investment in research and development, poor training facilities, low manpower in science and technology, brain drain, and the absence of a capital goods sector that would motivate engineering designs and fabrications (Fabayo, Odejide, and Alade 1995). Another assumed constraining factor is that because industries arrive in the Third World as turnkey operations, Third World scientists and engineers will likely be employed in such industries to perform only routine tasks. This type of work environment, it is argued, does not provide local scientists and engineers the opportunity to learn by doing. It has also been argued that the content of scientific and technological education that Third World scientists and engineers receive abroad is so far removed from the problems of their native countries that they are unable to do socially relevant science at home.

The Biafran experience challenges these assumptions. All these perceived handicaps existed in Biafra, yet through the wartime organization known as Research and Production (RAP) Biafran scientists, engineers, and technicians managed to perform socially relevant science, sustain their efforts through the three-year Nigerian-Biafran war, and put Biafra on the path to technological development, had the young nation survived. Thus I suggest that technological development is driven more by the effective harnessing of human agency, nurtured by appropriate sociopolitical conditions, than by the presence of glamorous technological preconditions. That proposition is examined here in the context of scientific and technological practice in prewar Nigeria, wartime Biafra, and postwar Nigeria. I conclude with lessons and suggestions for socially relevant science in Nigeria. By socially relevant science I mean the use of educational skills and knowledge in science and technology to solve problems of society while continuing to advance that knowledge to improve and perfect technological devices. Where scientists, engineers, and technicians cannot rise to that challenge in this age of science-based production, their work degenerates into social irrelevance.

Science and technology comprise an important source of new knowledge that, when injected into the economy, fuels development in social organizations such as education, health care, communication, and manufacturing enterprises (Geisler 2001). Teece and Pisano (1998) use the term dynamic capabilities (of science and technology) to define a firm's ability to integrate existing conceptual and empirical knowledge toward facilitating prescription. When extended to society in general, dynamic capabilities denotes a society's ability to utilize all its skill, knowledge, and resources to adapt to the ever-changing environment. Consequently, the knowledge produced by firms, universities, research institutes, and other organizations becomes diffused into the economy to the extent that it will be absorbed by relevant organizations, contribute to their success, and thus propel socioeconomic progress (Geisler 2001). [End Page 1396]

Science and technology are human, not superhuman, activities. Their success depends on the circumstances in which the potential or actual actors in scientific/technological and political spheres of society find themselves, their recognition that their roles can advance the cause of societal development, and their determination to enact those roles for that cause. Four action parameters inform much of the enterprise of scientific and technological advancement: basic research, applied research, development, and technology.

The United States' National Science Foundation (NSF) (as cited in Geisler 2001) defines basic research as an activity that has as its objective a fuller knowledge or understanding of the subject under study, rather than a practical application thereof. It is research that advances scientific knowledge but does not have specific, immediate commercial objectives. By contrast, applied research is aimed at gaining knowledge or understanding in order to determine the means by which a specific, recognized need may be met. Development is the systematic use of the knowledge or understanding gained from research toward the production of useful materials, devices, systems, or methods, including the design and development of prototypes and processes. While science produces new knowledge, technology applies knowledge to new ways of doing things (NSF in Geisler 2001). Although Biafran scientists performed both basic and applied research, they placed more emphasis on the development component in response to the circumstances of the war, which demanded immediate solutions to the urgent problem of national survival. In fact, these scientists mostly invoked and recalled existing knowledge from basic and applied research and used that knowledge to tackle the business of producing devices, materials, and systems for the society.

The series of events that led to the onset, prosecution, and end of the Nigerian-Biafran war (1967–70) has been documented in an impressively voluminous literature on that episode of Nigerian history (e.g., de St. Jorre 1972; Forsyth 1969; Jacobs 1987; Madiebo 1980; Nwankwo 1972; Stremlau 1977). For now, suffice it to say that the war was the final stage of a conflict that had started with the military coup of January 15, 1966. Igbo military officers were the primary actors in that coup, which took the lives of some leading political and military figures of non-Igbo origin. The people of Northern Nigeria, in response to the loss of their prominent personalities, carried out several massacres of Igbos in some cities of the region. The crisis forced thousands of Igbos and other citizens of Eastern Nigeria out of the North and back to the East, making them refugees in their homeland. The situation culminated in an intense national tension.

Fluctuating agreements and disagreements, conflict and consensus, promies and disappointments, and trust and distrust between the leaders of then Eastern Nigeria (led by Lt. Col. Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu) and the Federal Nigerian Government (led by Lt. Col. Yakubu Gowon) eventuated in the blockade of Eastern Nigeria. According to Jacobs (1987), instead of implementing [End Page 1397] agreements reached by the two parties in Aburi, Ghana, in early January 1967, the federal government enacted a series of measures that led the people of Eastern Nigeria to believe that they were being expelled from the Nigerian federation.

Jacobs recounts the measures as follows. The federal government, which held the revenues of Nigeria (especially those flowing from oil exports), would not help the Eastern Region with its large burden of refugees. Regular remittances to which the East was entitled were withheld. Government employees in the East were denied their wages. Federal supplies of equipment and material to agencies in the East were cut off. Nigeria Airways flights were suspended. All airports in the Eastern Region were closed to outside traffic. Eastern assets in Nigeria were frozen, as were those owned jointly with Nigeria abroad. Foreign currency exchange was cut off. Eastern seaports were closed to shipping, and export of Eastern produce was banned except through Lagos. The blockade of Biafra had begun, three months before there was a Biafra (Jacobs 1987).

Furthermore, sensing the possibility of secession by Eastern Nigeria, Lt. Col. Gowon issued a decree on May 27, 1967 dividing Nigeria into twelve states. The minority ethnic groups in Biafra may have favored that measure. But breaking the Eastern Region into three states removed the major oil deposits and installations from Igbo control (Jacobs 1987). On May 30, the Eastern legislature, under Lt. Col. Ojukwu, seceded from Nigeria by declaring the region an independent and sovereign state known as the Republic of Biafra. On July 6, the Nigerian army attacked Biafra from the latter's northern borders. Thus began the Nigerian-Biafran war.

Such was the historicostructural context in which Biafran scientists, engineers, and technicians (henceforth termed Biafran scientists) operated. Blockaded from sea, land, and air, Biafrans were isolated from other parts of Nigeria and the outside world. Most accounts of the war make passing mention of the ingenuity of Biafran scientists during that conflict. Ogbudinkpa (1985) is one of the very few who has thoroughly examined scientific practice in Biafra and the prospects of its transferability to national development in postwar Nigeria. A lucid, authoritative, and firsthand descriptive account of the role played by Biafran scientists during the war has more recently been published by E.O. Arene, a professor of chemistry who was a founding member of the Biafran Science Group. Through a series of events that group became an organization known as the Research and Production Directorate, popularly and fondly known as RAP.

Arene's book The Biafran Scientists: The Development of an African Indigenous Technology (1997) was a courageous undertaking. After the war, in which Biafra was defeated, many key leaders and personnel of RAP could not reveal their roles for fear of possible reprisal from the federal military government of Nigeria (Ogbudinkpa 1985). That fear is understandable, because although RAP was comprised of people from different ethnic groups in Biafra, the Igbo were predominant. Their very conspicuous presence in RAP was not deliberate but rather the direct result of demographic realities. Igbos formed the majority [End Page 1398] population in Biafra, as they had when it was Eastern Nigeria. It was common knowledge that the educated population was higher in Igboland than in other parts of Biafra. Also, several non-Igbo ethnic groups in coastal and riverine areas fell to the Nigerian army early in the war, stranding a large body of non-Igbos behind enemy lines until after the war ended on January 15, 1970 (Madiebo 1980). Moreover, the conflict that eventuated in the Nigerian-Biafran war was essentially a confrontation between the Igbo and the people of Northern Nigeria, owing to the conspicuous role of Igbo army officers in the plan and execution of the coup of January 15, 1966, in which key leaders of Northern and Southwestern Nigeria had died. It is therefore not surprising that Igbo scientists would prefer anonymity after losing a war that had been sustained through the maximum application of their professional skills and moral support. Arene's book was in fact first produced in 1987 as a restricted document. Clearance to publish it for public reading came a decade later.

Arene's magnificent account of RAP is richly descriptive. My intention here is to place RAP in an analytical and explanatory context, bringing sociological theory to bear on the dynamics of an organization that rallied the best of human ingenuity in a society that lacked all the so-called preconditions of technological development. Putting Biafra's RAP in the context of sociological theory helps to achieve two objectives. First, it suggests some reasons why scientific practice in postwar Nigeria has not enjoyed the same degree of dynamism and social relevance that its counterpart in wartime Biafra exhibited. Second, by anchoring RAP and its story in structuration theory in particular, we can see that Western sociological theory can be used to explain events in non-Western societies.

Scientific and Technological Practice in Biafra: A Conceptual Framework

Any number of sociological viewpoints could be claimed as the appropriate tool for explaining the social relevance of RAP. At first thought, plain structuralism, which sees structure as the singular determinant of action, appears a strong candidate. Upon critical reflection, however, plain structuralism offers only an incomplete understanding of the phenomenon. A fuller explanation can be gained from structuration theory, which (according to Giddens 2001) defines structure as both a medium and an outcome of social action. By this definition, structure and agency are interactive rather than separate from each other, and equal emphasis may be placed on both the subjective and objective dimensions of action.

Some early observers of the Nigerian-Biafran war even indirectly interpreted the role of Biafran scientists from a psychological perspective. Psychologism, according to Wallace (1969), seeks to explain social behavior through the psychological characteristics of the participants themselves. In this sense, explanations of the properties of populations rest on reference to the individuals who compose the populations (Schnore 1961). Emphasis thus fastens on the [End Page 1399] attitudinal or innate characteristics of actors. Frederick Forsyth's Biafra Story (1969) provides a good example:

Biafra was variously described as the Japan, the Israel, the Manchester, and the Kuwait of the African continent. The comparison with Japan refers to the population. Rarely among Africans, they [Biafrans] have the gift of unceasing hard work. In factories the workers turn in more man-hours per year than elsewhere, and in the farms the peasants produce more yield per acre than in any other country. It may be that nature has necessarily bred these traits, but they are also backed by the ancient traditions of the people. In Biafra, personal success has always been regarded as meritorious. Igbos are avid for education and particularly for qualification in one of the technical professions. Other characteristics are adduced to explain the antipathy they manage to generate; they are pushful, uppity and aggressive say the detractors; ambitious and energetic say the defenders. Throughout Africa one will find Arab traders (Lebanese or Syrians) or Indians. These peoples have wandered across the world with talent for trade undercutting local traders and driving them to the wall. But they will never be found where the Biafrans operate.

(105–6)

In the same vein, Ottenberg (1971) observes that the Igbo are known for their high achievement skills, an enterprising disposition, a strong emphasis for an open status system, and a high degree of receptivity to change: failure to achieve is regarded with a certain pity, almost with disgust (see also LeVine 1966). Such characterizations imply that there is something in the Biafran, especially Igbo, personality, that positions the individual for success and innovativeness. This personality is characterized by hard work, entrepreneurship, creativity, thrift, perseverance, and pursuit of excellence.

But if these attributes, which could indeed have been inherent in the Biafran personality, were the primary force for the achievements of RAP, scientific and technological innovations should have flourished in Eastern Nigeria before the creation of Biafra, or even in other parts of Nigeria where Biafran scientists had a conspicuous presence. And the speed of technological innovation led by indigenous scientists and engineers in Biafra should have been replicated in Eastern Nigeria after the war, especially in Igbo states, which constitute the majority population in the region. Granted, evidence of invaluable technical creativity continues to be recorded among illiterate blacksmiths, roadside technicians, designers, and metal fabricators in parts of former Biafra such as Aba, Awka, and Nnewi. The products of these roadside designers and fabricators have contributed immensely to productive activity in other sectors, including the manufacturing sector. But the characteristics and activities of RAP were different from those of roadside designers and fabricators.

Science and technology activities in RAP were led and performed by people with high levels of education and specialization in various fields of science [End Page 1400] and engineering. Most of their activities were conducted in formal or quasi-laboratory situations. In most cases, support staff (laboratory and workshop technicians, technologists) had an intermediate-level education, secondary to two or more years of postsecondary. In a world dominated by science-based production, it is only natural to expect highly educated scientists and engineers to collaborate in linking science and engineering knowledge to the productive sector, thereby contributing to economic growth. Figure 1 shows the spark of extraordinary creativity that existed in Biafra during the war. By contrast, science and technology activity was characterized by a state of ordinariness in pre- and postwar Nigeria.

Various students of science and society in postwar Nigeria (Anya 1993; Chatelin et al. 1998; Ogbimi 1990; Tiffin and Osotimehin 1988; Ukaegbu 1985, 1991, 1995) have doubted that Nigeria's available science and technology manpower can make appreciable contributions to the country's technological advancement. This includes manpower in the part of Nigeria that was Biafra, where scientists performed socially relevant science. Because scientists of the former Biafra did not continue their technological leap forward after the war, the attribution of their wartime feats solely to psychobehavioral properties inherent in a Biafran personality or agency is an unsatisfactory explanation.

G.O. Ezekwe, who headed a leading engineering group in RAP, puts this point very succinctly in his foreword to Arene's book:

The record of the achievements of indigenous experts in military equipment and essential commodities production shows that even under [End Page 1401] the prevailing atmosphere of a severe economic depression in Nigeria, which is none-the-less more congenial than the civil war environment, Nigerian scientists and engineers can transform the country into a newly industrialized nation in a tolerable time period, if the conditions are right.

(1997:4–5)

Ezekwe does not indicate what those right conditions are or should be. Underlying his statement, however, is a structuralist orientation, which asserts that human achievements are determined by the social environment in which actors find themselves.

Structuralism, Waters (1994) observes, considers the material structures that sustain individuals, societies, and cultures and traces their effects on thought and action. Human beings are thus believed to be influenced by their socioeconomic and historical location. For a structuralist, the unleashing and utilization of human potential in Biafran scientists' resourcefulness, inventiveness, endurance, and indomitable will to solve the immediate problem would be attributable solely to the new geopolitical environment, Biafra, in which they worked. Or the new structure could be said to have led to a situationally induced release of dormant human efficacy, with which the scientists achieved socially relevant results. Structure is thus held to be the determining factor that underlies surface appearances. Everyday social experience and the beliefs that sustain it are held to be a gloss that masks a genuine but hidden reality beneath the level of consciousness. The sociologist's task is then to elucidate the connection between action and structure in such a way as to render action the transparent product of structure (Waters 1994).

The secession of the Eastern Region from Nigeria led to a new geopolity, Biafra, but the secession also left Nigeria with a new structure made up of the rest of Nigeria without the East. A structuralist argument might propose that the scientific communities in the two societies responded to the situation differently because Biafra was blockaded but Nigeria was not. War and its preparations have probably equaled economic considerations as factors in the history of technology (Mackenzie and Wajcman 1999): war and the threat of war act coercively to force technological change, with defeat the anticipated punishment for those left behind; hence military concerns have often shaped the development pattern and design details of new technologies. From the structuralist perspective, Biafran scientists were coerced to action by a new social environment to which they responded with an unprecedented quantum and speed of scientific creativity.

But structuralist arguments, Sewell (1992) rightly notes, assume a far too rigid causal determinism in social life, reduce actors to the status of programmed automatons, and fail to recognize the agency of social actors. Secessionist Biafra was the result of the interaction between structure and human agency rather the sole handiwork of structure. Human beings created Biafra out of Nigeria, the latter a tension-ridden and amorphous geoethnic structure readily susceptible to intergroup conflict. Biafra thus was the unintentional consequence of human [End Page 1402] action. In his critiques of structural determinism, Giddens (1984, 1987) argues that human agents are not blind and dull objects that carry out whatever is predetermined by structures. They are agents who know a lot about their social circumstances, the conditions of their agency, and its outcomes. And they use their knowledge to carry out their agency. Agency itself is more than an isolated action. It is an action that is part of reproducing society, thereby making history (Giddens, cited in Munch 1994). On the other hand, structure has the dual capacity to enable and to constrain action. And the duality of structure and agency finds expression in the processes by which structures are constituted through action and action is constituted structurally (Giddens 1976, 1984, 2001). Agents create structures, which in turn influence action. Thus one of the hallmarks of structuration theory, as Giddens terms it, is that rather than maintaining a dualism between structure and agency, as in constructionist and structuralist sociologies, structuration views action and agency as interactive and co-influential. As actors draw upon structures in order to provide guidance for their own actions, they produce or reproduce structures (Waters 1994).

Giddens (2001) defines structure not as patterns of social relationships but as rules and resources recursively implicated in social reproduction. Resources consist of any kind of advantages or capabilities that actors may draw upon to affect the outcome of the process of interaction. These include meaning (the stock of knowledge), morals (value systems), and power (patterns of domination and divisions of interest). Biafra was the outcome of antagonistic agency of the federal and Eastern political leaders, with support from their constituencies. The new and independent geoethnopolity plus the resultant war in an environment of domestic and international blockade jointly provided the rules and resources which Biafran scientists took advantage of. Resources included the collective feeling and appreciation of independence, a collective sense of urgency for survival, a sense of shared identity, the collective desire to control group destiny, and a pool of bright and skilled science and engineering manpower. Also new rules of organizational participation, which placed a high emphasis on merit and recognition of competence, motivated Biafran scientists to invest the best in themselves in the application of abstract scientific knowledge to productive activity.

The coup of January 15, 1966, was an action by a small group of the Nigerian military against the perceived inefficiencies of existing political leaders as individuals. It was not intended to prompt the fragmentation or dissolution of the country. But in response to the deaths of their leaders Northern Nigerians invoked the existing interpretive schemes of an antagonistic multiethnicity and responded to the situation as a structural issue by unleashing extreme violence on Igbos, an act that unintentionally led to the creation of Biafra. Put more formally, the interaction between the coup (agency) and the rules and resources of antagonistic multiethnicity (structure) led to the creation of Biafra and the war (another structure). The latter, in turn, provided the social capital, and [End Page 1403] the varieties of attributes of human agency or "agentic" outcomes, with which Biafran scientists worked to make history by way of an unprecedented leap toward technological development (see Figure 2).

Social capital, defined as the networks and norms of trust, and the reciprocity that arises from them, has been found to be beneficial for individual and group success (Aguilera and Massey 2003; Marsh 2003; Putnam 2000). Biafra as an independent political entity had the power to allocate material resources to its constituencies. But it did not have a lot of material on hand because of the constraints caused by the blockade. Therefore, social capital was the greatest resource at its disposal.

Thus far I have tried to place the story of scientific practice in Biafra in a theoretical context. Every account of the political economy of the war directly or indirectly makes reference to the activities and contributions of the Biafran science and technology community, especially the organization known as Research and Production (RAP). What did the scientists, engineers, and technicians actually do to merit this attention? That question is addressed below.

Biafran Research and Production: Activities and Accomplishments

According to Ezekwe (in Arene 1997), the response of Biafran scientists during the nation's brief life can truly be described as a feat, because there was no preexisting science and engineering infrastructure worth mentioning. RAP [End Page 1404] began its journey around April 1967 as an informal group known as Biafran Scientists, with its nucleus at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (which became the University of Biafra once sovereign statehood was declared). The core population of this group was comprised of academic scientists and their support staff. As the possibility of war loomed, Biafran Scientists coalesced into a more tangible entity known as the Biafran Science Group, which was inaugurated in June 1967 in Enugu, the then capital of Biafra. The Biafran Science Group later became transformed into RAP, with a more definable and institutionalized structure, indeed an amorphous bureaucracy.¹ But that huge bureaucracy hardly exhibited the negative attributes characteristic of bureaucracies in general and Nigerian bureaucracies in particular.

Strong support from the Biafran government allowed the early informal entity Biafran Scientists to convert the laboratories of the Ministry of Commerce into war chemical laboratories. The workshops of the Nigerian Railway Corporation and the Nigerian Coal Corporation were converted into war engineering workshops. The Biafran Scientists were also mandated to build another chemical laboratory at Iva Valley. All these facilities were located in Enugu (Arene 1997). The Biafran Scientists as a diffuse entity worked in small groups, each group toying and experimenting with any ideas that came to mind. When scientists, engineers, and technicians in other towns and cities heard of the official inauguration of the Biafran Science Group in Enugu, they soon formed similar groups in Aba, Port Harcourt, and other places. These groups were made up mainly of scientists and engineers from the private sector. Thus, the practical world of industrial scientists and engineers merged with the theoretical world of their academic counterparts (Arene 1997) to produce socially relevant science.

Enugu fell to the federal army in October 1967. The Biafran Science Group moved to Umuahia, consolidated, and changed its name to Research and Production Directorate. The office of Head RAP was initially at Umudike. It was later relocated to the Defense Headquarters, around the community of Afara at the outskirts of the city of Umuahia. Except for the accountant and his deputy, none of the principal administrators of RAP had a degree in management or organization studies. B.C.E. Nwosu, who headed the organization, was a nuclear physicist. The administrative officer was Steve Emejuaiwe, a microbiologist. The scientific officer was Charlie Okafor, with a doctorate in chemistry. The air defense unit was managed by F.N.C. Oragwu, a nuclear physicist. Yet RAP headquarters and its numerous units scattered across the country were run very efficiently. Hardly was any action or decision bogged down in red tape. The middle- and low-level staff at the head office was a highly efficient group of workers. The typists and secretaries among them produced memos and schedules with dazzling speed and accuracy. The accounts clerks, some of whom had never done any accounting job or office work prior to their employment in RAP, executed their functions with utmost efficiency. The welfare officer, Mrs. Wikina, an indefatigable woman of incredible energy, toured centers to search for relief materials for RAP [End Page 1405] employees. The various units of RAP in different towns and villages of Biafra were headed by scientists and engineers, some of them lacking prior administrative experience but motivated by the desire to contribute their best for the successful prosecution of the war.

One of the admirable attributes of RAP as an organization was its ability to adjust quickly to changing circumstances. Arene (1997) clearly documents how speedily the Biafran Science Group regrouped and metamorphosed into RAP immediately after the fall of Enugu in October 1967. RAP fared similarly after the fall of Umuahia in 1969. The office of Head RAP, in particular, quickly rented and moved to an uncompleted and rickety building in Isu, a rural town on the Anara-Nkwere-Orlu road. Within a very short time after the fall of Umuahia, the business of administering RAP had stabilized. The various units of RAP on the Umuahia, Umudike, and Uzuakoli axis quickly relocated and continued the business of producing for the war effort. The resettlement process and resumption of work were swift and efficient, indeed almost magical.

From its earliest beginnings, when it was known as Biafran Scientists, RAP worked on war-related projects. Scientists, engineers, and technicians combined their different areas of knowledge and expertise to produce different kinds of weapons. The chemical groups worked on incendiaries, smoke signals, detonators, napalm, primers, rocket fuels, cocktails, and bombs. Some engineering groups produced grenade and rocket casings, mortar shells, and bullets; others fabricated armored cars from tractors and trucks. One of the best-known weapons made by Biafran scientists was the ogbunigwe (mass killer or destroyer), which became a formidable antipersonnel mine (Arene 1997; Ogbudinkpa 1985). Biersteker (1978) notes that RAP also demonstrated the capability to produce petroleum and fuel oil on a large scale in numerous and widely distributed locations, and without the assistance and supervision of expatriate technicians.

Madiebo provides further evidence of this extraordinary versatility:

As soon as Port Harcourt fell in May 1968, and with it, most of the oil fields and the refinery, shortage of fuel was felt all over the country. A Petroleum Management Board (PMB) was established to control what was available as well as find ways of effecting replenishments. The Board designed and built a sizeable and efficient refinery at Uzuakoli. What they produced was not sufficient for the needs of a nation at war, thereby making petrol rationing imperative. The Research and Production Directorate, which considered no problem impossible to solve, soon stepped in to assist. It designed and built several refineries and produced petrol and diesel at a considerably fast rate. With its assistance also, all major armed forces units and formations as well as civilian organizations set up oil refineries. Products of these numerous refineries were generally fair and satisfied the urgent fuel needs of the nation even after the main refinery at Uzuakoli was lost to the enemy.

(1980:114–15, emphasis added) [End Page 1406]

Madiebo's account of localized petroleum refineries in Biafra is consistent with the early history of oil refining in advanced countries. For instance, small refineries that used a simple distillation process were ubiquitous in nineteenth-century America (History Channel 1997). In Biafra, because building conventional fractionating towers was not possible at the time, the method of simple laboratory distillation did the job: fuel (petrol) was made through this simple process (Arene 1997). It is ironic, though, that Nigeria failed to exploit this indigenous capability after the war. Instead it preferred to invest billions of dollars in the acquisition of complex refineries that, in many cases, have disappointed the public due to incessant, prolonged, and excruciating bouts of fuel scarcity. Sadly, Nigeria presently spends huge sums of scarce foreign exchange to import petrol even though the empirical case of Biafra shows that domestic capacity exists to produce the commodity through simpler processes. Rather than integrating Biafra's oil refining capability, Nigeria's postwar petroleum policy marginalized it to the disadvantage of the nation.

That RAP "considered no problem impossible to solve" is an excellent example of group self-efficacy. According to Bandura (1986), "self-efficacy" refers to the beliefs people have about their abilities to execute a course of action required to attain designated types of performance. Self-efficacy is thus the power and confidence to produce an intended effect. In discourse on development, national self-efficacy denotes the confidence of a nation's citizens that societal problems and obstacles are soluble and surmountable. Self-efficacy is the belief that the individual or group can exert considerable control over the environment, rather than surrendering life and the future to external forces, human or superhuman (Inkeles and Smith 1998). It means that a people takes its destiny in its own hands and avoids falling into a state of helpless dependence on outsiders.

National self-efficacy is energized, nurtured, and sustained by the presence of appropriate social capital. Networks of social trust create a sense of shared identity, mutual understanding, common objectives, and solidarity that promotes group commitment and positive responses to development efforts (Krishna and Shrader 1999; Thin 2002). Hence it is logical to state that social capital brings out the best in human capital. In particular, Igbo solidarity toward Biafra was significant and therefore contributed to the expression of the highest levels of motivation among scientists, which moved them to perform to the best of their potential.

Because of the blockade, consumer items were very scarce in Biafra. Using its store of individual and institutional self-efficacy, as it had with petrol production, RAP's chemical, engineering, and microbiological units combined their skill and knowledge, exploited and refined the saline resources of the Abakaliki axis, and mass-produced salt (Arene 1997). RAP also produced alcoholic drinks such as wines, gin, whisky, and brandy, as well as soap and other consumables. Nafziger (1982) rightly attributes to RAP the credit for applied research and the production [End Page 1407] of replacements for goods from abroad that had been cut off by the blockade imposed by the Nigerian government.

When the Biafran government inaugurated the Land Army to mobilize the people to produce more food, biologists, botanists, and zoologists in various units of RAP joined professors and lecturers on agriculture with practicing field officers. The Land Army did a tremendous job, cultivating all available land in the Biafran hinterland (Arene 1997).

Nor should it be forgotten that Uli Airport, in the heartland of Biafra, was built without any foreign technical assistance. As the war progressed, this indigenously designed and constructed airport was the only link between Biafra and the outside world.

This short summary of the activities of Biafran scientists clearly approximates the definition of socially relevant science. The scientists were versatile: they tackled nearly every problem that they were confronted with, whether in military outfitting or in consumables for the civilian population. Two further attributes stand out: their effective transfer of skills and knowledge, and their dedicated work ethic. Transfer of knowledge is the ability to adapt specialized knowledge and training toward efforts in other fields. In one instance, a scientist formerly employed in a leading multinational brewery that had closed down because of the war became a central figure on the shop floor of one of the wartime makeshift oil refineries. Arene (1997) also describes a case where professors and lecturers in the agricultural sciences, motivated by a desire to solve the immediate societal problem, undertook to make explosives. Some sustained injuries from accidental discharge or incorrect composition of their devices.

The work ethic in RAP was indeed dedicated. Scientists, engineers, and technicians worked round the clock, in the actual sense of the phrase. I myself observed many instances when laboratory technicians in A.N.U. Njoku-Obi's microbiology unit took turns maintaining an overnight watch on their experiments. Many high- and low- level scientists and engineers virtually lived in their laboratories and workshops.

Where that energy, collaborative spirit, work commitment, altruism, and hardihood came from during the war, and where they have disappeared to since the end of the war, deserve research attention. Those qualities no longer exist in government work organizations in the postwar Eastern Region, the enclave that was Biafra. Nor are they found in other parts of Nigeria, for that matter.

At the end of the war in 1970, RAP was somewhat reconstituted as a federal research institute known as the Project Development Agency (PRODA). It was later renamed the Project Development Institute but retained the initial acronym. PRODA was expected to be a replica of RAP. G.O. Ezekwe (mentioned above), a renowned engineer who had suffered serious injuries from accidental explosions in his RAP workshop during the war, was the first director of PRODA, and a significant proportion of PRODA's pioneer technical and clerical staff was likewise drawn from RAP. Some breakthroughs have since been credited to [End Page 1408] PRODA, including the establishment of a scientific equipment factory. But it is no exaggeration to state that in more than three decades of existence since the end of the war PRODA has never achieved the degree of societal relevance and visibility recorded by RAP in the three short years of secessionist Biafra.

During a study of PRODA that I conducted in 1980 its employees reported that they were only somewhat effectively utilized relative to scientists in other research institutes (Ukaegbu 1987). But the "creative spark," the high level of excitement for innovation, and the round-the-clock attachment and commitment to work that had characterized RAP did not exist to the same degree in PRODA, even though a good number of its personnel had previously served in RAP. Studies of industries, universities, and other research institutes in postwar Nigeria (Ukaegbu 1985, 1991, 1995; Ukaegbu and Agunwamba 1995) have also revealed a science and technology system that has been unable to rise to the challenges posed by a developing society. Instead the system has elicited complaint and reproach.

Scientific and Technological Practice in Postwar Nigeria: The Complain/Blame Syndrome

Since the end of the Nigerian-Biafran war, politicians, academic commentators, research administrators, and the ordinary public have generally expressed disappointment with and complaints about the failure of the science and technology sector to contribute to Nigeria's technological development. Dissatisfaction has focused on obstacles and inadequate technological preconditions, as described earlier. Babatunde Thomas, adviser on human resources, science, and technology to President Olusegun Obasanjo and a seasoned scholar of technological development, has articulated what he calls "the vicious circle of technological backwardness in Nigeria" (2001:6). The character of this vicious circle as he describes it is an exact replica of the presumed causes of technological underdevelopment that I outlined in the introductory remarks to this present article. In other words, problems that existed upon independence in 1960 still exist intact more than forty years after.

The phrase "technological backwardness" implies that no appreciable incremental change has occurred in the science and technology sector by way of socially relevant science. This culture of complaint (indeed, lament) is not limited to Nigeria alone. Wakhungu (2001) presents a similar list of handicaps in her discussion of science and technology policy in Africa as a whole. To generalize for all of Africa, however, implies that all the countries of the continent are handicapped by the same degree of deficiencies and deprivations. The relatively ample science and technology institutions and infrastructure that we see in Nigeria simply do not exist in Gambia. Kenya is home to a number of domestic and international scientific research agencies whose equivalents are absent in Angola. For Nigeria to continue to blame its failures on social and infrastructural [End Page 1409] conditions that existed more than four decades ago means that the country has wasted all those years.

Biafra's leap forward in science and technology occurred in those same conditions, actually in even direr conditions of resource deprivation. For Biafra there were no established capital goods industries such as iron and steel and machine tools to aid engineering designs and fabrications. The Biafran experience even challenges the argument by dependency theory that the content of Western science and technology education received by Third World scientists and engineers is so removed from the problems of their countries that their educational skills are useless to their local environments. Dependency theory further states that Third World scientists and engineers, after studying with sophisticated equipment in advanced countries, become disoriented and discouraged upon return to their home countries because only inadequate and obsolete equipment is available to them there. These may be valid observations. But the Biafran experience neutralizes their generalizability. Most of the Biafran scientists and engineers were first-generation professionals who had received their education in European, American, and first-generation indigenous institutions of higher education with a strong Western presence. Yet when the challenge of survival came, they used their knowledge acquired abroad to solve the problems at home.

In the years since the end of the Nigerian-Biafran war, more Nigerian scientists and engineers have been trained at home than abroad. If domestic training were the magic bullet, science and technology should have flourished since the end of the war. After all, immediately after World War II Japan sent its young citizens to acquire scientific and technological education in Western Europe and North America, with great success. That Western scientific and technological education could be relevant in Japan, China, South Korea, Malaysia, and Singapore, but not in Nigeria, defies logic.

The only noteworthy research institute in Biafra at the time of its origin, the Agricultural Research Institute at Umudike, was not designed to cater to the variety of war needs. Neither were the workshops of the Nigerian railway and coal corporations and the laboratories of the Ministry of Commerce designed for the omnibus activities and tasks performed in them by Biafran scientists. It took human ingenuity, determination, confidence, self-efficacy, and will to recreate and redirect the minimal infrastructure to serve the needs of the time. This effort demonstrates my contention, stated above, that science and technology are human, not superhuman, activities. Human agents create the structures and infrastructures of science and society, which either enable or constrain the performance of socially relevant science.

According to Diamond (1968), there were some 500 medical doctors, 700 lawyers, and 600 engineers in Biafra at the time of secession from Nigeria. Although the proportion of engineers to other professionals was far above that in many African countries at the time, 600 engineers in a country of 14 million [End Page 1410] people is nevertheless inadequate. Engineers may have been relatively few in Biafra, but they received high-quality education, whether at home or abroad. Since the end of the war Nigeria has also made significant investments in education and the production of high-level manpower. It presently has more than 40 universities, including several that specialize in science and technology education. It has many polytechnic schools and colleges of education. Enrollment in science and technology constituted 30% of the total enrollment in Nigerian tertiary education in 1992 (UNDP 1992). Nigeria has always lamented its inability to achieve a much higher rate of enrollment (60%) in science. But that 30% is consistent with the situation in other countries around the world at that fairly recent date. Of the total world enrollment in tertiary education, the average enrollment in science was 39% in industrialized nations; the average for developing countries was 32%. In fact, of the 2.1 million degrees awarded in the United States in 1993, only 24% were in science and engineering (UNESCO 1998). It would appear that Nigeria's 30% figure is not significantly low at all. Overall, these data show that production of a large quantity of scientific and technological manpower, while desirable, is not a sufficient condition for technological development. Much depends on the quality of the manpower produced and the extent to which such manpower is put to effective use.

Commentators on technological development who lament that Nigeria still suffers an acute shortage of trained manpower should also refocus their attention toward the quality of education received and the extent of its utilization by those already trained. Research has shown that by 1985, graduates in engineering and allied disciplines (e.g., architecture and surveying) in Igbo states of Nigeria were seeking employment as secondary school teachers because they could not find jobs related to their education (Ukaegbu 1995). In recent years blame has shifted from the numerical inadequacy of manpower to the eroding quality of education and the international outmigration of Nigerian scientists. The costs of this departure of highly trained professionals, and the resultant brain drain, are undoubtedly high for a developing country. In the complain/blame game, however, society forgets that one serious constraint on socially relevant science is the absence of committed, visionary, knowledgeable, and courageous leadership that can work to erase the economic, social, and personal insecurity that induces the outmigration of scientists. After all, China, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore have lost and continue to lose highly trained professionals to the more advanced countries of the West but continue to make technological and economic progress on their own.

To hinge Nigeria's lack of technological development on the international outmigration of native scientists is also to insult the equally brilliant and capable professionals who remain at home, for such blame implies that they are incompetent to achieve the desirable results attributed to their absent peers. A case in point is Brino Gilbert, a physicist who resides in Edo State, who stirred [End Page 1411] international interest at the Invention and New Product Exposition in the United States in May 2003. His "counter-collision gadget" (CCG) won a silver medal in the manufacturing category, a bronze medal in aeronautics, and a trophy as the best invention from Africa. He had spent years seeking support from governments, groups, and individuals in Nigeria, without success (Williams 2003).

It is appropriate to presume that in the many years since independence Nigeria would have taken visible steps in the direction of socially relevant science, and thus toward technological advancement. Yet one veteran observer of scientific practice in Africa remarked in 1979, nearly two decades after independence, that "increase in the number of Nigerians with scientific training has not resulted in an increased amount of scientific activity" (Eisemon 1979:506). Nearly two decades farther along came an article provocatively titled "The Nigerian Scientific Community: The Colossus with Feet of Clay" (Chatelin, Gaillard, and Keller 1997). And in 2001 Nigerian Presidential Adviser Babatunde Thomas commented with cautious hope that "burdened by the increasing deterioration recorded in her rating in the field of science and technology despite her array of intellectuals, Nigeria may soon come out with a new policy that is human-factor based" (2001b). These independent opinions expressed by influential international and domestic observers of science and development in Nigeria indicate that scientific manpower has not risen to the challenge of performing socially relevant science. It is true that some research institutes and universities have worked on prototypes and devices awaiting application by willing entrepreneurs. And some agricultural research institutes have successfully worked on improved seed varieties. But until dissemination occurs with appreciable speed and in large quantity, Nigerian society will not feel the presence of a socially relevant scientific community.

The description of the Nigerian scientific community as a "colossus with feet of clay" is particularly instructive. It is a metaphor for ineffectiveness. "Colossus" signifies an object or entity of immense size, scope, power, strength, and preeminence over other entities. For a colossus to have feet of clay, despite its apparently towering attributes, means that such an object is in reality feeble and undependable. Despite a gigantic human and material infrastructure in science and technology as well as large quantities of publications in science, the Nigerian scientific community is still on the margins of Nigerian society because it has not made a visible impact on the country's quest for technological development.

But they have held their ground in the arena of production and dissemination of scientific knowledge. Chatelin, Gaillard, and Keller (1997) used a pancontinental bibliometric comparison to show that Nigerian scientists have the highest publication rate in Black Africa. When Africa is considered in total, they rank next to South Africa and Egypt. In agriculture and medicine, in particular, Nigerian scientists publish more than their South African and Egyptian counterparts. Infrastructurally, Nigeria boasts of more than 30 scientific research institutes, supported by a considerable number of technological incubation and engineering [End Page 1412] centers distributed across the country. Most of these agencies are under the power, supervision, and administration of the federal government. There is also a national academy of science, whose exact contribution to the development of science and technology is difficult to assess. Added to these resources are series of public policy documents on science and technology, which hardly see the light of implementation. By contrast, Biafran technological achievement occurred without a science policy and without a national academy of science. The steel-rolling mills that have been built since the end of the war did not exist for Biafra. Polytechnic schools now produce lower- and middle-level technical manpower. Compared to the situation in Biafra, the scientific and technological infrastructure in postwar Nigeria is indeed gigantic. Yet scientific activity in Biafra was known for its social relevance, whereas that of Nigeria draws only complaints.

Two questions arise. Why has PRODA, the designated postwar successor to RAP, failed to achieve the dynamism of its predecessor? And why has the Nigerian science and technology sector in general been unable to make a visible contribution to the nation's socioeconomic development despite its relatively huge infrastructure and the enormity of societal problems that demand scientific and technological skills? Answers to these questions are suggested below.

Constraints to Socially Relevant Science in Postwar Nigeria: Some Concluding Remarks

Arene states flatly that "RAP was effective within Biafra because of the stress of war. Remove the stress of war and the Biafran scientists would be no different . . . [than] they were before Ojukwu pronounced the former Eastern Nigeria an independent state of Biafra" (1997:73). RAP was the preeminent organization charged with and capable of applying scientific and technological knowledge to the problems of the time. Biafran scientists saw that they were needed and that the results of their efforts were recognized and used for solving practical problems. In addition, they were given specific assignments and challenges by a government that respected and valued their skills and knowledge. Employees of RAP were also accorded respect in the communities in which their units were located. And the Biafran government matched its demands on RAP with resources to enable RAP to perform its scientific activities. All these culminated in what may be termed "the right conditions." By contrast, PRODA is in competition with numerous other research institutes for governmental resources and public attention. In a society unconstrained by blockades and war, governments and citizens can satisfy their material needs by using imported goods. Consequently, postwar Nigeria with its high import orientation marginalizes domestic research activities and innovations to the point of irrelevance. Forrest's succinct observation of Biafra is relevant here: "Under conditions of autarchy in war-time Biafra, scientists and [End Page 1413] engineers demonstrated the capacity to innovate and adapt existing technology. Although the value of this experience was recognized, attempts to carry over the achievements to peacetime were largely unsuccessful. The scientific personnel and engineers involved, quickly scattered" (1994:236).

Biafra thus vindicates dependency theory, which holds that the more a country is cut off from the world system the more likely it is to realize its full human potential, which is the hallmark of national development. The blockade of Biafra was a de facto severance from the world system. It was a condition in which necessity became the mother of invention. But dependency theory also argues that foreign-trained scientists are so demoralized by the lack of available work resources that their knowledge acquired abroad is of little value to the solution of problems at home. This apparent contradiction in dependency theory can be reformulated to better effect according to the tenets of structuration theory, in which my arguments here have been anchored: namely, that skilled, capable, and determined agents can achieve national development by taking advantage of the rules, resources, and social capital provided by independence from the world system. That was the case in Biafra.

If the creative spark in Biafra was ignited by the stress of war, as Arene has said, does it mean that Nigeria must fight another war before a similar spark occurs? If so, with whom will that war be fought? Granted, the sense of collective struggle for survival and possible victory was an enabling environment for the revolutionary application of scientific knowledge by Biafran scientists. But postwar Nigeria has had, and continues to have, plenty of war to fight in the social sphere. Since the end of the Nigerian-Biafran war, the majority of Nigerians have continued to suffer from poverty, destitution, disease, and varying forms of deprivation. These conditions should have inspired the kind of energetic national political leadership that kindles a sense of a shared identity, mutual understanding, common objectives, solidarity, collective commitment (social capital), and the resulting group motivation, determination, and effort characteristic of a society confronted with a real war situation. If challenge is what is required, the challenges are present.

One major constraint, among others, is that postwar Nigeria lacks a sense of a collective national ownership, with the attendant social capital and maximum harness of human agency that existed in Biafra, especially among the Igbo. Hence the science and technology system in Nigeria remains impervious to any form of material fortification and administrative mobilization. And hence the recognized and desired linkage between scientific research endeavors and the productive sector remains elusive more than four decades after independence and three decades after the civil war.

The irony of scientific and technological practice in Nigeria came to light at the Sixth USA-Africa Conference on Manufacturing Technology held in Abuja in July 2002. Some forty Nigerian scientists and engineers in diaspora, most of them academics domiciled in the United States and Britain, convened to discuss [End Page 1414] how to improve manufacturing technology in Nigeria. They presented papers on science policy as well as on their bench work in science and engineering. The sophistication of the diaspora scientists' research, the clear connections between this research and specific functions in manufacturing, and the fact that some prestigious manufacturing firms in Britain and the United States were waiting to use this research made the diaspora Nigerians seem like visitors from Mars. The efficacy, relevance, and the immediate utility of their scientific activities in their countries of residence were unquestionable. Some of these conferees had practiced in Nigeria before they went abroad. That they could not achieve the same successes in Nigeria, nor can their equally qualified and brilliant counterparts who have remained at home there, attests to the entrenched imperviousness toward scientific and technological mobilization mentioned above.

Thus Nigerian science and technology professionals shine and perform socially relevant science in their countries of residence abroad but cannot do the same at home. Their effectiveness in diaspora is not a function of pressures of war. Rather, they are operating in sociopolitical environments that recognize excellence and competence through adequate material and honorific rewards. Structuralism would argue that Nigerian scientists in diaspora perform socially relevant work because they operate in structures conducive to professional success. Such an argument should recognize that those structures were the outcome of human agency, whether intentionally or unintentionally designed.

In a recent study of private manufacturing enterprises owned by indigenous entrepreneurs in Igbo states (Ukaegbu 2002), I found that most entrepreneurs and their managers did not know much about scientific research institutes in Nigeria. Some of them, in fact, could not name any of the institutes. Those who had some knowledge of the existence of the institutes did not think of them as potentially useful to their firms' operations. What has become of all the scientific and technological knowledge acquired by Nigerians both before and after the Nigerian-Biafran war? And where did the extraordinary scientific creativity exhibited by Biafran scientists go? Research institute employees, especially since the 1990s, are often idle. Many items of research equipment are also idle and covered with dust, clearly indicating lack of use. And many research facilities that break down are simply abandoned to rot away (Ukaegbu and Agunwamba 1995). As Arene (1997) has pointed out, the fusion of the theoretical knowledge of academic scientists and engineers with the practical knowledge and skills of their counterparts in the productive sector was highly instrumental to Biafra's technological success. In contrast, the two sectors are decoupled and severely disarticulated in peacetime Nigeria.

Informal conversations in July 2002 with a group of highly educated science and engineering personnel in positions and roles related to technological research and applications showed a visible frustration, throughout the group, with the lack of linkage between research and production in Nigeria. Government was the immediate target of blame, even though the respondents were themselves [End Page 1415] high-level government employees. But some also blamed an abstract entity they called the "Nigerian factor," which on further probing turned out to signify the carefree and nonchalant attitude (a kind of national lackadaisical syndrome) of both the political leadership and the general citizenry toward the country's development. The government itself blames the multitude of constraining factors described earlier. To put it in the most ordinary parlance, everybody blames everybody else.

This generalized blame syndrome implies three scenarios. First, the political leadership and the scientific and technological elite, past and present, have not known what to do to move the country onto a path of technological development. From that perspective the problem must seem very daunting. Hence political response has been either to shift the problem to the periphery of governmental and national attention, as if it does not exist, or to pay lip service to the need for change. Second, the leadership has been afraid of taking the risks involved in technological development. And third, the political class, with its mentality of dependence on outside assistance, has been unable to muster the will to move Nigeria toward taking its technological destiny into its own hands.

In sum, the Nigerian scientific community should not be the primary focus of attributed culpability. Socially relevant ideas and knowledge may and indeed do emanate from the nation's scientists. But the actualization of such ideas is more often a function of intelligent and visionary public policy — not political corruption and complaisance toward the accelerated depletion of the country's strategic human and natural resources by the forces of globalization.

Geisler (2001) aptly notes that the more knowledge-driven a society, the more it relies on new knowledge to maintain its institutions. Nigeria today is not a knowledge-driven society, its numerous educational institutions and bright, highly educated workforce notwithstanding. It seems not to be driven by anything, not even by a set of ideas cherished by the general public or even a majority of its citizens. Or if driven by anything at all, the motive force is a geoethnoreligious structure that renders political institutions incapable of mobilizing the general society for the promise of economic development. Every political group that assumes leadership of the country becomes suffocated in the entanglements of managing this complex and debilitating ethnocultural diversity.

Perhaps Nigeria as presently configured is best described as a geoethnopolity of antiprogress. The rules and resources emanating from the nebulous principle of federal character regarding employment, political appointments, and elective office contravene the merit principle (recognition of competence), a core ingredient of success for Biafra's RAP. An overcentralized political economy makes the constituent states so dependent on the center that state leaders are unable to furnish their respective citizens with the societal visions and conditions that are conducive to the creative sparks and the strong social capital that could propel technological and economic development at regional and local levels. Similarly, research institutions and activities in Nigeria are so dependent upon and focused [End Page 1416] on the central government that state governors, commissioners, and state houses of assembly hardly think or talk about technological development as one of the challenges that demand their urgent attention. This is not to say that politicians at the central level of government seriously think and talk about it, either. For example, the majority of campaign speeches for federal and state positions during the 2003 elections, including speeches by all the presidential candidates, contained no clear plan for long- or short-term strategies for a forward leap in the areas of science, technology, and production.

Short of war, an appropriate way to apply what we have seen in Biafra's RAP — to spark creativity and inspire human capital toward socially relevant science and technology in present-day Nigeria — would be to decentralize the complex Nigerian geoethnopolity in a manner more far-reaching than the current structure allows. This intentional agency might generate new rules and resources that would enable each of the resulting constituencies to confront the challenges of its own environment. Implicit in the idea of disentangling the geoethnopolity are the controversial concepts of restructuring, political decentralization, and true federalism or even confederalism, all of which have been commonly used in recent years to describe possible paths for Nigeria's political future. Most proponents of geopolitical restructuring have based their arguments on the premise that political centralization in an amorphous ethnocultural environment is the direct cause of incessant intergroup conflict in Nigeria. This perspective presupposes and advocates that a political decentralization more far-reaching than presently in force will reduce ethnoreligious territorial tensions, restore or create relative ethnoreligious homogeneity in the resulting regions/geopolitical zones, and promote peace and stability among divergent groups.

Sociologically speaking, this basic premise that geopolitical decentralization will promote stability by reducing ethnoreligious tensions is seriously undermined by empirical conditions, because conflict is ubiquitous in human interaction. Recent troubles in Nigeria illustrate the point. The people of Umuleri and Aguleri in Anambra State have traditionally been perceived by outsiders as agnates (a patriclan/ummunna). But several years ago they engaged in a fratricidal war that took many lives and destroyed much property on both sides. Yet they are Igbo who live in close geographic proximity and have shared the same language and culture for ages. An intense Ife-Modakeke conflict in Yorubaland captured the attention of the Nigerian public for several years in the 1990s and showed signs of recurrence in 2003. Members of the maitasine group in Northern Nigeria staged attacks against fellow Muslims in the early 1980s. Similar intraregional conflicts have been documented in other parts of Nigeria. We must conclude that ethnocultural homogeneity is not a sufficient condition for peace in a community, or in the macro-society for that matter.

A developmental argument for restructuring is superior to the ethnocultural alternative. In this case the quest for far-reaching politicoeconomic decentralization is based on the idea that the more the constituent parts take their destinies in their [End Page 1417] own hands, the more they will rise to the resulting challenges. Hence they will more readily tap the social capital and creative energies of their own populations for technological and economic development. In a Nigeria restructured without war, the expected outcome of intentional agency, the source of challenge, will be new rules and resources for which political leaders and their constituencies are largely responsible — and thus accountable to themselves — in terms of success or failure. So long as the central government remains the focus of immense political and economic power, the satellite constituencies will continue to depend on it. And the center, though itself historically inept as an agent of development, will remain a handy scapegoat on which to blame constituents' failure to rise to the challenges of transforming their domains socially, economically, and technologically.

In a country where individual and subgroup sentimental attachments reside more in the ethnocultural enclave than with national allegiances, the state is incapacitated to make and implement development-oriented policies. Kenny (2003) observes that because ethnic groups in Africa command far more loyalty and solidarity than the state, the state lacks legitimacy, is weakened, and therefore becomes unable to make and implement bold policies for growth and development. Kenny further notes that the longer the people of a diverse society stay together in their evolution as a nation-state, the more they develop the solidarity that can propel development. In other words, Nigeria is faced with a crucial choice: to reconfigure its geopolitical structure with the aim of accelerating development, or retain the constricting status quo and wait for a time that may never come.

I would argue that the intractable and intense ethnic and religious divisions that persist in Nigeria stifle cohesive political vision and constrain politicians from implementing prodevelopment policies. Further, the country's economic burden is presently shouldered by a handful of states, because the current 36-state structure has resulted in many economically unviable states that continue in existence for the sake of an illusory political stability. These two factors forestall emergence of the political rationality, courage, and clarity of purpose that leaders need in order to make viable policies and mobilize the public toward the path of development. Much time and effort is expended on balancing ethnic claims and maintaining a superficial political stability. Superficial national stability combined with a dismally declining quality of life and fragmentary societal infrastructure is the hallmark of a failed political project. In other words, rather than enabling development, the present structure constrains it.

The failure of Biafra has had several aftereffects. From the federal government's perspective, especially, the defeat of Biafra returned Nigeria to the desired status quo of a unified country, with the gains typically anticipated from cultural diversity and political economies of scale. But those gains have not materialized in the appalling political, economic, and social conditions that have plagued [End Page 1418] Nigeria since the end of the war. To ignore this negative fallout, especially on the Biafran side, is thus to engage in a biased intellectual enterprise. The failure of Biafra aborted the foundations it had laid, as well as its readiness, for a takeoff in technological development. That takeoff would have shown that Black Africa was capable of technological development even if only at a crude and rudimentary level. The history of technology shows that societies quite often proceed rapidly from crude to polished stages of development. Hence, Black Africa lost a society, a golden opportunity, that might have served not only as a technological role model but could also have kindled the intraregional imitation and competition historically known as catalysts of technological advancement. As Onyeani (2003) emphatically states, Biafra would have become the most powerful black country in the world had it been given the chance to survive and continue with the process of manufacturing virtually everything it needed.

Two years into the war, many Biafran citizens had understood the capabilities of their scientists, internalized their effectiveness, and reposed confidence in them as problem solvers. Given their breakthroughs, societal recognition of their work, and the positive reinforcement of seeing their inventions and innovations applied to practical uses, Biafran scientists would have continually pushed their activities to higher levels. But the Biafran scientist who created something from nothing could not be replicated in postwar Nigeria. The current Nigerian geopolitical structure has created a societal mentality of individual and subgroup indifference toward the nation's development. Excessive centralism in postwar Nigeria has precluded the emergence of the kind of social capital that could inspire its scientific and technological workforce toward innovation and development. This paradox is consistent with the duality of structure that we see in structuration theory: structure enabled the practice of socially relevant science in Biafra but constrains it in Nigeria. That Biafran scientists achieved technological relevance under severe material deprivation vindicates my theory that scientific and technological development, or development in general, is primarily propelled by maximum deployment of total available human essence (agency) whereas technological preconditions and material thresholds only serve as desirable accessories.

Structuration consists of the conditions and the media by which structures are transformed into systems (Giddens 1984). The lessons of Biafra show that the production and reproduction of its socially relevant science and technology system was a dynamic process anchored in reciprocal interaction between the social environment and human agency. Postwar Nigeria has enormous human and natural resources. But its 36-state structure, enacted through the agency of various political actors, draws enormous allocative power and citizen attention to the central government, creating a mentality of dependency and role abdication among leaders of the states. Ethnoreligious tensions, an intractable foe, rob the society of the kind of social capital that could optimize human potential for [End Page 1419] creating viable institutions. Consistent with the assumptions of structuration theory, production and reproduction of social forms can be achieved through the instrumentality of human agency and structural conditions. Common sense therefore suggests that a development-driven geopolitical restructuring through deliberate political action is a very necessary precondition for national development in general and for the development of science and technology in particular.

Endnotes

* Presented at the First International Conference on Igbo Studies: A Tribute to Simon Ottenberg, Africana Studies and Research Center, Cornell University, April 4–6, 2003. This article reflects on my experience as a young accounts clerk in the Biafran office of Research and Production (RAP), where I observed firsthand the magic of will and the power of social capital to evoke the best of human potentialities. I thank Simon Ottenberg, whose pioneering work on Igbo institutions and culture provided me with the right forum and motivation finally to write this present work, which had lingered in my mind since the end of the Nigerian-Biafran war in 1970. Thanks also to Christian Iroegbu, Emmanuel Enekwechi, Emmanuel Nnadozie, Ebere Onwudiwe, Chudi Uwazuruike, and Ifeanyi Uzoka for the series of informal discussions and conversations that directly and indirectly helped to crystallize my idea, and to Gale Bandsma and Elaine Force for their secretarial help. I thank the anonymous reviewers of Social Forces for their help in sharpening my thoughts. Direct correspondence to Chikwendu Christian Ukaegbu, Department of Sociology, 406 Ross Hall, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY 82071. E-mail: chris@uwyo.edu.

1. I had intended to include many names of leaders and employees of RAP in order to make my account vivid and concrete. But I was a very junior employee at the office of Head RAP, now more than 30 years ago, and Arene's book (1997) contains many more names than I could ever hope to have recollected. For additional detailed information on the composition of RAP units, see also Ogbudinkpa (1985).

References

Aguilera, Michael, and Douglas Massey. 2003. "Social Capital and the Wages of Mexican Migrants: New Hypotheses and Tests." Social Forces 82:671–701.

Anya, A.O. 1993. Science and the Crisis of African Development. Bolabay Publications.

Arene, Eugene O. 1997. The "Biafran Scientists": The Development of an Indigenous Technology. National Library Press.

Bandura, Albert. 1986. The Foundations of Thought and Action: A Social Cognitive Theory. Prentice-Hall.

Biersteker, Thomas J. 1978. Distortion or Development? Contending Perspectives on the Multinational Corporation. MIT Press.

Chatelin, Y., Jacques Gaillard, and A. S. Keller. 1997. "The Nigerian Scientific Community: The Colossus with Feet of Clay." Pp. 129–54 in Scientific Communities in the Developing World, edited by Jacques Gaillard, V.V. Krishna, and Roland Waast. Sage Publications.

De St. Jorre, John. 1972. The Brothers' War: Biafra and Nigeria. Houghton Mifflin.

Diamond, Stanley. 1968. "The Viability of Biafra as a State." Paper presented at the First International Conference on Biafra, New York, December 7.

Eisemon, Thomas. 1979. "The Implantation of Science in Nigeria and Kenya." Minerva 17:504–26.

Ezekwe, Gordian O. 1997. "Foreword." Pp. 4–5 in The "Biafran Scientists": The Development of an Indigenous Technology, by Eugene O. Arene. National Library Press.

Fabayo, J.A., A.F. Odejide, and J.A. Alade. 1995. "Technological Self-reliance for Industrial Developments in Nigeria: Issues and Impediments." Scandinavian Journal of Development Alternatives 14(1–2):5–28.

Forrest, Tom G. 1994. The Advance of African Capital: The Growth of Nigerian Private Enterprise. University Press of Virginia. [End Page 1420]

Forsyth, Frederick. 1969. The Biafra Story. Penguin Books.

Geisler, Eliezer. 2001. Creating Value with Science and Technology. Quorum Books.

Giddens, Anthony. 1976. New Rules of Sociological Method: A Positive Critique of Interpretive Sociologies. Hutchinson Press.

———. 1984. The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration. Polity Press.

———. 1987. "Structuralism, Post-Structuralism and the Production of Culture," Pp. 195–223 in Social Theory Today, edited by Anthony Giddens and Jonathan H. Turner. Polity Press.

———. 2001. "Notes on the Theory of Structuration." Pp. 384–90 in Social Theory: Continuity and Confrontation, edited by Roberta Garner. Broadview Press.

History Channel. 1997. Empires of Industry: Andrew Carnegie and the Age of Steel. Written by John Mernit and James Golway. Produced by Steven Land. Jupiter Entertainment, Inc., in association with The History Channel. Copyright A&E Television Networks. Order no. AAE-72295.

Inkeles, Alex, and David Smith. 1998. "Becoming Modern." Pp. 209–18 in Development and Underdevelopment: The Political Economy of Inequality, edited by Mitchell A. Seligson and John T. Passé-Smith. Lynne Rienner.

Jacobs, Dan. 1987. The Brutality of Nations. Alfred A. Knopf.

Kenny, Charles. 2003. "Why Aren't Countries Rich? Weak States and Bad Neighborhoods." Pp. 413–25 in Development and Underdevelopment: The Political Economy of Global Inequality, 3rd ed., edited by Mitchell A. Seligson and John T. Passé-Smith. Lynne Rienner.

Krishhna, Anirudh, and Elizabeth Shrader. 1999. "Social Capital Assessment Tool." Prepared for the Conference on Social Capital and Poverty Reduction, The World Bank, Washington, D.C., June 22–24.

LeVine, Robert A. 1966. Dreams and Deeds: Achievement Motivation in Nigeria. University of Chicago Press.

Mackenzie, Donald, and Judy Wajcman. 1999. The Social Shaping of Technology. Open University Press.

Madiebo, Alexander A. 1980. The Nigerian Revolution and the Biafran War. Fourth Dimension.

Marsh, Robert. 2003. "Social Capital, Guanxi, and the Road to Democracy in Taiwan." Comparative Sociology 2:575–604.

Munch, Richard. 1994. Sociological Theory: From the 1850s to the Present. 3 vols. Nelson-Hall Publishers.

Nafziger, E. Wayne. 1982. The Economics of Political Instability: The Nigerian-Biafran War. Westview Press.

Nwankwo, Arthur Aqwuncha. 1972. Nigeria: The Challenge of Biafra. Rex Collings.

Ogbimi, F. E. 1990. "Preparing for Commercialization of Scientific Research Results in Nigeria." Science and Public Policy 17(6):373–79.

Ogbudinkpa, Nwabeze Reuben. 1985. The Economics of the Nigerian Civil War and Its Prospects for National Development. Fourth Dimension. [End Page 1421]

Onyeani, Abba. 2003. "Tears of the Sun Failed to Recognize the Bravery and Ingenuity of the Biafrans." Interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). The African Sun Times (East Orange, NJ), (19 April):26.

Ottenberg, Simon. 1971. Leadership and Authority in an African Society: The Afikpo Village-Group. Washington University Press.

Putnam, Robert D. 2000. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. Simon and Schuster.

Schnore, Leo. 1961. "The Myth of Human Ecology." Sociological Inquiry 31:128–39.

Sewell, William H. 1992. "A Theory of Structure: Duality, Agency, and Transformation." American Journal of Sociology 98:1–29.

Stremlau, John J. 1977. The International Politics of the Nigerian Civil War: 1967–1970. Princeton University Press.

Teece, David J., and Gary P. Pisano. 1998. "The Dynamic Capabilities of Firms: An Introduction." Pp. 193–214 in Technology, Organization and Competitiveness: Perspective on Industrial and Corporate Change, edited by Giovanni Dosi, David J. Teece, and Josef Chytry. Oxford University Press.

Thin, Neil. 2002. Social Progress and Sustainable Development. Kumarian Press.

Thomas, Babatunde. 2001a. "Development of Science and Technology for the Socioeconomic Advancement of Nigeria: Policy Interventions, Constraints and Possible Responses." Discussion paper for the Consultative Group Forum series, Abuja, Nigeria, Session 3, January 12.

———. 2001b. The Guardian, February, http://www.ngrguardiannews.com.

Tiffin, Scott, and S. Osotimehin. 1988. "Technical Entrepreneurship and Technological Innovation in Nigeria." Journal of Development Planning, 18:195–220.

Ukaegbu, Chikwendu Christian. 1985. "Are Nigerian Scientists and Engineers Effectively Utilized? Issues on the Deployment of Scientific and Technological Labor for National Development." World Development 13:449–512.

———. 1987. "Job Satisfaction and Skill Utilization in Research Institutes." Management in Nigeria, (September/October):14–20.

———. 1991. "The Structure of Nigerian Industries and Utilization of Scientific and Technological Manpower," Nigerian Journal of Economic and Social Studies 33:1–19.

———. 1995. "The Constraining Factors That Undermine Technological Development and Effective Utilization of Scientific Manpower: The Nigerian Experience." Review of Human Factor Studies 1(2):3759.

———. 2001. "Scientists, Engineers and Scientific Practice in Africa: The Case of Nigeria." (April 26–28) Presented at the Workshop on Technology and Development in Africa, Center for African Studies, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

———. 2002. "Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Survival in Igbo States of Nigeria." In progress. Copies may be requested from the author.

Ukaegbu, Chikwendu Christian, and Christian C. Agunwamba. 1995. "Structural Adjustment and Manpower Utilization: The Case of Nigerian Scientists and Engineers." Pp. 131–47 in The Significance of the Human Factor in African Development, edited by Senyo B.-S.K. Adjibolosoo. Praeger. [End Page 1422]

UNESCO. 1998. World Science Report. UNESCO Publishing.

UNDP. 1992. United Nations. Human Development Report. UNDP.

Wakhungu, Judi Wanglawa. 2001. "Science, Technology and Public Policy in Africa: A Framework for Action." Bulletin of Science, Technology and Society 21.4:246–52.

Wallace, Walter L. 1969. Sociological Theory: An Introduction. Aldine.

Waters, Malcolm. 1994. Modern Sociological Theory. Sage Publications.

Williams, A. 2003. "Nigerian Inventor, Gilbert, Shines at Global Contest." The Guardian, June 25, http://www.ngrguardiannews.com