The Pan-African Nation: Oil and the Spectacle of Culture in Nigeria. Andrew Apter. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2005. 334 pp.

FESTAC 1977 and indeed, the entire gamut of Pan-Africanism or Negritude stem from the experience of slave trade, slavery and colonialism. Apter’s book could be viewed from the historiographical tradition of a-historical Africa (Afro-pessimism) that re-affirms the influential notion of a dark continent bereft of a history except the activities of the Europeans, civilizing mission of colonial rule and the failure of the post-colonial state.