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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Nigeria, alien influx and the ecowas treaty: national sovereignty versus supra national allegiance? |
Author: | James, Ibrahim |
Year: | 1983 |
Periodical: | Genève-Afrique: acta africana |
Volume: | 21 |
Issue: | 1 |
Pages: | 7-24 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | Nigeria |
Subjects: | immigrants Africans freedom of movement deportation |
Abstract: | The history of West Africa has been a continued long story of human movement. Pre-colonial West African kingdoms, Tekrur, Ghana, Mali, Songhai, Kanem-Borno, Ashanti, Fante, Dahomey, etc. had no defined territorial boundaries in the contemporary sense. Even the artificially-defined colonial West African boundaries were no impediment to trans-border migrations in the West African region. This liberal attitude towards human mobility in the region ebbed with the attainment of political independence. Human mobility in West Africa is an antecedent of nation-states or of political boundaries, and nation-states are not the ultimate final stage in world politics but a transitional one towards the formation of political communities such as ECOWAS. The expulsion of aliens is only a reflection of the dilemma confronting newly emergent nations namely: the difficult choice between national sovereignty and supra-national allegiance. Maps, notes, sum. (French; German), tab. |