Introduction

This introductory chapter provides an overview of Nigeria and postcolonial scholarship in social work highlighting the importance of history in shaping present predicaments. It argues that, to understand Nigeria's social problems, it is necessary to examine historical antecedents to its poor social development record, traceable to precolonial times when the country comprised unconnected diverse regionally defined ethnic and religious groups. Masked by British unification in 1914, these regional differences have led to prolonged periods of political instability and ethnoreligious divisions that have hampered development post-independence. The chapter ends with an introduction to the chapters that follow.