Books published by Malthouse Press

Judicial pronouncements on issues relating to jurisdiction in Nigeria are on the increase and cases are often lost on jurisdictional grounds, while brief writing becomes herculean in the absence of a resource guide on the citation of authorities and knowing what changes have taken place in the law relating to the jurisdiction of courts in all facets of human endeavour and in respect to cases that find their way to the courts. This book highlights in a simplified manner, judicial pronouncements by the superior courts of records as it relates to issues of Jurisdiction under the Nigerian Law.

Dearlogue is an intriguing and sensitive collection of poems, which explores modes of dialoguing and communication of feelings between, and sentimental representations of, the amorous duo. The complexities of human emotions are clearly on display here, the masterful play of words notwithstanding!

Here is a familiar phenomenon and especially easily understood in any neighbourhood, or settlement, or small town or certain parts of a city or geographical region where intensively profitable commercial or industrial or mining activities have wrought extensive physical changes, alongside transformation of basic values and political bickerings and configuration of social and political alignments. The Locusts are Here Again documents and explores the various hazards, deprivations and sufferings engendered by crude oil-exploiting activities in the so-called oil-bearing communities of the Niger Delta of Nigeria. The communities can so far only bear the oil physically but unable to own it economically, socially and politically except the deleterious consequences.

In Our Wife Has Gone Mad, a play which in its unpublished form won the 2017 Society of Nigeria Theatre Artists (SONTA)/Olu-ObafemiAward for playwriting, the Author takes the fight for feminist equality to the seeming realm of the ludicrous. Women who are married to more than one man in a lifetime, it is normally after a divorce or death of the husband. In the case of Daniela in this play, she appropriates the same liberty or privilege given to men and marries several husbands. She does not cheat on the first husband; she merely legally gets married to the other two men and keeps them in their different cities - after all, some men do this too...

From ancient to contemporary times, music in the area known as Nigeria has passed through different stages of transmutation. Primarily transmitted through oral means has in the last century received significant scholarly attention. Areas like folksong documentation, ethno-organological studies, popular music studies and art music have continued to feature in scholarly discourse. Societal dynamism allows room for scholarly reassessment and evaluation of aspects of Nigerian music; thus, reflecting change and continuity in the area. It is within this cusp that this book looks at contemporary trajectories in Nigerian music.Contributors are Charles Aluede, Albert Oikelome, Yemi Akperi, Oghenemudiakevwe Igbi, John Aideloje Abolagba, 'Femi Adedeji, Samuel Ayodele Adegboyega, Emurobome Idolor, Opeyemi Adeyinka Asaolu, David Bolaji, Margaret Efurhievwe, Bruno Ekewenu, Sunday Ofuani, Enoh Okafor, Philo Igue Okpeki, Rotimi Peters Ologundudu, Edward Oluwagbemiga Olusegun, Bode Omojola, Peace Onyenye, Precious Omuku, Udoka Ossaiga, Akin Joseph Osunniyi, Isaac Udoh

The main strength of this well written play is its dialectical blend of religious and political education, with an unmistakable revolutionary intent. Woven intricate but unobtrusive dialogue, with palpable images of light and darkness, fusing theocracy with politics in a palpable, simple and lucid lyrical tone, Na'Allah has given us a new play which proposes a new path to social liberation in which manipulative partisan politics is unequivocally unmasked. The wedlock proposal which comes at the end between the radical Mariama and the cleric Aafa is instructive of a future in which love and moral rectitude, shorn of external material trappings, becomes the defining features of social, just polity of our dream.

In twenty-two chapters, divided into six parts for convenience, the authors not only lay bare the "art of lawyering" but also provide invaluable nuggets of perfecting and excelling as a solicitor and advocate. There is little doubt that the contents of this book dramatically make a lawyer, especially the lawyer in Africa, to be more effective, more skilful and a proper lawyer useful to the client and society.

Topics discussed in this book are deliberately comparative and show the different levels of the ground rules for the regulation of corporate operations in the different jurisdictions. The United Kingdom, Nigeria and South Africa are primarily chosen simply on the common law background upon which the statutory provisions in those countries are founded. There are also references to Canada, Australia and India on case by case basis to illustrate the differences in the application of the relevant legal principles and statutory interpretations. The insights gained should facilitate statutory amendments and effective adjustment in the operations of the regulatory agencies and business organizations.The book is written as an invaluable study material for students at the tertiary level. Illuminating the concepts from divergent perspectives avails the reader a broad range of explanations for a better understanding of the subject. Legal practitioners and the judiciary should also find in this work a good source of legal information on company law, especially whenever the need arises to seek persuasive guidance from the opinions of courts and writers on similar developments in cognate jurisdictions to give meaning to those difficult and uncharted courses in the discharge of their daily responsibilities of interpreting and applying the law as judicial officers. The book should be a handy material for those running the affairs of a company in understanding the rules of their engagement.

This anthology is an outcome of literary writers' reaction to the Boko Haram insurgency in the north-eastern part of Nigeria. Lives therein have not only been extensively disrupted by the group's violent tactics and the mind-numbing levels of physical destruction and thousands of deaths, but also in the dislocation of millions of people, with most of them seeking refuge in urban centres, especially Maiduguri, for safety. These refugees, classified as Internally Displaced Persons and in camps guarded by Nigerian soldiers, have received worldwide attention. Writers in the affected areas and elsewhere in Nigeria have responded in their poetry, short stories, and non-fiction some of which are collected here.

Ndaba Sibanda, from Zimbabwe, has co-authored more than thirty published books. He was a 2005 National Arts Merit Awards (NAMA) nominee, compiled and edited Its Time (2006), and Free Fall (2017), and the recipient of a Starry Night ART School scholarship in 2015.

In Herding South, Peter Omoko spotlights the dispossessed and dystopian fate of minority groups in Nigeria, and the fractured social equilibrium that pervades the land, with its polarising and destructive effect on the people's psyche. Writing essentially as a troubled witness, the poet navigates through the horrifying pains and trauma of a people, instigated by the ineptitude and narrow-mindedness of their leadership. Omoko's intention in this collection - to speak home-truth to power in order to reclaim the people's humanity - is well delineated in the sardonic and emotive metaphors used in the poetry and the rhetorical force of its lines."

Previous works on Discourse Analysis and Pragmatics have either been dominantly focused on theory or on practice without much balance and attention to both theory and analysis. The present volume seeks to strike a balance between the two closely related disciplines on the one hand, and between the study of theory in the two disciplines and on issues of methodology and application in specific areas of enquiry on the other. The book seeks to provide a cross-sectional view of scholarship in these areas, specifically from the perspective of how the intersection of theory and practice enables Nigerian scholars of Discourse Analysis and Pragmatics to understand and analyse texts that have pan-Nigerian peculiarities.

This book provides an overview of the tools and guidance required by Law Enforcement Officers with detailed knowledge about interrogating a suspect in Nigeria… to the collection of conviction- ensuring evidence at a crime scene and… right through to the basics of forensic investigation and the legal rights of the suspects involved. There is analysis of how the concept of Tunnel Vision captures psychology, police investigation and attendant effects on the investigation of crimes. This book not only enumerates the ethics of interrogation, it also provides a valuable and workable information on ethics of crime scene investigations, scientific evidence and rights of suspects.

This book highlights in a most condensed form judicial pronouncements by the superior courts of records as they relate to practice and procedures in civil litigation in Nigeria. Judicial pronouncements on civil aspects of the law in Nigeria are on the increase, rendering brief-writing more challenging, if not herculean, in the absence of a resource guide for the citation of authorities and knowing which changes have taken place in the law. For lawyers not to be taken by surprise in courts when issues relating to practice and procedures are raised without notice, makes the need to have a resource book that should serve as a quick guide the more compelling. This book is thus intended to be a reference guide.

This book is on the nature and practice of legal education in Nigeria, with comparative material sometimes deployed to shed light on current local situation. The primary goal of legal education is to prepare students for the profession. To do this, a faculty will need to pay attention to a theory of learning to guide it in implementing a programme that will serve the mission. It is hoped that the basic information here provided on the basic structure and content oflegal education and ensuing challenges should point in more fruitful directions to all in the legal profession in Nigeria.

Mohammed Chris Alli is a retired Nigerian Army Major General who served as Chief of Army Staff from 1993 to 1994 under General Sanni Abacha's regime and was military governor of Plateau State Nigeria from August 1985 to 1986 during the military regime of General Ibrahim Babangida. Many years later, he was appointed interim administrator of the state during a 2004 crisis in the state following ethno-religious killings in Shendam, Yelwa Local Government. In this anthology, organized as a symposium on Mohammed Christopher Alli's work, he is identified as one of those critical and rational thinkers, philosophers, albeit, a General in the Nigerian Army, whose work finds a befitting logical space in the contemporary African philosophical tapestry. The book also captures the elements of military misrule in Nigeria and its undue influence on the body polity; it is a critical survey of past military misadventures, and a satire against false federalism, it is a firm warning against future corruption and impunity in the military.

Professor Darah turned seventy on Wednesday November 22, 2017 and to celebrate his very productive career, his colleagues and many of those he has mentored thought it appropriate to mark his official exit from the university in a dignified way by commissioning for publication, in the now acceptable festschrift tradition, the highly compelling and outstanding collection of essays titled: Scholarship and Commitment: Essays in Honour of G.G. Darah. The book is a ground-breaking collection of essays; some are couched as tributes to the ebullient celebrant, there are others on more serious discourses in the areas of literary theories and criticism, language and linguistics, popular literature and politics, the African woman, identity and contemporary realities, oral literature, the news media and cultural studies. The essays, on their own, attest to the vivacity and liveliness as well as the encouraging state of health of publishing in the Nigerian academia, which in this collection alone, parades forty-two essays in different fields or discourses.

The Oily Marriage, Professor Hope Eghagha's third published play, delves into the socio-cultural and political conflicts, conflicting emotions, and dilemma which the discovery and exploitation of crude oil present to the people of the Niger Delta in Nigeria. It functions at the personal level and the level of inter-ethnic relations and how sometimes the solutions to problems become intertwined with and undermined by selfish and personal interests. The image of the exploiter looms large in the play as business and commerce are locked in mortal combat for the soul of the region. How these issues play out in the twenty-first century is the concern of the playwright in this fast-moving drama of ideas.