Searching for Resiliency Amidst Conflicts, Child Soldiering and Emigration: The Case of the Nigerian Civil War-1967-197

Dr. Buster Ogbuagu

Chair and Associate Professor in the Department of Social Work, University of St. Francis, Joliet, Illinois

Dr. Buster Ogbuagu has worked as a radio broadcaster, high school teacher, social worker in child protection, juvenile justice, and as a clinical practitioner. As a new immigrant to Canada, he started from scratch and worked as an office cleaner. He holds a BSc. (Hons.) in Sociology & Anthropology from the University of Nigeria. He also earned a BSW, MSW and Ph.D. from McGill University. Philosophically, Dr. Ogbuagu is passionate about intersectionalities and anti-oppressive epistemologies to social work practice, which underscore and inform his teaching and practice. As a Diasporic Transnationalist, his current and ongoing research and professional interests include social policy/welfare, ethics, race, anti-racist/anti-oppression, minority & gender issues, multiculturalism, refugees, refugee/resettlement/transnational migration, community organizing and advocacy; child protection; mental health, including addictions and disability. Dr. Ogbuagu has documented some of his many lived experiences in several published journal articles and books. Resiliency amidst conflicts explores the personal, but oftentimes, collective narratives of how some of those who have been through hell and back still manage to construct resiliency. It presents a chronology of British imperialism in Nigeria, leading to their incitement of the Nigerian Civil War-1967-1970 and sequelae of mayhem to the colonized, expendable subject. My story as a colonial subject, child soldier and as a refugee/immigrant to Canada, an office cleaner and currently a university professor in the United States presents as a prism through which even those who have endured so much pain and suffering and walking the trails of despondency are able to summon resiliency to survive and even dare to thrive in strange and oftentimes, alienating environments.