By ENEWARIDIDEKE EKANPOU
Borders are the plagues of any society; borders are also the joys of any society. Border-management strategies intentionally mapped out do produce results that become either destabilising or beneficial when viewed through the lens of man’s struggle for self-actualisation and social belonging in a society where identity-building is all.
However, society is structured; the cream of man’s struggle is to attain self-actualisation and social belonging, especially with borders that have attained changing meanings and functions in the society. In line with the changing meanings of borders, which function differently in different societies, the preoccupation of High Chief Government Ekpemupolo (Tompolo) and High Chief Dr. Dennis Otuaro centres on functionally optimal management of borders away from the undulations that stifle growth and self-actualisation projections. Burdened with these national assignments, Tompolo and Dr. Otuaro are always at work to be on the rosy side of history in terms of border management since they are now looked upon as border managers in Nigeria.
Borders were chiefly conceptualised as geographical constructs, cartographically marked and indicated by lines and divisions. With the reconceptualisation, reconfiguration and re-imagination of borders in the 1980s, borders have also become social constructs that function differently and define human relations, especially when they are applied to literature through the methodology of border poetics.
