The Third Wave of Historical Scholarship on Nigeria : Essays in Honor of Ayodeji Olukoju [1 ed.] 9781443847124, 9781443839945

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The Third Wave of Historical Scholarship on Nigeria

The Third Wave of Historical Scholarship on Nigeria: Essays in Honor of Ayodeji Olukoju

Edited by

Saheed Aderinto and Paul Osifodunrin

The Third Wave of Historical Scholarship on Nigeria: Essays in Honor of Ayodeji Olukoju, Edited by Saheed Aderinto and Paul Osifodunrin This book first published 2012 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2012 by Saheed Aderinto and Paul Osifodunrin and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-3994-9, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-3994-5

Dedicated to Professor Olukoju’s family

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Illustrations ...................................................................................... x List of Tables.............................................................................................. xi Acknowledgments ..................................................................................... xii Part I: Ayodeji Olukoju and the Third Wave of Historical Scholarship on Nigeria Chapter One................................................................................................. 2 The Third Wave of Historical Scholarship on Nigeria Saheed Aderinto and Paul Osifodunrin Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 22 Treading the Uncharted Path in Nigerian History: The Intellectual World of Ayodeji Olukoju Saheed Aderinto and Paul Osifodunrin Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 50 “Ports, Hinterlands, and Forelands”: Ayodeji Olukoju and Nigerian and Comparative Maritime Historiography Tokunbo Aderemi Ayoola Part II: Sources, Methodologies, and Historiographies Chapter Four.............................................................................................. 76 Sex across the Border: Researching Transnational Prostitution in Colonial Nigeria Saheed Aderinto Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 95 Of Orality and History: Songs, Royalty, and Traditional Agency in Yorubaland, 1910 to the Present Abimbola O. Adesoji

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Chapter Six .............................................................................................. 118 The Emics and Etics: Insider/Outsider Binary in Nigeria’s Migration History Isaac Olawale Albert Chapter Seven.......................................................................................... 128 Of Historical Visibility and Epistemology: History and Historians of Nigerian Women Saheed Aderinto Part III: Rereading and Rewriting Colonial Nigeria Chapter Eight........................................................................................... 154 “The Owner of the Land”: The Benin Obas and Colonial Forest Reservation in Benin Division, Southern Nigeria Pauline von Hellermann and Uyilawa Usuanlele Chapter Nine............................................................................................ 183 Native Courts, the Cocoa Economy, and Land “Palaver”: Ijesa and Ekiti, 1900–1948 Olatunji Ojo and Lawrence K. Alo Chapter Ten ............................................................................................. 207 Toward New Approaches to Nigeria’s Railway History: The Rural and Agricultural Alternatives Shehu Tijjani Yusuf Chapter Eleven ........................................................................................ 224 Inventing Citizenship, Creating Otherness: Memory and the Politics of Identity in Yorubaland Saheed Aderinto Part IV: Emerging Frontiers in Colonial Nigerian History Chapter Twelve ....................................................................................... 246 Lagos and the Invention of Juvenile Delinquency in Nigeria, 1920–1960 Laurent Fourchard

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Chapter Thirteen...................................................................................... 274 “Their Days Are Spent in Gambling and Loafing, Pimping for Prostitutes, and Picking Pockets”: Male Juvenile Delinquents on Lagos Island, 1920s–1960s Simon Heap Chapter Fourteen ..................................................................................... 306 Crime, Murder, and the Religious Body in Late-Colonial Lagos Paul Osifodunrin Part V: Contemporary Nigeria Chapter Fifteen ........................................................................................ 334 Media Globalization, African Popular Culture, and History from Below: Nigerian Video Films Paul Ugor and Giovanna Santanera Chapter Sixteen ....................................................................................... 359 Mainstreaming the Contemporary Context of Historical Scholarship in Nigeria Olukoya Ogen Chapter Seventeen ................................................................................... 373 Human Trafficking in Nigeria: Globalization and Transnational Immorality, 1985–2010 Richard A. Aborisade and Adeyinka A. Aderinto Chapter Eighteen ..................................................................................... 392 From Denial to Acceptance: HIV/AIDS in Nigeria since the 1980s Akeem Ayofe Akinwale Contributors............................................................................................. 406 Index........................................................................................................ 411

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Map 8.1. Reservation in Benin District before 1914 Map 8.2. Reservation in Benin Division under Oba Eweka II, 1920s Map 8.3. Existing and proposed new reserves under the Benin Forest Scheme, demarcated in 1937 under Oba Akenzua II Figure 4.1. Criminal record of Nigerian Madam Regina Chewizi convicted for brothel keeping in Takoradi on April 29 1952. Figure 4.2. Mugshot of Nigerian Madam Regina Chewizi convicted for brothel keeping in Takoradi on April 29 1952. Figure 12.1. Population of immigrants and youth in Lagos: 1931, 1950, 1963 Figure 13:1. Lagos Island Figure 13.2. Postcard scene of the Marina Figure 13.3. Cowboy drawing

LIST OF TABLES

Table 10.1. Tonnage of groundnuts and other products transported by railway from Kano Station, 1912–1918 Table 10.2. Railway passenger traffic at Madobi Station, 1939 Table 10.3. Trading firms operating in Madobi village, ca. 1924–1940s Table 10.4. Tonnage of groundnuts transported by railway from Madobi Station, 1924–1962 Table 10.5. Groundnut middlemen in Madobi Table 12.1. Population growth of selected Nigerian cities, 1866 to 1963 Table 12.2. Juvenile offenders under age 17, 1927 to 1965 Table 12.3. Children passing through hostels in Lagos Table 12.4. Prosecution of hawking in Lagos Juvenile Court Table 13.1. Michael Akademi, a juvenile delinquent in Lagos, 1927–1941

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Our heartfelt appreciation is extended to all who contributed in one way or the other to the completion of this festschrift in honor of Ayodeji Olukoju. We thank contributors for supporting this project and enduring our numerous editorial demands. Raphael Njoku of Louisville University, Hakeem Tijani of Adeleke University, Olutayo C. Adesina of University of Ibadan, Niyi Afolabi of the University of Texas at Austin, and Chima Korieh of Marquette University read and offered useful comments on the manuscript. We appreciate Olatunji Ojo of Brock University’s note on the introduction. Babatunde Babalola of Rice University not only helped courier research materials between Waynesville and Lagos but commented on chapters 3, 6, and 11. We wish to express our gratitude to Bob Fullilove for reading the manuscript with the view of making it more accessible to our audience. We acknowledge Cambridge University Press for the permission to reproduce chapters 8 and 12. Our appreciation also goes to Cambridge Scholars Publishing for publishing this volume. The staff of the press—Carol Koulikourdi, Amanda Millar, and Chris Humphery— handled our request effectively and with deep enthusiasm. Saheed is grateful to Western Carolina University and its ever-friendly library staff for supporting this project and helping to secure materials. He is also grateful to his colleagues—David Dorondo and Richard Starnes—for sharing critical information about book publishing and for their quality mentorship. Paul wishes to thank the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) and the French Institute for Research in Africa (IFRA) for supporting his research. Without our families and relatives, this project, like others, would not have materialized. We thank our wives (Olamide Aderinto and Bukola Osifodunrin) and children for their relentless sacrifice and support for our academic and professional goals. Above all, we thank almighty God—the ultimate source of our knowledge, energy, strength, and inspiration. Saheed Aderinto Waynesville, NC Paul Osifodunrin Lagos

PART I: AYODEJI OLUKOJU AND THE THIRD WAVE OF HISTORICAL SCHOLARSHIP ON NIGERIA

CHAPTER ONE THE THIRD WAVE OF HISTORICAL SCHOLARSHIP ON NIGERIA SAHEED ADERINTO AND PAUL OSIFODUNRIN

The significant place of Nigeria in Africanist studies is indisputable— it is one of the birthplaces of academic historical research on Africa. Nigeria is also one of the most studied countries in Africa.1 Academic writings on the country date back to the 1950s when scholars at the University College Ibadan (later the University of Ibadan) launched serious investigations into the nation’s precolonial and colonial past. The ideology of this first wave of academic history was well laid out—guarded and propagated from the 1950s through the 1970s. Scholars were convinced that research into the precolonial histories of state and empire formation and the sophistication of political structures before the advent of imperialism would supply the evidence needed to counteract the notion— obnoxious to Africans—that they needed external political overlords because of their inability to govern themselves. Historical research was therefore pivoted toward restoring Nigerian peoples into history. This brand of academic tradition, widely called “nationalist historiography,” supplied the much needed ideological tools for decolonization through its deployment of oral history, archaeology, and linguistic evidence. But like any school of thought, nationalist historiography had to adapt to new ideas and respond to changing events; unfortunately its failure to reshape its research agenda and inability to reinvent itself, coupled with several developments outside academia, made it an anachronism and set in motion its demise from the 1980s or earlier.2 However, the story of nationalist historiography transcends its “rise” and “fall.” Indeed, without nationalist historiography, historical research on Nigeria and to a large extent Africa might have either been delayed or taken a completely different course. It might have been impossible for other branches of history—economic, social, women’s—that emerged during the second wave of historical writing (1970s–1980s) to become

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established when it did. Nationalist historians provided the template and foundation on which the second wave of historical writing was built. Even the neo-Marxist school promoted by scholars at Ahmadu Bello University derived its line of counterdiscourse criticizing the elitism of state formation from data presented in nationalist historiography. Hence, unlike nationalist historiography, which focuses largely on political history of state and empire building, the second wave recognized the economic, social, and gendered character of Nigeria’s precolonial and colonial past. Without nationalist historiography, stories that spotlight the lives of “ordinary” people—that is, men and women who worked behind the scene providing the much needed resources that sustained the elite-run state—might have been delayed or assumed a different dimension. In addition, if not for the foresight of Kenneth Dike, one of the key figures of the first wave, the National Archives, the largest repository of primary documents on colonial Nigeria, which helped preserve data for upcoming generations of historians, would not have come into existence when it did. Had Dike’s rescue mission of 1951 that paved the way for the establishment of the Nigerian Records Office (later the National Archives) in 1954 been delayed the massive body of information that has helped historians to chart multiple terrains in the county’s vast history would have been destroyed.3 Taken together, three overlapping periods appear discernible in the evolution of Nigerian history. While nationalist historiography represents the first wave, which emerged in the 1950s and reached its height in the 1970s, the second wave (1970s and 1980s) saw the consolidation of fields such as social, economic, and women’s history. In Nigeria, Nationalism, and Writing History, Toyin Falola and Saheed Aderinto detail the ideological, methodological, and epistemological foundations and character of the first and second waves.4 The third wave (since the 1990s) is the concern of this volume in honor of Ayodeji Olukoju. This phase ushered in a new historiographical and paradigmatic shift through such emerging subfields as sexuality, crime, children, youth, urban, business, and environment, among others. Scholars continue to identify themselves as political, social, or women’s historians, but the 1990s and 2000s witnessed the birth of highly specialized subfields that derived their orientation from the main branches established during the first and the second waves. For instance, the new histories of business, crime, and children draw some of their methods, data, and vocabulary from the well-established branches of social, women’s, economic, and even political history.5 The history of sexuality stands at the intersection of race, gender, politics, economy, and sociocultural dynamics.6 Indeed, Aderinto claims that sexuality is a “total” history because the rhetoric of sex finds important representation and

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expression in virtually all aspects of a society’s existence.7 Reference to crime, children, youth, and sex in Nigerianist literature in pre-1990s is legion. However, it was from the 1990s that works that put sexuality, childhood, or criminality at the center of historical inquiry began to spring up.8 Maritime history, which Olukoju developed into a serious site of scholarly engagement, draws significantly from data grounded in Nigeria’s economic past. His Infrastructure Development and Urban Facilities in Lagos, the first book-length history to focus on the three key infrastructure systems of electricity, water, and urban transport in Nigeria, is grounded in the narratives of urbanization, urban planning, and economic development in colonial and postcolonial Nigeria.9 Indeed, a lot of sociological and economic analyses are embedded in historical studies of food culture and urban centers.10 The “new” globalization and unprecedented emigration of Africans to North America and Europe since the 1980s has fueled new research into the “new” African diaspora.11 The third wave of historical scholarship on Nigeria also saw new works that systematically challenge stale ideas about ethnicity, nationalism, power, politics, agency, and the nature of Nigerians’ encounter with colonial rule in general. Established ideas and highly revered scholars are inherently difficult to challenge, but scholars taking the bull by the horns have pointed to major gaps that need filling and to ideas that are anachronistic given the emergence of new information and data.12 For instance, unlike in the decades prior to the 1990s when women’s history was interpreted almost entirely in political terms, in the 1990s and 2000s scholarship has engaged the experiences of women in other spheres.13 In terms of geographic coverage, Nigeria’s minorities (that is, ethnicities other than the Yoruba, the Hausa, and the Igbo) have begun to receive adequate academic representation.14 Moreover, minorities within each of the so-called major ethnic groups are now seeing their names and communities forming the basis of sustained research agendas.15 In Chapter 5 of this volume, Abimbola Adesoji responds vigorously to Olukoju’s admonition that “community history must be the priority of Nigerian historians during this [twenty-first] century if we are to capture whatever remains of our fast-disappearing stock of oral traditions, the repositories of which are dying out.”16 If historians agreed with Obaro Ikime’s theme in his 1985 lecture as the president of the Historical Society of Nigeria (HSN) that historical research should be tailored to answer pertinent questions about contemporary challenges of nation building, it was not until the 1990s that works truly yielding to his admonition began to surface in increasing number.17

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The peculiarities of the third wave are seen not only in the thematic continuities and changes that historians engage but also in the methodologies, expositions, and sources they deploy. If the historians of the first and second waves were rarely required to locate their work within extant literature, mainly because they pioneered most of the subjects they researched, a scholar writing from the 1990s to the present—due to the expansion of scholarly output—has been expected to contextualize his or her work with respect to the existing literature. Writing in 1980, J. F. Ade Ajayi, the doyen of Nigerian history, aptly summarized the difference between his and later generations in terms of research topics and access to sources: “Years ago when some of us were PhD students, we were in the fortunate position that there were broad areas of virgin fields with major themes and obvious bodies of material calling for study. Such compact themes and compact bodies of sources are getting fewer.”18 However, he is convinced that there is a future for Nigerian history and historians: “We are only still scratching the matter on the surface, but the rich ores are no longer at the surface level.”19 In predicting the future course of historical research on Nigeria, he notes, “If you are going to make your mark you will need new kinds of techniques and approaches which will take you below the surface and beyond the most obvious themes.”20 Ajayi’s prediction came true as the drying up of the “virgin fields” (especially political history) compelled historians to delve into new subfields and devise creative methods of harvesting and interpreting data or using familiar information in new ways. Historians of the third wave spent more time than their predecessors mastering language and vocabulary of other disciplines and regions to enhance their narrative and analytical skills. The criteria for judging the quality of works changed as scholars are regularly required to justify how their work represents an original contribution or extends existing scholarship. For example, a piece of writing on suicide in colonial Ibadan of Southwestern Nigeria must go beyond merely stating the importance of the research to general Nigerian or African history, to include integration within the extant literature produced on suicide in Africa and other colonial sites.21 Unlike the writings of the first and second waves, which are mostly empirical and descriptive, the works of the third wave must meet expectations to be theoretically and analytically grounded. But these new standards, which were drawn up by scholars based outside Africa, were not matched by availability of research funds, materials, publishing opportunities, and conducive work environments in Nigeria. Unlike in the 1960s and 1970s when Nigerian libraries could afford items published abroad, from the 1990s it is common for even the best libraries not to have important items

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published in Nigeria—much less those published in North America or Europe. Indeed, the 1990s saw the near collapse of the Nigerian education system and the disappearance of research funds and library materials. A combination of indiscipline and poor library use practices resulted in the depletion of the holdings of the few research libraries to the extent that items published in Nigeria have all but disappeared from their shelves. If historians of Nigeria based in the country monopolized and effectively directed the course of research during the first and the second waves, the third wave tilted the balance in favor of scholars based in Europe or North America who have privileged access to research materials including those published in Nigeria. Olukoju has examined how Nigerian scholars have been responding to this state of affairs—adapting and adjusting to the country’s economic problems and political instability since the 1990s.22 The greatest challenge for historians of the twenty-first century, according to Olukoju, is “making themselves relevant to the current needs of the society in which they live.”23 In the face of increasing criticisms of the relevance of historical knowledge in the twenty-first century historians of the third wave have been compelled to redefine college curricula and conduct research into the historical foundations of major issues that surround nation building. For instance, child “labor,” human trafficking, and infrastructural decay have received the attention of historians examining the roots of these problems in order to counter the widespread notion that they are “new” postcolonial challenges of underdevelopment that suddenly emerged in the wake of the structural adjustment program (SAP) of the 1980s.24 The “new” pressure on historians to prove their relevance in the twenty-first century has intensified attention on contemporary (i.e., postcolonial) history. Although serious methodological and epistemological obstacles inhibit scholarship in this area, historians have increasingly seen the need not to leave this period of Nigerian experience to political scientists and journalists. They have joined the social scientists in studying violence, religious conflict, and political instability that threaten national cohesion by digging into the past.25 Historians’ claim to a “superior” form of analysis is cogent: understanding the changing phases of inter- and intragroup relations since the precolonial era is key to a grasp of contemporary Nigeria’s disunity. But contemporary history poses enormous challenges in terms of sources (especially written). The Nigerian government has refused to abide by its own archive administration law passed in 1992 that made provision for the declassification of official documents older than twenty-five years.26 If enforced, this law would have given historians access by now to documents produced between the 1960s and 1985 that would enrich our

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knowledge about the following highly controversial developments: ethnicity and genesis of the Nigerian Civil War, military dictatorship, oil and corruption, state-sponsored terror, and politicization of religion. The virtual absence of official documents produced after the demise of colonial rule has not stopped some historians from using other sources—namely, oral history and newspaper accounts—to write history. However, what we know, from an academic standpoint, would have been enhanced with availability and accessibility of state records. The advent of the Internet and its concomitant impact on the ways information is accessed and shared has produced varying positive outcomes for historical research. Unlike in the pre-1990s era when researchers had to be physically present in the libraries and archives in order to access academic materials, historians of the third wave, through computer networks and information technology, could access a vast amount of research materials in the comfort of their home, café, or anywhere. Internet discussion groups or e-mail lists give historians, regardless of where they are based, the opportunity to pose questions about their research to a community of researchers across the globe and track the state of knowledge in their fields. Such discussions also generate ideas for research. In addition, conference announcements and calls for publications provide opportunities for both established and up-and-coming researchers to share their findings with the academic community at a speed unmatched by academic culture during the first and second waves. The natural barrier of distance between scholars working from Nigeria and their counterparts in Europe and North America has largely collapsed—paving the way for fast and sustained collaboration in the areas of research, teaching, and professional development. The third wave of historical scholarship on Nigeria can be summarized thus: (1) emergence of specialized subdisciplines from the old stock (e.g., maritime, business); (2) works that challenge and/or revisit conventional narratives about ethnicity, identity, modernity, nationalism, and Nigeria’s encounter with colonialism; (3) entirely new fields of history such as crime, urban, children and youth, and sexuality, including works that use new sources to launch significant investigation into previously unknown areas of Nigerian history; and (4) periodization that represents a shift from colonial to contemporary Nigerian history. This last genre tackles fresh developments and events that are extraneous to the colonial period and those that had their foundation during alien rule. Contemporary history has also been treated as “functional” history because of the notion that it can help answer and solve some of Nigeria’s problems of underdevelopment. Hence a historian’s craft cannot be separated from the sociopolitical

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environment in and of which he or she writes. This typology is not neat— considerable overlap exists in terms of both period and theme. What we have attempted to do in the present volume is create a workable structure through which to engage this third wave of Nigerian historical writing. It is our hope that The Third Wave of Historical Scholarship on Nigeria captures the new wave of thinking about Nigeria and its history in the twenty-first century, while maintaining the resilience of “old” historiographies, and emphasizing the significance of historical research in understanding the country’s challenges of underdevelopment. This book honors the scholarship of Ayodeji Olukoju, whose works speak effectively to the research agendas of the third wave. It cannot, of course, fully represent the gamut of new ideas and thought running through the works produced by historians of Nigeria since the 1990s, but we have endeavored to give readers entrée into this exciting paradigm shift.

Organization of the Book This festschrift in honor of Ayodeji Olukoju has a total of 18 chapters fused together thematically and chronologically. In Chapter 2, Saheed Aderinto and Paul Osifodunrin assess Olukoju’s place in Nigerian history by examining his work first on economic history, and second on urban and infrastructure history. We comment on his sources, approaches, and how he has advanced the state of knowledge. In Chapter 3, Tokunbo Ayoola focuses on how Olukoju placed maritime history at the center of revisionist ideas about the place of Nigeria in the world political and economic system during the colonial era. He takes us through several aspects of Olukoju’s scholarship on maritime history—from port construction and development to administration and finance—highlighting how he interpreted, constructed, and reread the intersection between colonial capitalist exploitation and the maritime industry. Indeed, Tokunbo’s analysis of Olukoju’s works covering the world wars gives interesting angles to the indispensability of the maritime industry to Britain’s war effort. The story of the maritime industry transcends trade and economic relations, as Ayoola establishes. As the main international gateway of human contact and the spread of ideas, the maritime industry played a significant role in “compressing” the world and facilitating the sharing of world culture. After reading Ayoola’s chapter on Olukoju’s work on maritime history, one gets a better sense of the centrality of this industry to British colonialism in Nigeria. One also realizes the enormous challenges of interpreting history and the importance of the historian’s craft. Although Olukoju has covered much ground in Nigerian maritime history,

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Ayoola points to several aspects he has overlooked. Ayoola lists the following areas that have escaped Olukoju’s eye and that up-and-coming historians could venture into: “the history of the Nigerian Navy; ethnicity, race, class, and the maritime industry; the Nigerian Civil War and maritime trade; labor in the Nigerian maritime industry; gender and maritime trade; Nigerian women seafarers; transfer of Western technology; shipping and tourism; and the representations of ports, ships, shipping, and so on in arts, music, literature, and religion.” The second part, “Sources, Methodologies, and Historiographies,” features chapters that revisit established methodology with the purpose of filling important interpretative gaps, or that present new sources for charting new courses. In Chapter 4, Saheed Aderinto uses a spectrum of archival materials from the Enugu and Ibadan offices of the Nigerian National Archives and the Public Records and Archives Administration, Accra, Ghana, to reconstruct the history of transnational prostitution. Between the 1920s and 1950s, women from the Southern Nigerian provinces of Ogoja, Owerri, and Calabar emigrated to the Gold Coast (Ghana), where they worked as prostitutes. Aderinto points out that this first major transnational prostitution network in colonial Nigeria involved thousands of women who defied patriarchal construction of female domesticity to venture into transactional sex work. According to him, the popular notion that transnational prostitution in contemporary Nigeria emerged “suddenly” in the 1980s is inaccurate and ahistorical. Although the colonialists moralized against migratory sex work, its proceeds created a multiplier effect in the communities from which the women originated. So important was casual-sex work to the economy of communities in Ogoja and Calabar Provinces that the colonialists attempted to impose a new tax regime on returnee prostitutes. Casual sex work, according to Aderinto, provides a critical entry into a vast array of issues including but not limited to gender, agency, modernity, and power relations. Indeed, sex, a subject traditionally associated with secrecy, had the power and capacity to invoke wider issues about the changing roles of biological males and females and the artificiality of colonial physical boundaries. Aside from challenging Victorian notions of female inferiority, women who sold sex and men who bought it created new avenues of expressing identity and adapting to changing social relations unleashed by colonial capitalism. Hence, despite the moralizing of colonialists and some African males against prostitution, the men and women who bought and sold sex considered it a significant component of their existence. Aderinto takes readers into the content of each category of archives produced by European administrators and Nigerians, highlighting the perception of

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each group toward sex work and the broader issues of sexual morality. Like all sources for reconstructing history, archival materials need to be critically cross-examined and supplemented with other genres of materials such as oral history and newspapers. The credibility of oral sources for writing history has long been established. Indeed, during the 1960s and 1970s, pioneering Nigerianists collected a vast store of oral information to reconstruct the history of communities as part of a larger project to use evidence from precolonial history to highlight the sophistication of ancient African civilizations and by extension the ability of Africans to govern themselves. However, it would appear that the availability of a large body of documentary sources on colonial history has practically reduced the volume and the intensity of use of oral literature (a genre of oral sources) in the history writing of recent decades. Abimbola Adesoji, in Chapter 5, revisits the use of songs and orality in writing the political history of Yorubaland with particular emphasis on Ile-Ife, the ancestral home of the Yoruba. Instead of dealing with the precolonial period, the era oral information has helped to unveil, his work turns to the colonial and contemporary era, highlighting political, religious, and sociocultural representations in royal songs composed during the reign of three Oonis (kings) of Ile-Ife since 1910. Although the political careers of these kings are well archived in colonial records and other written sources, songs provide rare perspectives into undocumented experiences of power, agency, and grassroots mobilization. He situates the songs within the context of the circumstances under which they were composed and the role they play in mediating relations among various sections of the community. Adesoji claims that a large chunk of “traditional” history of Yoruba communities in the colonial and postcolonial eras is archived in daily and seasonally composed songs ready to be collected, interpreted, and appropriately used for shedding light into grey areas of people’s past experience. The preceding two chapters on sources lead us to another on methodology. In Chapter 6, Isaac Olawale Albert, the doyen of peace and conflict studies in Nigeria, deploys his fieldwork experience to shed light on how the emic (insider) and etic (outsider) concept affects historians’ craft both in the field and out. He argues that although the emic and etic concept has developed into a veritable site of scholarly engagement in the social sciences, historians have devoted little energy to exploring how it affects their craft.27 While not suggesting that historians are unaware of the often opposing relationship between the insider and the outsider, Albert contends that they should dedicate more quality energy toward theorizing how the insider/outsider dichotomy affects the ways they collect and

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interpret data. In other words, historians, like anthropologists, should in their writing provide background information on how their fieldwork experience and positionality vis-à-vis the subject affects the collection and interpretation of data. Using his fieldwork experience on studying intergroup relations between the Hausa and the Yoruba in the Sabon gari (stranger quarters) of Ibadan and Kano, Albert takes readers into the deeprooted conflict among Nigerian ethnic groups and how it affects a researcher’s relationship with the subjects. His position as an insider and outsider oscillated in accordance with the ethnicity, religion, and other components of identity of the groups he interviewed. After reading Albert’s chapter, one comes to appreciate that ethnicity was not the only criterion for being considered as an insider; so, too, was knowledge of the history of the people being studied. In other words, Hausa residents of Ibadan, after several years of providing valuable information to Albert (a Southern Christian who spoke Hausa) and trusting him with their stories, began to treat him as an insider. Albert examines the impact of this transition from being an outsider to an insider. He gives a host of recommendations on how to navigate the slippery slope of research on religious and cultural identities. The last chapter in Part II is historiographical in content. In Chapter 7, Saheed Aderinto appraises the contributions of LaRay Denzer, Bolanle Awe, and Nina Mba to scholarship on women and gender. He engages the cumulative scholarship of these highly influential scholars by examining the contextual relationship between history as the totality of a society’s past, on the one hand, and the politics of production of knowledge, on the other. According to Aderinto, although historians of Nigeria have carried out critical historiographical work on the scholarship of “mainstream” historians, they have largely neglected those specializing in women’s and gender history. For him, historiographical essays on gender and other aspects of Nigerian history not only render handy and accessible entry into the world of knowledge produced by historians, but help to map the metamorphosis of the relationship between knowledge and power. He also develops our appreciation for the influence pioneering scholars have on future generation of thinkers, and the value of ongoing dialogue between “old” and “new” historiographies. Aderinto observes that one of the best means of coming to terms with the evolution of academic scholarship and the varied approaches to studying peoples and societies is by engaging how prominent scholars grapple with the wondrous task of creating academic visibility for historically marginalized groups. Denzer’s, Awe’s, and Mba’s work cannot be avoided in any serious discussion of women’s place in Nigerian history since the precolonial period.

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Unlike the preceding section, which delves into sources, methods, and historiography, the next, titled “Rereading and Rewriting Colonial Nigeria,” parades chapters that deploy both new and familiar sources to challenge and reinterpret established knowledge about Nigerian encounter with imperialism and intergroup relations. The infrastructure, sites, and symbols of colonial exploitation, such as forest reserves, railways, and courts, have attracted significant scholarly interest since the 1960s. Aside from establishing how they were established and controlled as integral components of imperialism, scholars have written about issues of resistance and negotiation. But as the chapters in the section show, narratives and ideas bear revisiting as historians discover new data. In Chapter 8, Pauline von Hellermann and Uyilawa Usuanlele interrogate the impact of the creation of forest reserves on land-use practices in Benin Division. But rather than focus entirely on how the new forest policy favored the British, as J. A. Atanda and others have done, or on the often violent resistance that followed the exploitation of land and its resources, they dwell on the “negotiations between colonial officers and local authorities.” This approach allows them to dissect how both the chiefs and the British benefited from the forest reserves, and the immediate and longterm impacts of land-use policies on the peoples of Benin Division. According to von Hellermann and Usuanlele, understanding the politics and interaction between the British and the Benin chiefs and the processes of the establishment of the forest reserves “contributes to current debates about the extent of colonial power, local cooperation in colonial rule, and colonial interest politics.” Their scholarship unveils a “natural resource” or “economic” dimension to Frederick Cooper’s complication of the role of the African “collaboration” under the colonial regime.28 They remind us that the rigid binary of “resisters” and “collaborators” is not useful for understanding the establishment and politics of forest reserve exploitation in Benin Division. Rather, a “resister” to one aspect of forest reserve politics could become a “collaborator” vis-à-vis another aspect, and vice versa. Scholarly research on the process of establishment of the British legal system is not new, according to Olatunji Ojo and Lawrence Alo, who take on this subject in Chapter 9. However, after presenting an excursion into the current literature on the workings of the British legal system, the development of the legal profession in Nigeria, and how individuals appropriated colonial legal machinery to achieve desired material and social goals, they opine that the existing scholarship fails to provide “a good idea of the growth and evolution of customary courts.” Ojo and Alo’s chapter enriches our knowledge of British and customary legal

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administration in Ijesa and Ekiti not covered in the extant literature. The authors integrate the experience of the Ekiti into the discourse of the conflict and cooperation between the British and the chiefs in the administration of land law. Ojo and Alo posit that the British upheld the rulings of the chiefs in accordance with preexisting customary law insofar as they did not contradict the imperialists’ “civilized” ideas and practices of their “modern” judicial system. On several occasions, the British and the chiefs rendered different judgments on cases brought before them because their interpretations of the idea of justice and fairness diverged. While the chiefs continued to give rulings on land matters in accordance with customary laws, the decisions of the British, which normally overturned the chiefs’, were informed by Britain’s legal code. Ojo and Alo amplify the significance of the colonial legal system for understanding socioeconomic and political change. The colonial legal system played a significant role in the emergence of new value judgments and realignment of existing power and relational agency in contradictory manners. The authors pose the following major questions: “How did the native courts, which combined the Yoruba and British legal systems, shape land cases in Ijesa and Ekiti Districts? How did the British legal code and the associated social and economic changes impact gender, class, and property relations? How well did the new courts perform in settling conflicts brought before them?” Scholarly research on the railway, which first appeared in the 1960s, established the importance of transport to the entrenchment of colonial capitalism. Railway construction was the most expensive capital project undertaken by the colonialists immediately after the “pacification” of a substantial part of the region that would later become Southern Nigeria from the 1890s. The opening up of the African interior and its integration into the world capitalist system through the railway firmly established the economic motive of European imperialism, in Nigeria as elsewhere on the continent. In Chapter 10, “Toward New Approaches to Nigeria’s Railway History,” Shehu Tijjani Yusuf provides a short but in-depth look into the array of scholarship on Nigerian railways and identifies new areas that require attention. According to Yusuf, historians have concentrated almost entirely on the impact of the railway on colonial urban centers at the expense of rural agricultural communities. Using Madobi village in Kano as a case study, he weaves the advent of the railway into the beginning of groundnut production in Madobi, the influx of Southerners into the Northern Nigerian village, and intergroup relations between the host and stranger communities. He emphasizes the importance of the initiative and

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agency of local communities to the world capitalist system and demonstrates how the “foreigners” created new sociocultural identities in their new homes. Historical writing about the relations between the Ibadan and the Ijebu, two Yoruba subgroups, began to appear from the 1920s, according to Saheed Aderinto in Chapter 11. Even the great Yoruba intellectual Samuel Johnson dedicated a substantial portion of his narrative to the relations between these two important Yoruba subgroups. Aderinto observes that it is impossible to write about the Ijebu without mentioning the Ibadan and vice versa, partly because geography and a number of socioeconomic and military factors during the nineteenth century necessitated relations between the two. During the colonial period, the Ijebu were the most populous Yoruba subgroup in Ibadan as they migrated into the city to partake in the new economic opportunities created by the colonialists. After engaging the core ideas presented by various Yoruba historians from Johnson to Olufunke Adeboye, Aderinto attempts to reconstruct the historical foundation of the discrimination against Ijebu settlers in colonial Ibadan. He does not disagree with established scholars of the Yoruba that economic and military rivalries chiefly influenced the enmity between the Ibadan and Ijebu during the nineteenth century. He also agrees that the Ibadan were unfriendly with the Ijebu strangers during the colonial period. However, he contends that the nineteenth-century military and political rivalry sowed the seeds of hatred and discrimination against the Ijebu settlers in Ibadan during the period. He stresses the importance of continuity and change in inter- and intragroup relations, making connections to the significant position that memory and citizenship construction play in molding the patterns of intergroup relations between “autochthonous” and “settler” populations. The penultimate section, titled “Emerging Frontiers in Colonial Nigerian History,” has three interrelated chapters on the history of children, youth, and crime. In Chapter 12, Laurent Fourchard examines how sociocultural and economic permutations during World War II paved the way for the construction of juvenile delinquency as a problem in Nigeria. Delinquent juveniles, variously called the “boma boys” and “jaguda boys” in 1930s and 1940s Lagos, engaged in both minor and violent crimes and wrought significant havoc disrupting public peace. The British generally overlooked juvenile crime and delinquency in the interwar era, but they saw it as a major threat to social stability during World War II. This new posture on juvenile crime, as Fourchard establishes in this pioneering historical study of Nigerian children and youth, was closely connected to the larger project of ensuring that domestic insecurity did not undermine Britain’s war effort. Activities of delinquent children and juveniles were

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considered a threat to the immediate and future survival of imperialism in Nigeria. The fact that new institutions such as the Colony Welfare Service were established during World War II when budgetary shortfalls crippled the effective running of the colonial state established the importance of the impact of juvenile delinquency on the sustainability of imperialism. As it turned out, the British were fighting not only to prevent the ascendancy of Nazi Germany but also to limit the excesses of delinquent children who were labeled domestic “enemies” of the colonial state. Fourchard does not underestimate this security undertone of the institutional attention given to children and youth welfare. According to him, although the British and the African educated elites disagreed on most issues confronting Nigerians and how to address them, they held common ground on the immediate and future impact of youth delinquency. Fourchard’s chapter leads to a related study of delinquent juveniles in Lagos by Simon Heap, another pioneering historian of children and youth history. Variously known as Alaayes, Agbero (touts at motor parks), Gbana (cocaine or heroin), omo onile (sons of the soil), or omo ojuina (sons of the eye of the fire), jobless Lagos vagrant and delinquent youths have attracted the attention of social scientists, criminologists, and even literary icons like Wole Soyinka, who have produced a massive body of work depicting youth counterculture in relation to the larger problems of urbanization, poverty, and absence of good governance. However, historical research on this “deviant” and visibly noticeable social class is scanty. Heap appears to take a “functional” history approach when he opines that understanding the roots of youth crime and homelessness is important to grappling with the contemporary dynamics of the problem. While Fourchard locates his chapter mainly in the colonial context, Heap makes a connection between the colonial and postcolonial periods, emphasizing the need to study the background of challenges facing Nigerian youth today. Heap argues that historians have paid limited attention to people with limited capital or agency, with the result that most Nigerians are faceless, passive, and deprived of significant historical representation. His claim is actually right if one considers that women were not officially treated as significant players in the colonial order until the Women’s War of 1929, which completely put to rest the notion of women’s powerlessness. By writing delinquent juveniles into history, Heap highlights the realities of homelessness, hopelessness, and criminality of the “boma boys” and “jaguda boys” of the 1930s and 1940s—the ancestors of today’s “Area boys”—who defied the authority of colonialists and indigenous elites alike. This historical link shattered the popularly held notion that violent crime and youth delinquency are problems

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accentuated primarily by the postcolonial crisis of underdevelopment. Heap’s chapter also challenges the conventional narrative about elements and methods of resistance to colonial rule. He contends that the activities of delinquent youth constituted a form of resistance to the mainstream culture of decency and respectability, and to colonialism in general. Crime and the religious body is the main theme of Chapter 14 by Paul Osifodunrin. He uses the murder of Bisiriyu Apalara, a famous YorubaMuslim cleric in 1940s and 1950s Lagos, to unlock a host of ideas about politics, religion, and the resilience of indigenous faith in rapidly modernizing Lagos. Apalara was murdered in 1953 by members of the Lagos Oro cult because he was a fervent critic of traditional religion. He organized numerous religious outreach campaigns and drew a large following from the Lagos Yoruba-Muslim community who were highly impressed by his mastery of the tenets of Islam and his eloquence. While other Muslim clerics feared retribution for criticizing the “infidels,” as adherents of Yoruba indigenous faiths were labeled, Apalara exhibited the highest degree of intrepidity, even in the face of danger to his life. His murder did not go unsolved—some leaders of the Oro cult were charged and sentenced to death for the crime. This case, in addition to a few others, represented a milestone in the history of crime and crime solving in Nigeria. It challenged the ancient legal dictum of “No body, no murder,” because Apalara’s body was never recovered; and the murder investigation showcased the deployment of forensic science in solving a high-profile crime. Apalara’s death was so important that it entered the Yoruba linguistic lexicon (in the form of popular sayings) and was registered in the dictionary of urban popular music and culture. Today, Islamic associations, streets, literature, and public buildings proudly carry and continue to propagate his name and work. Osifodunrin’s work complements a growing number of studies on crime and murder in colonial Nigeria, such as David Patten’s book-length study of the man-leopard killings among the Ibibio and Ruth Watson’s study of murder and politics in Ibadan. However, unlike existing studies that downplay the relationship between murder and interfaith politics, Osifodunrin’s chapter approaches homicide from the angle of the politics of spiritual legitimacy. He goes on to argue that although Apalara’s death obviously appeared like a conflict between Muslims and adherents of traditional faith, the motives of his killers were largely economic. This revisionist dimension casts religiously motivated crime beyond conventional narratives of “holiness” or spiritual “cleansing” by looking at other salient but highly important variables. Apalara’s murderers hid behind the ruse of protecting the sanctity of the

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gods in committing a crime that was motivated by personal and collective economic greed. Part V of this book deals with contemporary Nigeria. It contains chapters that explore developments that took place after the demise of colonial rule and those that assumed new dimensions in response to political and social transformation. The Nigerian video film industry, popularly called “Nollywood,” is recognized as one of the most indelible cultural “revolutions” in contemporary Nigeria. Tunde Kelani, a representative filmmaker, remarks that video films represent a progression in the documentation of Nigerian history.29 He points out that Nollywood films, like oral history and archaeological evidence, represent a footprint through which the past can be recovered. In Chapter 15, Paul Ugor and Giovanna Santanera take up the cinema “revolution” by inserting it into global cultural and artistic production by Nigerians. They posit that Nollywood “has become a veritable cultural platform for constructing alternative social histories and identities, especially among marginal social groups and individuals outside the spheres of state and/or corporate power and influence.” Ugor and Santanera do not suggest that Nollywood narratives are wholly true and exact reflections of contemporary Nigerian society. Rather, they explore “how the video industry and its films “constitute rough social maps of existing mentalities, values, and events, especially from the perspective of common people.” After setting the economic, political, and sociocultural context responsible for the emergence of Nollywood from the early 1990s, they proceed to engage the video films as popular history and travel narrative. More research is needed to fully address both the gains and the shortfalls of this new medium in researching recent Nigerian history. Although historians have used cinema films produced from the colonial period through the 1980s as historical sources, it would appear that Nollywood films, due to a host of overlapping economic, political, and social factors, pose a different kind of challenge for professional historians. However, the obvious gain is that future generations of historians will have access to video images that were produced by Nigerians for Nigeria. At various points in this introduction, we mention that historians of Nigeria are now focusing more attention on contemporary history while facing the challenges of writing about major local and national events without access to important state records. The new interest in contemporary history is attributable in part to the need to demonstrate the continuities and changes in Nigerians’ engagement with transformative political and social processes, both within their immediate community and in the broader context of the nation-state. In Chapter 16, Olukoya Ogen takes a

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more “theoretical” approach to contemporary history within the larger philosophical and methodological debates among historians not only of Nigeria but throughout the world. He addresses the shifting definitions of contemporary history and the challenges historians face in exploring “recent” events. His chapter asks significant questions about how historians of Nigeria should engage contemporary Nigeria and reflects on the steps taken by universities to channel historical education to meet immediate needs of Nigerian society in the twenty-first century. Violent crime, HIV/AIDS, and human trafficking are some of the major problems confronting Nigeria, not unlike many African states. In Chapter 17, Richard A. Aborisade and Adeyinka A. Aderinto present the transformation of human trafficking in Nigeria since the 1980s. Readers should consider this chapter in conjunction with Chapter 4 in order to get a clearer sense of the historical foundations of transnational sex work. However, whereas Chapter 4 deals only with sources for researching transnational prostitution in colonial Nigeria, Chapter 17 takes on the nature and dynamics of the sex trade and efforts to stem its tide since the 1980s. It highlights the roles of national and international agencies drawn along political, religious, and ethnic lines. Aborisade and Aderinto treat human trafficking as one of the manifestations of obvious elements of underdevelopment—namely, unemployment, poverty, and lack of education. Chapter 18, by Akeem Ayofe Akinwale, explores the HIV/AIDS pandemic since the 1980s. Akinwale identifies the pandemic as one of the major challenges facing Nigeria’s health care delivery system. He dedicates adequate space to the discussion of the ways the political, religious, and scientific communities have been dealing with the scourge and its impact on the nation-state. In conclusion, we have attempted to give readers a look at how some scholars of Nigeria are thinking about a host of ideas on the craft of writing history, Nigerians’ experience in colonial and contemporary times, and continuity and change in the country’s experience of power, agency, and popular ideas associated with progress and development. This volume highlights works produced by historians of the third wave of historical writing, which is exemplified by the expansion of geographic and paradigmatic coverage to encompass regions and themes neglected by scholars of the first and second waves. This invention and reinvention, rereading and rewriting of Nigerian history establish that the art or science of historical writing, like history itself, is a continuum. As historians search for “virgin” areas of specialization or reinterpret popularly held ideas, they are inescapably bound to a tradition that comes before them.

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Notes 1

For a broad survey on the origins of academic history writing on Nigeria, see Toyin Falola and Saheed Aderinto, Nigeria, Nationalism, and Writing History (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2010), chaps. 1–3. 2 E. A. Ayandele, “How Truly Nigerian Is Our Nigerian History?” African Notes 5, no. 2 (1969): 19–35; E. A. Ayandele, “The Task before Nigerian Historians Today,” Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria 9, no. 4 (1979): 1–13; Adeile E. Afigbo, The Poverty of African Historiography (Lagos: Afrografika, 1977); J. F. Ade Ajayi, In Search of Relevance in the Humanities in Africa (Lagos: FESTAC Colloquium, 1977); J. F. Ade Ajayi, “A Critique of Themes Preferred by Nigerian Historians,” Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria, Silver Jubilee Edition (1980), 33–39; B. Swai, “The State of African History: Social Responsibility of the Coming Generation of African Historians” (Paper presented at the 34th Annual Congress of the Historical Society of Nigeria, 1989); A. O. Adeoye, “Understanding the Crisis in Modern Nigerian Historiography,” History in Africa 19 (1992): 1–11; A. Temu and B. Swai, Historians and Africanist History: A Critique (London: Zed Books, 1981); and Olutayo C. Adesina, “Teaching History in Twentieth-century Nigeria: The Challenges of Change,” History in Africa 33 (2006): 17–37. 3 For the role of Dike in the establishment of the Nigerian National Archives, see Falola and Aderinto, Nigeria, Nationalism, and Writing History, chap. 2. 4 Ibid. 5 See the following works by Abosede George: “Feminist Activism and Class Politics: The Example of the Lagos Girl Hawker Project,” Women’s Studies Quarterly 35 (2007): 128–43; and “Within Salvation: Girl Hawkers and the Colonial State in Development Era Lagos,” Journal of Social History 44, no. 3 (Spring 2011): 837–59. See also Laurent Fourchard, “Urban Poverty, Urban Crime, and Crime Control: The Lagos and Ibadan Cases, 1929–1945,” in African Urban Spaces in Historical Perspective, ed. Steven J. Salm and Toyin Falola (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2005), 287–316; Laurent Fourchard, “Lagos and the Invention of Juvenile Delinquency in Nigeria, 19201960,” Journal of African History 46 (2006): 133–34; and “The Making of the Juvenile Delinquent in Nigeria and South Africa, 1930–1970,” History Compass 8, no. 2 (2010): 129–42; Simon Heap, “Jaguda Boys: Pickpocketing in Ibadan, 1930– 1960,” Urban History 24 (1997): 324–43; and Ayodeji Olukoju, “The Impact of British Colonialism on the Development of African Business in Colonial Nigeria,” in Black Business and Economic Power, ed. Alusine Jalloh and Toyin Falola (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2002), 176–98. 6 Benedict B. Naanen, “Itinerant Gold Mines: Prostitution in the Cross River Basin of Nigeria, 1930–1950,” African Studies Review 34, no. 2 (1991): 57–79; Eno Blankson Ikpe, Human Sexuality in Nigeria: A Historical Perspective (Lagos: Africa Regional Sexuality Resource Center, 2004). See the following works by Saheed Aderinto: “Of Gender, Race, and Class: The Politics of Prostitution in Colonial Lagos, Nigeria, 1923–1958,” Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies

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33, no. 3 (2012 forthcoming); “The Problem of Nigeria Is Slavery, Not White Slave Traffic: Globalization and the Politicization of Prostitution in Southern Nigeria, 1921–1955,” Canadian Journal of African Studies 46, no. 1 (2012): 1-22; “Dangerous Aphrodisiac, Restless Sexuality: Venereal Disease, Biomedicine, and Protectionism in Colonial Southern Nigeria, 1921-1955,” Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 13, no.3 (forthcoming 2012); “‘The Girls in Moral Danger’: Child Prostitution and Sexuality in Colonial Lagos, Nigeria, 1930s–1950,” Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences 1, no. 2 (2007): 1–22; “Prostitution and Urban Social Relations,” in Nigeria’s Urban History: Past and Present, ed. Hakeem Ibikunle Tijani (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2006), 75–98; “Policing Urban Prostitution: Prostitutes, Crime, Law, and Reformers,” in Tijani, Nigeria’s Urban History, 99–118. 7 Saheed Aderinto, “Sexualized Nationalism: Lagos and the Politics of Illicit Sexuality in Colonial Nigeria, 1918–1958” (PhD diss., University of Texas at Austin, 2010), 5. 8 Paul K. Ugboajah, “Juvenile Delinquency and Its Control in Colonial Lagos, 1861–1960” (PhD diss., University of Ibadan, 2010). 9 Ayodeji Olukoju, Infrastructure Development and Urban Facilities in Lagos, 1861–2000 (Ibadan: IFRA, 2003). 10 Eno Blankson Ikpe, Food and Society in Nigeria: A History of Food Customs, Food Economy, and Cultural Change, 1900–1989 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1994). 11 Akanmu G. Adebayo and Olutayo C. Adesina, eds., Globalization and Transnational Migrations: Africa and Africans in the Contemporary Global System (Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009); Isidore Okpewho and Nkiru Nzegwu, eds., The New African Diaspora (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009); and Khalid Koser, ed., New African Diasporas (New York: Routledge, 2003). 12 See, among others, Moses Ochonu, Colonial Meltdown: Northern Nigeria in the Great Depression (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2009). 13 See, among others, Nwando Achebe, Farmers, Traders, Warriors, and Kings: Female Power and Authority in Northern Igboland, 1900–1960 (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2005); Gloria Chuku, Igbo Women and Economic Transformation in Southeastern Nigeria, 1900–1960 (New York: Rutledge, 2005); and Chima Korieh, The Land Has Changed: History, Society, and Gender in Colonial Nigeria (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2010). 14 See, among others, Julius O. Adekunle, Politics and Society in Nigeria’s Middle Belt: Borgu and the Emergence of a Political Identity (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2004). 15 Examples include but are not limited to Olukoya Ogen, “The Ikale of SouthEastern Yorubaland, 1500–1900: A Study in Ethnic Identity and Traditional Economy” (PhD diss., University of Lagos, 2006). 16 Ayodeji Olukoju, “Challenges before the Twenty-first Century Nigerian Historian,” in Issues in Historiography, ed. O. O. Olubomehin (Ibadan: College Press, 2001), 134.

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17 Obaro Ikime, In Search of Nigerians: Changing Patterns of Inter-group Relations in an Evolving Nation State (Lagos: Impact Publishers, 1985), 17. 18 Ajayi, “Themes Preferred by Nigerian Historians,” 38. 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid. 21 See Olufunke Adeboye, “‘Iku Ya J’esin’: Politically Motivated Suicide, Social Honor, and Chieftaincy Politics in Early Colonial Ibadan,” Canadian Journal of African Studies 42, no. 2 (2007): 189–225. 22 See the following works by Ayodeji Olukoju: “The Crisis of Academic Research and Publishing in Nigerian Universities,” in African Universities in the Twentyfirst Century: vol. 2, Knowledge and Society, ed. Adebayo Olukoshi and Paul Tiyambe Zeleza (Dakar: CODESRIA, 2004), 363–75; “Rethinking Historical Scholarship in Africa,” in Rethinking the Humanities in Africa, ed. Sola Akinrinade, Dipo Fashina, David O. Ogungbile, and J. O. Famakinwa (Ile-Ife: Faculty of Arts, Obafemi Awolowo University, 2007), 167–82; and “Challenges before the Nigerian Historian,” 126–41. 23 Olukoju, “Challenges before the Nigerian Historian,” 129. 24 Rasheed Olaniyi, “Economic Crises and Child Trafficking: A Comparative Analysis of the 1930s and 1990s,” in Children and Youth in the Labour Process in Africa, ed. Osita Agbu (Dakar: CODESRIA, 2009), 35–62; and Abosede George, “Gender and Juvenile Justice: Girl Hawkers in Lagos, Nigeria, 1926–1955” (PhD diss., Stanford University, 2006). 25 Olayemi Akinwumi, Crises and Conflicts in Nigeria: A Political History since 1960 (Munster, Germany: LIT Verlag Munster, 2004). 26 National Archives Ibadan, National Archives Decree No. 30 (1992), 7. 27 For an insight into how the emic/etic paradigm has been used in women’s studies, see Nwando Achebe and Bridget Teboh, “Dialoguing Women,” in Africa after Gender? ed. Catherine M. Cole, Stephan F. Miescher, and Takyiwaa Manuh (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007), 91–113. 28 Frederick Cooper, “Conflict and Connection: Rethinking Colonial African History,” American Historical Review 99, no. 5 (1994): 1516–45. 29 Kelani is well known in and outside Nigeria for producing some of the finest culturally and historically grounded films since the 1990s. See Mainframe Production http://www.mainframemovies.tv/. See also The Strength of Africa: A Dutch Documentary on the Nigerian Movie Industry (Nollywood), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F46ILA6-UkY.

CHAPTER TWO TREADING THE UNCHARTED PATH IN NIGERIAN HISTORY: THE INTELLECTUAL WORLD OF AYODEJI OLUKOJU SAHEED ADERINTO AND PAUL OSIFODUNRIN

This festschrift celebrates the brilliant career of Ayodeji Olukoju, a key figure representative of the third wave of Nigerian historical writing—and perhaps the most prolific historian of Nigeria based in the country. His scholarship stands out, both qualitatively and quantitatively. Launching a career in the early 1990s—a time that coincided with the all but complete breakdown in his home country of infrastructure to support a decent life, as well as educational institutions and quality leadership—Olukoju quickly rose to academic stardom, overcoming all obstacles to serious scholarship. Spotlighting the career of distinguished scholars like Olukoju remains one of the best ways to reward them for their hard work, encourage them to do more, and demonstrate that there is a future for a young, up-and-coming generation of scholars who are willing, ready, and able to work hard. After a short teaching stint at Ogun State University (now Olabisi Onabanjo University), Olukoju joined the Department of History at the University of Lagos in 1987. In 1991, he received his doctorate from the University of Ibadan and rose to the position of a full professor of history in 1998, at the age of thirty-nine. He was head of Department of History and dean of Faculty (College) of Arts at the University of Lagos between 2001 and 2009. In 2010, he was appointed the vice chancellor (president) of Caleb University, Imota, Lagos. Olukoju has held visiting positions at various research centers and universities in North America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. His works have appeared in tier one area and specialist publications including Journal of African History; International Journal of African Historical Studies; African Affairs; History in Africa; African

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Studies Review; African Economic History; Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History; Journal of Transport History; and Journal of Labor History, among others. Cumulatively, he has published twelve books and monographs and more than one hundred journal articles and book chapters. In addition to numerous academic awards and honors, Olukoju is a Fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Letters—the “apex organization of Nigerian academics and scholars in the Humanities.”1 Olukoju’s areas of specialization include urban, infrastructure, and economic history.2 His monograph Infrastructure Development and Urban Facilities in Lagos, 1861–2000 is the first book-length study of three key urban facilities in Nigeria.3 He has also created a cluster of works on political leadership, terrorism, underdevelopment, historiography, and the local history of Oka Akoko, his hometown.4 However, he is recognized more for his pioneering scholarship on maritime history. In this chapter, we present Olukoju’s highly revisionist scholarship on economic, urban, and infrastructure history. We situate his work within the breadth of historical writing in order to pinpoint his aggregate contributions to the production of knowledge on Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country. In Chapter 3, Tokunbo Ayoola engages Olukoju’s work on maritime history from a historiographic standpoint. Yet, it is impossible to fully capture Olukoju’s career in two chapters. We are also aware of the overlapping nature of his writings and the flaws of compartmentalizing more than one hundred strong publications—spanning close to three decades—into maritime, economic, urban, and infrastructure history. Nevertheless, we believe that Chapters 2 and 3, read and interpreted together, provide handy and accessible entry into Olukoju’s fascinating and highly sophisticated intellectual world. We conclude by attempting to make sense of what his achievement and future goals mean to historical knowledge in general. We do this two-dimensionally by emphasizing that his career has been shaped in part by the sociopolitical atmosphere of the country during the time of his writing as well as by a well-defined and -executed agenda to advance the frontier of knowledge. His career is blossoming at a time when historians are persistently under pressure to demonstrate their relevance to the development of society. He ventures into some of the core elements of underdevelopment to demonstrate that history has a lot to offer as Nigeria and its leaders attempt to fashion the best means of putting the country on the path toward sustained development.

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Olukoju and Nigeria’s Economic Past Economic history as a subfield of Nigerian history began in the 1970s when scholars (both historians and social scientists) like A. G. Hopkins, R. O. Ekundare, Bade Onimode, Wale Oyemakinde, Deji Ogunremi, Paul Lovejoy, and Toyin Falola, among others, sought to write a history that recognizes the importance of “ordinary” people in the making of society.5 In the preface to his seminal work, Economic History of West Africa, Hopkins states quite clearly that “the reader will find little discussion here of large states and great leaders, or foreign explorers, missionaries, and pro-consuls.”6 In attempting to reconstruct the history of agriculture and trade, Hopkins asserts, a historian is drawn to the “activities of a great majority of Africans—women and men.”7 His tome appeared as modern African historians were being criticized for romanticizing the past by presenting the history of so-called heroes and heroines and placing limited emphasis on the experiences of “ordinary” Africans who provided the material and human resources that allowed the rulers to stay in power and build their empires. Economic history, therefore, represents a departure from the conventional political history of Africa that purports to chronicle the achievements of the continent’s great men and women. When Olukoju appeared on the scene in the 1990s, a number of major themes in economic history had already been thoroughly addressed. Distinguished historians like Bolanle Awe, Falola, and Hopkins, among others, had successfully counteracted colonialists’ assumption that the precolonial economy was static and unchanging through critical examinations of the dynamism of modes of production, distribution, and marketing in the precolonial era.8 A mass of works—often grounded in neo-Marxist rhetoric—had established the consequences of colonial capitalist expropriation by treating colonialism as just one of numerous phases of Africa’s unequal economic relation with the West over the centuries.9 Olukoju was therefore left with the following choices in order to make a mark in a field dominated by academic heavyweights: venture into themes that have been overlooked; apply established knowledge to geographic contexts not covered by his predecessors; or revisit and challenge stale ideas. This well-sustained agenda took him into the following areas of economic history, among others: government–business community relations; currency and monetary system; fiscal policy and export trade controls; and liquor trade politics.10 Let us start with a review of his scholarship on currency and monetary systems. But first, a short note on how other scholars engaged the relationship between colonial currency and colonial capitalism would help concretize Olukoju’s

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contribution.11 The general trend of scholarship on currency and monetary system—as evident in the works of Hopkins, Walter Ofonagoro, Falola, and A. G. Adebayo, and others—is that the British found the preexisting means of exchange inadequate for their agenda of establishing a new economic regime grounded in the idea that the colonies should serve as markets and sources of raw materials for the metropole. The introduction of a new currency system was needed for a variety of purposes, but primarily in order to generate financial resources needed for colonial administration through the payment of taxes and other levies. Such a system required that people engage in wage labor to earn cash for livelihood and for payment of taxes. European firms had to adopt the new currency as legal tender in their business transactions with African producers of export commodities. Although foreign merchant houses were initially apathetic toward the new currency system, colonial administrative laws were too effective to be ignored. In the long run, the government (through the establishment of the wage labor system) and European merchant houses (through their business transactions with Africans) facilitated the gradual disengagement from preexisting currencies and the complete monetization of the colonial state of Nigeria through the newly introduced currency. As Ofonagoro notes, the consolidation of the new currency system would not have been possible without the establishment of the African Banking Corporation (ABC), the first commercial bank in Nigeria, in 1891 and the West African Currency Board, to facilitate the circulation of the new currency, in 1912. Apparently, the discourse of currency and monetary system is highly germane to the history of Britain’s imperial presence in Nigeria between 1861 and 1960. In one of this works on colonial currency, Olukoju establishes that a good deal of attention has been given to what Hopkins labeled “currency revolution”—that is, the introduction of colonial currency and its impact on the entrenchment of colonial rule.12 However, he asserts that scholars have overlooked currency crisis—the shortage of money during specific periods and in certain regions of the country. Using Lagos and some parts of Northern Nigeria as case studies, Olukoju carefully maps out the genesis of currency crises between 1916 and 1920. In addition to identifying and contextualizing the activities of the colonial masters to ameliorate the situation within the context of the broader philosophy that the colonies should be self-sustaining, Olukoju devotes important attention to the response and resistance of the people to the crises. The shortage of silver coinage compelled the colonialists to devise an unusual policy: introduce paper currency in Southern Nigeria and ask the colonial treasury to release its reserves. Olukoju complicates Gresham’s law of “bad money

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drives out good money” to explain the reactions and resistance to, and sociocultural construction of, “good” and “bad” money in relation to the escalating suspicions and distrust toward British economic policies. He explains that as creative as the introduction of paper money appeared to be, Nigerians preferred the existing currency (silver coins) for a number of reasons. The silver coins had intrinsic value, while the paper money did not. It was also difficult to break paper money into smaller denominations. This situation compelled buyers to either pay more for items or buy more than they desired. In addition, the paper money or notes “were vulnerable to corrosion or outright destruction by sweat, fire, and water. . . . Moreover, the illiterate producers in the hinterland, at least initially, could not distinguish the different denominations of the currency notes.”13 Olukoju completes his deep analysis of the intrigues between and among the colonialists and Nigerians thus: “the ‘badness’ of any medium of exchange was determined by the intrinsic value ascribed to it and to other currencies in circulation at the same time.”14 The story of colonial currency transcends its important role as legal tender and a tool for maximizing capitalist expropriation. In another study on currency, Olukoju examines currency counterfeiting as a form of resistance to colonial rule. Indeed, this work adds significant narratives to well-known stories of “riots,” “revolts,” and strikes as methods adopted to resist and undermine imperialism. He highlights the prominent position that the Ijebu, a Yoruba subgroup, played in currency counterfeiting as a response to the violent manner they were brought under colonial rule in 1892. To be sure, the Ijebu were one of the few Yoruba states that militarily resisted colonial encroachment during the era of the Scramble for the Nigerian geographic area. Olukoju disagrees with Falola that the preponderance of the Ijebu in currency counterfeiting was attributable to their proximity to the coast. Rather, he argues that it “demonstrates how self-help criminality served as both a source of accumulation and an expression of alienation from, and resistance to, the colonial order.”15 After laying out his argument by weaving currency counterfeiting into discourses of resistance and self-help criminality, Olukoju goes on to elaborate on the modus operandi of “forgers” and how they made and circulated fake currency. He unmasks the identity of prominent counterfeiters and discusses the series of laws and propaganda campaigns put in place to bring culprits to justice. A careful reading of antiforgery laws—which included a life sentence for conviction—shows that the British were awake to the dangerous implications of counterfeiting for the colonial economy and would go to great lengths to control it.

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In other works on currency, Olukoju continues to confine his analysis of the introduction of colonial currency to specific regions of the country and forgery.16 Regional studies of the penetration of the monetary system help to show, according to Olukoju, the divergent impacts that imperialism had on various parts of the country. The reaction of different groups of Nigerians to colonial capitalism was largely determined by their differing economic and social structures before and after colonization. While historians who wrote on currency prior to the 1990s approached it from a “Nigeria-wide” perspective, Olukoju studies the matter from regional perspectives that bring him closer to the actual realities of the impact of colonial currency. Olukoju has also published a number of works on the liquor trade and fiscal policy. In a piece published in the International Journal of African Historical Studies, he addresses the prohibition of alcohol in Northern Nigeria between 1898 and 1918.17 Trade in imported liquor was as old as the trade in slaves. It was one of the articles of exchange for slaves and served multiple sociocultural purposes.18 However, during the nineteenth century, the Sokoto Caliphate, which came into existence after a series of jihads (holy wars), forbade the sale and consumption of alcohol among Muslims. The religious justification for prohibition continued into the colonial period and assumed another paternalist dimension of shielding the natives from “bad” external influence. “Although the literature on the liquor trade in Africa is quite substantial,” Olukoju notes at the beginning of this article, “the bulk of it has centered on the West African liquor controversy. . . There is thus no detailed study of the liquor traffic in the prohibition zone, which was made up essentially of the Muslim communities.”19 Olukoju unveils the series of channels—railway and river—through which smuggling of alcohol took place from the Southern region to the North. He highlights some of the challenges and contradictions of prohibiting liquor traffic along the lines of ethnicity and social class. For instance, the “pagan” communities in the Middle Belt region were permitted to brew local alcohol, while Southerner strangers received liquor allocations on a monthly basis. When it became obvious that the government could not control the illicit sale of both imported and indigenously produced alcohol, Governor Frederick Lugard imposed taxes, according to Olukoju. Lugard’s policy contradicted Islamic tenets that prohibited the sale and consumption of alcohol and brought him in close conflict with the Muslim aristocrats whose faith and culture he promised to protect from the “sinful” ways of Western “infidels.” Olukoju retains perhaps the most interesting part of his argument for the very end. Here he casts the origin of the politics of alcohol prohibition

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in Northern Nigeria within the logic of economic encroachment, which preceded the colonial integration of Northern Nigeria in 1903. The British prohibited trade in alcohol in the North, not primarily because they wanted to please the Sokoto Caliphate but because that was the only way to enhance the consolidation of British imperial interests being anchored by Sir George Goldie of the Royal Niger Company. Goldie knew early on that his company would not break through economically without the support of the Church Missionary Society (CMS), which measured the worthiness of colonial administrators by their attitude toward liquor. However, Goldie’s company traded in alcohol clandestinely in the Lower Niger. Olukoju opines that Goldie’s liquor policy “was a ruse to promote his economic interest, for it allowed him to please the C.M.S. on the one hand and the Northern emirs on the other, while giving the Company free rein to operate in Northern Nigeria.”20 One would need to read Simon Heap’s work on the liquor trade in Southern Nigeria to get a “Nigeriawide” picture of the contradictions in colonial policy toward both local and foreign liquor and the contribution of alcohol to Nigeria’s economy.21 In later works, Olukoju would return to the subject of the prohibition of liquor by fully integrating it within the prevailing politics of race and the idea of Africa’s primitivity. In “Race and Access to Liquor,” he expands on his earlier analysis of prohibition by not only comparing Northern Rhodesia with Northern Nigeria, but also contextualizing the implications of the introduction of different laws in Northern and Southern Nigeria for nation building in the postindependence era.22 Consumption of European liquor by Africans in both Northern Nigeria and Northern Rhodesia was prohibited. Olukoju observes that unlike in Northern Rhodesia where alcohol use was restricted to beer halls, in Northern Nigeria it was prohibited altogether. Religious considerations and racism influenced the prohibition of both local and imported alcohol in Northern Nigeria; in Northern Rhodesia the justification for depriving Africans of liquor and restricting recreational space hinged mainly on notions of racial difference. According to Olukoju, while campaigns against access to liquor influenced the struggle for political determination in Northern Rhodesia, in Northern Nigeria it was mainly a “status symbol” among Muslim elites whose interests were geared toward protecting their domain from the “unholy” practices of Europeans and Southern Nigerians.23 Olukoju is right to see race and the political economy of alcohol as reasons why the practice and outworking of imperialism varied from place to place, being informed largely by the sociocultural, political, and economic foundations of each colonial site. Religion influenced prohibition in Northern Nigeria because the British met there a society structured along

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the tenets of Islam. Northern Rhodesia, unlike Northern Nigeria, was a settler colony—hence the need to protect the minority white settlers from the danger of intoxicated blacks dictated prohibitory policies. In affirming further the importance of the politics of liquor to the evolution of the Nigerian state and to contemporary challenges of nation building, Olukoju opines: This exchange [correspondence between Northern and Southern colonial officers] illustrates that the liquor question was a significant, though hitherto neglected element in the separate development of the Northern Province of Nigeria. Clearly, this issue was manipulated by Goldsmith, Temple, and Lugard (the last-named in the pre 1919 period) to ingratiate themselves with the Muslim rulers of the emirates by exaggerating the dangers to the Northern Muslims of influences emanating from the South. Such paternalistic British “friends of the North” hid behind this bogey to build an “empire for themselves,” while laying the foundation for a disastrous polarity that has survived colonial rule. Well over thirty years after Nigeria’s formal independence [this work was published in 1996], die-hard Northern Nigerian ex-colonial officers of this type still romanticize about the “Holy North” supposedly characterized by the “virtues” of “fealty and piety”, as contrasted with “the pagan south”, whose Europeanized elite had been the butt of the ridicule of Lugard and his wife and other pro-North officials.24

Although liquor was prohibited in most parts of Northern Nigeria where Islamic religion held sway, in the South colonial subjects were permitted to use both imported and locally brewed alcohol. So important was imported liquor (spirits) to the economy of Southern Nigeria that it accounted for a quarter of government revenue in the 1890s. In another study, Olukoju uncovers the fiscal policy of imported spirits in Southern Nigeria between 1890 and 1919.25 After presenting a short analysis of the trend of scholarship on alcohol in the British Empire, he observes that the fiscal component has escaped the attention of scholars. Although the moral/ethical and economic justification for importation of spirits to the colonies divided the missionaries and the colonial administrators, the colonial government could not afford to dispense with the revenues derived from it. According to Olukoju, the strategic importance of spirits in the Nigerian economy was threatened in the wake of World War I for two principal reasons: practically all the liquor imported into Nigeria came from the “enemies’ country”; and wartime emergency measures generally led to a decline in virtually all imported items. In order to augment this shortage, Lugard, according to Olukoju, imposed a poll tax for the first time in Southern Nigeria. He also proceeded to impose a surtax of 25

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percent (later increased to 30 percent) on most imports in 1916. These new fiscal policies generated widespread tax “riots,” inflation, and scarcity of essential imported items. In summarizing the impacts of World War I on the trade in spirits, on government revenue, and on colonial subjects, Olukoju notes the “fragility or the vulnerability of the colonial fiscal system which virtually collapsed once its rickety foundation, laid upon bottles of ‘rotguts’ [German-made spirits] cracked.”26 Business community–government relations are another focus of Olukoju’s attention. During the colonial period, traders and entrepreneurs from Europe, Asia, and Africa dominated the Nigerian economy. None of these three groups constituted a homogenous entity because they were composed of different nationalities with vested economic interests in various aspects of the colonial economy: from merchandise trading and mining to banking and shipping.27 Of these groups, the Europeans were the most influential for they had huge capital resources and represented well-established European expatriate firms. In one of his earliest works on this aspect of economic history published in African Studies Review in 1995, Olukoju singles out the relations between European expatriate companies and colonial administrators, identifying the various ways in which both classes of colonizers worked to maximize the gains of imperialism.28 Olukoju uses this study, and three others published after it, to respond to Hopkins’s admonition that scholars should explore government–business community relations at the case study level.29 He starts off by establishing that neither the government nor European expatriates could dispense with one another. While the government required the capital of the expatriate firms for full exploitation of Nigeria’s human and natural resources, the expatriate firms could not operate successfully without the peace and order imposed and maintained by the government.30 Olukoju identifies the ways in which the European community tried to shape economic policy. The Europeans formed pressure groups to deliberate over proposed legislation that might affect their business interests and petitioned the colonial administration on matters that they believed would adversely affect them. They even had official representation in the Legislative Council, where most colonial laws were debated and passed. Banquets sponsored by the business community in honor of new or outgoing colonial officers brought the European expatriates closer to the government and increased their chances of successful lobbying.31 But on several occasion, conflict broke out between the colonial government and the European business community over the modus operandi of expropriation. The relations between the government and

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business community, as Olukoju sees them, were traditionally unfriendly during global crises such as World War I, the Great Depression, and World War II when the British imperialist regime had to pass strict emergency laws and implement fiscal policies to safeguard its colonies from imminent takeover by rival nations. In a piece that speaks strongly to the conflict of interest between the colonial government and the business community, Olukoju identifies how the latter agitated for the reduction of railway freight rates for the transport of export commodities—hides and skins, groundnuts, cotton, cocoa—from the point of production to the port of Lagos.32 Except for cocoa produced in the Western region of the country, all these commodities came from Northern Nigeria—about one thousand kilometers from the port. While the government keenly worked to recoup its massive investment in the railway, which opened the entire interior of Nigeria to international trade, the business community felt that the administration should provide a more conducive atmosphere for trade by reducing freight charges. Olukoju highlights the importance of transport to the colonial economy and the high level of intrigues and politicking among diverse groups of interest groups, emphasizing the implications or outcomes of conflict of interest between the government and the business community. He states that Nigerians, not the British colonialists or large trading firms, paid the price of high freight costs by being underpaid for their produce (e.g., cocoa, groundnuts, and cotton) and compelled to buy imported goods at inflated rates.33 Conflict over the best means of maximizing the gains of imperialism transcended government-business relations to include agitation by African entrepreneurs. Unlike big European expatriate companies that had huge stores of capital and received preferential treatment from the colonial administration, African business owners faced institutionalized discrimination in areas of access to loans and other “comforts of business.” In a work titled “‘Nigeria or Lever-ia?’: Nationalist Reactions to Economic Depression and the Menace of Merger,” Olukoju explores the impact of the epileptic character of the colonial economy on the relations between the colonial administration and European firms such as Lever Brothers, on the one hand, and African businesses, on the other.34 He employs Hopkins’s delineation of the three stages of development of African thinking on colonial economic problems to map out the nationalist agitation against the threat of being consumed by the large European firms. He disagrees with Hopkins’s assertion that “political leaders occasionally made use of economic issues, but failed to develop an economic policy . . . because economic discontent was neither widespread nor sustained” before World War I.35 Using two prominent idealist Lagos

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newspapers—the Lagos Weekly Record and Herbert Macaulay’s Lagos Daily News—Olukoju argues contrarily that “nationalist economic thought had been well articulated in the pre–First World War era when the commercial outlook was not as bleak as in the 1920s.”36 Olukoju outlines why and how African businesses responded and fought indiscriminate merger with the big firms, which worked to drive indigenous entrepreneurs out of business. This article points to the historical roots of some of the problems indigenous entrepreneurs face in contemporary Nigeria. Right from the nineteenth century, foreign predatory influence on African business assumed different forms and went a long way toward taming the progress of sustainable African-centered industrialization. The African entrepreneurs, most of whom were educated, were not the only group to criticize the unfair economic relations between African and European merchant companies. Local producers working on the cocoa and palm plantations also knew when and how to demand better economic deals. In “Confronting the Combines,” Olukoju delves into how the Urhobo and Yoruba producers of palm kernels and cocoa responded to poor prices offered for their produce during the 1930s depression.37 In Olukoju’s view, this aspect of “economic militancy” deserves more than the cursory examination given to it in the existing literature, for it demonstrates that the African producers were active rather than passive agents, especially during times of widespread economic stagnation. The Urhobo palm kernel producers and traders based in western Nigeria and their cocoa-producing counterparts during 1934 and 1937–39, respectively, embarked on a “holdup”—that is, they refused to sell palm kernels to the United African Company (UAC) and John Holt, two big expatriate firms, unless a better price was offered.38 Not even the colonial government—the so-called Great White Umpire, which in theory was expected to be neutral in the transactions between the African producers and European firms— was successful in achieving a truce. As significant as the holdups were in safeguarding the producers’ interests, they were unsuccessful. In explaining the failure of the cocoa holdup of 1937–38, Olukoju, drawing on a similar study by Axil Harneit-Sievers, concludes that it started too late in the planting season and that the organizers did not maintain adequate communication lines with fellow producers and traders. Olukoju goes on to explain why similar holdups in the Gold Coast (now Ghana) succeeded. According to him, while the bulk of cocoa in the Gold Coast was produced by wealthy plantation owners “who possessed the means to hold-up their own crops and to buy up the output of the small scale producers who could not afford to sell . . . the Nigerian cocoa industry was dominated by small scale farmers who did not have the

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means of holding up their own annual crops much less buying up those of others to completely hold-up produce.”39 In a nutshell, the Nigerian holdups “changed little or nothing; it was at best a gesture of defiance.”40 In addition to holdups, Nigerian producers also reacted to the unfairness of business transactions through the adulteration of goods.41 Olukoju does not claim to be broaching this aspect of economic history to the academic community. He begins by acknowledging the contributions of historians O. N. Njoku and Adebayo to the subject. He feels, however, that a number of issues still deserve quality attention. While Adebayo’s study deals with hides and skins, groundnuts, and cotton in Northern Nigeria, Njoku’s addresses palm produce in Southeastern Nigeria. For his part, Olukoju’s work focuses on cocoa and palm produce in Western Nigeria. The British took quality control seriously because produce adulteration had a negative multiplier effect on the proceeds of big merchant companies and the British imperial government. Nigerian exports between 1889 and 1929 faced keen competition in the world market where prices were largely determined by the quality of items of trade. According to Olukoju, both the Nigerian producers of cash crops and European merchant traders engaged in various forms of fraudulent practices in order to maximize profits. While Nigerian producers mixed water with palm produce, their European counterparts “perpetrated such malpractices as the shortfolding of cloth and the misrepresentation of inferior articles as genuine.”42 But instead of assigning the blame for adulteration equally to the Nigerian producers and the big European trading firms, the British passed a law that severely punished the former. Olukoju observes that this law produced mixed reactions among the educated elites of Lagos: although produce adulteration is criminal, they felt that both sides of the transaction were complicit. Olukoju pontificates why antiadulteration efforts failed: “The inefficiency and corruption of the inspectors derived from poor pay and working conditions, ineffective supervision (probably unavoidable for reasons of logistics), and inducements from the merchants themselves or their agents.”43 Although Olukoju does not view adulteration as a form of resistance to colonial rule, as he does in the case of counterfeiting in his work on currency, it is probable that the producers were working not just to increase their profit margins but to undermine capitalism. Free trade policy as one of the methods the British adopted for penetrating Africa, Olukoju affirms, has received significant attention in the works of economic historians. Generally speaking, scholars identify the impact of Britain’s “open door” policy, which stood in contrast to French “protectionism,” as a feature of its contradictory economic stance

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because the approach came with so many conditions and exceptions.44 For instance, Britain closed economic doors against other countries that traded in commodities produced by British manufacturers. In other words, the door was open and the trade free only when Britain’s economic interests were not in jeopardy. Olukoju does not disagree with his colleagues on this contradiction in Britain’s imperial philosophy. However, he adds new information and ideas by looking at how Britain’s contradictory fiscal policy played out in the trade in palm kernels with Germany at the onset of World War I, and in textiles with the Japanese during the Great Depression. By 1914, when war broke out, close to 50 percent of Nigeria’s palm kernel crop was exported to Germany because British industrialists did not have enough mills to process it.45 However, the commencement of hostilities compelled Britain not only to stop Germany from trading in Nigerian palm kernels but to encourage and finance its own industrialists at home to build additional crushing mills. A similar situation took place during the 1930s when Manchester manufacturers pressured the British government to terminate the importation of Japanese textiles into Nigeria. In describing the contradictions and core principles under which either an “open door” or “protectionist” policy worked, Olukoju opines: “Open door policy was essentially limited to periods of relative peace or commercial stability, or when the economic superpower enjoyed unassailable ascendancy” and that “protectionism was a child of necessity, a ‘neo-mercantilist’ policy resorted to by nations in economic desperation.”46 After dealing with protectionism during World War I and the Great Depression in “Slamming the Open Door,” Olukoju went on to unmask the series of policies put in place to control both imports and exports during World War II. In his usual fashion of establishing the importance of his work in relation to the existing literature on a subject, Olukoju asserts that although the material and manpower contributions of Nigerians to the British Empire’s Win-the-War efforts have been well documented, “there is no specific treatment of official policy dealing with the colony’s import and export trade sector during the war and in its aftermath.”47 Britain, like most European countries, saw the war coming and was prepared to face its consequences on supply and availability of both essential and nonessential commodities. The strategy of export restriction was simple: to conserve supplies for Britain’s use and ensure that exports did not slip into the hands of the enemy nations. Restricted imports, according to Olukoju, fell under five categories: (1) items of economic importance to the colony’s subjects; (2) those placed under strict export control in Britain; (3) those licensed on a percentage of previous levels, as fixed by the controller; (4) goods for which licenses were issued based on the controller’s conviction

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that their importation was vital; and (5) goods that would not be licensed except in situations of necessity.48 While this policy appears neat on paper, it had an enormous impact on colonial subjects. Olukoju discusses the impact of wartime import and export controls on different classes and strata of the colonial society— from rural producers of export commodities and urban consumers of imported items, to European and African businesses and expatriates. He is able to put a human face on the agonies of the period through a content analysis of newspaper editorials and petitions from Nigerians decrying scarcity and inflation of both essential and nonessential commodities. Nigerians subsidized the metropolitan economy through the “buy British” drive, according to Olukoju. This campaign encouraged colonial subjects to buy imported items from Britain, even if they were more expensive than similar brands from countries within the empire. The fact that the British retained these wartime emergency regulations until 1949—four years after the cessation of hostilities—“show[s] that the government derived economic gains that it was not willing to relinquish.”49 Other prominent works on economic history by Olukoju include series of essays on economic globalization, international economic relations, and liberalization.50 As in other works analyzed above, Olukoju consistently demonstrates the importance of new findings in illuminating dark corners of economic history. Even when he uses familiar sources or engages wellknown issues, he creates interpretations that complicate existing knowledge, leaving critical readers with challenging questions for further study. Obviously, his work on economic history deals more with the colonial era—only on a few occasions does he venture into the postcolonial period. However, he rarely leaves his audience questioning the importance of that colonial economic history to contemporary Nigeria. He often does what most other historians rarely do—that is, make important remarks about the long-term impact or ramifications of a story set within the colonial timeframe on postcolonial narratives of growth and underdevelopment. We see this in his analysis of how liquor trade politics contributed to the evolution of “two Nigerias” (that is, the North and the South). From the early 2000s, Olukoju’s scholarship began to extend to urban and infrastructure history—while not leaving either economic or maritime studies. As we shall see in the next section, this new research agenda would lead to signature works that put cities and infrastructure in their rightful place in colonial and contemporary Nigerian history.

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Urban and Infrastructure History Writing in 1994, Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch calls Africanists’ attention to the paucity of research on Africa’s urban past.51 She observes that anthropologists and social scientists have monopolized research on towns and cities. This situation seemed not to have changed by 2000 when David Anderson and Richard Rathbone, in the introduction to their anthology African Urban Space, asserted: “To date, urban history as a recognizable sub-field has not made a significant impact upon African historiography.”52 Since that year, the appearance of many books and monographs on urban history testifies to the growing importance of cities to the African experience.53 The unprecedented rural–urban migration in the past thirty years coupled with enormous economic and political crises in African countries draw the attention of scholars to the study of urban areas. City centers have traditionally been used as a yardstick for measuring the development of African societies and economies simply because they visibly show the extent of progress or failure of nation building.54 Scholarly output on urban history, as one would expect, has taken multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary dimensions as scholars from diverse fields in the humanities and social sciences engage in critical study of Africans’ urban experiences. From histories of town planning, sanitation, and slums to popular culture, crime, and disease, recent scholarship has established urban centers as credible sites of historical inquiry. Coquery-Vidrovitch’s observation is correct in the case of Nigeria. A large number of works on urban Nigeria have been conducted by social scientists (especially geographers and town planners). Although some of these works—in particular, Akin Maboguje’s seminal work Urbanization in Nigeria55—have significant historical content in that they place their analyses in historical context, historians began to seriously turn the focus of historical discourse on urbanism from the 1990s. Olukoju is among those few historians of Nigeria who have devoted adequate attention to urban history. Unlike Laurent Fourchard, Simon Heap, and Abosede George, among others whose work deals with social or sociological aspects of urbanization, Olukoju weighs in on issues around infrastructure, sanitation, residential segregation, markets, and population. His monograph Infrastructure Development and Urban Facilities in Lagos, 1861–2000, as previously mentioned, is the first book-length study of key urban utilities in any part of West Africa. In this book, Olukoju presents the history of electricity, public water supply, and transportation in Lagos. The availability and accessibility of these three utilities are important indicators of the

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quality of life in the city. The book is set against the backdrop of Lagos’s rapid population boom and economic expansion, and its position as political capital of Nigeria up to 1991. Olukoju does not just narrate when and how each of these facilities was established; he situates them within the matrix of public agitation for the improvement of colonial subjects’ lives, the economic crisis that affected the availability of money for projects, the ability of people to pay their bills, and colonialists’ racial prejudice. He discusses the involvement of diverse individuals and groups (both colonialists and native Nigerians) in the construction of these facilities. After analyzing the genesis and expansion of electrification and public water supply, Olukoju concludes that regime after regime failed to meet people’s demand for basic infrastructure: “By 2000 none of the three [electricity, water, and public transport] could be said to be serving more than sixty percent of the population with any degree of regularity and efficiency.”56 Olukoju’s comprehensive study spans more than one hundred years in a single volume. He explains that the availability of research materials on each decade varies—thus determining the depth of analysis of each period. For the postcolonial period, the absence of official government documents compelled him to rely on oral information, newspapers, and other fragmentary sources. The depth and volume of information on each of the facilities also varies. There is more data on electricity and water supply because the colonial government kept records. In contrast, urban transport was monopolized by private individuals, whose data is difficult to access. In terms of financial requirements for provision of the three facilities, Olukoju points out that while private individuals could invest in mass transit because an enthusiastic entrepreneur could afford the cost of a bus, the huge financial outlay for electric and water utilities meant that only the government or large firms had the capital to undertake them. After a thorough, reasoned analysis of continuity and change in infrastructure provision and maintenance during colonial rule and after its termination up to 2000, Olukoju gives the following recommendations, among others: “First, there must be a well thought out integrated approach to infrastructure development in Lagos in the wider contexts of State and Federal Governments’ policies. Second, arising from this is the need for policy coordination to ensure profitable intermodal urban transport in the Lagos metropolis. For too long, the government has placed an undue emphasis on road transport.”57 The appearance of Infrastructure Development and Urban Facilities in Lagos did not end Olukoju’s interest in infrastructure history. In subsequent years he developed more fully some of the issues he left out of the book

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and incorporated new perspectives.58 In a study of electricity supply and consumer response, published in African Affairs in 2004, Olukoju establishes that the “power supply merely mirrors the larger question of the performance of state-owned enterprises in post-independence Africa.”59 Unlike in Infrastructure Development and Urban Facilities in Lagos, which contains little about people’s perceptions of infrastructure provision, this piece is more “Lagosian-centered” in that it details how residents adapted and adjusted to governmental failure to provide basic amenities. He starts off by giving a short history of electricity generation in Nigeria by various establishments between 1900 and 2003—from the Public Works Department and the Nigerian Government Electricity Undertaking to the Electricity Corporation of Nigeria and the National Electric Power Authority (NEPA).60 The change of names of these establishments reflected the government’s efforts to meet the increasing demand for electricity for domestic, commercial, and industrial needs, as well as changes in the technology, equipment, and resources for generating power. When electricity was first introduced in 1898, coal was the primary fuel for power generation. By the 1960s, according to Olukoju, power was being generated with hydroelectric and thermal (gas or steam) technologies. After enumerating government-centered factors—such as corruption and lack of accountability, especially during the era of military rule— responsible for NEPA’s failure to meet customers’ demand, Olukoju goes on to analyze consumers’ response within the framework of social class. While some consumers resorted to “self-help” criminal behavior such as illegal connections, others refused to pay bills partly because they did not receive the service they were billed for.61 Indeed, bill-payment delinquency in Lagos as elsewhere in Nigeria has been identified as one of the major problems inhibiting the performance of electricity producers. On several occasions, consumers reacted to poor service by physically attacking NEPA’s staff. But instead of engaging in violence or criminal activity, citizens purchased small power-generators to meet their electricity needs. Olukoju’s position on who should be blamed for the crisis of urban facilities is evident. He is clear in pointing to the failure of successive governments to adequately meet demand, but he also emphasizes that consumers (e.g., through bill delinquency, “self-help” criminality, and illegal power connections) should also be faulted. The problems facing Lagos and other Nigerian cities transcend electricity, water supply, and public transport. As one of the largest cities in Africa, Lagos is also plagued by the problem of waste disposal. The urban waste management problem in Lagos dates back to the 1920s or earlier, as Olukoju

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demonstrates. A combination of factors such as poor government response to waste management and citizens’ lack of discipline accounted for the massive heap of domestic and industrial waste matter found on the major streets of Lagos both during and after the end of colonial rule.62 After reading Olukoju’s penetrating discussion of how successive governments in Lagos (from the 1920s to the 2000s) tackled the problems of waste management, one sees clearly that it would take a concerted effort of both the citizenry and the authorities to maintain a clean city. In addition, it appeared that waste management methods must be structured in accordance with the peculiar cultural, economic, and geographic realities of Lagos. This is particularly important given the failure of imported technologies (for example, during the regime of Governor Lateef Jakanda, 1979–83) to ameliorate the situation. By comparing and contrasting waste management in Lagos with that in Tokyo, the largest city in the world, Olukoju is able to prove that most of the challenges of urbanization are not unique to Nigeria or Africa.63 But it would appear that the Japanese, due to technological advancement, have better means of managing their household waste than do Lagosians. Infrastructure, Olukoju firmly reiterates in the works cited above, is a key component of urban life. The quality of life in most cities, whether in Nigeria or elsewhere in the world, is traditionally measured by the availability, accessibility, and affordability of electricity, water, and transport. In his book titled The Fourteenth Commissar of Works, he uses the career of Rauf Aregbesola, the commissioner of works and infrastructure in Lagos between 1999 and 2007, as an entry point into the enormous tasks of resuscitating the city’s decaying infrastructure after decades of neglect.64 Olukoju is well positioned to undertake an exploration of this type, having committed serious academic energies toward the study of the activities and roles played by different administrators (both Europeans and Nigerians) in providing and maintaining urban facilities since 1861, when Lagos was first brought under colonial rule. The notion of African racial inferiority featured prominently in the justification for Europeans’ colonization of Nigeria. Before and during the effective occupation or colonization, Europeans passed a series of medical, sanitary, education, and political laws aimed at justifying the unscientific notion that Africans were primitive and thus incapable of governing themselves. In a study titled “The Segregation of Europeans and Africans in Colonial Nigeria,” Olukoju gives the genesis of the series of laws passed both in Southern and Northern Nigeria that created European segregation areas (ESAs).65 The purported justification for segregation

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was that the incidence of malaria and yellow fever among the Europeans would be reduced if they resided apart from the range of mosquitos and tsetse flies that bred in the African residential areas. The residential segregation laws made provision for a 440-yard-wide nonresidential zone between European and African residential areas. In situating this piece within existing literature, Olukoju references a similar study by T. S. Gale that covers the entirety of British West Africa. Although Gale’s work is useful for providing some background to the creation of European segregation areas, it does not, according to Olukoju, cover the post1920s—the period characterized by political polarization among British colonial officers and sanitary authorities about the effectiveness of segregation.66 In addition, Olukoju disagrees with Gale that segregation ceased to be a problem after the 1920s by examining how it was practiced or maintained up to 1950.67 Between 1920 and 1950, colonial administrators like Hugh Clifford (governor between 1919 and 1925) and sanitary officers were skeptical about the effectiveness of the segregation policy both on the medical wellness of the Europeans and on the professed mission of civilizing Africans. While some believed that excessive separation of Africans from Europeans inhibited the stamping out of “primitive” culture that kept Africans at the lower “rungs” of the ladder of racial evolution, others thought that strict implementation of sanitary laws, not segregation, was the best means of reducing the epidemic of malaria and yellow fever. Segregation law did not go unchallenged by African nationalists. Olukoju notes that the change of nomenclature from “ESA” to “European reservation,” to “European residential area,” and finally, to “government residential area” had a lot to do with the agitation within both the African and European communities for the segregation laws to be repealed. Political developments after World War II, characterized by decolonization, the involvement of more Nigerians in running the colonial state, and advances in scientific medicine sounded the death knell of segregation in places like Lagos. By 1947, residency in the ESA would be based not on color but on standard of living. It was not until 1950 that an application for a residential lease at Ikoyi, a European segregated community, by an African was approved.68 Looking at Ikoyi today, one sees the remnant of colonial racism manifested in the architecture, evoking the splendor and tranquility of the elite colonial lifestyle. Olukoju’s scholarship on urban history extends to the areas of grassroots development and politics in sections of Lagos like Agege and Ajegunle.69 In establishing why micro studies of sections of the megalopolis are important, Olukoju, in a piece published in 2005–6, opines that it

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affords a deep and penetrating look into the realities of community development; issues of security, power, and authority; and the challenges of daily life. He puts a human face on the namelessness often associated with the study of big cities. He fuses the working of chieftaincy and different sections of the community—from market and religion, to youth and stranger—to highlight the interrelated nature of urban politics, ethnic identity, and class consciousness.70 Olukoju has also researched other aspects of urban history such as markets in Ibadan and Lagos. His scholarship complements works on the political, economic, social, and religious functions of markets. According to Olukoju and Fourchard, his collaborating author, inadequate or incomplete basic infrastructures (such as running taps, public latrines, and fire service) mirror the larger problems confronting the Nigerian state at virtually all levels.71 They assert that throughout the colonial and postindependence periods, conflicts over street hawking, payment of levies, hygiene, and demolition of “illegal” structures pitched market women against state and local authorities.72

Conclusion As stated at the outset of this chapter, we have attempted a difficult task of compartmentalizing Olukoju’s broad scholarly achievements in economic and urban and infrastructure history. We have also offered our own interpretations of his writing in relation to others’. We do not claim to have fully engaged all Olukoju’s work in the selected areas; having chosen only a few that we believe help establish our appraisal of his contributions to Nigerian history. We hope that our endeavor encourages other historiographers to engage the works left out in this admittedly broad exploratory study. Olukoju’s mission in virtually every work is driven by his desire to advance the state of historical knowledge. This agenda guided him through various subfields, whether obvious or obscure, where he registered his presence with narratives that are capable of standing the test of time. Olukoju’s scholarship clearly speaks to the well-acknowledged wisdom in the historical profession that a historian’s craft cannot be dissociated from the socioeconomic and political situation of the society in or of which he or she is writing. His scholarship began at the period when history, like most disciplines in the humanities, was facing a formidable crisis of relevance. Neither government nor citizens saw the utility of a discipline that often appeared disconnected from the pressing realities of underdevelopment and the forward-looking drive toward the technological

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development that is considered the prerequisite for rousing Nigeria from its sleeping-giant mode. Scholars and institutions reacted divergently to the situation. Olukoju is one of the few scholars who rose to the challenges of demonstrating the value and utility of history. In the choice of topics, periodization, and approaches, he demonstrates that historians have a place in modern Nigeria. Histories of urban politics and infrastructure, for example, not only tell us much about the change and continuity in institutional approaches to the improvement of the quality of life of citizens; they also establish that the very challenges of underdevelopment are historically rooted. Whether through the study of currency or of business-government relations, this kind of historical undertaking identifies and elucidates the evolution of underdevelopment with which Nigeria is contending today. In several of his publications, Ayodeji Olukoju maps out the course that historical research must take in the twenty-first century. In a study entitled “Challenges before the Twenty-first Century Nigerian Historian,” published in 2001, Olukoju opines that unlike in the pre-1990 period when the government made use of the expertise of historians, the historians of the twenty-first century must convince the society and the state that they have something to offer.73 In order to demonstrate their relevance, Olukoju suggests that they should use their professional expertise to contribute to newspapers and produce documentaries on issues that are of importance to the public and the state. “By blending the professional with the pecuniary,” Olukoju anticipates, “it would be possible to achieve the goals of the proprietors, the historian and the discipline to the mutual advantage of all.”74 He mentions that focusing on themes like crime, technology, sexuality, the environment, diplomacy, and peace and conflict, among others, could shed light on challenges of living in the twenty-first century. As we shall see in this volume, historians are already critically engaging certain of these issues. More work still needs to be done to revitalize history education at all levels and to bridge the gap between “town and gown.” To this end, and in response to “inadequacies in the institutional framework for scholarly exchanges and intellectual engagement in the discipline of history in Nigeria,” Olukoju helped found the Network of Nigerian Historians (NNH) in 2010 to serve as “platform for scholars committed to institution and capacity building.” We conclude this chapter with a summary of the goals of the NNH: “To promote historical research and scholarship; To enhance capacity building among the younger generation of historians; To strengthen institutional linkages and collaboration;

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To provide outlets for scholarly research (journals, monographs, and conference proceedings); To mount scientific workshops, meetings, and conferences; To intervene in scholarly and public policy debates; To complement at the subregional level the activities of the Association of African Historians or any such body in the foreseeable future dedicated to the advancement of historical scholarship; To broaden interest in the study of history by engaging with public and private sector stakeholders; To prepare and recover endangered sources of history; To cooperate and collaborate with agencies and organisations (such as CODESRIA and SEPHIS) which are committed to the study of the history of development in the Global South; To act as repository and disseminator of historical and cultural information.”

Notes 1

Nigerian Academy of Letters, http://nalnigeria.org/home. See the following works by Olukoju on urban and infrastructure history: Infrastructure Development and Urban Facilities in Lagos, 1861–2000 (Ibadan: Institut Française de Rechèrche en Afrique, 2003); The Fourteenth Commissar of Works: The Life and Labour of Rauf Aregbesola (Lagos/Winnipeg: Bluesign Publications/Canadian Center for Global Studies, 2007); “Towards Integrated Infrastructure Development in Greater Lagos,” in Global and Local Dynamics in African Business and Development, ed. Simon P. Sigue (Gainesville, FL: IAABD e-book, 2008), 739–44; (with Laurent Fourchard) “State and Local Governments, and Management of Markets in Lagos and Ibadan since the 1950s,” in Gouverner les villes d’Afrique: État, gouvernement local et acteurs privés, ed. Laurent Fourchard (Paris: Karthala, 2007), 107–23; “Power Relations in Ward-Level Governance in an Urban Setting: Ajegunle-Lagos (Nigeria) since the 1950s,” in Pouvoirs Locaux et Gestion Foncière en Afrique de L’Ouest, ed. Odile Goerg (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2006), 179–208; “Provision and Management of Water Services in Lagos, 1915–2000,” in Environmental History of Water: Global Views on Community Water Supply and Sanitation, ed. Petri S. Juuti, Tapio S. Katko, and Heikki S. Vuorinen (London: IWA Publishing, 2006), 343–54; “Lagos: Birth of a City,” in Between Basel and Angola: The Travels and Explorations of the Basel Citizen Carl Passavant to West and Central Africa from 1883 to 1885, ed. Juerg Schneider, Ute Roeschenthaler, and Bernhard Gardi (Basel: Christoph Merian Verlag, 2005), 177–88 (published in German as Zwischen Basel und Angola: Die Forschungsreisen des Basler Bürgers Carl Passavant nach West- und Zentralafrika in den Jahren 1883–85);“Electricity and Water Supply in Lagos, 1861–2000,” in Politiques d’Équipement et Services Urbains dans les Villes du Sud: Etudes Comparée, ed. Chantal Chanson-Jabeur, Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch, and Odile Goerg (Paris: Editions Harmattan, 2005), 327–61; “Nigerian Cities in

2

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Historical Perspective,” in Nigerian Cities, ed. Toyin Falola and Steven J. Salm (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2003), 11–46; “Urban Transport in Metropolitan Lagos,” in Nigerian Cities, ed. Falola and Salm, 211–36; “The Segregation of Europeans and Africans in Colonial Nigeria,” in Security, Crime, and Segregation in West African Cities, ed. Laurent Fourchard and Isaac Olawale Albert (Paris: IFRA, 2003), 263–86; “The Cost of Living in Lagos, 1914–45,” in Africa’s Urban Past, ed. Richard Rathbone and David Anderson (Oxford: James Currey, 2000), 126–43; “The Pluralisms of Urban Waste Management: A Comparative Study of Lagos (Nigeria) and Tokyo (Japan),” in The Humanistic Management of Pluralism: A Formula for Development in Nigeria, ed. Agwonorobo Eruvbetine (Lagos: Faculty of Arts, University of Lagos, 2001), 508–25; “Actors and Institutions in Urban Politics in Nigeria: Agege (Lagos) since the 1950s,” Afrika Zamani: Journal of the Association of African Historians 13–14 (2005–6): 153–78; ‘“Never Expect Power Always’: Electricity Consumers’ Response to Monopoly, Corruption, and Inefficient Services in Nigeria,” African Affairs 103, no. 410 (2004): 51–71; “The Travails of Migrant and Wage Labour in the Lagos Metropolitan Area in the InterWar Years,” Labour History Review 61, no. 1 (1996): 49–70; “Population Pressure, Housing, and Sanitation in West Africa’s Premier Port-City: Lagos, 1900–1939,” The Great Circle: Journal of the Australian Association for Maritime History 15, no. 2 (1993): 91–106; and “Growth of Infrastructure in Lagos: Challenges and Prospects” (published in German as “Zum Thema Infrastruktur”), Stadtbauwelt (Berlin), no. 164 (special issue on Lagos, 2004), 54–59. 3 Olukoju, Infrastructure Development and Urban Facilities. 4 See the following works by Olukoju: Positive Leadership in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa, Positive Leadership Monograph Series No. 3 (Ikorodu, Nigeria: Center for Social Science Research and Development, 2002); “Maritime Terrorism: Dimensions, Scenarios, and Countermeasures,” in Global Understanding in the Age of Terrorism, ed. Ayodeji Olukoju and Muyiwa Falaiye (Lagos: University of Lagos Press, 2008), 137–50; and Muyiwa Falaiye, ed., Global Understanding in the Age of Terrorism (Lagos: University of Lagos Press, 2008); Ayodeji Olukoju, Z. O. Apata and O. Akinwumi, eds., Northeast Yorubaland: Studies in the History and Culture of a Frontier Zone (Ibadan: Rex Charles, 2003); “The Crisis of Academic Research and Publishing in Nigerian Universities,” in African Universities in the Twenty-first Century, vol. 2: Knowledge and Society, ed. Adebayo Olukoshi and Paul Tiyambe Zeleza (Dakar: CODESRIA, 2004), 363–75; “Nigerian Civil Rights Organisations since the 1980s,” in Emergent Actors in African Political Economy, ed. Katsuya Mochizuki, African Research Series No. 9 (Makuhari/Tokyo: Institute of Developing Economies, 2003), 73–90; “The Siege of Oka, ca. 1878– 84: A Study in the Resistance to Nupe Militarism in Northeast Yorubaland,” in Warfare and Diplomacy in Precolonial Nigeria: Essays in Honor of Robert Smith, ed. Toyin Falola and Robin Law (Madison, WI: African Studies Program, 1992), 102–10; “Sit-Tight Syndrome and Tenure Elongation in African Politics,” in Contemporary Issues in Africa, ed. R. A. Olaniyan (forthcoming); “Rethinking Historical Scholarship in Africa,” in Rethinking the Humanities in Africa, ed. Sola Akinrinade, Dipo Fashina, David O. Ogungbile, and J. O. Famakinwa (Ile-Ife:

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Faculty of Arts, Obafemi Awolowo University, 2007), 167–82; “The Western Region Local Government Law of 1952: A Study in Its Application to Akokoland, 1952–62,” in Northeast Yorubaland, ed. Olukoju et al., 200–222; “Oka,” in Yoruba Towns and Cities, ed. G. O. Oguntomisin (Ibadan: Bookshelf Resources Ltd., 2003), 77–88; “Challenges before the Twenty-first Century Nigerian Historian,” in Issues in Historiography, ed. O. O. Olubomehin (Ibadan: College Press, 2001), 126–41; and “Organized Labour, Governance, and the Electoral Process: Insights from the Nigerian and American Experiences,” in Governance and the Electoral Process: Nigeria and the United States of America, ed. O. Ogunba (Lagos: American Studies Association of Nigeria, 1997), 337–66. 5 R. O. Ekundare, An Economic History of Nigeria, 1860–1960 (London: Methuen, 1973); A. G. Hopkins, An Economic History of West Africa (New York: Columbia University Press, 1973); G. O. Ogunremi, Counting the Camels: The Economics of Transportation in Pre-industrial Nigeria (New York: NOK Publishers International, 1982); Bade Onimode, Imperialism and Underdevelopment in Nigeria: The Dialectics of Mass Poverty (London: Zed Books, 1982); and Paul Lovejoy, Caravans of Kola: The Hausa Kola Trade, 1700–1900 (Zaria, Nigeria: Ahmadu Bello University Press, 1980). 6 Hopkins, Economic History of West Africa, 1. 7 Ibid. 8 Toyin Falola, The Political-Economy of a Precolonial African State: Ibadan, 1830–1900 (Ile-Ife: University of Ife Press, 1984); and Bolanle Awe, “Militarism and Economic Development in Nineteenth-Century Yoruba Country: The Ibadan Example,” Journal of African History 14, no. 1 (1973): 65–77. 9 Examples include but are not limited to the following: Onimode, Imperialism and Underdevelopment in Nigeria; Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (London: Bogle-l’Ouverture, 1972); Claude Ake, Political Economy of Africa (London: Longman, 1981); and Toyin Falola, ed., Britain and Nigeria: Exploitation or Development? (London: Zed Books, 1987). 10 See the following works on economic history by Olukoju: “Liberalisation, Deregulation, and Privatisation in Nigeria since the 1980s,” in Emergent Themes and Methods in African Studies: Essays in Honor of Adiele Eberechukwu Afigbo, ed. Toyin Falola and Adam Paddock (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2009), 457–74; “The Adisi Case: Currency Counterfeiting in Inter-War Colonial Gold Coast,” in Money in Africa, ed. Catherine Eagleton and Harcourt Fuller (London: British Museum, 2009), 68–74; “‘Nigeria or Lever-ia?’: Nationalist Reactions to Economic Depression and the Menace of Mergers in Colonial Nigeria,” Journal of Third World Studies 19, no. 1 (2002): 173–94; “Economic Relations between Nigeria and the United States of America in the Era of British Colonial Rule, ca. 1900–1950,” in The United States and West Africa: Interactions and Relations, ed. Alusine Jalloh and Toyin Falola (Rochester, NY: Rochester University Press, 2008), 90–111; “Emergent Business Actors in Nigeria in the Post-Structural Adjustment Era,” in Emergent Actors in African Political Economy and Society, ed. Katsuya Mochizuki (Makuhari/Tokyo: Institute of Developing Economies, 2003), 3–28; “Nigeria and the World Market, 1890–1960: Local and Global

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Economic Dynamics in the Colonial Context,” in Globalization and Its Discontents, Revisited, ed. K. S. Jomo and K. J. Khoo (Delhi: Tulika Books, 2003), 141–56; “The Faulkner ‘Blueprint’ and the Evolution of Agricultural Policy in Inter-War Colonial Nigeria,” in The Foundations of Nigeria: Essays in Honor of Toyin Falola, ed. Adebayo Oyebade (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2003), 403–22; “The Colonial Monetary System in Northern Nigeria, 1903–1939,” in Nigeria in the Twentieth Century, ed. Toyin Falola (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2002), 183–99; “The Impact of British Colonialism on the Development of African Business in Colonial Nigeria,” in Black Business and Economic Power, ed. Alusine Jalloh and Toyin Falola (Rochester, NY: Rochester University Press, 2002), 176–98; “Economy and Politics in Nigeria during the Nineteenth Century,” in Studies in the Nineteenth-Century Economic History of Nigeria, ed. Toyin Falola and Ann O’Hear (Madison, WI: African Studies Program, University of Wisconsin, 1998), 11–26; “Economic History: Its Emergence, Relevance, and Relationship with Cognate Disciplines,” in Fundamentals of Economic History, ed. Ayodeji Olukoju, Adebayo Lawal, and Kehinde Faluyi (Lagos: First Academic Publishers, 2003), 1–24; “The Business Lobby and the Sustenance of Democratic Governance: The Nigerian and American Experiences,” in Consolidation and Sustenance of Democracy: Nigeria and the United States, ed. S. O. O. Amali et al. (Ibadan: Hope Publications/ASAN, 2002), 103–15; “Transportation in Colonial West Africa,” in Economic History of West Africa since 1750, ed. G. O. Ogunremi and E. K. Faluyi (Ibadan: Rex Charles, 1996), 144–56; “Ecology and Economic Underdevelopment: Agriculture, Trade, and Transport in Badagry, c. 1880–1950,” in Badagry: A Study in the History, Culture, and Traditions of an Ancient City, ed. G. O. Ogunremi, M. Opeloye, and Siyan Oyeweso (Ibadan: Rex Charles, 1994), 72–89; “The Politics of Free Trade between Lagos and the Hinterland, 1861–1907,” in History of the Peoples of Lagos State, ed. Ade Adefuye, Babatunde Agiri, and Jide Osuntokun (Lagos: Literamed, 1987), 85–103; “The United Kingdom and the Political Economy of the Global Oils and Fats Business in the 1930s,” Journal of Global History 4, no. 1 (2009): 105–25; ‘“Buy British, Sell Foreign’: External Trade Control Policies in Nigeria during the Second World War and Its Aftermath, 1939–50,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 35, nos. 2–3 (2002): 363–84; “Self-Help Criminality as Resistance? Currency Counterfeiting in Colonial Nigeria,” International Review of Social History 45, no. 3 (2000): 385–407; “Confronting the Combines: Producers’ and Traders’ Militancy in Western Nigeria, 1934–1939,” Nordic Journal of African Studies 9, no. 1 (2000): 49–69; ‘“Subsidizing the Merchants at the Expense of the Administration’: Railway Tariffs and Nigerian Maritime Trade in the 1920s,” Indian Journal of African Studies X, nos.1–2 (1999): 61–77; “Slamming the ‘Open Door’: British Protectionist Fiscal Policy in Inter-War Nigeria,” ITINERARIO: European Journal of Overseas History 23, no. 2 (1999): 13–28; “Government, the Business Community, and Quality Control Schemes in the Agricultural Export Trade of Nigeria, 1889–1929,” African Economic History 26 (1998): 99–118; “Nigeria’s Colonial Government, Commercial Banks, and the Currency Crisis of 1916–1920,” International Journal of African Historical

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Studies 30, no. 2 (1997): 277–98; “Rotgut and Revenue: Fiscal Aspects of the Liquor Trade in Southern Nigeria, 1890–1919,” ITINERARIO: European Journal of Overseas History 21, no. 2 (1997): 66–81; “Race and Access to Liquor: Prohibition as Colonial Policy in Northern Nigeria, 1919–45,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 24, no. 2 (1996): 218–43; “Prohibition and Paternalism: The State and the Clandestine Liquor Traffic in Northern Nigeria, c. 1898–1918,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 24, no. 2 (1991): 349–68; and “Anatomy of Business-Government Relations: Fiscal Policy and Mercantile Pressure Group Activities in Nigeria, 1916–1933,” African Studies Review 38, no. 1 (1995): 23–50. 11 For colonial currency and monetary system, see among others: Toyin Falola and Akanmu Adebayo, Culture, Politics, and Money among the Yoruba (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2000); J. H. Latham, “Currency, Credit, and Capitalism on the Cross River in the Pre-colonial Era,” Journal of African History 12 (1971): 599–605; G. I. Jones, “Native and Trade Currencies in Southern Nigeria during the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries,” Africa 28 (1958): 42–54; A. H. M. Kirk-Greene, “The Major Currencies in Nigerian History,” Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria 2 (1960): 132–50; Marion Johnson, “The Cowry Currencies of West Africa, Part I,” Journal of African History 11 (1970): 17–49; Paul E. Lovejoy, “Interregional Monetary Flows in the Precolonial Trade of Nigeria,” Journal of African History 15, no. 4 (1974): 563–85; Eugenia W. Herbert, “Aspects of the Use of Copper in Pre-Colonial West Africa,” Journal of African History 14 (1973): 179–94; Walter Ofonagoro, “From Traditional to British Currency in Southern Nigeria: An Analysis of a Currency Revolution, 1880–1948,” Journal of Economic History 39, no. 3 (1979): 623–54; A. G. Hopkins, “The Currency Revolution in Southwest Nigeria in the Late Nineteenth Century,” Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria 3 (1966): 471–83; A. G. Hopkins, “The Creation of a Colonial Monetary System: The Origins of the West African Currency Board,” African Historical Studies 3 (1970): 101–32; E. K. Hawkins, “The Growth of a Money Economy in Nigeria and Ghana,” Oxford Economic Papers 10, no. 3 (1958): 339–54; and Jan S. Hogendorn and H. A. Gemery, “Continuity in West African Monetary History? An Outline of Monetary Development,” African Economic History 17 (1988): 127–46. 12 Olukoju, “Nigeria’s Colonial Government.” 13 Ibid., 289. 14 Ibid., 296. 15 Olukoju, “Self-Help Criminality as Resistance?,” 386. 16 Olukoju, “Adisi Case,” 68–74; and Olukoju, “Colonial Monetary System in Northern Nigeria,” 183–99. 17 Olukoju, “Prohibition and Paternalism.” 18 Simon Heap, “A Bottle of Gin Is Dangled before the Nose of the Natives”: “The Economic Uses of Imported Liquor in Southern Nigeria, 1860–1920,” African Economic History 33 (2005): 69–85. 19 Olukoju, “Prohibition and Paternalism,” 349. 20 Ibid., 364.

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21 Heap, “Bottle of Gin Is Dangled”; Simon Heap, “Before ‘Star’: The Import Substitution of Western-Style Alcohol in Nigeria, 1870–1970,” African Economic History 24 (1996): 69–89. 22 Olukoju, “Race and Access to Liquor,” 218–43. 23 Ibid., 219. 24 Ibid., 239. 25 Olukoju, “Rotgut and Revenue,” 66–81. 26 Ibid., 78. 27 Olukoju, “Anatomy of Business-Government Relations,” 24–26. 28 Ibid., 23–50. 29 The includes, Olukoju, “Subsidizing the Merchants,” 61–77; Olukoju, “Nigeria or Lever-ia?” 173–94; and Olukoju, “Confronting the Combines,” 46–69. 30 Olukoju, “Anatomy of Business-Government Relations,” 24–26. 31 Ibid., 26–29. 32 Olukoju, “Subsidizing the Merchants,” 61–77. 33 Ibid., 74. 34 Olukoju, “Nigeria or Lever-ia?” 173–94. 35 Hopkins, quoted in ibid., 173. 36 Olukoju, “Nigeria or Lever-ia?”174. 37 Olukoju, “Confronting the Combines,” 46–69. 38 Ibid. 39 Ibid., 65–66. 40 Ibid., 66. 41 Olukoju, “Government, Business, and Quality Control,” 107. 42 Ibid. 100. 43 Ibid., 114. 44 Olukoju, “Slamming the ‘Open Door,’” 13–15. 45 Ibid., 14–23. 46 Ibid., 25. 47 Olukoju, “Buy British, Sell Foreign,” 363–84. 48 Ibid., 375. 49 Ibid., 383. 50 See the following by Olukoju, among others: “Liberalisation, Deregulation, and Privatisation,” 457–74; “Economic Relations,” 90–111; “Emergent Business Actors,” 3–28; and “Nigeria and the World Market,” 141–56. 51 Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch, The History of African Cities South of the Sahara: From the Origins to Colonization (Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2005), xi. The book was originally published in French in 1994. 52 David M. Anderson and Richard Rathbone, “Urban Africa: Histories in the Making,” in Africa’s Urban Past, ed. David M. Anderson and Richard Rathbone (Oxford: James Currey, 2000), 9. 53 The following list is not exhaustive: Bill Freund, The African City: A History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Steve J. Salm and Toyin Falola, eds., African Urban Spaces in Historical Perspective (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2005); Fourchard and Albert, Security, Crime, and Segregation;

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Laurent Fourchard, African Urban History: Past and Present Perspectives,” Lagos Historical Review 5 (2005): 1–21; and Hakeem Ibikunle Tijani, ed., Nigeria’s Urban History: Past and Present (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2006). 54 Anderson and Rathbone, “Urban Africa,” 9. 55 Akin L. Mabogunje, Urbanization in Nigeria (New York: Africana Publishing Corporation, 1968). 56 Olukoju, Infrastructure Development and Urban Facilities. 57 Ibid., 140. 58 Olukoju, “Towards Integrated Infrastructure Development,” 739–44; “Provision and Management of Water Services,” 343–54; “Electricity and Water Supply,” 327–61; “Urban Transport in Metropolitan Lagos,” 211–36; and “Growth of Infrastructure in Lagos,” 54–59. 59 Olukoju, ‘“Never Expect Power Always,” 51–71. 60 NEPA was established by decree No. 24 of June 29, 1972. 61 Olukoju, ‘“Never Expect Power Always,” 51–60. 62 Olukoju, “Pluralisms of Urban Waste Management,” 508–25. 63 Ibid., 514–25. 64 Olukoju, Fourteenth Commissar of Works. 65 Olukoju, “Segregation of Europeans and Africans,” 263–86. 66 Ibid., 264. 67 Ibid. 68 Ibid., 283. 69 Olukoju, “Actors and Institutions,” 153–78; and Olukoju, “Power Relations in Ward-Level Governance,” 179–208. 70 Olukoju, “Actors and Institutions,” 153–78. 71 Fourchard and Olukoju, “State and Local Governments,” 107–203. 72 Ibid., 115. 73 The government's demand for historians, according to Olutayo Adesina, depleted academia as the best hands sought government jobs rather than train new generations of scholars. Olutayo C. Adesina, “Teaching History in TwentiethCentury Nigeria: The Challenges of Change,” History in Africa: A Journal of Method 33 (2006): 17–37. 74 Olukoju, “Challenges before the Nigerian Historian,” 131.

CHAPTER THREE “PORTS, HINTERLANDS, AND FORELANDS”: AYODEJI OLUKOJU AND NIGERIAN AND COMPARATIVE MARITIME HISTORIOGRAPHY TOKUNBO ADEREMI AYOOLA

For the first two decades of Nigeria’s political independence, Babafemi Ogundana, the late professor of transport geography at the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University), in Ile-Ife, pioneered and developed Nigerian maritime studies.1 Then in 1979, this brilliant scholar died prematurely; and as a result of his passing, the field seemed to come to a halt. From 1980 to the early 1990s there was a hiatus, if not stagnation, in Nigerian maritime scholarship and studies, the only exception to this lacuna being M. E. Noah’s journal article on inland ports and European trading firms in southeastern Nigeria, published in 1989. 2 Meanwhile, during the period that Ogundana’s brilliant career was flowering in the academic discipline of geography—and up to the early 1990s—there was a parallel development and consolidation of Nigerian transport historiography. Pioneer Nigerian and Africanist historians at the forefront of this development (with their areas of specialization) are Ogunremi (precolonial Nigerian transportation systems);3 Tamuno, Oyemakinde, Omosini, Graham, Mason, and Oshin (railroad);4 and Hay, Njoku, and Drummond-Thompson (roads).5 Completely missing from this important body of historical works was the historical study of Nigerian maritime industry. It was into this apparent academic void that Olukoju marched in, in the early 1990s and began what has eventually become his pioneering and expansive scholarship on Nigerian and comparative maritime history (and of course, other interrelated themes). His incursion into maritime history was rather fortuitous. As he later put it: “I owe my foray into maritime history to the order that Professor Omoniyi Adewoye [Olukoju’s PhD

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dissertation adviser] gave me to look for a more challenging topic.”6 The new topic Olukoju resubmitted and was approved by his adviser was “Port of Lagos and its hinterland.”7 The study he carried out on the new topic, which was titled “Maritime Trade in Lagos, 1914–1950: Its Nature and Impact,” not only earned him a PhD from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, but also “launched [him] into the broad field of economic and social history” of Nigeria and West Africa.8 Subsequent to receiving his doctorate, and in what he himself characterized as a “postdoctoral [publishing] blitzkrieg,” Olukoju in the next two decades meticulously combed archives in Africa, Europe, and Asia, and the evidence and facts obtained from this diligent search were imaginatively weaved into brilliant narratives and published as journal articles, book chapters, monographs, books, and policy documents. Olukoju’s studies on economic and social history of Africa have covered a wide range of themes: port engineering, port administration, port finances, interport competition, offshore fishing, coastal environment, currency counterfeiting, agriculture, banking, alcohol, business-government relationship, business and nationalism, health and sanitation, cost of living, municipal transport, water and electricity, trade, labor, globalization, culture, and public policy.9 Even though he has written on many and varied issues and themes, this chapter will only focus on his work on Nigerian maritime history. The chapter concludes that although Olukoju has covered so many grounds in the area of Nigerian and comparative maritime history, there are still many equally important themes and issues that seem to have escaped his research and analyses.

Port Construction and Development As stated above, Olukoju’s foray into maritime history started with his doctoral dissertation, submitted to the University of Ibadan, in 1991.10 It was subsequently revised and published as a monograph, The Liverpool of West Africa.11 It covers the period from the late nineteenth century to 1950, beginning with an analysis of the trade nexus and dynamics in Lagos and between it and the rest of the world and covering changes in the world economy, colonial fiscal policy, transportation, currency, commercial organization, and production for export in Lagos and its environs. 12 Second, it examines how European nations and their merchant firms in West Africa exploited Nigerian peasants and workers. Third, it analyzes the impact of international capitalism’s boom-and-bust cycle on Lagos and its hinterland; and the consequent underdevelopment of African

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entrepreneurship. Finally, it discusses the impact of maritime trade on labor relations, housing, wages and cost of living, class relations, capital accumulation, and demography in Lagos.13 Assessing the book, Africanist scholar and business historian Stephanie Decker observed: “This is a study of the economic history of Lagos, a subject that has not received sufficient attention since Anthony Hopkins wrote his Ph.D. thesis on the topic in 1964. The strength of Ayodeji Olukoju’s contribution lies in the meticulous archival research into the minutiae of colonial policy making in a highly dependent economy.”14 She nonetheless identifies some shortcomings of the book; not least Olukoju’s shying away from a more rigorous analysis of the political economy of British imperial domination of Nigeria’s maritime industry.15 Between 1991, when he received his doctorate at Ibadan, and the publication of his dissertation as a monograph in 2004, Olukoju wrote and published many research articles on Nigerian and comparative maritime history. As a maritime historian whose primary research focus is the port of Lagos, which is also the connecting point to his other research interests, it is hardly surprising that his first work to be published in an international journal was “The Development of the Port of Lagos, c. 1892–1946.”16 In it, he examines the processes and political economy of the construction and development of Lagos Harbor; the economic and commercial interests that influenced the colonial and imperial governments to reformulate Nigeria’s port policy for Lagos and other harbors; working conditions at the harbor; and the latter’s role in the expansion of trade in the city of Lagos. Olukoju argues that with the consolidation of British colonialism in Nigeria from the start of the twentieth century and the construction of a railroad link through the interior from Lagos to the commercial city of Kano, in northern Nigeria, the commercial and economic importance of Lagos Harbor was enhanced, as trade volumes and the variety of commodities passing through the port increased to include “groundnuts, cotton, tin, hides and skins, and cocoa.”17 Commodities imported through Lagos to the hinterland included “textiles, tobacco, salt, liquor, motor spirit, cigarettes, matches, paraffin and a few non-manufactured items like kola nuts.”18 But these mercantile successes came at some cost, as expensive physical reconstruction had to be carried out on the port. Although many studies had been done on Lagos port prior to 1992 when Olukoju published his article on it, there was no historical study of the physical development of the port up to 1950. It is against this backdrop that Olukoju’s pioneering work on the subject should be appreciated. More

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than any scholar, he identifies and analyzes the specific physical challenges Lagos port faced between 1892 and the 1940s, and how these problems were solved. Like most ports in West Africa before 1914, Lagos had many structural problems, and key among these were its shallow entrance and poor land accessibility for ocean steamers. According to Olukoju, “The bar at the mouth of the harbour had been the scourge of shipping since Lagos became prominent on the Guinea Coast in the sixteenth century.” 19 This problem was further aggravated “by silting which reduced freeway to mere 10 feet in 1899.”20 Consequently, many steamers stayed away from the harbor, while some others that braced its physical challenges were wrecked. Alarmed by these setbacks and their impact on Nigerian shipping and trade, the colonial government decided to carry out physical reconstruction of the harbor.21 Four years after publishing his first article on the development of Lagos port, Olukoju returned again to the theme of port engineering with a case study on Port Harcourt (in southeastern Nigeria). Prior to this study, the historical origin and development of Port Harcourt had been neglected in the literature on Nigerian ports and maritime trade. But in a journal article titled “Playing the Second Fiddle: The Development of Port Harcourt and Its Role in the Nigerian Economy, 1917–1950,”22 Olukoju sought to fill the gap in the extant literature “by examining the economics and politics of Port Harcourt’s development within the wide context of national port policy and events in the colonial economy.”23 Prior to the construction of Port Harcourt from scratch in 1917, some old ports already existed in the southeast region: Calabar, Bonny, and Opobo.24 But none of these was chosen to be developed into a new port as was done in the case of Lagos port. Why was this so? Olukoju brilliantly identifies the reasons, not least of which was the fact that in the wake of British colonial authorities’ determined efforts to construct modern transport infrastructure in Nigeria for the exploitation of resources, the old ports seemed old and inadequate.25 Olukoju argues that the main development of Port Harcourt took place between 1917 and 1927, and as in Lagos, the mouth of the channel and harbor had to be dredged to allow in larger, oceangoing steamers.26 On this matter, Olukoju states that all the stakeholders were agreed. What generated disagreements and intense debates, however, was the development of wharfage facilities.27 There was bureaucratic infighting among colonial officials and departments, on the one hand, and a clash of views between the colonial government and the British business community in Nigeria and Britain, on the other. It is in the meticulous analysis of the

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brinksmanship of the stakeholders involved that Olukoju makes his lasting contribution. Principally, the comptroller of customs and the general manager of the Nigerian Railway had completely different views on the matter. Olukoju is of the opinion that both officials were mostly concerned about how their respective departments could generate additional revenue from the operations of the new port for their organizations. As far as the customs comptroller, T. F. Burrowes, was concerned, although Port Harcourt was originally planned to be a railroad terminal through which coal from the Udi Hills would be exported, the fact that it could also be easily accessed by river made it a potential key to the development of both local and interior trade.28 However, no provisions had been made to nurture and tap this potential trade; rather, the control of trade in and around Port Harcourt had practically been handed over to the Nigerian Railway. The comptroller recommended the development of waterside plots near Port Harcourt for the use of merchants.29 On his part, the general manager of the Nigerian Railway rejected the accusation made against his agency concerning its management of Port Harcourt, its trade, and the customs comptroller’s advice, including the development of waterfront plots for merchants.30 These kinds of disagreements were not confined only to colonial government offices. In the words of Olukoju, “The debate on the proposed waterfront development had been joined by the business community, the party most directly affected.” 31 The representatives of business, the Chamber of Commerce, argued that the practice of transporting produce from the waterside to the port was costly in labor and money, and very slow. 32 Just as there were internal divisions within the colonial government ranks on these issues, there were divisions, argues Olukoju, among members of the commercial community as well. But the cleavage within the business community was more complicated. 33 It centered around the big European firms such as the Niger Company and the African Eastern Corporation versus smaller firms such as John Holt, H. B. W. Russel, and G. B. Ollivant. While the former were opposed to the development of the waterside plots—since they already had local stations from which they carried out trade with the local areas—the latter, which had no outstations, were jubilant at the prospect of waterside plots, and how these might help their trade.34 In the end the government, acting on the recommendations of the consulting engineers, supported Borrowes’s proposal for the development of the waterside plots. By 1927, four berths with a total length of 1,920 feet had been constructed. In 1928, a new transit shed was completed.35 In the same year projects to build a canoe berth and a barge wharf were started.

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In Olukoju’s view, not all colonial officials and Nigerian elites were enthused about the construction of a completely brand-new port. The argument of some of the Port Harcourt “haters” was that the port was unnecessary and expensive. 36 Olukoju, however, does not share such negative assessments, but insists that the importance and value of the new port was huge and its impacts many. These included providing a coastal outlet for palm oil, palm kernels, and coal from Igboland in eastern Nigeria; superseding, in importance and economic value, older ports in the region; enhancing national importance by facilitating the export of tin from Nigeria; serving as an important catalyst for trade between the port and its hinterland; and attracting many migrants from both far (Yoruba from western Nigeria), and near (Ibo from the adjoining interior).37 Despite its immense potential, not all the objectives for constructing the port, according to Olukoju, were achieved. The expectation that the port would “eventually handle the imports and exports . . . up to Kaduna including the branch to the tin fields . . . [and] the probability of a portion of Kano and Zaria traffic being diverted to [Port Harcourt] and that from Benue river above Abinsi,” was not realized.38 Thus, Olukoju concludes that try as they might, the promoters and developers of Port Harcourt were unable to bring the port up to a competitive footing with Lagos. This was because Lagos had many economic, commercial, geographic, and historical advantages over its rival.39 From 1917 to 1946, Port Harcourt remained a “second fiddle” to Lagos.

Port Administration It was not only in the development of Nigerian ports that interdepartmental rivalries, bureaucratic infighting, clash of views among colonial officials, and confrontations between the colonial government and the business community occurred. All these also characterized the administration of ports in colonial Nigeria. As is known all over the world, administration and management of human and material resources are very important to any industry. Since the late nineteenth century when British colonial authorities in Nigeria started developing ports in the colony, administrative structures and processes were also built to accompany them; to achieve goals set for the ports. Yet, important as these issues are, no scholar ventured an examination until Olukoju beamed his scholarly searchlight on them. In “Background to the Establishment of the Nigerian Port Authority: The Politics of Port Administration in Nigeria, c. 1920–1954,”40 Olukoju explores the politics of conflict at the heart of the management of Nigerian

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ports before the government’s decision to set up a central body, the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), to replace the multitude of government agencies that shared in the running of the colony’s ports prior to 1954. Olukoju argues that after the imposition of colonial rule on Nigerian communities, the colonial authorities found existing Nigerian ports old and inadequate for the new imperial project. Thus, “the consequent increase in the volume of trade induced the British colonial government to commit huge sums of money to infrastructure.”41 For example, “extensive schemes of harbour works at Lagos and Port Harcourt were undertaken, and the successful dredging of Lagos enabled . . . ocean-going vessel[s] to enter in 1913. These developments altered the pattern of trade at these ports.”42 As a result of these huge investments, Olukoju says the government had to exercise direct political control over the ports; while leaving the management of the old ports in the hands of European trading firms such as the United African Company and John Holt and Company. In this way, “the foundation was thus laid for the diffusion of port authority in Nigeria until 1954.” 43 Coupled with this was a lack of “unified control” and “division of responsibility among several [governmental] departments” at the ports. Olukoju puts the confusion characterizing port administration in Nigeria before 1939 into sharper focus: The Customs Department had controlled its wharf on Lagos Island since the 1860s and collected harbour and berthage dues. The Port Department undertook civil engineering maintenance and in conjunction with the Nigerian Railway supervised cargo-handling in Apapa and Port Harcourt. Revenue from this service was collected by the railway, which also controlled the Ijora coal wharf. The shipping companies controlled lighterage, while the Marine Department undertook pilotage towing and the berthing of vessels collecting the appropriate due for these services.44

It was in view of the foregoing that the business community, which had a very high stake in the administration of Nigerian ports, made proposals to the government on how best to administer them. Olukoju has ably identified and analyzed those proposals (and others), suggestions, reorganizations of departments, and decisions taken by the colonial administration up to 1939—to achieve effective and efficient running of the ports.45 He argues, however, that these various measures were not only insufficient, but were tainted by interdepartmental rivalries and selfserving economic interests.46 He further shows how by the end of the war government officials realized, to their chagrin, that port administration in Nigeria, which was still exemplified by diffusion of authorities, was very inefficient. The government therefore set up the Strong Commission to “inquire into the functions of the Marine Department, with specific

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reference to the management of Nigerian harbours. This was with a view to creating a body to effect a more efficient and less expensive management of Lagos and, perhaps, Port Harcourt.”47 After closely examining the commission’s report, Olukoju identifies the following causes of the administrative chaos and inefficiency in port administration in Nigeria: “division of control; the dominance of the Railway; and to a subsidiary extent, over-centralised government control.”48 The commission then recommended “[first that] the entire operation of the ports should be unified and placed under the control of a single authority and, second that this authority should be a Board of Management on the lines of a Port Trust as generally recognized.”49 Olukoju concludes that the government accepted these recommendations and consequently unified the control of all Nigerian ports in a single body with the establishment of the NPA.

Port Finance One of the crucial aspects of the general administration and management of organization and industry discussed above is finance. And it was equally critical in the development and management of Nigerian ports and railroads, strong pillars of Nigerian maritime trade. Conscious of the importance of finance in these settings, Olukoju has examined the management of both port and railroad tariffs in the Nigerian maritime economy. This he did in two overlapping journal articles: “The Making of an ‘Expensive Port’: Shipping Lines, Government, and Port Tariffs in Lagos, 1917–1949” and “‘Subsidizing the Merchants at the Expense of the Administration’: Railway Tariffs and Nigerian Maritime Trade in the 1920s.”50 Olukoju notes that in the quick rush by the colonial government to develop and use modern transportation systems in the colony, huge local financial resources and foreign loans were secured. After the completion of the infrastructure projects, they were expected to generate revenues from which the foreign loans, their interest payments, and other charges would be repaid; to be routinely maintained; and to provide some profits for the government. 51 Important sources of this expected revenue were tariffs and other charges on services provided by the ports and railroads. Olukoju puts these points in sharper relief in the case of Lagos port: Charges in all ports are levied for services provided to shipping. In Lagos, these included lighterage, lighting and buoyage, berthage, pilotage and harbour services. They were introduced to pay for at least part of the heavy investment in the physical development of the port, which lacked a natural

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These major works required about ǧ200,000 in 1910; rising to more than ǧ3 million in 1924.53 Thus, “port charges were adjusted constantly to cope with the vagaries of trade and to keep pace with recurrent expenditures.” 54 The first adjustment of port charges in the period under review was done in 1917, and this, according to Olukoju, immediately drew criticisms from the business community. 55 In the specific case of railroad tariffs, Olukoju identifies the following duties: freight charges (particularly on export commodities: cocoa, groundnuts, cotton, hides and skins); 56 handling charges (at ports with railroad links); and terminal charges—all of which “cover interest on money borrowed for the warehouses, terminal stations and wharves, as well as to pay for the ‘free’ storage period; booking and consignment of merchandise; cost of additional supervisory staff; shunting and marshalling of trains; and general maintenance and upkeep.”57 In constructing, adjusting, and administering these tariffs and charges, however, the government was constantly pitched against British commercial interests in Nigeria and Britain. This constant government-business bickering, Olukoju argues, clearly reveals the inherent contradictions and fault lines of British imperialism in Nigeria: “metropolitan/colonial, and official/private [mercantile community].” Whereas the colonial government was levying port and railroad charges to recoup its investments in the development of transport infrastructures, the business community— shipping giant Elder Dempster; the Liverpool, London, and Manchester chambers of commerce; the Association of West African Merchants (AWAM); the British Cotton Growing Association (BCGA); John Holt and Company (Liverpool) Ltd); and the Nigerian Chamber of Mines in London—was constantly exerting pressure on the government to revise downward both extant and proposed charges, which were seen as too high and thus made Lagos “an expensive port.” For many years the government successfully resisted such pressures. This resistance, Olukoju amply demonstrates, can best be appreciated through the words of one top colonial official, the General Manager of Railways, E. M. Bland, who once defiantly wrote: “I cannot see that by reducing our charges we would increase our tonnage and moreover in view of our higher working costs to

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do so would only be subsidizing the merchants at the expense of the administration [emphasis in the original] which . . . we cannot afford.”58 But such resistance did not last very long, according to Olukoju. Before and during the Great Depression, when prices and demand for Nigeria’s export commodities fell sharply, the government revised downward some of the tariffs. This was to support and encourage shipping lines, producers, merchants, and others. Olukoju concludes, however, that these rate reductions were temporary. For instance, from 1945 onward, port charges were reversed. In the final analysis, the government’s refusal to effect dramatic changes in tariffs did not cause any rupture in trade, the economy, and relations among and between stakeholders of Nigeria’s maritime industry.

Port of Lagos and Maritime Trade The steady development and modernization of Lagos port, as already noted, led to the expansion of trade in the port city. However, this was not consistently the case throughout the colonial period. Olukoju has therefore analyzed how the vagaries of the international capitalist economy, to which Nigeria was organically linked since the late nineteenth century, have influenced Lagos and its maritime trade. This close examination was done in two separate studies: “The Maritime Trade of Lagos during the First World War” and “Maritime Trade in the Aftermath of the First World War.”59 In the first article, Olukoju focuses on the impact of the Great War on Lagos and Nigerian trade, stating that at the start of the conflict Nigeria’s foreign trade partners—Germany, Austro-Hungary, and Holland, which were branded as enemy countries—were completely banned by the Entente powers (the UK, France, and Russia) from trading with Nigeria.60 The war, according to Olukoju, had several serious consequences for Lagos’ trade. First, the German market for Nigerian palm kernels was closed, and the British, Nigeria’s colonizers, could not buy all her agricultural products; consequently, the colony’s export trade declined. Second, since trade was banned with Nigeria’s former European partners, British firms, particularly Elder Dempster, monopolized and manipulated the Nigerian economy. Third, because Germany’s submarine activities restricted sea lanes, the British government requisitioned some ships, thereby reducing the number of vessels available for normal commercial transportation and hence cargo space. Fourth, the various restrictions on trade, finance, and movement of people and goods adversely affected Lagos.61

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Thus, during the war, Lagos citizens and Nigerians experienced a very tough economic situation, and at the end of the war they were expectant that the economy would fully recover and they would enter into a boom period. Olukoju says these expectations were at first met, but later the economy experienced years of boom and bust. These vagaries vis-à-vis the economy and their impact on Lagos trade are the kernel of Olukoju’s second work on the subject. In “Maritime Trade in the Aftermath of the First World War,” he observes that between 1918 and 1920, there was an economic upturn, brought about by many factors: Germany reentered Nigeria’s market, leading to healthy competition among the latter’s European customers; entry of other European nations into the Nigerian market further boosted trade and competition; demand for Nigerian export products increased; and prices of Nigerian agricultural products in Europe rose suddenly and astronomically.62 Furthermore, Olukoju argues that the war also brought negative consequences. First, there was a sudden rise in the number of exporters, especially Africans. Second, many farmers in the hinterland of Lagos abandoned their farming activities to become laborers at Lagos port. Third, as a result of the boom, many Lagosians became spendthrifts. For instance, there was a mad rush for expensive cars. Fourth, there was heavy investment in real estate. Fifth, a “new culture of dress” emerged, the aso ebi, described as a “uniform dress that had been traditionally worn as an indication of cooperation on festive occasions.” The pernicious thing about the new use of what was originally traditional social dress uniform (aso egbe) was the “waste and [personal] debts associated with it.”63 Sixth, a mass migration to Lagos took place, of people who, according to Olukoju, were “fortune seekers who continued to flock into Lagos with serious implications for housing and supply of food.”64 The boom did not last forever; it went bust in mid-1920. The period was immediately followed by an economic depression, from 1920 to 1922. Subsequently, there were “alternating years of prosperity and commercial instability characterized by fluctuating trade figures.”65 Olukoju concludes that the undulating fortunes of maritime trade in Lagos demonstrate the impact of the vagaries of international capitalism on a dependent colonial economy.66

Shipping Shipping is very crucial in the conduct of maritime trade between ports and between ports and their hinterlands, and it is one of the important themes that Olukoju has addressed extensively in his work. His studies in

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the area have covered cargo, passenger, liner, and tramp shipping. In regard to cargo shipping in Nigeria, his first published work is “Elder Dempster and the Shipping Trade of Nigeria during the First World War.”67 In this journal article, he addresses the complex issue of allocation of shipping space on ocean going liners during World War I; fixing of ocean freight rates by both Elder Dempster (ED) and the colonial government; the emergence of Elder Dempster as an unchallenged shipping monopoly firm in West Africa; how the company used its monopoly power to exploit the war situation to its advantage; and the reaction of colonial and imperial governments, and merchants—African and European—to ED’s negative practices.68 Olukoju argues that during the war there was no shortage of import and export commodities to ship to and from West Africa, but rather there was a lack of space for cargo on board oceangoing vessels.69 He states that to ameliorate this problem, there was a need for “the allocation of the available shipping space.” This seemingly straightforward task was manipulated by certain expatriate firms that formed themselves into a cartel, the “Lagos Working Agreement,” or what Olukoju calls “the Combine.” Their aim was to “lower produce prices to the barest minimum,” and to take all available shipping space, at the expense of African and European non-Combine firms. Olukoju argues that members of the Combine: bought up quantities of produce sufficient to fill all available shipping space. These were then loaded into railway wagons and sheds thereby causing congestion on the railway. Government officials were thus compelled to grant the Combine firms priority in the allocation of shipping space. . . . In this way, the “Agreement” firms succeeded in making the colonial government and shipping company [Elder Dempster] to do their bidding at the expense of the non-Combine firms.70

Additionally, he avers that managers of the non-Combine companies and other observers rejected and complained against those discriminatory practices to the colonial government. 71 In reaction, the latter set up a committee in 1916 “to allocate the available shipping space between the Combine and non-Combine firms.”72 Olukoju opines that a committee that ought to have been an honest broker was made up entirely of members of the Combine, and states that it came as no surprise that the committee’s recommendations overwhelmingly favored the cartel. 73 As one would expect, the non-Combine firms condemned the committee’s composition and decisions. Although it would appear that there was unanimity of interests between the colonial state and big business during the war, this state of affairs did not last long, according to Olukoju. Buoyed by its

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monopoly position, ED broke ranks and unilaterally raised ocean freight rates several times during the war. These moves pitted the shipping company against the Nigerian colonial state. This was, Olukoju claims, “a classic case of a contradiction between two wings of imperial enterprises” within the colony.74 While ED justified the rate increases on account of its skyrocketing operational costs and the need to make a profit, the government viewed such increases with alarm, for their potential to destroy the colony’s revenue base.75 The inherent contradictions in British imperialism in Nigeria during World War I were further revealed, according to Olukoju, when the Nigerian government requested the Colonial Office to prevail upon ED to reconsider the increases made to ocean freight rates. But instead of doing this, it simply sided with ED. 76 Olukoju points out that the Colonial Office’s deft move was made to protect the overall imperial interests of Britain, represented in this case by ED, against other European nations’ interests and the well-being of Nigerians. 77 Britain’s imperial interests were further protected in 1917, when, as a result of its requirement for a greater volume of raw materials from West Africa, Britain intervened in the shipping trade by requisitioning ships—including ED’s—and then increasing freight charges on agricultural produce from the region.78 Olukoju concludes that despite all the problems brought about by the world war, ED’s strategy proved very successful. It took firm control of the shipping trade in Nigeria and West Africa and negotiated with its shippers and the colonial government from a strong position of strength; moreover, its interests converged with those of the government and the other Combine companies on the allocation of shipping space, while diverging from those of the colonial state on ocean freight charges—which threatened the very basis of colonial government. 79 In the end, ED triumphed over the colonial state because it was backed by the imperial state, the only constant in all these matters being the overall protection of British imperial interests.80 The labyrinthine connections between Nigerian colonial government and officials, British imperial government and officials, Elder Dempster, foreign shipping lines, and the exploitation of Nigeria, which were the focus of Olukoju’s research on cargo shipping, reemerge in his treatment of passenger and tramp shipping. In the case of the former, in “‘Helping Our Own Shipping’: Official Passages to Nigeria, 1914–1945,” he analyzes the “controversy generated between the wars by attempts to reserve the passenger shipping of colonial Nigeria for the Elder Dempster line in the face of intense foreign competition,” and the deliberate policy of the British government of supporting ED against other foreign shipping

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lines, even in situations where the latter offered better services at much reduced rates.81 As with ocean freight charges, ED consistently raised passenger fares throughout the war period. This provoked outcries from the colonial government (because the increases cut deeply into its budgets for official passages) and some colonial officials (for the poor services they received on board ED’s ships). According to Olukoju, the 1918 increase, which was about 160 percent over prewar rates, drew the bitterest criticism. 82 The situation was compounded after the war, especially during the deep economic slump of 1920–22, when ED had to contend with German, French, and Italian competition. 83 Olukoju argues that it was in this context that the British imperial government decided to reserve Nigerian official government passages for the shipping company. This eventually led to the clash of interests between the imperial government—represented by the Colonial Office, Ministry of Shipping, other imperial agencies, and ED—on the one hand, and the colonial government of Nigeria, on the other.84 While initially the Nigerian colonial government, for its own economic well-being, was opposed to the increases, later it changed tactics and requested the Colonial Office to intervene with ED to obtain rebates for colonial officials traveling on its ships, which the company did. Later, there developed new sentiments in favor of ED expressed in the words of one of its officials as “helping our own shipping”; that is, ensuring that colonial officials were not allowed to patronize other shipping lines offering cheaper and better services.85 Meanwhile, colonial officials who were patronizing ED were opposed to the policy of not being allowed to travel by other European liners.86 For its part, the imperial government, represented by the Secretary of State for the Colonies and the Ministry of Shipping, which wanted to profit from passenger fares, sided with Elder Dempster.87 Olukoju concludes that the official support given to ED clearly reveals the close collaboration between colonial government and big business; that ED misused its monopoly influence by charging very high fares and providing substandard services to British officials; that in the confrontation between imperial and colonial interests, the latter regularly lost out; and that the legendary British “open door” trade policy was jettisoned during both world wars in order protect overall British imperial interests.88 In “‘Getting Too Great a Grip’: European Shipping Lines and British West African Lighterage Services in the 1930s,” Olukoju demonstrates for tramp steamer shipping in West Africa, as he did for cargo and passenger

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shipping, how Elder Dempster along with its junior collaborator, the United African Company (UAC), tried to maintain a near total stranglehold on lighterage services in the region during the colonial period. 89 Their two respective companies, the West African Lighterage and Transport Company and Takoradi Coaling and Lighterage Company Limited, “served the steamers of their parent companies and their associates . . . [and] semi-regular lines to and from destinations outside the range of the regular lines such as Japan, Australia, Scandinavia and South Africa as well as chartered vessels.”90 Olukoju further argues that before World War II lighterage services were undertaken only by regular and scheduled shipping lines such as ED. Thus, lighterage services conducted by the ED-led shipping cartel did not welcome competition from “casual [tramp] shipping.” This form of irregular and unscheduled shipping was often used by independent manufacturers and traders, who in order to take advantage of cheaper rates chartered ships to sail to the region in specific seasons to transport to Europe and America seasonal agricultural produce like cocoa. 91 But to discourage competition from the tramps, the cartel applied different sets of lighterage charges to them. To Olukoju, this seemingly settled arrangement was, however, thrown into chaos in 1935 when the American casual shipper, Rockwoods Company, buyers of Gold Coast cocoa, petitioned the Colonial Office about “the discriminatory pricing policy of the West African lighterage companies” and the unnecessary delay of its chartered ships at West African ports, especially on the Gold Coast.92 Rockwoods’s petition, Olukoju says, at first polarized the Colonial Office into camps: the protectionists, who believed that the lighterage companies and their principals ought to be protected against outsiders such as Rockwoods; and free traders, who argued that the cartel’s monopoly should be broken and competition allowed. 93 In their defense against Rockwoods’s accusations, the shipping cartel and the lighterage companies decided to tie “their interests with those of the United Kingdom and mobiliz[e] support in the Colonial Office and the Board of Trade” against Rockwoods.94 In the end, Olukoju argues, the position of shipping within the political economy of British imperialism determined the matter. To protect the overall economic interests of Britain, the Colonial Office supported the British companies.95 Therefore, because it could not prevail upon the companies to jettison the differential, discriminatory, and punitive lighterage tariffs, the cartel’s lighterage monopoly in West Africa continued. The only concession granted to Rockwoods was the lowering of the lighterage charges it had to pay. However, the principle of differential charges still was maintained.96

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Maritime Nationalism In his work on shipping examined above, Olukoju demonstrates how Africans were effectively excluded from active participation in all aspects of the shipping business in colonial Nigeria. He concretely proves that from the beginning of World War I to the end of colonial rule in West Africa in the 1960s, the Elder Dempster Company dominated shipping in the region. However, beginning in the late 1950s and during the decolonization period, indigenous African entrepreneurs and nationalist politicians finally found the courage and platform from which to challenge and bring to an end the monopoly capitalism of European shipping firms, the so-called Conference Lines. The extent to which this goal was achieved Olukoju analyzes in “A ‘Truly Nigerian Project?’: The Politics of the Establishment of the Nigerian National Shipping Line (NNSL), 1957– 1959.”97 Olukoju argues that one of the ways the challenge against European shipping cartels was mounted was through the “clamor” for, and the establishment of, a national shipping line that would “give Nigerians a share of their own shipping business.”98 He notes that aspirations for this important development, which under ordinary circumstances might have been a straightforward economic matter, were not fully realized due to the controlling influence of three key external factors.99 First was Nigeria’s social and political cleavage, which characterized the late colonial period. The country had three major regional political parties: the Northern People’s Congress (NPC), representing the Northern region; the National Council for Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC), representing the Eastern Region; and the Action Group, representing the Western Region. Coupled with these were divisions among Nigeria’s more than 250 ethnic groups and along religious (Christian versus Muslim) fault lines.100 The divisions in the body politic, which found expression in the House of Representatives, the major chamber of the national parliament, and in the Federal Executive Council, shaped the character of the national line that was eventually established.101 The second factor was the rivalry between Nigeria and its West African neighbor and rival for regional and continental influence, Ghana, which had earlier established its own national carrier, the Black Star Line. Nigerian political leaders did not want Ghana to take all the economic glory, so they determined to set up a national line.102 Third, the European Conference Lines were able to cajole the federal government and the Northern Nigerian regional government—which were initially indifferent to the clamor from the Western and Eastern Regions for a national

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shipping line; the appointment of Zim Israeli Navigation Company as the technical partner to the new line; and the non-involvement of the Conference members in the establishment of the national line—into agreeing that two members of the Conference system should become foreign technical partners to the new line. 103 The latter development ensured that the new line became a member of the Conference Line system, and this automatically restricted its independence of action vis-à-vis the interests of the other Conference members.104 After many months of procrastination, intragovernmental arguments, rivalries between the federal government and Western and Eastern regional governments, and some “horse trading,” the Nigerian National Shipping Line (NNSL) was formally established in December 1958. Olukoju gives comprehensive details of the agreement between the federal government and the foreign partners with whom the line was set up: [The] initial authorized share of £2 million [was] divided into two million shares of 1 each, 400,000 of which were called founders’ shares. These were allocated in the following proportion: the federal government (twenty-six percent) and Nigerian Produce Marketing Company (twentyfive per cent), together totaling fifty-one per cent or 204,000 shares; while Elder Dempster Lines and Palm Line held the balance of 196,000 shares, or forty-nine per cent. . . . A Nigerian was elected Chairman and held the deciding vote. Subject to the overall direction of the Board of Directors, the technical partners were mandated to act as the sole operational agents of the line for a period of six years.105

Olukoju is of the opinion that “the agreement did not command universal acceptance among Nigerians” for many reasons, not least of which was the fact of the new line’s complete dependence on the same shipping cartel whose monopoly it was supposed to be breaking. 106 He further argues that due to the regional, national, and international factors that influenced the establishment of the NNSL, it was born with many disabilities. First, rather than the new line being an equal competitor to members of the West African Conference Lines, it was in reality a dependent junior partner. 107 Second, its membership in the Conference system circumscribed its possible autonomy and future expansion, on account of its limited capacities and capabilities. 108 Third, the new shipping line could not end all the monopolistic malpractices of the West African Conference Lines in Nigeria. 109 Fourth, from the late 1950s through many years after independence, the NNSL controlled less than 4 percent of West African Conference trade. 110 Fifth, whereas NNSL’s technical partners controlled a whopping 2.1 million out of 2.5 million tons of Nigeria’s shipping trade, NNSL’s limited carrying capacity handled

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only 50,000 tons.111 Having been born almost stillborn, its survival seemed dubious. Olukoju describes poignantly its eventual demise: “the ill-fated firm suffered a double jeopardy in the post-independence era as it came under a series of unpatriotic management teams which bled it to its death in the early 1990s.”112

Comparative Maritime Disappointed by the realization that the establishment of the NNSL did not live up to the expectation of Nigerians and by the postcolonial mismanagement of the Nigerian maritime industry, Olukoju then decided to examine the historical development and management of maritime business in other nations of the world.113 This was with a view toward comparing them with Nigeria’s and drawing useful insights that could help Nigeria in reorganizing its maritime industry. It is against this backdrop that one should comprehend his works on the comparative analyses of Japanese and Nigerian maritime trade and development. These include Maritime Trade, Port Development, and Administration: The Japanese Experience and Lessons for Nigeria; “Maritime Policy and Economic Development: A Comparison of Nigerian and Japanese Experiences since the Second World War”; and “Ports as Growth Poles: The Japanese ‘Developer Port’ Concept in Comparative Perspective.”114 In these works, Olukoju seeks to do many things. First, he compares the formulation and implementation of policies on the development of ports, maritime trade, shipbuilding, and industries close to the locations of ports in Japan and Nigeria. Second, he examines the roles of both the private and public sectors in the development and management of maritime industries in both countries. Third, he analyzes the maritime industries in the two countries in relation to practices around the world. Fourth, he critically examines the roles and impacts of ports in the development of cities and regions in the two countries. Fifth, he operationalizes and compares the application of such concepts as “maritime industrial development areas (MIDAS),” export process zones, and “developer” ports. Finally, he draws crucial lessons from these comparative analyses. While noting the basic differences and similarities in the economy, geography, history, development, and society of Japan and Nigeria, Olukoju identifies factors for the success and failure in the formulation and implementation of maritime policies and programs in the two countries. First, Japan’s long pedigree in the central planning of its economy allowed it to “achieve better policy coordination and

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implementation.” For Nigeria, the use of central planning is comparatively recent—1945 to 1985—and has been handled poorly. Second, whereas a strong economic base has allowed Japan to invest heavily and consistently in port and regional development, this has not been the case for Nigeria, despite the windfall from massive oil exports from the 1970s onward. Third, Japan developed its indigenous engineering technology vis-à-vis the ports, shipbuilding, and related projects, so as to meet its local needs. In contrast, Nigeria still relies heavily on Western technology for its maritime needs. Fourth, although Japan is still a dominant player in port administration and development, it has not shut out private operators from participating in the industry. Thus, Japan has been operating a publicprivate partnership for more than three decades, whereas Nigeria has just begun taking rather unsure steps in this direction. Furthermore, during economic downturns, both countries have always been saddled with heavy financial deficits, arising from huge investments in port development in boom periods. But while Japan has been able to meet its financial shortfalls through manufacturing and export-led recovery, Nigeria’s economy has always been import dependent. Moreover, port policies in Japan have led to widespread development, but in Nigeria, economic development has been limited to Lagos and Port Harcourt, without the necessary coordination and integration of the ports to industrial and urban development policies. Finally, although both countries have invested heavily in maritime trade, in Nigeria most of the capital ended up in the pockets of politically connected entrepreneurs. In Japan such investments led to a dynamic shipbuilding subsector. Thus, Japan has been able to control regional coastal trade and liner shipping. Nigeria, owing to its undeveloped status, cannot compete with Western shipping firms and has a very small share of its own coastal shipping. Olukoju concludes that “the different fortunes of Nigeria and Japan in maritime economic development derived from human and natural forces, which the latter had been able to harness to greater advantage.”115 Perhaps dissatisfied with the fact that his many research findings were being confined only to academic and research institutions, Olukoju made some of the findings and recommendations available to the government, in form of his position paper “Nigerian Ports: The Imperatives of Radical Reforms.” 116 In it, Olukoju recommends the following: privatization of Nigerian ports after the reorganization of the maritime industry; systematic pursuit of regional shipping hub status; comprehensive review of tariffs in Nigerian ports; definition of the strategic focus of port development; effective and efficient utilization of port capacities; adoption of the Japanese policy of classifying ports by size and strategic importance, so as

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to achieve strategic development; eradication of corruption at all toll gates in and around Nigerian ports; and reorganization and modernization of the Nigerian railroad and road systems, to build up an intermodal network that would include maritime shipping.117

Conclusion Olukoju entered into the field of maritime history in the early 1990s with his PhD dissertation on “Maritime Trade in Lagos, 1914–1950.” Thereafter, as has been shown above, he has written widely on the Nigerian, West African, and Japanese maritime industries. His pioneering contribution in the field of maritime history has been the many brilliant case studies he has done on passenger, tramp, liner, and cargo shipping; port engineering and development; port administration and management; port finances; the maritime industry and nationalism; inter-port competition; and economic and social effects of ports. Through his research into many hitherto neglected aspects of Nigerian transportation history, he has helped to extend the boundaries of knowledge on West African, African, and global economic and social history. He has published many original, pioneering, and cutting-edge empirical studies that disprove revisionist historians who continue to argue that European colonialism in Africa brought political stability and unlimited economic prosperity for Africa. Contrarily, through many case studies, Olukoju shows how the Elder Dempster Shipping Company and the Conference Lines exploited and abused their monopoly over Nigerian and West African economies, entrepreneurs, and producers. Although Olukoju has contributed immensely to the development of Nigerian maritime history, there remain areas about which he has not written and that call for further study on the history of the Nigerian Navy; ethnicity, race, class, and the maritime industry; the Nigerian Civil War and maritime trade; labor in the Nigerian maritime industry; gender and maritime trade; Nigerian women seafarers; transfer of Western technology; shipping and tourism; and representations of ports, ships, shipping, and so on in arts, music, literature, and religion.

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Notes 1

Ogundana’s works include “Lagos, Nigeria’s Premier Port,” Nigerian Geographical Journal 4 (1961): 26–40; “The Fluctuating Significance of Nigerian Seaports before 1914,” ODU: A Journal of West African Studies 3 (1967): 44–71; “Changing the Capacity of Nigeria’s Seaport Entrances,” ODU: A Journal of West African Studies 14 (1976): 69–88; “Seaport Development—Multinational Cooperation in West Africa,” Journal of Modern African Studies 12 (1974): 395– 407; “Transport Policy on Controlled Exports in Nigeria,” Nigerian Journal of Economic and Social Studies 13, no. 3 (1971): 365–82. 2 M. E. Noah, “Inland Ports and European Trading Firms in Southern Nigeria,” African Affairs 88 (1989): 25–40. 3 G. O. Ogunremi, “Pre-colonial Transport in Nigeria” (PhD diss., University of Birmingham, UK, 1973). 4 T. N. Tamuno, “Genesis of the Nigerian Railway I,” Nigeria Magazine 83 (December 1964): 279–92; J. O. Oyemakinde, “A History of Indigenous Labour on the Nigerian Railway, 1895–1945” (PhD diss., University of Ibadan, 1970); O. Omosini, “Railway projects and British attitude towards West Africa, 1872– 1903, ” Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria 4 (June 1971): 491–507; M. B. W. Graham, “The Nigerian Railway: Technological Innovation and Social Change in a Colonial Society, 1895–1935” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 1976); M. Mason, “Working on the Railway: Forced Labour in Northern Nigeria, 1907– 1912,” in African Labor History, ed. P. C. W. Gutkind, R. Cohen, and J. Copans (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, 1978), 56–79; V. O. Oshin, “The Development of Railway Transportation in Nigeria, 1880–1945” (PhD diss., Obafemi Awolowo University, 1987). 5 A. M. Hay, “The Development of Road Transport in Nigeria, 1900–1940,” Journal of Transport History 3 (1971): 95–107; O. N. Njoku, “The Development of Roads and Road Transport in Southeastern Nigeria, 1903–39,” Journal of African Studies 5 (1978): 471–97. 6 Ayodeji O. Olukoju, “Ports, Hinterlands, and Forelands,” Inaugural Lecture delivered at the University of Lagos, June 21, 2006 (Department of History and Strategic Studies, Faculty of Arts), 1. 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid., 6–17. 10 A. O. Olukoju, “Maritime Trade in Lagos, 1914–1950: Its Nature and Impact” (PhD diss., University of Ibadan, 1991). 11 Ayodeji Olukoju, The Liverpool of West Africa: The Dynamics and Impact of Maritime Trade in Lagos, 1900–1950 (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2004). 12 Ibid., 1–131. 13 Ibid. 14 Stephanie Decker, review of The Liverpool of West Africa: The Dynamics and Impact of Maritime Trade in Lagos, 1900–1950, by Ayodeji Olukoju, African Studies Review 51, no. 1 (2008): 140–41.

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Ibid. Ayodeji Olukoju, “The Development of the Port of Lagos, c. 1892–1946,” Journal of Transport History 13, no. 1 (1992): 59–77. 17 Ibid., 59–61. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid., 61. 20 Ibid. 21 Ibid., 69–75. 22 Ayodeji Olukoju, “Playing the Second Fiddle: The Development of Port Harcourt and Its Role in the Nigerian Economy, 1917–1950,” International Journal of Maritime History 8, no. 1 (1996): 105–31. 23 Ibid., 105. 24 Ibid., 106. 25 Ibid., 107. 26 Ibid., 108–11. 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid., 113–16. 29 Ibid. 30 Ibid., 116–17. 31 Ibid., 118. 32 Ibid. 33 Ibid., 118–20. 34 Ibid. 35 Ibid., 124. 36 Ibid., 131. 37 Ibid., 125–31. 38 Ibid., 127. 39 Ibid., 130. 40 Ayodeji Olukoju, “Background to the Establishment of the Nigerian Ports Authority: The Politics of Port Administration in Nigeria, c. 1920–1954,” International Journal of Maritime History 4, no. 2 (1992): 155–73. 41 Ibid., 158. 42 Ibid. 43 Ibid. 44 Ibid., 158–59. 45 Ibid., 159–70. 46 Ibid. 47 Ibid., 171. 48 Ibid., 172. 49 Ibid. 50 Ayodeji Olukoju, “The Making of an ‘Expensive Port’: Shipping Lines, Government, and Port Tariffs in Lagos, 1917–1949,” International Journal of Maritime History 6, no. 1 (1994): 141–59; and “‘Subsidizing the Merchants at the Expense of the Administration’: Railway Tariffs and Nigerian Maritime Trade in the 1920s,” Indian Journal of African Studies 10, nos. 1–2 (1999): 61–77. 16

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Olukoju, “Subsidizing the Merchants,” 61–77. Olukoju, “Making of an ‘Expensive Port,’” 142–43. 53 Ibid. 54 Ibid., 143. 55 Ibid., 144–46. 56 Olukoju, “Subsidizing the Merchants,” 375. 57 Olukoju, “Making of an ‘Expensive Port,’” 148–49. 58 Cited in Olukoju, “Subsidizing the Merchants,” 378. 59 Ayodeji Olukoju, “The Maritime Trade of Lagos during the First World War,” Lagos Notes and Records 7 (1996): 167–84; and “Maritime Trade in the Aftermath of the First World War,” African Economic History 20 (1992): 119–35. 60 Ibid. 61 Ibid. 62 Olukoju, “Maritime Trade in the Aftermath,” 120. 63 Ibid. 64 Ibid., 123. 65 Ibid., 131. 66 Ibid. 67 Ayodeji Olukoju, “Elder Dempster and the Shipping Trade of Nigeria during the First World War,” Journal of African History 33, no. 2 (1992): 255–71. 68 Ibid., 257–64. 69 Ibid., 258. 70 Ibid., 259. 71 Ibid., 260. 72 Ibid. 73 Ibid., 260–61. 74 Ibid., 266. 75 Ibid. 76 Ibid., 267. 77 Ibid. 78 Ibid. 79 Ibid., 269–70. 80 Ibid. 81 Ayodeji Olukoju, “‘Helping Our Own Shipping’: Official Passages to Nigeria, 1914–1945,” Journal of Transport History 20, no. 1 (1999): 30–45; quotation on 30. 82 Ibid., 35–36. 83 Ibid., 33. 84 Ibid. 85 Ibid., 41. 86 Ibid., 34. 87 Ibid. 88 Ibid., 42. 52

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Ayodeji Olukoju, “‘Getting Too Great a Grip’: European Shipping Lines and British West African Lighterage Services in the 1930s,” Afrika Zamani: Journal of the Association of African Historians, 9–10 (2001–2): 19–40. 90 Ibid., 22. 91 Ibid., 23. 92 Ibid. 93 Ibid., 33–34. 94 Ibid., 25. 95 Ibid., 37. 96 Ibid. 97 Ayodeji Olukoju, “A ‘Truly Nigerian Project?’: The Politics of the Establishment of the Nigerian National Shipping Line (NNSL), 1957–1959,” International Journal of Maritime History 15, no. 1 (2003): 69–90. 98 Ibid., 72. 99 Ibid. 100 Ibid., 72–73. 101 Ibid., 73. 102 Ibid., 77. 103 Ibid., 78–79. 104 Ibid. 105 Ibid., 79. 106 Ibid., 80. 107 Ibid., 88. 108 Ibid. 109 Ibid., 88–89. 110 Ibid., 89. 111 Ibid., 84. 112 Ibid., 89. 113 Olukoju, “Ports, Hinterlands, and Forelands,” 26–28. 114 Ayodeji Olukoju, Maritime Trade, Port Development, and Administration: The Japanese Experience and Lessons for Nigeria (Tokyo: Institute of Developing Economies, 1996); “Maritime Policy and Economic Development: A Comparison of Nigerian and Japanese Experiences since the Second World War,” Afrika Zamani: Journal of the Association of African Historians 11–12 ((2003–4): 160– 82; and “Ports as Growth Poles: The Japanese ‘Developer Port’ Concept in Comparative Perspective,” International Journal of Maritime History 16, no. 1 (June 2004): 43–57. 115 Olukoju, “Maritime Policy and Economic Development,” 180. 116 Ayodeji Olukoju, “Nigerian Ports: The Imperatives of Radical Reforms,” NESG Economic Indicators 7, no. 3 (2001): 10–18. 117 Olukoju, “Maritime Policy and Economic Development,” 177–80.

PART II: SOURCES, METHODOLOGIES, AND HISTORIOGRAPHIES

CHAPTER FOUR SEX ACROSS THE BORDER: RESEARCHING TRANSNATIONAL PROSTITUTION IN COLONIAL NIGERIA SAHEED ADERINTO

A book-length historical research on sexuality in colonial Nigeria does not exist. Indeed, a quick count of existing published works is easy to do.1 Historians of Nigeria have yet to draw any meaningful connection between sexuality and nationalism despite the fact that these two concepts are closely related, and that Nigeria (arguably Africa’s most studied country) is also the birthplace of modern African and nationalist historiography.2 Even the unprecedented output of scholarship on African women since the 1980s (from Nina Mba’s pathbreaking and foundational Nigerian Women Mobilized (1982) to Nwando Achebe’s brilliantly crafted Female King of Colonial Nigeria (2011) has not found any critical expression in the treatment of such highly significant themes as the intersections of class, race, and sexuality in the making of Nigerian women’s history.3 Without any gainsaying, the paucity of published work on sexuality in colonial Nigeria constitutes a concern, not only because it seems to suggest that discourse of the sexual component of Nigeria’s past is not worth studying, but also because of the enormous body of ideas and data left unexplored. If contemporary researchers thought that sexuality is associated with obscenity and should be silenced in terms of scholarship, the makers of the Nigerian colonial past (both men and women, Africans and colonialists alike) thought it was important and readily voiced their positions on it. While historians of Nigeria have yet to invest adequate scholarly energy on sexuality discourses, their counterparts like Luise White, Laketch Dirasse, and Charles van Onselen, among others, working in southern and eastern Africa have seen the need to venture into this aspect of the African experience.4 Extant works examine such themes as the sociology and political economy of sexuality, urbanization and social change, venereal disease and pathology, the commoditization of sex, and body politics. From

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recent scholarship on homosexuality, especially Marc Epprecht’s book Heterosexual Africa?, we now know the historical processes that galvanized into the idea of Africa’s exclusive and “normative” heterosexuality and the much licensed same-sex affairs.5 In all, existing literature establishes and validates the significance of sexuality to nation building, identity formation, the clash between tradition and modernity, and by extension, Africa’s historical formation. Although the methods, approaches, sources, and politics varied across time, space, and place, historians of sexuality have shown that Africa’s experiences of gender and sexuality differ from region to region, and were shaped by both local as well as global politics. In this chapter, I present an introductory exploration of primary archival sources for researching transnational prostitution in colonial Nigeria with particular focus on the Nigeria–Gold Coast network during the first half of the twentieth century. Between the 1920s and 1950s, women from Southern Nigeria emigrated to the Gold Coast where they worked as prostitutes. This first instance of major transnational prostitution in twentieth-century Nigeria involved many adult women who practiced prostitution voluntarily.6 Comprehensive reports and petitions by Nigerians (both at home and abroad) and British abolitionists representatively establish that many underage girls (mostly younger than thirteen) were also criminally lured into the sex trade by adult men and women.7 The Nigeria–Gold Coast prostitution network involved the movement of bodies, culture, language, and money across artificial colonial boundaries. It is impossible to give an estimate of its value partly because it was an off-the-books sector of the colonial economy. But we do know that Nigerian prostitutes remitted about £2,000 to their local communities in Ogoja, Owerri, and Calabar Provinces during the late 1930s and early 1940s. According to colonial administrators, some communities such as Ediba and Obubra depended almost entirely on the proceeds from sex work during the 1930s.8 So important was prostitution to the economy of Ogoja Province that the Native Authorities suggested a direct tax of 30 shillings on returnee prostitutes because “they possessed as many loads as a white man.”9 Although the substantive literature in the social sciences tends to treat transnational prostitution as a “new” development and manifestation of the postcolonial quagmire of underdevelopment, its history actually dates back to the early decades of the twentieth century or earlier.10 The spectrum of sources presented here is capable of stimulating work that connects colonial with postcolonial ideas and puts history at the center of major issues of national interest by supplying the historical context to some of the challenges of nation building. The similarities and differences in the dynamics of prostitution in colonial and postcolonial Nigeria is significant for understanding

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the shifting social and economic processes and the continuum in sexual practices that are often constructed as “illicit” or “deviant.” During the colonial period, as in the postcolonial era, prostitution took on a purely urban character as women from rural areas migrated to such cities as Lagos, Ibadan, Port Harcourt, Accra, and Secondi to work as prostitutes. The physical and cultural geography of sex work, like most forms of labor, expanded to accommodate societies’ changing economic and social structures. The documents to be analyzed are those deposited at the Enugu and Ibadan offices of the Nigerian National Archives (NAE and NAI, respectively) and the Public Records and Archives Administration Department (PRAAD), in Accra, Ghana. They include official “fact-finding” reports and correspondence between colonial officers of Nigeria and the Gold Coast, on the one hand, and the League of Nations, on the other. Between 1920 and 1955, the League and its successor organization, the United Nations, coordinated a global movement in opposition to transnational prostitution, demanding that sovereign nations and colonial dependencies alike submit information concerning the matter on an annual basis. This body of archival materials basically represents the perceptions of the colonialists and the politics of sexuality in the empire. Nigerian perspectives on casual sex work included petitions from a spectrum of reformists—from rural patriarchs to ethnic or home improvement associations. Taken together, these sources provide a vivid look into the perspectives of colonialists and Nigerians on transnational sex work, social mobility, and cultural legitimacy. They help reconcile the contradictions inherent in the colonialists’ project of modernization, and the conflicting nature of Nigerian sexual nationalism. The materials established the importance of sex as a gateway into a host of complicated narratives about gendered colonialism, imperial modernity, agency, and identity formation. I situate the documents within the larger historical processes of the period, highlighting the circumstances under which they were produced and their connection to larger issues of the African colonial encounter. The paucity of documents produced by civil authorities before the outbreak of World War II sharply reflect the disposition of the colonialists toward prostitution, which did not pose a serious danger to imperialism in Nigeria until the early 1940s. As historians of Africa generally understand, the volume and coverage of documentation on a particular subject was mostly determined by the impact it had on the colonial status quo. This chapter does not pretend to carry out an exhaustive exploration of all the sources for reconstructing transnational prostitution. For instance, it excludes newspaper coverage and public debates during the 1940s. However, it gives an

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introductory insight into the general trends of documentation, the main characters, and the viability of sexuality as a subfield of Nigerian history.

Some Conceptual Clarification The politics of morality and emotions, and the diverse interpretations accorded to sociosexual behavior across societies, necessitate a brief clarification of important concepts. For the purposes of this chapter and the historical reality under examination, prostitution is defined as a form of labor that involves the sale of sexual services.11 It is framed as comprising contractual heterosexual affairs that were mostly transient and geared toward mutual material and erotic satisfaction. Men bought sex with money from the proceeds of their labor, while women sold sex. Hence both participants were involved in production. The way that proceeds from labor flowed was similar to how resources were spent on essential consumable items such as food. In other words, buying and selling sex—under circumstances that do not involve intimidation, force, or coercion—was little different than other everyday transactions. This definition is not exhaustive—it is impossible to have an all-inclusive conceptualization of prostitution—not only because sex evokes divergent connotations across physical and cultural geographies but also because of the secrecy associated with it. Secrecy and repression of sex and sexuality, as Michel Foucault has shown, was accentuated by the consolidation of the aristocratic capitalist class in Europe.12 The invention of sexuality, according to him, not only created categories of “normal” and “abnormal” behavior but placed the state at the center of regulating the private lives of its subjects.13 The colonialists in Africa as elsewhere imported Eurocentric categories of “good” and “bad” and a culture that marginalized and/or silenced the documentation of sexuality. In fact, illicit sexuality only became an issue subject to documentation when its negative consequences such as venereal disease (VD) and its connection to criminal behavior threatened prevailing ideals of morality and respectability. If historians of Africa encounter difficulties researching the history of sexuality under imperial rule, it is because the colonialists treated sex as an aspect of human experience that must be silenced and repressed in order to enhance a morally sanctified society. Prostitution, as both a sociosexual relationship and a performance, has been a subject of debate among scholars of various ideological standpoints— from liberal to Marxist feminist.14 However, this is not the appropriate place to review the theoretical and ideological controversies that cut across contours of power, patriarchy, agency, and exploitation.15 What is more

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important here is that prostitution in the context of the colonial African encounter created new forms of social and economic process that both colonialists and African reformists moralized against. The chiefs who moralized against illicit sex and pressured the colonialists to criminalize it felt that the proceeds from prostitution tilted local agency in favor of women. In other words, at the center of criminalization and moralization lay the factor of money and its impact in realigning prevailing notions of gender and hierarchy. Moralizing against illicit sexuality also fit into traditional African and Victorian designations of sexual conduct outside marriage as immoral, unacceptable, and sinful. For the colonialists, prostitution was both a symptom and a manifestation of African sexual pathology that they intended to correct through their modernizing and civilizing influence. Although the period between the 1870s and 1940s witnessed unprecedented involvement of women in prostitution globally, the colonialists constructed sex work purely as an “African social problem” that must be curtailed in order to promote healthy living and to sanitize the society under siege by the forces of moral decadence.16 In reading and rereading the prostitutes’ work, researchers have to consistently appraise and reappraise, construct and reconstruct colonial rhetoric that pathologized women’s productive and reproductive capacities. The colonialists perceived prostitution and the women who practiced the “illicit” trade as if it were just another form of opportunistic labor that might allow them to benefit from colonial capitalism. Men paid for sex partly because it was an alternative means of securing companionship, and sometimes food, away from home. As Luise White has argued, our conceptualization of prostitution must not come from the moralists’ fixation on prostitutes’ bodies and social standing, but rather from the function they served and how they used the resources they accrued.17 Prostitutes did not spend their incomes alone. They typically invested in real estate and in their families, thus providing much needed resources for alleviating the negative effects of the epileptoid character of the colonial economy. Aside from providing the sociosexual balance in important sites of imperial power such as mines and urban centers monopolized by men, prostitution created the financial resources that led to increased independence for women from colonial and African structures of domination. The term “migratory prostitution” is used interchangeably with “domestic and transnational prostitution.” Regardless of the period and location, women traditionally practiced prostitution outside their native communities —hence prostitution, like many forms of labor that emerged under the colonial capitalist system, was associated with migration.18 Occasionally, I use the term “migratory prostitution” in lieu of “traffic,” and put traffic in

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quotation marks to problematize the assumption of some reformists that women who practiced prostitution were forced into the sex trade or that the entire network of sex work was criminal. A careless use of the term “traffic” can indicate a researcher’s acceptance of colonial prejudice.

The Colonialists’ Sources Colonial documentation of transnational prostitution includes “factfinding” investigations and correspondence among civil, military, legal, and medical officers. These authorities were directly and indirectly involved in either reporting the nature of the sex trade and its impact on public health and security or devising the appropriate legislation to halt the “traffic,” or both.19 The information they generated can be found in the “Simple List of Chief Secretary’s Office collections (CSO),” under the entry “Traffic in Girls from Nigeria to the Gold Coast” in NAI and in PRAAD.20 The CSO files help unlock the perspectives of officers operating from the seat of imperial power in Accra and Lagos. They contain correspondence between the governors of Nigeria and the Gold Coast, and the colonial office in London. Other classes of documents from Ogoja, Calabar, and Owerri Provinces deposited at the Enugu office of the Nigerian National Archives deal precisely with on-the-ground assessments by local colonial officers and Nigerians. They are labeled clearly as “Prostitution in Obubra Division,” “Nigeria–Gold Coast Traffic,” Exodus of Nigerian Women in the Gold Coast,” and so on.21 These documents contain minutes of meetings with the Native Authorities, notes of district officers, annual reports, and petitions from “concerned and law-abiding” citizens about women’s emigration and its impact on the economy, “tradition,” and the social life of the communities. One would have to read both the CSO collections and the files from Enugu Archives in order to make sense of the positions held by various colonial officers. The comprehensiveness and length of the documents varies in accordance with the subject under discussion and the capacity in which each officer was acting. As one would expect, the most detailed information about the “traffic” came from officers under whose jurisdiction most of the Nigerian prostitutes in the Gold Coast originated from. These areas included Ogoja, Owerri, and Calabar Provinces of Southern Nigeria. However, Nigerian officers did not produce one of the earliest and most comprehensive reports on transnational prostitution. J. R. Dickinson, Gold Coast chief inspector of labor, was the first colonial officer to fully document Nigerian prostitutes in the Gold Coast as part of his larger survey of labor conditions in the colony in 1938.22 Although the government of the Gold Coast failed to publish his report for political reasons and classified it as “confidential,”

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Dickinson’s findings would later help authorities in devising legislation against the “traffic.” A portion of this highly significant report is worth quoting: My investigations were made with the object of ascertaining the effect which these women had on the labourer’s pocket and health rather than the conditions in which the prostitutes live. . . . The girls interrogated looked upon their professions as ordinary work undertaken with a view to earning money which they intended to take back to Nigeria as savings or in finery. As in the case of the labourers themselves, the women leave their country with the idea of making money and returning home with their savings and quantity of fine clothes. They appear to have an organization among themselves.23

Different sections or departments of the colonial establishment produced documents that reflected how transnational prostitution affected their operations. The Nigeria Police Force (NPF) traditionally supplied detailed reports about arrests and prosecutions of people accused of trafficking in young girls. These reports provide the most credible information about the identity of women accused of prostitution, their clients, and other members of the subculture such as pimps. Some police reports also included photos of pimps arrested and prosecuted for trafficking. Occasionally, the annual report of the NPF included data on repatriated prostitutes and other categories of offenders derogatorily classified as “undesirables.” The data produced by the Director for Medical and Sanitary Service (DMSS) and the military authorities of the colonial army, the West African Frontier Force (WAFF), focused on the medical impact of gonorrhea and syphilis on the soldiers, while the attorney general’s office was frequently contacted to advise on the appropriate legislation and implementation. The “Simple List of Paper from Federal Ministry of Health Lagos,” contains adequate entries on VD treatment and other procedures. Legal perspectives can be gleaned from the files of the attorney general of Nigeria. A full listing of all antitransnational prostitution laws can be found under the immigration legislation section of the “Annual Law of Nigeria,” published by the Government Printer between 1940 and the 1950s. Others are contained in the body of law labeled “Offences against Morality” and “Children and Young Persons Ordinance (CYPO),” which was updated annually between 1941 and the 1950s.24

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Figure 4.1. Criminal record of Nigerian Madam Regina Chewizi convicted for brothel keeping in Takoradi on April 29 1952. Source: NAI, CSO 26/1/36005

Antiprostitution laws and CYPO are published primary documents. They are also available in some research libraries in Europe and North America.25 It is an unusual body of materials in that most primary documents generated during the colonial period were not published. Scholars interested in the evolution of postcolonial human trafficking laws would find this collection useful. A researcher could do a comparative work on anti-transnational legislation during the colonial and the postindependence period to uncover the changes and continuity in institutional approaches to activities constructed as “social problems.” For instance, colonial and postcolonial transnational prostitution laws alike

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produced contradictory outcomes of prohibiting women’s migration. Women in twenty-first-century Nigeria as in the 1940s require the permission of their fathers or husbands to receive passports or traveling documents. Although enacted to prevent trafficking in women or girls, this component of antitrafficking law negatively affects women’s freedom of choice. Unlike in the 1940s when the NPF, customs office, and Colony Welfare Office were chiefly responsible for policing transnational prostitution, twenty-first-century Nigeria saw the emergence of new agencies like the National Agency for the Prohibition of Traffic in Persons (NAPTIP) that monitored sexual exploitation of girls.26 Rehabilitation of prostitutes in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic (since 1999) has become the focus of a newly created women’s agency, supported by the wives of politicians and heads of government, who appropriated the cause of trafficking as a means of demonstrating their relevance in the new political dispensation.27 Regardless of how one chooses to approach research on the institutional response to migratory prostitution, the colonial background remains vital in that it laid the foundation of the state’s construction of this social problem and its intervention in issues of sexuality that citizens traditionally consider a “private” matter. Whether under colonial or postindependence dispensation, illicit sexuality threatened mainstream ideas of reproduction, respectability, morality, and social purity. Another genre of documents was generated by the Gold Coast and Nigerian regiments of the WAFF. The history of the colonial army is as old as the story of Britain’s imperial presence in West Africa. During the second half of the nineteenth century, the WAFF performed a critical role in assisting the British to brutally expand their territorial influence on hitherto independent African empires and states.28 By the twentieth century, the role of the force encompassed the suppression of “revolts” and “insurgencies” that threatened the colonial project. 29 The WAFF also saw action both in and outside Africa during World War I and World War II. Like most colonial outfits, the WAFF experienced such problems as mutiny; but VD was perhaps the most severe noncombatant threat to its productivity. Gold Coast authorities identified Nigerian women as the main purveyor of gonorrhea and syphilis in its regiments.30 As worrisome as the situation appeared, the British—which, for military-centered reasons, attempted to keep the soldiers within the barracks—did not police prostitution or prevent the African rank and file of the WAFF from patronizing prostitutes.31 Early data from the second decade of the twentieth century establish the colonialists’ position of tolerating sex work in both Nigerian and Gold Coast armies. The outbreak of World War II

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intensified documentation on prostitution because the incidence of VD reached an all-time high.32 The NAI and PRAAD each have several files on the incidence of VD in the Nigerian regiment of the WAFF that can help researchers bridge the interconnections between sexuality, race, and sexually transmitted disease in the colonial military. The annual reports of the Federal Ministry of Health also contain returns of cases of VD in the army. Although not contextual and mostly inconclusive, these data help pinpoint the types of VD prevalent among the troops and the nature of treatment offered. They also open endless possibilities for research into colonial medical history, an area that is currently underresearched. In addition, military and public health documents are capable of enhancing our knowledge of sexualized racism in the colonial force. Like that of African women, whose bodies were constructed pathologically, the identity of African soldiers represented a sort of sexual aberration, as they were labeled as “primitive” individuals incapable of controlling their sex impulses.33 Another category of files from the CSO deals with correspondence between Nigeria and the Gold Coast, on the one hand, and the League of Nations and United Nations, on the other. As previously mentioned, the League and later the UN coordinated a global movement against transnational prostitution between 1921 and 1955. The immensely useful documents filed as the “Annual Report on the Traffic in Women and Children and Obscene Publications vol. I–IV” and the “International Convention on the Suppression of White Slave Traffic” help situate prostitution during the first half of the twentieth century in its global context.34 If properly interpreted, the League’s annual questionnaire on trafficking in women and girls that Nigeria, like many other countries in the world, completed could help researchers understand the imperial politics of vice and humanitarianism.35 These documents expose the contradictory position of the Nigerian government on the regulation of prostitution. However, they do not answer why the government refused to report transnational prostitution to the League; nor do they explain the interrelatedness of sexual pathology and civilization—rhetoric that featured abundantly in the colonialists’ justification for the imposition of colonialism. One would need a thorough theoretical grounding in imperialism, race, gender, and the imperial construction of otherness to be able to discern the politics of sex—whether in Nigeria or in other British imperial locations.36

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Figure 4.2. Mugshot of Nigerian Madam Regina Chewizi convicted for brothel keeping in Takoradi on April 29 1952. Source: NAI, CSO 26/1/36005

The Nigerian Sources Sources on prostitution and the sex trade produced by Nigerians took the form of petitions from rural patriarchs and chiefs. The general tone of the petitions tilted toward the condemnation of women’s emigration. For the Native Authorities, composed of men, the local economy suffered setbacks when women who contributed immensely to the domestic economy as traders, agriculturists, and artisans left for the Gold Coast. In addition, it was generally assumed that prostitution delayed marriage and reduced women’s reproductive life and capabilities. But the Native Authorities’ practice of policing women’s movement was not unique to Nigeria. Throughout the colonial period of African history, rural chiefs fervently worked with the colonial authorities to maintain their patriarchal grip on women’s economic and physical mobility.37 Control over women’s productive and reproductive rights and capabilities—publicly couched in the vocabulary of preserving the integrity of African culture—targeted their growing influence in the society. A petition by the chiefs of Obubra Division in 1948 sheds adequate light

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onto the power of women’s labor and agency and the perception of the impact of prostitution on the community: Because of harlotism the population of our village is diminishing. Our taxable males are few and for that sake our taxable money is so little that it does not suffice for use for general improvement of the town. . . . Owing to our small population, it is difficult for us to maintain our school. Owing to lack of population we cannot do anything to improve our town. . . . Because our women cannot marry or live at home to produce children, the shortage of labour is acute in our town so much that we are compelled to employ labor from other villages. It is practically impossible to count all the havoc done to any village, town, or nation in which harlotism prevails.38

The correspondence and petitions in the files on prostitution from Calabar, Ogoja, and Owerri Provinces deposited at the NAE reveal that returnee prostitutes challenged established hierarchies when they invested their income in property considered to be the preserve of men.39 Men feared that the wealth displayed by returnee prostitutes could discourage young girls from marrying and jeopardize the prospect of receiving bride-price. Bride-price and other marriage payments augmented the income of some families and increased the power rural men had vis-à-vis young urban wage earners. However, it would appear that the attitude of the chiefs toward casual sex work varied from place to place and was shaped by the impact of women’s emigration on local economies. It would also appear that the men who protested migratory prostitution were those who did not benefit from remittances. Another class of documents that were produced by Nigerians is variously designated in Africanist literature as belonging to “tribal,” “ethnic,” “hometown,” or “diaspora” associations. These groups were formed chiefly to facilitate grassroots development in their communities and create positive social cohesion in places of sojourn. The hometown association is indisputably one of the new forms of identity formation under colonial rule. Although the history of these associations dates back to precolonial times, colonial “pacification,” rapid urbanization, the creation of national artificial boundaries, and massive migration of people recast their composition and changed the functions they performed. Some of them—like the foreign branches of the Nigerian Youth Movement—cut across ethnic and location boundaries. Their numerical strength and contribution to the development of the homeland depended on the economic and social structure of the diaspora and the access the host community gave them in maximizing the gains of living away from home. Although scholars from James Coleman to Abimbola Adesoji have studied the contributions of hometown associations

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to nationalism and grassroot development, they have largely neglected their role in the regulation of sexuality.40 Like the colonial states, the hometown unions in Nigeria and in the Gold Coast—Akajuk Union, Ngwa Clan Union, Calabar Improvement League, and Akunakuna Union, among others—were equally interested in the regulation of women’s movement.41 For them, the activities of “undesirable” women smeared their images both at home and abroad. But this situation transcended the rehabilitation of image and perception: the associations risked being penalized by their host community and government for not “taming” the sexuality of their women. A petition dated July 8, 1941, by the Owerri Division Union captured the essence of hometown associations’ attitudes toward sex work: The subject of this petition is the growing habit of some women from Owerri Province leaving behind both their husbands and children and making their ways to various parts of Nigeria and even to the Gold Coast for the expressed purpose of indulging in the illicit bodily traffic, an act which is very disgraceful as it tends to lower the high standard of morals that was set up by our progenitors. In addition, young girls are often taken over to the Gold Coast where money is received on their heads, a procedure which is more or less trade in human beings; some are again taken there in order to make money through prostitution for their mistresses. The Gold Coast press failed to spotlight or call attention occasionally to this traffic in women and its attendant evils, especially with regard to the spread of venereal diseases which act as canker-worms eating up the fabric of our manhood. We have had consultation with the officers and members of the Union as to the best method of approach in carrying out a successful campaign against this indecent traffic. It was finally decided that a letter should be written requesting . . . the Government of Nigeria to view this matter with the gravest concern, because the mere mention, in local and foreign newspapers with wide circulation, of Nigerian women practising prostitution on the Gold Coast, reflects very unfavourably on the people concerned.42

Petitions by the ethnic unions can be found in the files on prostitution in Ogoja, Calabar, and Owerri Provinces and their districts deposited in the Enugu National Archives. They were usually addressed to the NPF, the CSO, the CWO, or the Native Authorities. Extracts on prostitution from the minutes of their meetings were occasionally attached to the petitions sent to these authorities. But collaboration between the hometown associations and the authorities transcended helping the latter to police their “recalcitrant” members. Internal politics of gender and power were easily grafted onto the tension over illegitimate sex and social purity. An in-depth examination of the politics of hometown associations and illicit sexuality is beyond the focus of this chapter. However, what seems obvious is that unlike studies

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from other parts of Africa that summarily narrate that the “tribal” unions were “enemies” of women who practiced prostitution, the Nigerian experience transcends the rhetoric of dangerous sexuality to a complex interplay of class, agency, and power within the associations.

Conclusion Nigeria’s history of sexuality is a viable site of scholarly endeavor. It is a history that dovetails with numerous aspects of Nigeria’s encounter with colonial rule and shows how a subject like sex traditionally associated with secrecy attracted significant public debates. The interrelatedness of sexuality and colonial security compelled the colonialists to police prostitution from the early 1940s. As previously mentioned, this chapter does not purport to be a complete exploration of all the materials on transnational prostitution in colonial Nigeria, but the themes and ideas expressed here are meant to introduce prospective researchers to sexuality as a budding subfield of Nigerian history. As interesting and historiographically significant as the aforementioned materials are, a number of problems make their availability problematic and difficult. The Nigerian National Archives, like virtually all the nation’s government-controlled institutions, is poorly funded, making the effective preservation of documents impossible. Hence, the documents on prostitution, like most other holdings of the archives, are decomposing very fast. It is sad to say that some of the documents I analyzed here might not be available in the future judging by their present precarious condition.43 The holdings of the National Archives tell the history of migratory prostitution only from the perspective of Africans and Europeans whose narratives are predominantly about regulation and prohibition. Whereas there is much information about prostitutes as criminally minded women, men are rarely presented as members of the prostitution subculture. This one-sided narrative of prostitution mirrored the Victorian and African cultural practice of moralizing against sex in a strictly female-specific manner and painting women as “sexually dangerous.” One would need to explore other sources such as oral history to uncover the perspectives of women who practiced prostitution in colonial Nigeria, especially from the 1940s. Oral history is capable of providing information on undocumented aspects of prostitution— namely, wealth accumulation and investment, romance and love, and social status.

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Notes 1

See, for instance, Benedict B. Naanen, “The Itinerant Gold Mines: Prostitution in Cross River Basin of Nigeria, 1930–1950,” African Studies Review 34 (1991): 57– 79. See also the following works by Saheed Aderinto: “Of Gender, Race, and Class: The Politics of Prostitution in Colonial Lagos, Nigeria, 1923–1958,” Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies 33, no. 3 (2012 forthcoming); “The Problem of Nigeria Is Slavery, Not White Slave Traffic: Globalization and the Politicization of Prostitution in Southern Nigeria, 1921–1955,” Canadian Journal of African Studies 46, no. 1 (2012): 1-22; “Dangerous Aphrodisiac, Restless Sexuality: Venereal Disease, Biomedicine, and Protectionism in Colonial Southern Nigeria, 1921-1955,” Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 13, no.3 (forthcoming 2012); “‘The Girls in Moral Danger’: Child Prostitution and Sexuality in Colonial Lagos, Nigeria, 1930s–1950,” Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences 1, no. 2 (2007): 1–22; “Prostitution and Urban Social Relations,” in Nigeria’s Urban History: Past and Present, ed. Hakeem Ibikunle Tijani (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2006), 75–98; “Policing Urban Prostitution: Prostitutes, Crime, Law, and Reformers,” in Tijani, Nigeria’s Urban History, 99–118. Reference to prostitution in colonial Nigeria can be found in the following works: Nwando Achebe, The Female King of Colonial Nigeria: Ahebi Ugbabe (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011), 77–86; Laurent Fourchard, “Lagos and the Invention of Juvenile Delinquency in Nigeria, 1920-1960,” Journal of African History 46 (2006): 133–34; Gloria Chuku, Igbo Women and Economic Transformation in Southeastern Nigeria, 1900–1960 (New York: Routledge, 2005), 164–65; 217–18; Abosede George, “Within Salvation: Girl Hawkers and the Colonial State in Development Era Lagos,” Journal of Social History 44, no. 3 (Spring 2011): 837–59. Equally important is Abner Cohen’s anthropological survey on Hausa prostitution (karuwanci) in migrant communities in southwestern Nigeria during the 1960s: Custom and Politics in Urban Africa: A Study of Hausa Migrants in Yoruba Towns (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), chap. 2. 2 A recent book on nationalist historiography is Toyin Falola and Saheed Aderinto, Nigeria, Nationalism, and Writing History (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2010). 3 Nina Emma Mba, Nigerian Women Mobilized: Women’s Political Activity in Southern Nigeria, 1900–1965 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982). Achebe briefly discussed prostitution in her latest book: The Female King of Colonial Nigeria, 77–86. 4 See, among others, Luise White, The Comforts of Home: Prostitution in Colonial Nairobi (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990); Megan Vaughan, Curing Their Ills: Colonial Power and African Illness (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991); Charles van Onselen, Studies in the Social History of the Witwatersrand, 1886–1914, vol. 1 (Johannesburg: Ravan Press), 103–62; Laketch Dirasse, The Commoditization of Female Sexuality: Prostitution and Socio-

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economic Relations in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (New York: AMS Press, 1991); Diana Jeater, Marriage, Perversion, and Power: The Construction of Moral Discourse in Southern Rhodesia, 1894–1930 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993); and Keith Shear, “‘Not Welfare or Uplift Work’: White Women, Masculinity, and Policing in South Africa,” Gender & History 8, no. 3 (1996): 393–415. 5 Saheed Aderinto, review of Heterosexual Africa? The History of an Idea from the Age of Exploration to the Age of AIDS (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2008), by Marc Epprecht, Gender Forum 23, no. 4 (2008), http://www.genderforum.org/index.php?id=152. 6 See Public Records and Archives Administration Department (hereafter cited as PRAAD), CSO 15/1/2222, Traffic in Women and Children, 1940–1948. 7 Ibid. 8 National Archives Ibadan (hereafter cited as NAI), CSO 26, 36005, Extract from Ogoja Province Annual Report 1938. 9 NAI, CSO 26, 36005, District Officer of Obubra Division to the Resident of Ogoja Province, February 7, 1941. 10 See, among others, Ifeanyi Onyeonoru, “Push Factors in Girl Trafficking for International Commercial Sex Work and the Gender Implications: A Study of Benin, Edo State,” African Journal of Peace and Conflict Studies 1, no. 1 (2003): 118–39; and O. Agbu, “Corruption and Human Trafficking: The Nigeria Case,” West African Review 14, no. 3 (2003): 210–52. 11 White, Comforts of Home, 1–21; Lenore Kuo, Prostitution Policy: Revolutionary Practice through a Gendered Perspective (New York: New York University Press, 2002), 1–50. 12 Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. 1: An Introduction, translated from the French by Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage Books, 1990), 17–49. 13 For a simplified analysis of Foucault’s arguments on the history of sexuality, repression, and power, see H. G. Cocks and Matt Houlbrook, “Introduction,” in Palgrave Advances in the Modern History of Sexuality, ed. H. G. Cocks and Matt Houlbrook (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 1–18. 14 A good review of the politics of naming prostitutes and their work can be found in Shannon Bell, Reading, Writing, and Rewriting the Prostitute Body (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 73–98. 15 Ibid. 16 See the following works and others on global prostitution between the 1870s and 1940s: Nils Johan Ringdal, Love for Sale: A World History of Prostitution (New York: Grove Press, 2004); Stephanie A. Limoncelli, The Politics of Trafficking: The First International Movement to Combat the Sexual Exploitation of Women (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010); Nora Glickman, The Jewish White Slave Trade and the Untold Story of Raquel Liberman (New York: Garland Publishing, 2000); Brian Donovan, White Slave Crusades: Race, Gender, and AntiVice Activism, 1887–1917 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006); and Edward J. Bristow, Prostitution and Prejudice: The Jewish Fight against White Slavery, 1870–1939 (New York: Schocken Books, 1982). 17 White, Comforts of Home, 11.

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18 Kenneth Lindsay Little, African Women in Towns: An Aspect of African Social Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), 76–129. 19 Karen Jochelson, The Colour of Disease: Syphilis and Racism in South Africa, 1880–1950 (New York: Palgrave, 2001); Vaughan, Curing Their Ills, 129–54; Michael W. Tuck, “Venereal Disease, Sexuality, and Society in Uganda,” in Sex, Sin, and Suffering: Venereal Disease and European Society since 1870, ed. Roger Davidson and Lesley A. Hall (New York: Routledge, 2001), 191–204; Nakanyinke Musisi, “The Politics of Perception or Perception of Politics? Colonial and Missionary Representation of Baganda Women, 1900–1945,” in Women in African Colonial History, ed. Jean Allman, Susan Geiger, and Nakanyinke Musisi (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002), 95–115; Sheryl M. McCurdy, “Urban Threats: Manyema Women, Low Fertility, and Venereal Diseases in Tanganyinka, 1926–1936,” in “Wicked” Women and the Reconfiguration of Gender in Africa, ed. Dorothy L. Hodgson and Sheryl M. McCurdy (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2001), 212–33; Lynette A. Jackson, “‘When in the White Man’s Town’: Zimbabwean Women Remember Chibeura,” in Women in African Colonial History, ed. Allman, Geiger, and Musisi, 191–213; P. L. Bonner, Desirable or Undesirable Sotho Women? Liquor, Prostitution, and the Migration of Sotho Women to the Rand, 1920–1945 (Johannesburg: University of Witwatersrand African Studies Institute, 1988); and Clive Glaser, “Managing the Sexuality of Urban Youth: Johannesburg, 1920s–1960s,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 38, no. 2 (2005): 301–27. 20 The file numbers are as follows: NAI, CSO 26, 278387, vols. 1 and 2; and PRAAD, CSO, 15/1/222. 21 See, among others, NAE, AIDIST 2.1.373; and NAE, OBUBDIST 4.1.71. 22 PRAAD, CSO, 15/1/222, Report on Labor Conditions in the Gold Coast, 1938. 23 Ibid. 24 “Criminal Code (Amendment Ordinance) 1944,” in Annual Volume of the Laws of Nigeria, Legislation Enacted during 1944 (Lagos: Government Printer, 1945); and “Children and Young Person Ordinance,” in Annual Volume of the Laws of Nigeria, Legislation Enacted during 1943 (Lagos: Government Printer, 1944). 25 The university libraries of the following institutions, among others, have the volumes: Michigan State University, University of Minnesota, Cornell University, and Yale University. 26 See the NAPTIP website at http://www.naptip.gov.ng. 27 Olukemi Adesina, “Between Culture and Poverty: The Queen Mother Phenomenon and the Edo International Sex Trade,” Jenda: A Journal of Culture and African Women Studies 1, no. 8 (2006): 218–41. 28 For a good synthesis of the Scramble for Nigeria, see Obaro Ikime, The Fall of Nigeria: The British Conquest (Ibadan: Heinemann, 1977). 29 For the details of the colonial military force, see, among others, David Killingray, “‘If I Fight for Them, Maybe Then I Can Go Back to the Village’: African Soldiers in the Mediterranean and European Campaigns, 1939–45,” in Time to Kill: The Soldier’s Experience of War in the West, ed. Paul Addison and Angus Calder (London: Picador, 1996); “‘Securing the British Empire’: Policing

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and Colonial Order, 1920–1960,” in The Policing of Politics in the Twentieth Century: Historical Perspectives, ed. M. Mazower (Providence, RI: Berghahn Books, 1997); “Imperial Defence,” in Oxford History of the British Empire, vol. 5, ed. Robin Winks (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); Timothy H. Parsons, The Rank-and-File: Social Implications of African Military Service in the King’s African Rifles, 1902–1964 (Oxford: James Currey, 1999); “‘Kibra Is Our Blood’: The Sudanese Military Legacy in Nairobi’s Kibera Location, 1902–1968,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 30, no. 1 (1997): 87–122; “Dangerous Education? The Army as School in Colonial East Africa,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 28, no. 1 (2000): 112–34; Sam Ukpabi, Strands in Nigerian Military History (Zaria, Nigeria: Gaskiya Corp., 1986); Sam Ukpabi, The Origins of the Nigerian Army: A History of West African Frontier Force, 1897–1914 (Zaria, Nigeria: Gaskiya Corp., 1987); C. N. Ubah, Colonial Army and Society in Northern Nigeria (Kaduna, Nigeria: Baraka Press, 1998). 30 NAI, MH 54, vol. I, Troops Diseases and Welfare—Control of, January 25, 1939. 31 NAI, Comcol 1, N 1088/1918, Venereal Disease in the Nigerian Regiment—the Commandant to the Director of Medical and Sanitary Service, 1918. 32 NAI, MH 544, Venereal Disease among African Troops—West African Governors’ Conference to the Honourable Chief Secretary, Lagos, March 18, 1942; and NAI, MH (Fed) 1/1 6304A, Venereal Diseases—Control of, 1941. 33 NAI, N 1088, Senior Sanitary Officer to the General Staff Officer, WAFF, April 1918. 34 See NAI, CSO 26, 27837. 35 NAI, CSO 26, 03338, vols. 1–4. 36 Some highly useful secondary sources on race, sex, and imperialism include, among others, Ronald Hyam, Empire and Sexuality: The British Experience (New York: Manchester University Press, 1990); Philippa Levine, Prostitution, Race, and Politics: Policing Venereal Disease in the British Empire (New York: Routledge, 2003); Megan Vaughan, Curing Their Ills: Colonial Power and African Illness (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991); Sander Gilman, Difference and Pathology: Stereotypes of Sexuality, Race, and Madness (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985); Jock McCulloch, Black Peril, White Virtue: Sexual Crime in Southern Rhodesia, 1902–1935 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000); Ann Laura Stoler, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule, 2nd ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010). 37 The following literature examines the colonial state and African male elders’ campaign to regulate women’s reproduction, social status, wealth, and sexuality through English and customary laws: Racheal Jean-Baptiste, “‘These Laws Should Be Made by Us’: Customary Marriage Law, Codification, and Political Authority in Twentieth-Century Colonial Gabon,” Journal of African History 49 (2008): 217–40; Sheryl M. McCurdy, “Urban Threats: Manyema Women, Low Fertility, and Venereal Diseases in Tanganyinka, 1926–1936,” in “‘Wicked’ Women, 212– 33; Jean Allman, “Rounding Up the Spinsters: Gender Chaos and Unmarried Women in Colonial Asante,” Journal of African History 37 (1996): 195–214; Marc

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Epprecht, This Matter of Women Is Getting Bad: Gender, Development, and Politics in Colonial Lesotho (Pietermaritzburg, South Africa: University of Natal Press, 2000), 80–96; Nakanyike Musisi, “Gender and the Cultural Construction of ‘Bad Women’ in the Development of Kampala-Kibuga, 1900–1962,” in “‘Wicked’ Women, 171–87; and Hamilton Sipho Simelane, “The State, Chiefs, and the Control of Female Migration in Colonial Swaziland, 1930s–50s,” Journal of African History 45 (2004): 103–24. 38 NAE, AIDIST 2.1.373, Egbisim Improvement Union to the District Officer, Obubra Division, April 3, 1948. 39 See the entries on prostitution in the Simple List of documents of Calabar, Ogoja and Owerri Provinces deposited in the NAE. 40 James Coleman, Nigeria: Background to Nationalism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965); J. D. Barkan, M. L. McNulty, and M. A. O. Ayeni, “Hometown Voluntary Associations, Local Development, and the Emergence of Civil Society in Western Nigeria,” Journal of Modern African Studies 29, no. 3 (1991): 457–80; Immanuel Wallerstein, “Ethnicity and National Integration in West Africa,” in Africa: Social Problems of Change and Conflict, ed. Pierre L. van den Berghe (San Francisco: Chandler Publishing Co., 1965); S. Okafor and R. Honey, “The Nature of Hometown Voluntary Associations in Nigeria,” in Hometown Associations: Indigenous Knowledge and Development in Nigeria, ed. R. Honey and S. Okafor (London: Intermediate Technology Publications, 1998), 9–16; L. Trager, “The Hometown and Local Development: Creativity in the Use of Hometown Linkages in Contemporary Nigeria,” Journal of Nigerian Public Administration and Management 1, no. 2 (1992): 21–32; Abimbola Adesoji, “Progressive Unions and the Competition for Community Development in Nigeria: A Study of the Ifon, Ilobu, and Erin Progressive Unions, 1940–1970,” African Study Monographs 29, no. 2 (2008): 51–72; Kenneth Little, “The Role of Voluntary Associations in West African Urbanization,” in Africa: Social Problems, 325–45; Dmitri van den Bersselaar, “Imagining Home: Migration and the Igbo Village in Colonial Nigeria,” Journal of African History 46 (2005): 51–73; Charles W. Abbott, “Hometown Associations and Ethnic Unions,” in Nigeria in the Twentieth Century, ed. Toyin Falola (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2002), 359–78; Austin Ahanotu, “The Role of Ethnic Unions in the Development of Southern Nigeria: 1916–66,” in Studies in Southern Nigerian History, ed. Boniface I. Obichere (London: Frank Cass, 1982); Kenneth L. Little, West African Urbanization: A Study of Voluntary Associations in Social Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965). 41 These petitions can be found in the following files: NAI, CSO 26, 36005, vols. 1 and 2; NAE, AIDIST 2.1.373; and NAE, OBUBDIST 4.1.71. 42 NAI, CSO 26, 36005, Owerri Division Union to the Commissioner of the Colony, Lagos, July 8, 1941. 43 For more on the problems facing the National Archives, see Falola and Aderinto, Nigeria, Nationalism, and Writing History, chap. 2.

CHAPTER FIVE OF ORALITY AND HISTORY: SONGS, ROYALTY, AND TRADITIONAL AGENCY IN YORUBALAND, 1910 TO THE PRESENT ABIMBOLA O. ADESOJI

The importance of songs in Yoruba culture and society accounts for their creation or composition, preservation, modification, reinvention, and continued usage. Although songs provide a window into nearly all aspects of a society’s life, their deployment in celebrating and denigrating royalty, identifying the personality traits of rulers, and projecting people’s perception of their character and reigns seems of prime importance. 1 Among the Yoruba of southwestern Nigeria, the conception of songs (orin) and poetry (ewi) is similar because of the voicing involved.2 It would seem, however, that while a poem can make a good song, a song may not be good poetry. Besides, while orin is sung, ewi is mostly chanted. Poetic songs could, however, be exceptions. Noticeably, the musicality of the Yoruba language is so high that the margin between submusical activity and real musical activity is very thin. Hence, “the borderline between speech and song is that indeterminate area designated as ‘speech-song’ or ‘heightened speech.’”3 The style of chanting or performing Yoruba poetry testifies to this feature of musicality. Broadly speaking, songs can be classified based on their structure and the functions they perform. Among the Yoruba, two structural forms of songs are discernible: prosaic and poetic. Prosaic songs are plain or noncoded songs telling a simple story. In length, they could be long or short; in structure, they are simple as no emphasis is placed on rhythm or rhyme scheme. The fluidity of prosaic songs is not unconnected with the dynamism of economic and sociopolitical circumstances within Yoruba society. 4 Hence, new components can surreptitiously creep in while

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obsolete ones are dropped. However, poetic songs are the products of elevated thought expressed in concise language. These include praisepoems and songs known as oriki, ewi, iwi, esa, ogbere, ijala, iremoje, ekun iyawo, and iyere ifa.5 The use of poetic devices, such as rhyme and rhythm, in the structure of poetic songs is not without reason. Rhyme and rhythm are suitable methods of ensuring effective memorization and transmission of songs. As one of the most popular genres of literature, song, whether rendered plain or coded, performs different functions. As Bassey Andah rightly points out, oral literature (of which song is perhaps the most common form) sheds light on historical figures, events, and ideas concerning traditional institutions.6 Songs have also been found to be very useful instruments for transmitting knowledge, values, attitudes, customs, history, science, lore, and the arts.7 In addition to entertainment, songs are also used to express and arouse emotions of love and hatred, to praise or abuse individuals, or even to propagate partisan accounts of events. This explains the Yoruba saying “Orin ni i siwaju ote,” meaning, “Songs precede a conflict.”8 Like poems, the functional classifications of Yoruba songs include epic, ballad, panegyric, and elegy, among others. The term “song” is applied here either as the act or art of singing. It does not include folksong, a form of song transmitted orally and traditionally sung by people who share a common cultural identity. Neither does it include the panegyric song or poem purposely composed and sung by traditional praise singers (eulogy). Given that they deal with current developments or developments related to personalities, situations, and events in either the distant or the immediate past, thematic songs are historical. This is because, according to Charles Aluede and Abu Braimah, “what is yet the topic of the day today turns a past event moments after, and so calls for historical analysis.” 9 The purpose of this chapter is therefore to utilize the hindsight gained from composed songs to reconstruct part of the never-ending chain of historical process. This chapter uses songs to reconstruct the reigns of three successive oonis (kings) of Ile-Ife, the acclaimed ancestral home of the Yoruba since 1910: Ooni Ademiluyi Ajagun (1910–30); Ooni Adesoji Aderemi (1930– 80); and Ooni Okunade Sijuwade (since 1980). Songs render rarely documented insights into the adaptation of the monarchy to constitutional changes during the colonial and postcolonial periods. The songs are analyzed and interpreted in the context of the sociopolitical development of Ile-Ife and Yorubaland, as well as the changing context of monarchical influence and power. Although historians of Nigeria have highlighted the veritability of oral literature as significant materials for reconstructing the

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history of non-literate societies before the imposition of British colonialism, existing works tend to focus on the precolonial period. 10 Indeed, the impression one gets is that songs and other forms of oral literature are not relevant in understanding the changing character of power and agency in colonial and postindependence Nigeria because of the popularization of written culture. As I demonstrate in this chapter, written documents, despite their importance in relating the past, need to be supplemented by other forms of oral literature like songs, which are rarely available in print. The continued composing of songs affirms the importance of history in the daily lives of the “ordinary” Yoruba as well as the power of orality in bridging the gap between action and thought. Produced chiefly by locals (men and women) who understand the social structures of their society in relation to new developments accentuated by colonial modernity, the songs I analyze below form an integral component of social and political allegiance to the royal institution, which wielded enormous power before colonial rule. The continued relevance of traditional institutions in colonial and postcolonial times affirms the resilience of traditional institutions in modern politics.

Of History and Culture: Songs and Yoruba Orality Songs, poetry, and music, according to Akin Euba, are terms that in Yoruba tradition mean almost the same thing, unlike the Western conception where they refer to different things. The musical nature of the Yoruba language, in which even in ordinary speech there is progression between different tones, could account for this seeming similarity. Yoruba poetry in particular is described by Euba as vocal music with inherent musical properties—hence its label as Yoruba music instrumental poetry. Euba stresses, though, that except when it is in written form, Yoruba poetry cannot be conceived of apart from music.11 In her analysis of oral performance of different kinds but with emphasis on oriki, Karin Barber sees the processional and dancing songs sung at every funeral festival and marriage as accompanying oriki chants, in which case they could be used to complement oriki—although songs and the invocations appealing for spiritual support can appear in any position in the text, since a poet chanting oriki can shift from chanting mode to singing. She also sees songs as a vital part of the festivals of orisa (gods and goddesses) and even as important complements of games played by younger girls among themselves, which in turn prepare them as adolescents to be able to hold their own in the performance of rara iyawo (bride’s lament), the genre that

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is the special preserve of young women.12 Underlying this analysis is the close link between songs and poetry. D. C. Conrad categorizes songs, proverbs, and basic narrative themes as common forms of cliché, which is considered of particular interest among types of elements of oral narrative. These clichés, according to him, are useful because of their brevity, simplicity, easy recollection, and dramatic nature. Clichés serve historians in two related ways: as mnemonic formulas to recall the past, and as a means to pass knowledge from generation to generation. 13 Underlying this conception is the significance of songs either as related to poetry or as subsumed under clichés and more importantly their embeddedness. But songs as a form of cliché may not fit into the mold of oral narrative that cannot be easily altered, particularly when they are composed to celebrate people’s achievements and are subject to modification depending on dispensations and particular situations and developments. In line with Euba’s categorization, Anthony I. Asiwaju, in his study “Efe Poetry as Source for Western Yoruba History,” identifies poetry’s crucial role as a satirical performance through which social phenomena are depicted while spectators are entertained. According to him, efe presents the views, feelings, and perceptions of commoners or the general masses as different from those of the nobility. Through efe poetry, the socioeconomic and political phenomenon that characterized the reign of some monarchs or which their reigns represented are depicted.14 Thematic songs related to royalty are similar to efe, but are different from efe or songs composed and sung by professional singers in the finesse or expertise employed. Although the osirigi musicians in Ile-Ife (to whom I will refer later) are professionals like efe poetry chanters, possessing skills transferred down the generations, their songs also fit into the mold of songs by commoners. Unlike efe poetry, which is a form of satire, osirigi songs are purposely composed to praise royalty. The similarity of efe to thematic songs explored in this chapter lies in the fact that both are forms of songs through which the commoners express their feelings about socioeconomic and political developments. But while efe is purely satirical, thematic songs are mostly in praise of royalty, though they, too, could sometimes be satirical or even abusive. Although they have acquired expertise through special training and experience, professional singers whose careers engage the attention of I. O. Delano could be sometimes inaccurate. Such inaccuracies are quickly corrected by their competitors or other singers or even by themselves, given their concern for being correct and for preventing misinformation.15 This, however, is not often the case with nonprofessionals.

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The role of traditional songs is likened to similar functions performed by the press, radio, and other media outlets. According to Ruth Finnegan, traditional African songs, like print and other media, are used to report, comment on, and criticize current affairs and government actions. Her argument is that songs can be a vital instrument through which public opinion and popular culture can be reflected, and their contemporary nature at the time of release notwithstanding, they can be of immense value for future historians.16 Delano corroborates this when he states that there are more passages of historical value in songs than in proverbs and emphasizes that songs are frequently composed to praise or abuse individuals, express love or hatred, or propagate partisan accounts of events. 17 This practical usefulness of songs is demonstrated in K. Y. Daaku’s study on the Akan-speaking people in which he identifies songs as one of the devices people use to preserve information about their past. Other such devices include libation, horns, the creation of special linguist staffs, “music of the drums,” oaths, proverbs, and funeral dirges. Thus, in addition to using stools made chronologically for the departed chiefs, instituting oaths to reenact special events such as wars and disasters, and sounding the mottoes of chiefs by playing the music of the short horn and drums, songs are a major component in traditional communication.18 Despite their usefulness, the weaknesses of songs as a source of reconstructing the past cannot be overlooked. Obvious among these shortcomings is the problem of their subjectivity arising from personal, sociocultural, and group bias or even bias related to interpretation. They could also be elitist as pointed out by Daaku, or inaccurate as highlighted by Delano given their verbal transmission. 19 Such shortcomings are applicable to almost all oral sources, and while they serve as limitations, songs remain quite useful in the reconstruction of the past.

Songs and Royalty in Ile-Ife: Situating the Past in the Present Three broad categories of songs relating to royalty in Ile-Ife can be identified: (1) songs composed by osirigi drummers in praise of the oonis; (2) songs composed by women in praise of the oonis; and (3) songs composed by subjects opposed to the kings as criticism of their conduct or to denigrate them. As the only music to which the ooni dances, osirigi music symbolizes royalty in Ile-Ife and is used in celebrations of royal festivals, chieftaincy installations, and burial of traditional high chiefs.20 It also features in social events involving the ooni, royal families, and high chiefs associated with the palace.21 The osirigi music comprises essentially

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the osirigi drum itself and three metal gongs—namely, konkolo, agbe, and ojo—and other gongs that may be added to complement the rhythmic patterns played by the principal gongs. The second category comprises songs often sung in social ceremonies in praise of the kings. Oftentimes, the achievements and sterling qualities of the reigning monarchs are celebrated and popularized by ordinary subjects who composed such songs either in memory or in honor of or in comparison with the reign of past kings. The third category, though no longer popular, includes songs composed by either those opposed to the candidacy of the kings or those who were affected negatively. But the taboos and negative implications associated with such songs have limited the popularity and spread of the genre. .

Songs Composed by Osirigi Drummers These songs include those related to specific monarchs and those related to the ooni throne. Pertinent examples are given below: Song I: Ooni Ademiluyi Ajagun E s’oba o je ki me mo mo ki A fi ye o je ki o n ri se bi mi Mo mo ‘Demiluyi Ooni O jo ngbede loju ogun, Baba Oguntade, Baba Oguntuase O r’owo etite joye O r’owo Turuku dara ju t’elerin lo O r’owo Turuku fe Obinrin onikolo Onikolo a begbe winin o Egberindinlogun esin loje ni koto Otutu Demiluyi Ooni Mo mo Ajagun lawarikan Ooni22 There is no king that reigns that I do not know Except for the one who has not been born I know Ooni Ademiluyi Brave man in battle, father of Oguntade and Oguntuase Becomes a chief as a vegetable merchant More prosperous in selling bush meat than an elephant owner And sells bush meat to marry a beautiful wife A beautiful wife with stately gait Having many horses in his backyard

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Ooni Ademiluyi I know Ooni Ajagun Lawarikan Song II: Ooni Adesoji Aderemi Omo l’eyin funfun l’eyin funfun Gbowu r’Atiba oja Owu ni koo ta mo mo teyin erun Ero o mi lo re Akui gbogbo ko mo ya s’osi otun n’t’oba Ibi an gbeja oni mo Ayinla gbeja a fe Fasiti lo gbo wa I k’omode ilu maa jeun O y’omode Ife, o mose yagba a ‘fe o Oloja o je ki an kiyun b’ole esi lere Ye o je ki an w’iyun re esi ni Mo mo yun moro m’obo K’oni ku k’oni j’obi j’obi Ibi ariye naa ri baba oge mo Adesoji re le e re o23 A child with sparkling white teeth Sells cotton wool at the Atiba market Sell cotton wool rather than your white teeth Whoever goes to Akui should not turn left but right for the oba’s house Adesoji loves Ife so much That he influenced the siting of a university That his people should enjoy Both the old and the young are proud of this The one who did well will be remembered And the one who behaves otherwise will be remembered too I have gone this far Let whoever has anything to say, say it He safely raises his children Adesoji has gone to the world beyond Song III: Ooni Okunade Sijuwade Eri o ege, Ege eri o Ibi gbogbo naa fi han alejo Aba Okunade file han Oyo Ababa tete aye ojo mirin

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Ko la rungun Oyo susu N le Olodo apiti okun o Mo mo Olubuse akoko Omo Olodo apiti okun Ladesuyi lo b’Olubuse Ero o mi lo re ‘lare gbogbo Ko mo ra ya s’osi otun nt’oba Igba an gbeja oni mo Olubuse gbeja Ife o O sanpon ode mora O tegun ogan mole Ababa tegun ogan b i oni te eera lona oko Bi ire ba ore o ba ore B’igi ba o di o ba ba di B’ita loba ba o ta o mo se bata o Omo eruku semusemu lese e gbagede Gbagede otororo Lafogido lo b’Ooni O l’aye o ni an ‘lofa O l’aye o ni an ‘loje Aye aba Sijuwade osiri mo se wole24 Eri o ege, Ege eri o (slang) It is not everywhere you show a guest Okunade’s father gave land to the Oyo May you come back some other time To clear away the Oyo mess I know the first Olubuse Son of Olodo, the man with a long rope Ladesuyi is the father of Olubuse Whoever goes to Ilare Don’t look left, the king’s house is on the right side In community defense Olubuse did his best for Ife He puts on the hunter-warrior regalia Crushes all obstacles Like crushing an ant Relate with people according to their approach Everyone has their time and record It was when Okunade’s father reigned that rebellion came to an end

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Song IV Mo f’ori bale mo f’oke aya bale Mo f’ori bale l’odo ajunilo Oodua, Oranfe onile ina okanranjigbo Akeran o j’ewe gbegbe Onile Kangun Kangun orun Omo mole mole omo gbogbo ebora Omo mole o f’eyin eyin rin I ki igi mo mo gun Baba oun loju otun Alele ti le oruaru Wari oye n’o m’oke m’oba n’ile mirin Ona na ro mo Ooni Baba re bu k’Ado, o bu k’Oyo O bu k’Oninana o bu k’Onipopo O bu k’Oniworan afotamodi Ababa fowo kan gbade, o fowo kan gbeda Oranmiyan o O f’owo kan gbagede ogun E tii de oke Esinmirin i hi eru segi n paun Ade moo se ‘kori kan wi ki mi la ran o Ikori dudu abi iyokun lorun Omo arida kan teere peru Or’ida kan gboro pomo Ida o fi pa alairigboran o mo ki i s’apo-omoran jekun o Ketekete fara e esin O fara e esin e ni gogo Gogo lopa y’esi Oba Oyo fara e ni Omodimodi eni yara Yara l’opa y’oba Oba Ondo fara e a Osodunsodun e m’etutu Etutu l’opa ‘y’oba Ogidigidi han san m’erinla Y’esi a digbo l’efon O digbo lu o r’iya ara re Ajalaye la kun lasa Erin lopo si ba meru Asa le, eru b’eye25

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I prostrate flat on the ground I greet the elders respectfully Oodua, Oranfe the god of thunder Akeran who does things unchecked Owner of the shapeless house in heaven Son of the cults and the spirit beings Son of the cults who walk backward And prevents his father from contacting a pointed stick At night it will be too dark An oba is dethroned by simple majority in some other places But it is a ritual process for the ooni Your ancestor allocated land to Oyo Same for the Ado Also for the Oninana And for the Onipopo He gave land to Oniwanran He used one hand to carry the crown and Oranmiyan’s staff He used one hand to carry the war mantle Just before Esinminrin River he complained of being tired of the load The crown is not just any load that anyone can carry, I would have assisted you That black ikori with a handle The man with a slim sword to kill the slave A long sword to kill even the freeborn Sheathe the sword reserved for the stubborn child A camel looks like a horse But does not have a bridle The bridle makes the horse beautiful The king of Oyo tries to be like us He made the city boundary with no structure The structure dignifies an oba The king of Ondo tries to be like us He holds festivals with no rituals Which makes a king stand out The way you attack a small cow No one dares attack a strong bull like that Try it and be battered Ajalaye is a big man The elephant stands frightfully The Eagle frightens other birds

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From the first three songs, certain personal qualities of the kings, their roots or lineages, and their personal achievements as well as that of their forebears are made known. Their roots, for instance, were traced to the Otutu, Akui, and Olodo royal compounds, respectively. The link of Ooni Sijuwade with the Olodo subruling house of Ogboru as against Olubuse has been disputed;26 however, the import of the links is to prove that they are genuine descendants from the Oduduwa lineage, given that all the ruling houses belong to the same Oduduwa dynasty. Division into ruling and subruling houses is a product of the growth of the main royal dynasty and was only meant to facilitate equity and rancor-free emergence of candidates for the throne. The three kings were also portrayed as being wealthy or prosperous, though in different forms, while the use to which they put their wealth and influence also differed. Whereas Ooni Ademiluyi used his own wealth for his own pleasure, acquiring horses and marrying beautiful wives, Ooni Aderemi’s reign was characterized by improvement in the welfare and well-being of his subjects. The particular reference to the university established at Ile-Ife could be the height of such efforts at making life prosperous for the people. Importantly, the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University), established in 1962, and its ancillary Teaching Hospital remain the most significant establishments in Ile-Ife to date.27 The reference to Ooni Aderemi as Ayinla is instructive because all oonis are referred to and called by that name. It would appear that the enterprising qualities of Ooni Aderemi that helped him excel in various business ventures have to do with his background as someone involved in petty trade or hawking perhaps on behalf of his mother. His success in business and his kinglike disposition eventually earned him the nickname Atobatele (“a wealthy kinglike prince before ascending the throne”).28 The prosperity of Ooni Sijuwade linked to his lineage or the larger Olubuse dynasty has to do with the allocation of land to strangers, particularly the Oyo immigrants. However, neither Ooni Sijuwade, Olubuse II, nor his grandfather Adelekan Olubuse I (1894–1910) settled the migrants in Ife— rather Ooni Ademiluyi Ajagun (1910–30) admitted them from the 1920s on the basis of such extraneous consideration as swelling the population of Ife in order to raise more tax revenue so that he could receive a better salary from the colonial government. In addition, he used the Modakeke politics as a weapon against his opponents.29 Modakeke, one of the communities that emerged following the collapse of the Old Oyo Empire and the southward movements of refugees and warriors, was populated by Oyo migrants who were initially scattered in different quarters of Ife and mostly worked as farm laborers in

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Ife villages. The inability to disband the settlement and relocate it as stipulated by the 1886 treaty made the Modakeke issue important in Yoruba history. Although the inhabitants either voluntarily or involuntarily evacuated the settlement during the reign of Ooni Adelekan Olubuse I, its establishment as a settlement outside the walls of Ife in 1847 and the readmission of the settlers was mostly motivated by extraneous considerations, such as the desire by Ooni Adegunle Abewela to gain the upper hand over his troublesome chiefs in the 1840s and the desire for better recognition and remuneration by Ooni Ademiluyi Ajagun in the early twentieth century. 30 But the portrayal of the Olubuse dynasty as warlike is pertinent. This is attested to by their cognomen or praise-name: Olubuse Eri Ogun Ebiti ki mo piri mole O sunmo s’ile sun’mo s’eni O kun ‘mo l’osun kun ‘mo lata31 Olubuse, living evidence of a victorious war The man who handles the children in a frightful way Deals with the children anyhow Plays and fights with the children It is in this context that the rebellion that was quelled during the era of Ooni Adelekan Olubuse, the father of the incumbent, referred to in the song can be understood. The Oyo settlers in Modakeke were dispersed from Ife with the breaking up of the Modakeke section of Ife city in 1909 during the reign of Ooni Adelekan Olubuse I by a combination of mystical power and warlike disposition.32 This event became a historical point of reference, but more important was the ascension of Ooni Sijuwade Olubuse II, during whose reign the festering but silent hostility between the returnee Oyo migrants in Modakeke and their Ife hosts reached a crisis point that eventually degenerated into open conflict, worsening the preexisting tensions. Song IV underscores the prerogative of the ooni to allocate land and other available resources for people’s use, whether they are natives or migrants. It also informs other popular sayings like Oba lo n’ile (that is, “The king is the owner of land”) and Oba lo ba l’ori ohun gbogbo (“The king reigns over and dominates all things obviously without any challenge”). This kingly prerogative derives from the ooni’s position and status as direct descendants of Oduduwa, who as the first ooni apportioned land to his descendants because of the growing population of Ife, which

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eventually resulted in or informed the dispersal of his descendants. There is also the affirmation of the link of the rulers with the deities, in which case they were seen as being children or one of the numerous deities in IleIfe believed to be either 201 or 401 in number.33 Similarly, their portrayal as powerful kings relying on charms and other powerful weapons and who could not be compared with any other kings is apt. So also is the reference to the heaviness of the crown, whose weight could not be shared with any other person.34 The song also attests to the enormous powers of successive oonis. The high esteem in which the monarchs are held informed the widespread notion that no one could confront or antagonize them. Traditions and contemporary stories are replete with instances of those who ran into serious problems as a result of their confrontations with the oonis. The cases of Balogun Ojuade and Ooni Ademiluyi and of Adetunji Aderotimi Layade and Ooni Aderemi are pertinent. Balogun Ojuade, the leader of the group opposed to the return of Modakeke to Ife on the grounds that it would intensify conflicts between the two groups, was murdered in his house in 1913.35 There was a widespread rumor that Ooni Ademiluyi was responsible for the murder of the highly influential chief. In the second case, Aderotimi Layade, the secretary-general of Egbe Omo Ibile Ife, a sociocultural association of Ife indigenes, engaged Ooni Aderemi in a serious face-off over the Erunkoja Oba Fund dedicated to the reconstruction of the palace walls. The Egbe Omo Ibile Ife was dissatisfied that funds were still being collected by Ooni Aderemi nine years after the completion of the walls. The monarch responded to the allegation of fraud by leading a Native Court session that sentenced eight leaders of the Egbe Omo Ibile Ife, including Aderotimi Layade, to eight years in prison.

Songs Composed by Women in Praise of the Oonis Song I Oruko meta l’oba mo mi je Oruko meta l’oba mo mi je Oba gbeminiyi Oba gbemiga Ibi me mo ro’kan l’oba gbe mi de, Oba rere The king has three names The king has three names The king brings honor to me The king brings promotion to me

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The good king has lifted me to a height I never thought of This song is adapted from a related one: Oruko meta l’omo mo mi je Oruko meta l’omo mo mi je Omo gbeminiyi Omo gbemiga Ibi me mo ro’kan l’omo gbe mi de, omo rere36 A child has three names A child has three names A child brings honor to me A child brings promotion to me A good child has lifted me to a height I never thought of The following is a corollary: Oruko meta l’oba mo mi je Oruko meta l’oba mo mi je Oba mi se titi Oba mi s’omi Ikan o ku o sibe Oba maase Oba rere37 The king has three names The king has three names The king builds roads The king provides water The king will do the remaining one Tradition recounts the story of a very poor woman who never thought of attaining any high social status. Later in life, her only son turned her fortunes around. The adaptation of the song therefore relates to the expectations of the people about the ability of Ooni Sijuwade to turn the fortunes of the city around. The import of these two songs is that the ooni is an agent of development. Given the centrality of the place of the ooni in the history of Ile-Ife, and by extension the whole of Yorubaland, it is a widely held notion that no meaningful development can take place in the community without the initiative, input, or support of the ooni. Although this song was adapted specifically for Ooni Sijuwade Olubuse II, it applies to past oonis, particularly those whose reigns witnessed tremendous

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developments or noticeable changes hitherto unrealized. The ooni as an agent or catalyst for change is a notion that is ingrained in the psyche of Ife indigenes. The association of the reigns of oonis with specific developments has further popularized this notion to such an extent that socioeconomic developments facilitated by both colonial and modern governments were ascribed to respective oonis during whose reigns such developments took place. Although they could facilitate development like the provision of infrastructures, they did not play any direct role in the provision of public amenities. However, there were few occasions where they were directly responsible for erecting monumental infrastructure—for example, Oduduwa College, built in 1932 during the reign of Ooni Aderemi. The association of the oonis with development has prompted the saying Ife l’oba sugbon ko ni eniyan, meaning “Ife has kings but not individuals of substance.” Song II Oba l’o n’ile Oba l’o n’ile ile Oba Okan l’o l’oogun Ol’ Egigun Oba l’o l’ode Eriwo Oba l’o n’ile38 The oba owns the land The land belongs to the king Okan owns Ogun And Egigun The oba owns Ode Eriwo The oba owns the land Song III Alara Oba Alara Ajero Oba Ajero Orangun Oba Ile-Ila Sijuwade l’oba Ile-Ife Mo m’ori b’ale f’Ooni o Olori aye39 Alara, the king of Ara Ajero, the king of Ijero Orangun, the king of Ila

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Sijuwade, the king of Ile-Ife I prostrate for the ooni Head of the universe Song IV Oye o y’Ekun are Eh eh eh O ye o y’ekun are Adesoji gbe faasiti d’efe O ye o yekun are Eh eh eh O ye o y’Ekun are40 You are worthy like the tiger Eh eh eh You are worthy like the tiger Adesoji brought a university to Ife You are worthy like the tiger Eh eh eh You are worthy like the tiger Song V Olua mi d’Ekun Gbogbo Eran l’Ekun je Sijuwade d’Ekun Gbogbo Eran l’Ekun je41 My lord becomes a tiger The tiger eats every animal Sijuwade becomes a tiger The tiger eats every animal The second and the third songs reinforce the earlier point made about the prerogative of the oonis to allocate land. However, the emphasis here is the limitlessness of their power not only over land but also over the resources contained in or related to it. The power of the king over land probably encouraged Ooni Adesoji Aderemi to appropriate the entire forest reserve belonging to the people of Ife. This development, as I shall soon discuss in detail, put him in a conflict situation with the youths and the political elites of the period. The recent effort by Ooni Olubuse to open up the forest reserve for his subjects’ use is consonant with this kingly

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prerogative. The third song more explicitly shows that every king in Yorubaland has a domain, popularly referred to as a kingdom, over which he reigns. These kingdoms are called by different names. The reference to the ooni as the “head of the universe” is related to the strongly held belief still prevalent in Ile-Ife and other parts of Yorubaland that Ile-Ife is the cradle of the Yoruba race. Comparison of the ooni with a tiger affirms the ability of the oonis to turn into wild animals. So also is their ability to “consume”—a symbolic representation of their prowess to deal with any enemy, no matter how powerful. But more important, the establishment of Obafemi Awolowo University during the reign of Ooni Adesoji Aderemi is considered as one of the powers of the king to initiate progressive development in the town. Ooni Sijuwade is referenced in the song because he succeeded Ooni Adesoji Aderemi.

Songs Composed by Subjects Opposed to the Kings Although it is a taboo according to tradition to abuse the ooni, whoever the occupant of the throne is, there were instances in the past when circumstances and certain developments led to the composition of songs purposely targeted at the office and person of the ooni. Where their misfortunes were not celebrated, their conduct and persons were denigrated or ridiculed. An example is the song reportedly sung by the emese (royal messengers) following the demise of Ooni Ademiluyi Ajagun: Ika ku o oyoyo Ika mo ku o oyoyo42 The wicked is dead, good riddance The wicked is dead, good riddance Tradition relates that this verse was sung by the royal messengers in a small procession between the palace and some parts of Ile-Ife to express strong dislike for the reign of Ooni Ademiluyi and their elation at his death. A number of factors could explain this song and what informed its composition. These included the role allegedly played by Ooni Ademiluyi in accepting the Oyo migrants back to Ife. Related also was the mysterious murder of Balogun Ojuade for opposing the return of the migrants. In addition, Ooni Ademiluyi, according to tradition, was credited with the mystical power of changing to a wild animal like a tiger or lion usually in the night to attack smaller animals and humans as well. While this story serves to corroborate the belief about the ability of the ooni to be

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transformed into or possessed by the spirits of wild animals, it nonetheless made Ooni Ademiluyi unpopular. His death was therefore seen as good news and was celebrated in a way by those who perhaps had seen him at close quarters. The reign of Ooni Aderemi, like that of Ooni Ademiluyi, also witnessed the composition of songs to condemn or criticize the expropriation of Ife Forest Reserve, which supposedly belonged to the Ife community, by the monarch. The songs are as follows: I Oko Aderawo e mo le d’ijongbon Oko Aderawo e mo le d’ijongbon43 The Aderawo Forest cannot become a problem The Aderawo Forest cannot become a problem II Baba yen, baba yen yoo lo ni Baba yen, baba yen yoo lo ni O fe’ju keke mo’gbo Onigbo Tie ti je nbe That old man must abdicate Furtively claiming the other person’s forest Something that belongs not to him III Aderemi k’owo bo yara ofo O ba a f’owo wa’ le bi obo Fani Kayode o ni k’omo e le o lowo44 Aderemi dipped his hand into an empty room You may dig the ground with your fingers like a monkey Fani-Kayode will not release his followers unto you IV Onigbo gba ‘gbo Fani-Kayode gb’oko baba re lowo Ooni Onigbo gba ‘gbo45

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The owner of the forest has taken his possession Fani-Kayode had taken his father’s possession from the ooni The owner of the forest has taken his possession V Oba l’o l’Aderawo Odo l’o l’abata Odide l’o n’Iwo Oba l’o l’Aderawo Ooni l’o n’ile O fi de Ibadan O fi de Iloko Ooni l’o n’ile46 The king owns Aderawo The king owns Aderawo The stream owns sand puddles The odide owns Iwo town The king owns Aderawo The ooni owns the land Up to Ibadan Up to Iloko The ooni owns the land The first song was more of a reflection on the controversy surrounding the Ife Forest Reserve, but it is indicative of the awareness generated by the issue. The second and third songs are expressive of strong opposition of the anti-Aderemi forces to the ooni’s continued holding of the reserve. The crisis of Ife Forest Reserve and the involvement of the Aderawo Timber Trading Company became an open controversy in 1955 and dominated Ife politics until 1970, while its ripple effect was felt for some years thereafter. The Ife Native Forest Reserve Order of 1941 created a reserve for Ife. In January 1954, the Ife District Native Authority, which Ooni Aderemi chaired, granted the Aderawo Timber Trading Company, jointly owned by himself and Lasisi Awosiyan, a retired forest guard, a concession covering fifty-three square miles for the felling of timber and building of roads within the reserve for a period of twenty-five years. After a few years of exploitation, the company transferred its concession to the African Timber and Plywood Company, which already had a concession for exploitation of five other areas of the reserve. But this agreement was known only to the inner circle of the old council until a

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popularly elected council replaced the Ife District Native Authority in 1955.47 Attempts to transfer responsibility for the control of the reserve from the divisional council presided over by Ooni Aderemi, to that headed by Remi Fani-Kayode, who as the chairman of the finance committee first detected the existence of the concession, was resisted not only by Aderemi but also by the Action Group, a predominantly Yoruba party, for clear political reasons. Whereas the defeat of Fani-Kayode in the House of Representatives election on December 12, 1959, and the dissolution of the Ife councils produced a temporary truce, the crisis had succeeded in pitching some radical Ife youths against the monarch. But the growth in the influence of the NCNC (National Council of Nigerian Citizens), following the decamping of the youths, led to an intensification of the crisis and resulted in a series of court cases that eventually terminated at the Privy Council. Although the Privy Council ruled in favor of Ooni Aderemi, the emergence of Fani-Kayode as deputy premier with an additional ministerial power of local government in 1963 led to a renewed call for the release of the Ife Forest Reserve by Ooni Aderemi or his abdication—a development that informed the second song.48 But the third song denigrated the person, power, and influence of Ooni Aderemi, particularly following the struggle for community support in which he proved unable to muster the backing necessary to break up the opposition camp. The fourth song was specifically composed to celebrate the victory of Fani-Kayode’s group at the Supreme Court in a case instituted by seven members of the Ife community who were led by Bale Adedire Ogunleye. Not only was the deed of concession set aside, but the Aderawo Company was ordered to refund within ninety days into the Ife Divisional Council Treasury all profits derived from the concession from January 6, 1954, to the date of the judgment: January 28, 1963. In addition, the company was restrained from future exploitation of the reserve and made to bear the total court costs.49 Ooni Aderemi, by an agreement of August 11, 1964, surrendered the forest reserve and in addition paid £13,000 pounds to the council treasury following the intervention by other Yoruba obas and the regional premier, Chief S. L. Akintola. Aderemi also conferred on Fani-Kayode the chieftaincy title of Balogun of Ife as a show of rapprochement; but with the military takeover of January 15, 1966, and the suspension of political party activities, the control of local government affairs was left practically in the hands of traditional rulers. This development led to the return of control of all revenues from the forest reserve to Aderemi. Similarly, those

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who took Ooni Aderemi to court were punished by being made to defray the cost awarded to the Aderawo Company by the Privy Council in 1964. Further agitation by relatively younger elements in Ife under the banner of Ife Divisional People’s Action Committee led to the final surrender of all the legal estates, rights, and interests of the Ife Forest Reserve to the Ife community by the Aderawo Timber Trading Company on September 19, 1970. 50 The fifth song is a reaction to the anti-Aderemi songs by his loyalists. Beyond serving as a defense of Ooni Aderemi’s actions and conduct, it was also a reminder of the power and prerogative of successive oonis to allocate or use land as they saw fit, a prerogative that modernity and change had undermined.

Conclusion Monarchy remains an important institution in Yorubaland as in some other parts of Nigeria and Africa. Its travails and challenges during different political dispensations as well as its transformation or its responses to change are clear indications of its dynamism, on the one hand, and the quality of leadership possessed by the occupants of the throne, on the other. Given that history as a mirror reflects the society, songs as a veritable source of history remain one major means through which the achievements and failures, conduct and misconduct, as well as personality traits of individuals are perceived, documented, evaluated, and transmitted. Songs as a historical source become more important when they are related to important personalities like monarchs, warriors, and accomplished individuals. Whereas songs have considerably aided the process of historical reconstruction of the reigns of monarchs in Ile-Ife, their usefulness is still limited given their orality as sources, with all the attendant shortcomings. But their continued relevance explains why they will continue to be composed and sung not only to praise but also to criticize. Their adaptation and reinvention attests to their versatility.

Notes 1 Ralph Dunstan, A Cyclopaedic Dictionary of Music (New York: Da Capo Press, 1973), 485. 2 Akin Euba, “The Interrelationship of Music and Poetry in Yoruba Tradition,” in Yoruba Oral Tradition, ed. Wande Abimbola (Ibadan: University Press, 1975), 471–87. 3 Ibid., 476. 4 Ibid.

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I. O. Delano, “Proverbs, Songs, and Poems,” in Sources of Yoruba History, ed. S. O. Biobaku (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), 77–86. 6 Bassey W. Andah, “The Nature of African Oral Tradition,” Tarikh 9 (1987): 9– 22. 7 Ibid., 13. 8 Delano, “Proverbs, Songs, and Poems.” 9 Charles O. Aluede and Abu A. Braimah, “Edo Folksong as Sources of Historical Reconstruction,” Studies of Tribes and Tribals 3, no. 2 (2005):123–28. 10 See the following works by Bolanle Awe: “Notes on Oriki and Warfare in Yorubaland,” in Yoruba Oral Tradition, 22–34; “Some Ibadan Place-names: A Source of Historical Evidence,” African Notes 6, no. 2 (1967): 85–93; and “Praise Poems as Historical Data: The Example of the Yoruba Oriki,” Africa 44, no. 4 (October 1974): 331–49. 11 Euba, “Interrelationship of Music and Poetry,” 483–84. 12 Karin Barber, I Could Speak till Tomorrow: Oriki Women and the Past in a Yoruba Town (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1991). 13 D. C. Conrad, “Islam in the Oral Traditions of Mali: Bilali and Surakata,” Journal of African History 26, no. 1 (1985): 33–49. 14 A. I. Asiwaju, “Efe Poetry as a Source for Western Yoruba History,” in Yoruba Oral Tradition, 190–202. 15 Delano, “Proverbs, Songs, and Poems.” 16 Ruth Finnegan, Oral Literature in Africa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970). 17 Delano, “Proverbs, Songs, and Poems.” 18 K. Y. Daaku, “History in the Oral Traditions of the Akan,” Journal of the Folklore Institute 8, nos. 2–3 (1971): 114–26. 19 Ibid.; Delano, “Proverbs, Songs, and Poems.” 20 A. O. Vidal, “The Role and Function of Music at Yoruba Festivals,” in African Musicology: Current Trends, ed. J. Cogdell DjeDje and W. G. Carter (Los Angeles: African Studies Center, UCLA, 1989); O. M. A. Daramola, “The Osirigi Drum and Ife Royalty,” Odu: Journal of West African Studies, n.s., no. 42 (August– December 2001): 143–48. 21 Daramola, “Osirigi Drum and Ife Royalty,” 144. 22 Interview with Mr. Taofeek Owojori, Osirigi musician, 43, Idu Ita-Osun, Ile-Ife, Osun State, December 26, 2010. 23 Ibid. 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid. 26 O. T. Hassan, “Historical Evolution, Structure, and Administration of Indigenous Quarters in Ile-Ife” (MPhil thesis, Obafemi Awolowo University, 2010), 25–48. 27 Biodun Adediran and Olufemi Omosini, “Conception Planning and Birth,” in Great Ife: A History of Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife (1962–1987), ed. Olufemi Omosini and Biodun Adediran (Ile-Ife: Obafemi Awolowo University Press, 1989), 3–18. 28 Ibid.

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29 Oyeleye Oyediran, “Modakeke in Ife: Historical Background to an Aspect of Contemporary Ife Politics,” Odu: Journal of West African Studies, n.s., no. 10 (1974): 63–78. 30 J. F. Ade Ajayi, “19th Century Wars and Yoruba Ethnicity,” in War and Peace in Yorubaland, 1793–1893, ed. Adeagbo Akinjogbin (Ibadan: Heinemann Educational Books, 1998), 9–19. 31 Interview with Madam Kosenatu Adebimpe Arogundade, 67, Plot 12 Block 4, Aladanla Layout, Ile-Ife, Osun State, December 20, 2010. 32 Ibid. 33 A. A. Adediran and S. O. Arifalo, “The Religious Festivals of Ife,” in The Cradle, 305–17. 34 See Isola Olomola, “Ife before Oduduwa,” in The Cradle, 56–57. 35 Oyediran, “Modakeke in Ife,” 66–67. 36 Interview with Madam Kosenatu Adebimpe Arogundade. 37 Interview with Madam Abeni Awogbade, Ake Compound, Ile-Ife, Osun State. December 18, 2010. 38 Interview with Chief Durojaiye Aremu, Adamo musician, 74, Iyekere, Ile-Ife, Osun State, December 15, 2010. 39 Interview with Chief Buraimoh Adewole, Adamo musician, 78, Latale Compound, Ile-Ife, Osun State, December 15, 2010. 40 Interview with Taofeek Owojori. 41 Ibid. 42 Interview with Madam Kosenatu Adebimpe Arogundade. 43 Interview with Chief S. A. Olayera, Adamo musician, Oduduwa College Road, Ile-Ife, Osun State, December 2010. 44 Ibid. 45 Ibid., 83. 46 Ibid. 47 Akinrinade and Akinjogbin, “Aderemi Era,” 202–6. 48 Ibid. 49 Ibid. 50 Ibid.

CHAPTER SIX THE EMICS AND ETICS: INSIDER/OUTSIDER BINARY IN NIGERIA’S MIGRATION HISTORY ISAAC OLAWALE ALBERT

One of the best ways to bring insiders’ perspectives to a research project is to have them work as team members, as co-inquirers with outside researchers throughout the research process.1

This chapter applies emic/etic binary concept to the study of Nigerian migration history as widely adopted in other disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. The emic/etic concept was first popularized in the field of linguistics by Kenneth Pike.2 Pike’s position is that researchers should acknowledge that the agent’s world differs substantially from that of the scientific observer. He thus argued that human behavior or institutions can be viewed from the etic and emic perspectives. He identifies the etic as a researcher’s (an outsider) analysis, understanding, and presentation of other’s behavior and institutions; and emic as the insider’s point of view. Commenting on the academic significance of this approach, Jean Bartunek and Meryl Louis observe that: members and others who are in some way close to the setting will usually have concerns and questions about the setting, and perspectives on it, that are different from those of the outside researchers. . . . In large part, these differences between insiders and outsiders stem from differences in their interests in gaining knowledge about the setting. Insiders need to understand their setting in order to be effective as actors and action takers. Relative to outsider researchers, insiders typically see the setting under study as a source of greater and more enduring consequences in terms of economic security, social affiliation, self-esteem, challenge and fulfillment. In contrast, outsiders typically experience the setting under study as would visitors; they are there temporarily, usually for a known period of time.3

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Scholars have posed several questions about the scope and veritability of the etic/emic concept: What are the limits of emic interpretation and etic analysis? Which should have priority between etics and emics? Can emics dispense with etics?4 Whereas Pike popularized the use of the emic/etic concept in linguistics to analyze human language, Marvin Harris (an anthropologist) is popularly believed to have introduced the concept to the field of anthropology in the context of material culturalism in the 1960s.5 The adoption of the concept in other disciplines (most especially psychology, cross-cultural research, ethnography, sociology, medicine, education, psychiatry, translation, management, archaeology, folklore, economics, religion, English) took place in the 1970s and 1980s. Social scientists now use the concept, usually as a heuristic devic. The annotated bibliography and statistical inferences compiled by Stewart Hussey and Thomas Headland, respectively, on the use of the concept in various disciplines show clearly that historians have not been part of the emic/etic debate.6 With a view to updating the conclusions reached by Hussey and Headland, I searched the Internet (Google and Questa most particularly) for published articles on emic/etic concept in African historiography. What I got was very insignificant. This is shocking given the significance of the emic/etic debate to contemporary fieldwork methodology and data interpretation. The paucity of published work on emic/etic in the field of history does not suggest that historians are totally unfamiliar with the need to differentiate between insiders and outsiders in their data collection and interpretation. They probably do not consider it as an integral component of their craft. Historians need to identify creative ways of applying the emic/etic concept to their work. They need the concept for producing “grand narratives” that overcome the problems sometimes faced in describing past events in terms “strange” to the people they study. The emic/etic approach is capable of deepening the interpretation and analysis of others’ perception, skills, and institutions. This was probably the thinking of Edward Said when he observed that: “Human history is made up of human beings, and since the struggle for control over territory is part of that history, so too is the struggle over historical and social meaning. The task for the critical scholar is not to separate one struggle from the other, but to connect them.”7 Historians can learn directly from related disciplines such as anthropology and archaeology that have adopted the concept to improve their field methods. Trying to map a role for the concept in archaeology, for example, Dean Arnold observed in the 1970s that the emic/etic debate could serve as a tool for reconstructing cognitive systems of a people from physical contrasts in their artifacts.

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Nigerian migration history, which is of immediate concern to us in this chapter, incorporates several issues in cross-cultural studies: multiculturalism, race, ethnicity, transborder violence, and the like. Incidentally, many of the issues raised by the scholars involved in the emic/etic debate center around same themes in cross-cultural studies. It is within this framework that psychology has now turned out to be the leading discipline in the use of the concept. So “homely” is the concept in the field of psychology that Walter Lonner observed in the 1970s that “currently, the suffixes (of phonetics and phonemics) have nested themselves (so) securely in the jargon of cross-cultural psychology (that they) are hardly ever associated with linguistics by members of the cross-cultural guild.”

The Challenges and Stages of Insider/Outsider Research Approach The application of the insider/outsider distinction to migration historiography does not suggest that the insider and the researcher should work toward equality in research efforts. The outsider remains the researcher. Commenting on this, Bartunek and Louis observed that what is important “is that decisions about the relative participation of the parties at various stages in the project reflect a process of mutual consultation and discussion. In this way, both insiders and outsiders have influence throughout the study.”8 The following are the basic characteristics of such a research effort in migration history: 1. The researcher must be ready and willing to accommodate the perspectives of the insider in the project; 2. The insider/outsider identities are defined from the perspective that the two differ in their physical and psychological relationship to the research setting and the questions to be examined; 3. The insider must be willing to contribute to the work beyond serving exclusively as sources of data. They must participate in the research design, data collection, analysis as well as crafting the stories presented about the setting; and 4. Both the insider and outsider must agree on the content of the story to be told about the setting under study. Borrowing from the social science perspectives provided by Bartunek and Louis, the following insider/outsider research stages can be recommended to migration historians:

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Stage 1 – Composition of the I/O research: In this case, the outsider chooses the insiders to work with. What to take into consideration here includes knowledge of and access to the research setting, ability to work with outsiders, experience in working in the setting, or readiness to be trained to work in the setting. Insiders can also choose outsiders to do the research for them, taking into consideration the aforementioned qualities and skills. Stage 2 – Developing working relationship: The two must establish the frameworks for relationship. The research goals and execution strategies should address mutual interests. Guidelines for building this kind of relationship must take into consideration that people have differences in language, meanings, and consequences associated with events, actions, and communications. Stage 3 – Formulating research questions: Both insiders and outsiders should have a say in the framing of the research questions. This could take various forms. Each of them could develop questions that are later integrated. The questions must be representative of the insider and outsider understanding of the setting. Stage 4 – Designing data collection processes: The data collection methods—interview, observation of present-day situations as a way of perceiving the past, questionnaire schedule, study of existing literature, ethnographic and archival materials—ought to involve both the insider and outsider. Even when the questions are designed by the outsider, the insider who is more familiar with the setting might be in a better position to identify the best ways to ask them. In some cases, the insider and outsider have different expertise that could bear on the work. For example, the insider could make the respondents tell an unstructured story, while the outsider develop more structured questions linked to the stories. Stage 5 – Collecting data: Insiders and outsiders to work together in collecting the data. They can work separately on different issue. The insider alone could collect the data and turn it over to the outsider. The outsider alone can collect the data. Stage 6 – Analyzing and interpreting data: This could be jointly done. It is also possible for the outsider to do the analysis for the insider to critique and reinterpret. In this case, the outsider’s understanding of the events is better enriched. The insider could also do the analysis for the outsider to update in the context of existing knowledge and theories. Stage 7 – Report writing: This depends on the purpose of the research. Where possible and necessary, both the insider and outsider produce the draft report. Where joint authorship is not needed, as in the case of a doctoral thesis, the outsider could provide the first draft for the insider to

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critique. In the final analysis, the report reflects the perspectives of both of them.

Personal Encounter with the Insider/Outsider Binary My first major personal encounter with the insider/outsider debate in migration history was when I was conducting research for my doctoral dissertation between 1992 and 1994. I worked on the topic “Migrant Settlements in Urban Nigeria: A Comparison of the Sabongaris in Kano and Ibadan, Nigeria, 1893–1991.” The work focuses on gaining a historical understanding of the phenomenon of residential segregation of the Southern Nigerian immigrants in Kano, an Islamic Hausa-Fulani community, and the Northern migrants in Ibadan, a Yoruba town. I was not conscious of the insider/outsider debate in extant literature at this time but encountered it in the field and later formally learned about it from identity conflict studies. The first methodological problem I encountered included how to get penetrating access to information from Yoruba migrants in Kano, on the one hand, and Hausa migrants in Ibadan, on the other. In the process of engaging this problem, I realized that the insider/outsider binary is not as clearly delineated as is ordinarily assumed. As a Yoruba Christian, I initially perceived myself as an insider among the Yoruba and predominantly Christian residents of Sabongari quarter where the “strangers” in the city of Kano as a result of a residential segregation policy started by the British around 1911 domiciled.9 My knowledge of Hausa language notwithstanding, I knew that my Yoruba and Christian identities were going to be a problem for me within the ancient part of Kano city known as Birni. Yet, I had to interview people in this part of the city. I equally perceived myself to be an outsider among the Hausa settlers in Ibadan, despite the fact that I speak Hausa fluently and had an earlier fieldwork experience among the people. My initial assumptions started to collapse as soon as the fieldworks started. Happy that I took so much interest in their affairs (by studying Hausa migrations in Ibadan for my MA), members of the Hausa community in the city decided to accord me the status of an insider. They granted me long sessions of interviews and shared meals as well as their confidential records with me. On one particular occasion, the Sarkin Hausawa (head of the Hausa community) called a full meeting of his cabinet and elders in the community where he formally asked everybody to grant me as many interviews as I wanted. But this had a flipside. At a stage in my work, my informants started to treat me as an “authority” on the history of the Hausa migrants in Ibadan. Instead of answering my

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questions, my informants treated me as the interviewee on many occasions. In other words, they started to treat me as the insider and themselves as the outsider. I broke the trend by organizing an elaborate focus group discussion where more “gray issues” were addressed. In all, the interviewees painted pictures of their experience in Ibadan configured by ethnicity (but surprisingly not religiosity as we saw in Kano). In Kano, religion was the problem. Unlike Ibadan, the Igbo people in Kano who I had expected to give me the treatment of an insider being a Christian southerner treated me as an outsider and directed me to “fellow Yoruba people” to answer some of the questions I asked them on the interethnic and religious conflicts in the Sabongari. When they cared to answer my questions, they carefully selected their words and told me more than I thought they know. I later discovered this problem to be a continuation of an ongoing “cold war” between the Yoruba and Igbo people living in the Sabongari over past violent conflicts in the city.10 The Igbo considered their Yoruba neighbors to be selfish, while the Yoruba, on the other hand, considered the Igbo to be too greedy. In explaining the selfishness of the Yoruba immigrants in Kano, the Igbo argued that whenever the Sabongari settlement was attacked by the Hausa, it was they (the Igbo) alone who come out to defend the entire community.11 The Yoruba either endeared themselves to the “Islamic fundamentalists” that prosecuted the “wars” by claiming to be fellow Muslims or hide. In the process, only the Igbo bear the brunt of the attacks.12 In their own defense, the Yoruba claimed that all the Southern Nigerian migrants in Kano came to the city individually under different circumstances and not as a bloc. They perceived the regular violence that occurred between them and their host communities as one of the hazards of “leaving one’s homeland.” Those who choose to remain in such a society must look for means of protecting themselves, first individually and second collectively. It was within this framework that one of my interviewees observed that: “If the Islamic fundamentalists that attack us claim to be out to deal with non-Muslims, what is wrong in saving my life by telling them I am a Muslim when Islam is my faith?” Some of the Yoruba respondents also argued that many of the problems they faced in the hands of their host communities derive from the way the Igbo dominate the economic life of the city of Kano. He observed further: “When the Hausa attack us here, one of the things they seek to do is to reduce the economic ascendancy of the Igbo in this town. The Igbo people know this. They can therefore not claim to have been fighting for everybody but simply out to prevent their investments from being pillaged

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by rioters. They make rational choices as we do. None should blame the other.”13 The same issue was raised among the Hausa-Fulani respondents that I interviewed in Kano. I wanted them to shed light on why the Igbo migrants suffered most during the ethnic and religious violence in Kano. They referred to three factors: (i) almost all Igbo-speaking people in Kano are Christians; (ii) they reject Islam and openly carry out rituals when burying their loved ones; (iii) they dominate the economy of Kano—“you cannot buy any major manufactured item in Kano without going through them.”14 On why the Yoruba were not as targeted as the Igbo during violence, two reasons were provided: (i) the Yoruba community in Kano is Muslim-dominated; (ii) “the Yoruba are cowards; they run away immediately any problem starts; it is only the Igbo who come out to show they can fight.” An Hausa-Fulani respondent provided two ethnic slurs to support his position on the cowardly nature of the Yoruba man: “It was a dry season. The weather was very hot. People either slept outside their houses or slept indoor with the windows thrown ajar. A Yoruba man on top of his wife suddenly noticed a thief trying to break into his room. In fright, he begged him (the thief)—Mr. thief, I am done. Please this is my wife, come and entertain yourself as I was doing on your arrival.”15 In other words, a Yoruba man can offer his wife to a criminal in lieu of an attack. The second story tried to create a similar impression. It has to do with a Yoruba man who in the colonial era went out at night. Some cloths had been spread on the fence to the building the previous night to dry up. As the Yoruba man came out, he saw in the cloths the image of a man trying to jump into the compound from top of the fence. In fright, the Yoruba man was quoted to have said in a floppy Hausa language: “Mr. Bricklayer of the night, can I help to pass molding blocks to you on the fence that you are reconstructing?” Even among the Yoruba of Kano, I had some problems. The Oba Yoruba (Head of the Yoruba community) was going through a serious legitimacy crisis when I was doing my fieldwork. Most of my informants refused to say what the problem was. The only one that ventured an explanation accused the Oba of “being too poor to lead us.”16 The narratives of migration and problems of interregional migrations provided by respondents were therefore sometimes configured to fit into the particular side of the Yoruba leadership divide they stood in Kano as of that time. A section of the community was even averse to my doing any other oral interviews beyond the ones done with them. As far as they were concerned, what they told me constituted all that needed to be known.17 When they noticed that I was still “nosing” around the community, they

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called on some members of their camp whom I encountered later to treat me not only as an “outsider” but more importantly a political risk.18 Another experience is worth sharing here as well. I was doing a book project that required me to talk to women in diverse social and cultural identities in Kano. I also had to interview some Hausa women prostitutes (Karuwai) in the city. I started with the wrong assumption that I could do the interviews through Hausa women. The first set of trials failed. The prostitutes would not talk to fellow Hausa women about their experiences. I became frustrated at a stage and was advised to engage the services of some Hausa “homosexuals,” known in the local parlance as Yan daudu, who help the prostitutes to procure men. These “insiders” (the Yan daudu, rather than the Hausa women I initially relied on) helped me to open the doors needed for my data collection.19 It is important to note that migrants sometimes constitute plural identities in some countries and communities. How do we engage such “insiders” in a research project? How do we ensure that all the necessary voices are captured in the study? In my work, I had to employ insiders in different contexts (not as co-researchers but as research assistants). I also tried as much as possible to integrate and reconcile the different perspectives that we came across in the field. This was by no means an easy task.20 The historian must adopt a dialogical approach in reconciling diverse and sometimes conflicting data. The historian must begin his or her analysis based on the assumption that all informants have something to contribute to a critical understanding of the past. The initial task is to grasp each person or group’s position in the strongest possible terms. How Gunter Dietz tried to achieve this objective in his study of the transnational communities and subnational identity politics in Andalusia, Spain, in the 1990s is worth sharing here as a way of concluding this paper. He observed that his research process and data analysis were based on a three-dimensional model “aimed at avoiding one-sided and thus biased accounts, which in contemporary ethnography frequently opt for either emic or etic research perspectives.”21 To overcome this reductionist tendency, he gathered his data on intercultural relations in multicultural settings by distinguishing the following three axes: (a) a semantic dimension, which focuses on the diverse actors involved and which extensively uses semi-structured ethnographic interviews to compile these actors’ discourses and to analyze them from a deliberately emic point of view; (b) a pragmatic dimension, which focuses on the interaction patterns involving the different participating actors, which relies on participant

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observation for gathering data on the actors’ practice and which applies a thoroughly etic perspective of analysis; (c) and a syntactic dimension, which focuses on the institutional structures of the movements and organizations studied and which through “intercultural workshops” and other participative tools tries to elucidate the “epistemological windows” that result from incongruencies that necessarily arise inside hierarchies, institutions, and organizations between the emic, actor-oriented and the etic, interaction-centered perspectives of analysis.22

Conclusion It is often argued that historians have a lot to learn from social science epistemology and methodology. The actual nature of the task is often not clearly stated. This chapter tries to shed light on some of the issues by showing how the insider/outsider debate in the social sciences can help historians of Nigerian migration to improve on their data collection and interpretation methods. The main plank of the insider/outsider debate is that researchers are outsiders to the groups they study.23 They must acknowledge it and must take this into consideration in their data collection strategies. Historians must constantly have it at the back of their minds that doing migration history research on unsympathetic populations can lead to conflicts between the researcher and participant’s construction of the meaning of migration experience. Historians can justify their accounts with reference to the attention given to the understanding of the insider/outsider perspectives of the issues that have been postulated as an alternative to traditional positivistic rationalism.

Notes 1

Jean M. Bartunek and Meryl Reis Louis, Insider/Outsider Team Research (London and New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1999), 4. 2 Kenneth L. Pike, Language in Relation to a Unified Theory of the Structure of Human Behaviour, 2nd ed. (The Hague: Mouton, 1967). 3 Bartunek and Louis, Insider/Outsider Team, 4. 4 Nick Jardine, “Etics and Emics (Not to Mention Anemics and Emetics) in the History of the Sciences,” History 11 (2004): 261. 5 Marvin Harris, The Nature of Cultural Things (New York: Random House, 1964); and The Rise of Anthropological Theory (New York: Harper and Row, 1968). 6 Stewart C. Hussey, An Annotated Bibliography of Publications Using Emic/Etic Concept (text file in a database format on diskette for IBM and compatibles;

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Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics, 1989); and see Thomas N. Headland, “Introduction: A Dialogue between Kenneth Pike and Marvin Harris on Emics and Etics,” in Emics and Etics: The Insider/Outsider Debate, ed. Thomas N. Headland, Kenneth L. Pike, and Marvin Harris (London: Sage Publications, 1990). 7 Edward Said, Orientalism (London: Penguin Books, 2003), 331–32. 8 Bartunek and Louis, Insider/Outsider Team, 4. 9 I. O. Albert, “Ethnic Residential Segregation in Kano, Nigeria, and Its Antecedents,” African Study Monographs 17, no. 2 (October 1996): 27–42. 10 I. O. Albert, “Violence in Metropolitan Kano: A Historical Perspective,” in Urban Violence in Africa: Pilot Studies, ed. I. O. Albert (Ibadan: IFRA, 1994); “Kano: Religion and Violence,” in Youth, Street Culture, and Urban Violence in Africa, ed. George Herault and Pius Adesanmi (Ibadan: IFRA/Books Builders, 1997). 11 Full reference of all the following notes (11–17) can be found in I. O. Albert, Inter-Ethnic Relations in a Nigerian City: The Historical Perspective of the Hausa-Igbo Conflict in Kano, 1953–1991 (Ibadan: IFRA, 1993). 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid. 16 Ibid. 17 Ibid. 18 Ibid. 19 See Isaac Olawale Albert, Women and Urban Violence in Kano, Nigeria (Ibadan: Spectrum Books, 1996). 20 Albert, Inter-Ethnic Relations. 21 Gunter Dietz, Frontier Hybridization or Culture Clash? Trans-national Migrant Communities and Sub-national Identity Politics in Andalusia, Spain (Working Paper 35, Center for Comparative Immigration Studies, University of California, San Diego, February 2001), http://www.ccis-ucsd.org/PUBLICATIONS/wrkg35.PDF. 22 Ibid. 23 Bartunek and Louis, Insider/outsider Team Research, 23.

CHAPTER SEVEN OF HISTORICAL VISIBILITY AND EPISTEMOLOGY: HISTORY AND HISTORIANS OF NIGERIAN WOMEN SAHEED ADERINTO

The institutionalization of African women’s history did not take place until the late 1980s. Prior to this period, historical research on African women was neglected to the extent that the UNESCO General History of Africa, one of the most comprehensive volumes on African history, treats women’s history ephemerally.1 This skewed emphasis is equally true of the Groundwork of Nigerian History, a project commissioned by the Historical Society of Nigeria to provide a comprehensive and accessible knowledge of the history of the Nigerian peoples.2 The inadequate scholarly attention given to women’s history should not be taken to mean that historians interested in this aspect of African history were not making a case for its integration into the mainstream of Africa’s past. Rather, it seems that mainstream African scholarship—dominated largely by men— was just uncritical or unconvinced when it came to accepting the claims, including the sources and methodology, of the emergent historians of women. But in spite of its difficult beginning, women’s history is now one of the most versatile and dynamic areas of Africanist scholarship. Not only do departments in the various universities in and outside Africa now offer courses on African women, but research centers, journals, and professional associations aimed at specifically promoting women’s scholarship now exist as well.3 Academic conferences and symposia on women and gender in Africa are regularly held in various parts of the world.4 Proceedings of such conferences and professional meetings are occasionally published in book form—thereby adding to the growing body of literature on women’s

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and gender studies.5 Collaboration between Europe- and North America– based scholars and their African counterparts has increased tremendously in spite of the protracted ideological ferment, which cuts across race, gender and sexuality, cross-cultural conceptualization of feminism, and the historical geography of women’s experiences.6 This chapter investigates the ideological origin of Nigerian women’s and gender history by examining the pioneering scholarship of Bolanle Awe, LaRay Denzer, and Nina Mba.7 Awe, a Nigerian, retired from the University of Ibadan’s Institute of African Studies in 1998 after an impressive teaching and research career covering more than three decades.8 Mba, originally from Australia, married a Nigerian and moved to the country in 1967. She died in 2002 at the age of 58.9 Denzer, a United States citizen, was a faculty member at the University of Ibadan from 1982 until 1998. She also served as the chair of the university’s History Department between 1995 and 1997. The trio received their doctorates from Oxford University, the University of Ibadan, and the University of Birmingham, respectively. These pioneering historians vigorously pursued their agenda of creating visibility for women’s history by adopting the following approaches: (1) delving into the biographies of prominent heroines;10 (2) examining the changing political and economic status of women since the precolonial period;11 (3) exhuming women’s contributions to nationalism and decolonization;12 (4) raising pertinent historiographical questions about women and their place in history;13 and (5) establishing a research and resource center for women’s studies, organizing conferences, and collaborating with scholars on a worldwide basis.14 Although historians of Nigeria have carried out critical historiographical work on “mainstream” historical scholarship, they have largely neglected that of women’s and gender history. The purpose of this historiographical chapter on women and gender in Nigeria is not only to make accessible the stores of knowledge produced by historians, but to map the changing character of the relationship between knowledge and power. Moreover, there is inherent value in appreciating the influence that pioneering scholars have had on younger generations of thinkers, and in highlighting the ongoing dialogue between “new” and “old” historiographies. I posit that one of the best means of coming to terms with the evolution of academic scholarship and the varied approaches to studying peoples and societies is by engaging how prominent scholars have grappled with the wondrous task of creating academic visibility for historically marginalized groups.

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Women’s history developed as an ideology aimed at correcting the misrepresentation of the place of women in history. The pioneers of this field were deeply interested in showing that, like men, women also contributed to the great civilizations of Africa that are persistently referenced as indicators of Africans’ glorious past. Thus, if mainstream Nigerian history developed in the late 1950s as an ideological weapon of the nationalist struggle and as a defensive reaction against Eurocentric representations of Africans as peoples without history who had to be placed under colonialism, women’s history emerged as a counterdiscourse against the marginalization of women in the history of state and empire building. In addition, it sought to challenge both the widespread notion that all women of the world share the same experience of patriarchal exploitation and the attempt to study African women strictly through the lens of Western historical formation.15 Hence, Mba’s, Awe’s, and Denzer’s careers were shaped by external and internal challenges. While the idea of the homogenization of women’s experience of patriarchy came from Western feminists who were and are largely uncritical of local peculiarities and variations such as the effects of colonial rule on the role and status of women served as an external impetus, the sidelining of women’s historical significance is largely an internal African epistemological challenge.16 In other words, mainstream African history was largely responsible for repressing African women’s history. Men dominated the academic study of Nigeria because they had a head start in education and career opportunities that were not readily accessible to women. It is not out of order to identify the late start for women’s history as one of the legacies of colonialism. I examine the works of these scholars as a single piece because they all share a similar ideological orientation toward women’s history. Although their work focuses primarily on southern Nigeria, their cardinal arguments —that local experience and knowledge rather than Western conceptions should influence data analysis and discourses—make their scholarship of Africa-wide importance. They belong to the same generation of thinkers who created credibility for women’s and gender studies as a viable subfield of Nigerian history. Even when they tackle similar subjects such as the place of colonialism in African history, they provide highly complementary conclusions that enhance our understanding of women’s historical experience.

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Challenging the Homogenization of Women’s Experiences: Methodological Issues in Nigerian Women’s History One of the most dominant discourses on women and gender in Africa is the refusal by Africanists (mostly African-born) to accept the homogenization of women’s experience by Western feminists. Although this paradigm has influenced well-received and award-winning works like Oyeronke Oyewumi’s Invention of Women and other notable publications, Awe is probably the first Nigerian academic to openly identify the imposition of this Western feminist discourse.17 In her reflection on the 1977 Conference on Women and Development held at Wellesley College, Awe criticizes the assumption that women—irrespective of culture, time, and place—are subjected to the same form of patriarchal exploitation. She admonishes scholars to examine the actual experiences of women from a local perspective instead of a sort of general/global outlook. African and Western societies, Awe reminds us, did not share the same historical experience. Historical differences like Western imperialism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and neocolonialism have far-reaching consequences for the role and status of African women—making their experience different from their Western counterparts.18 According to Awe: Questions at the Wellesley conference —for example, women’s relationship to power, or male and female perceptions of women—would have been more meaningful in a historical perspective. Answers to such questions would both give an insight into the virtually total neglect of women’s contributions by the powers that be during the colonial period and provide a useful framework for the examination of women in the transformation of former colonies into developed nations. Such a historical approach will also give leads into research needs and priorities.19

Her solution to the misrepresentation of African women’s experience is that Africa-based scholars who understand the cultural landscape should lead the scholarly investigation into various aspects of women’s history. In her words: While the observation of the foreign researchers can be useful, the time has now come when emphasis should be on indigenous scholars; by virtue of their permanent membership in their society they are likely to have a better insight into its problems and the areas that need closest attention. Because of the present position of women in developing countries, research on women must also be policy oriented, but initiated by local scholars who can best indicate priorities.20

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She also calls for the establishment of research facilities for collecting data, outlining research priorities, getting research grants, initiating projects, and brainstorming for the government on women-centered issues. It is important to state that Awe was writing at a time when African women’s history had yet to receive any significant scholarly attention either by Western scholars or by their African counterparts. Her affirmation is like a manifesto or theoretical framework that can guide the interpretation of African women’s history. She was also aware of how Western academic perspectives dominated African discourses until the birth of modern African historiography in the late 1950s. Similar to Dike’s defensive argument that African history should be studied from the perspectives of Africans, Awe advocated that African women’s history should be studied from the perspective of African women, with due recognition of significant historical developments and forces like colonialism that shaped their experience in diverse ways and produced contradictory outcomes. Awe’s vision for greater participation of Africa-based scholars in investigating African history was not realized, even with the establishment of the Women’s Research and Documentation Center, a research outfit she helped establish in 1987.21 North American and European feminists armed with Western ideas of gender relations and patriarchy continue to monopolize discourses on gender and sexuality in Africa. What factors account for this Western monopoly of knowledge? In an editorial in the 1991 Signs special issue on African women, Awe, as lead editor, and her collaborating editors (Susan Geiger, Nina Mba, Marjorie Mbilinyi, Ruth Meena, and Margaret Strobel) lamented the impact of economic recession and poor access to academic facilities on production of knowledge. The editorial comments that because of inadequate access to teaching and research materials in Africa, scholars based in Europe and North America dominate the discourse on African women: “Prevailing socio-economic conditions in African universities are not conducive to the production of knowledge. Scholars situated in the impoverished or beleaguered institutions lack the time or resources (libraries are in shambles; there are few current books or journals) to produce scholarly work. With greater access to resources, US and European scholars publish more about Africans than do African scholars.”22 The editorial comments dovetail with the problems Awe encountered while trying to get her Nigerian Women in Historical Perspective published. She recalls that “publishers after publishers declined to take on the manuscript because they decided that the time was not ripe for the publication of a book on Nigerian women and that such a book would not

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have much market value.”23 Although Nigeria’s economic strangulations negatively impacted the university system, a few dedicated scholars like Awe, Mba, and Denzer continued to weather the storm, producing wellresearched histories that place Nigerian women at the center of their own experience. By the 1990s US- and Europe-based African scholars joined their Nigerian counterparts in rendering African-centered narratives about the changing status of women. Detailed historical analyses of gender and power focusing on the importance of language and cultural geography in molding the experience of women across societies and time took the center stage. In a nutshell, instead of searching for general assumptions about women and agency that had roots outside the African academic and cultural landscape, scholars have dug deep into the history of specific ethnicities and the place of women within them. It is important to note that scholars, regardless of their location or base, are aware of and have been sensitive to the need to tell women’s stories endogenously.24 An anthology published in 2007 addresses the politics of location, identity, and production of knowledge about gender and women in Africa. Instead of treading the vociferous route of polarized identity politics that has characterized discourse on gender in Africa, the editors and contributors believe that collaboration between scholars of gender studies living and working in Africa and their North American and European counterparts is crucial for promoting healthy academic interaction and flow of information.25 Identity and location of production of knowledge should represent not a sort of binary opposition, but friends and partners in progress. The lineup of contributors and editors, which includes scholars from West, southern, and East Africa as well as from Europe and North America, validates this lofty mission.26 Aside from the idea of homogenizing women’s experience, the absence or presence of homosexuality in Africa has become another subject involving tension between Western and African-born scholars. While the former occasionally relied on fragmentary and often incoherent information about same-sex affairs to legitimize the presence in Africa of homosexuality—a practice some Africans persistently construct as “alien,” “nonnormative,” “un-African,” “Western import”—the latter generally believe that certain observable traits of affection between people of the same sex should not be eroticized.27 For example, in the preface to her widely read book Male Daughters, Female Husbands, Ifi Amadiume categorically states that woman-to-woman marriage among the Nnobi Igbo should not be confused for lesbianism, arguing that support and cooperation between women “do not imply lesbian sexual practice.”28 Amadiume directs her argument at black American lesbians who adopt

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“prejudiced interpretations of African situations to justify their choices of sexual alternatives which have their roots and meanings in the West.”29

Women and Historical Visibility: The Precolonial, Colonial, and Postindependence Eras As we have seen, modern African history emerged as men’s history and as a defensive response to the Eurocentric propaganda that Africans required external political agency because of their inability to govern themselves. Commenting on male-centered interpretations of African history, Awe opines, “While building up their own picture of African society, as distinct from western notions of that society, African historians seemed to have inherited a certain degree of Western bias, in that they have perpetuated in their writings the masculine-centered view of history; in explaining human experience in Africa, they have accepted the male experience as the norm while African women in consequence became anomalies.”30 In the preface to her Nigerian Women Mobilized, the first book-length academic monograph on Nigerian women’s history, Mba shares Awe’s views about the “imprisonment” of women’s experience in mainstream Nigerian history: “In the literature on twentieth-century Nigerian political history by both historians and political scientists, the role of women has generally been relegated to the footnotes.”31 Even when women’s activities are mentioned, they are reduced to the impact of colonial policies on them, not on women’s perception and understanding of their own power or influence in the society. It was obvious that a new history that would recognize the contributions of women to African experience had to be written. Writing women into history was necessary to unveil the extent of power they wielded and the roles they played in the development of their various societies in the precolonial and colonial periods. It is therefore a project targeted at creating visibility and voice for a group whose experiences were sidelined in mainstream historical knowledge. This project was anchored on Awe, Mba, and Denzer’s shared conviction that women contributed greatly to all aspects of state and empire formation: from waging wars and making peace to providing the economic foundation and resources that enhanced political stability and the flourishing of cultures, values, and ideas. It was thus a counternarrative that seeks to integrate women into the conventional narrative of heroic exploits, which tended to be considered a male preserve. Location helped Mba, Awe, and Denzer to adequately rise to this occasion: their base in Nigeria—one of the birthplaces of modern African historiography—provided the intellectual

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arena to showcase their ideas, test their assumptions, and create the necessary academic awareness for professional study of women’s issues and gender. At the outset, the availability of credible and accessible written sources—especially on the precolonial period—posed a major challenge to these pioneering scholars. They scaled this hurdle by relying on oral tradition, a genre of sources that helped create legitimacy for modern African history from the late 1950s. Oral traditions supplemented the scanty references to women’s activities recorded in the traveling journals of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century missionaries, merchants, and explorers. Public history—sometimes condensed into music, proverbs, and popular sayings—of towns, lineages, and communities is replete with the stories of women’s heroism and agency. Some praise names provide a much needed window into the nature of women’s social and political existence before the imposition of British colonialism.32 Although colonial archival materials contain information about women during the colonial period, they are often incoherent and biased. Colonial narratives generally treated women as objects, not subjects, of history. Indeed, women’s activities only received serious documentation when they challenged the exploitative character of imperialism or when they posed a danger to the prevailing status quo.33 Colonial bias toward women in the archival documents is not surprising: imperialism was a male-centered project par excellence—created by men and for men.34 The paucity of documentary colonial archival materials on women necessitated the use of another body of sources—namely, life histories. Denzer, Mba, and Awe were able to collect a large body of oral information because when they began to write in the 1970s and 1980s, most of the prominent women politicians and nationalists were still alive.

The Precolonial Era Historians have traditionally used the sociopolitical cum economic situation in precolonial Africa as a yardstick for gauging the impact of colonialism on Nigerians and Africans at large. As one of the eras in African history, the precolonial period is significant for it demonstrates the extent to which societies could manage their own affairs independently and creatively. The invention as well as evolution of core aspects of most African cultures is traceable to this period. Although external contacts dating back centuries impacted certain historical aspects of state formation, historians generally contend that the core components of African civilizations are indigenous to the continent. This defense of the

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originality and indigeneity of civilization to Africa found expression in the counteracting of Eurocentric ideas that pointed to evidence of influences from sophisticated cultures extraneous to the continent.35 In researching the history of the precolonial period, scholars harken back to the political developments that produced influential African men who in turn contributed immensely to the development of their various societies. Although such stories of big men in history tend to be exaggerated, a genre of history that spotlights the brilliance of African leadership served its principal goal of challenging the rhetorical charge of African political systems’ backwardness.36 As significant as this project was, it was imbalanced in that it focused only on elite men in Africa’s historical process. Women did not receive the merit they deserve as empire and state builders, political stabilizers, and cultural forces to be reckoned with. In redressing this jaundiced disposition toward women’s historical agency, Awe, Mba, and Denzer turned to the careers of great women and chieftaincy institutions. Awe’s anthology Nigerian Women in Historical Perspective clearly establishes the immense power women wielded as queens, priestesses, royal wives, princesses, and so on, in precolonial Nigeria.37 They not only led wars of territorial expansion but also ruled over large domains in peacetime.38 The stories of Inkpi of Igala, Moremi of Ile-Ife, and the queen of Duara as narrated by Awe validate the creative ingenuity of women in business, politics, unification, territorial expansion, and defense.39 These women, according to Awe, “participated in the events that brought new dynasties and governments into power. On each occasion, they displayed a tremendous sense of patriotism and sacrificed their most prized possessions; they played the part of the saviours of their societies in preventing disaster and hardship.”40 On Iyalode Efunsetan Aniwura of Ibadan, Awe demonstrates how this powerful woman used her wealth and social influence to help Ibadan, the most militarized state in nineteenth-century Yorubaland, in its numerous military exploits.41 She financed military expeditions and allowed her hundreds of slaves to work for the state. Although her male counterparts in the council of chiefs would later conspire to terminate her obviously increasing influence, Efunsetan, as Awe explicates, epitomizes the indispensable roles women played in the political processes leading to the consolidation of statehood. The impressive exploits of Efunsetan Aniwura, Moremi, and Inkpi are no exception. Drawing from oral traditions and written sources, Denzer demonstrates that between the mid-seventeenth and mid-eighteenth centuries, six women appeared on the list of Ilesa kings, while three princesses became the awujale (king) of Ijebu Ode before 1760. The fifth ewi (king) of Ado Ekiti, who reigned in the sixteenth century, was a

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woman named Yeyenirewu, reputed for her progressive leadership, generosity, and peaceful expansion during the forty-one years of her reign (1511–52).42 The twelfth deji (oba) of Akure was succeeded by his daughter, Eye Aro Obabinrin. Even oral traditions of Ile-Ife, the spiritual home of the Yoruba, recalled that two women were crowned as ooni (king); and in Oyo, a major Yoruba polity, a woman named Orompoto commanded an impressive cavalry that significantly expanded the frontiers of the empire.43 A more detailed cross-cultural evolution of women’s political and economic power in precolonial times is given in Mba’s foundational work, Nigerian Women Mobilized. Unlike Awe and Denzer, who focus on Yoruba women and the elite, Mba gives attention not only to the political power of Yoruba women but also to that of women of other ethnicities in southern Nigeria, such as Igbo, Benin, Itsekiri, Ijo, Kalabari, and Efik. Awe, Mba, and Denzer remind us that it is misleading to conclude that the totality of women’s precolonial past revolved around political leadership, state formation, and empire building. The history of women in precolonial times is incomplete without the experience of “ordinary” women who produced the resources and supplied the labor that kept the leaders in power. Women’s involvement in agriculture, craft making, and long-distance trade not only provided the essential materials that sustained life, but created the necessary balance in societies that practiced a flexible and complementary division of labor and production. A careful reading of the enormous data presented by Mba, Awe, and Denzer reveals that women’s influence in the political, economic, and religious/spiritual spheres varied from culture to culture and was shaped by divergent cultural and physical geographies. Indeed, this counterdiscourse against the homogenization of women establishes that the practices and performance of gender varied across time and space—even within the limited area of southern Nigeria. For instance, Denzer points out that while Igbo women were involved in farm cultivation, their Yoruba counterparts chiefly harvested and marketed farm produce.44 As varied as women’s political and economic roles were in precolonial times, a certain thread runs through their experience. Unlike in Western societies where women were treated as inferior opposite of men, in southern Nigeria, according to Mba, the “women’s world was not subordinate to that of the men, but rather the two worlds were complementary. The political system recognized the separateness of the women’s world by providing that women be represented in the government of the whole society in an institutionalized manner, as well as by granting women autonomy in their own sphere.”45 The cumulative

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importance of research on precolonial women’s history is that it establishes the historical context of the “powerlessness” of women in colonial and postindependence Nigeria. If a majority of Nigerian women were victims of state oppression and did not make economic headway in the colonial and postcolonial eras, it is because colonialism introduced new hierarchical ideas of gender that placed them in subordinate positions.

Women and Historical Visibility: The Colonial Period The incorporation of the Nigerian geographic area into the vortex of colonialism produced far-reaching consequences that cut across social, political, and economic boundaries. The basis of “traditional” order was threatened as imported colonial laws, political institutions, and social structures consumed the preexisting order. Virtually no aspect of African customs and values (including sex and sexuality) was immune to the formidable force of colonialism. Awe, Denzer, and Mba agree that colonial rule represents a paradox, for it had both beneficial as well as destructive consequences for the status of women. In Denzer’s words, “The imposition of colonialism generated complex social interactions—sometimes beneficial, other times diminishing—of women’s roles and status.”46 Mba made a similar comment: “The position of women in southern Nigerian society was both diminishing and enhanced under colonialism.”47 They also believe that women’s power under colonial rule can be evaluated in terms of continuity and change. In other words, the old precolonial order continued (albeit somewhat transformed), while new developments occasioned by the political, legal, and administrative machinery of colonialism enhanced the emergence and consolidation of new patterns of gender relations. The body of work produced about women and gender in colonial Nigeria therefore focuses both on the intended and the unintended consequences of imperial politics, nationalism, women’s resistance to colonial rule, and the contributions of women to decolonization. Although women lost some of the power they wielded in precolonial political structures, they benefited from the colonial government’s legalization of such practices as divorce.48 While traditional customary laws made divorce difficult to seek, colonial laws afforded women the right to get out of unhappy marriages.49 Divorce cases mostly initiated by women increased tremendously, especially in the first three decades of the twentieth century. Divorcées remarried and sought relationships that helped them achieve their life goals.

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Apparent elements of continuity and change complement the contradictory outcomes of colonialism. In the case of the female chieftaincy institution, adaptation to the new imperial status quo varied from culture to culture. It was also shaped by the personality of the women, and the type of relationship they established with the council of chiefs, on the one hand, and the colonial masters (district or resident officers), on the other. In a study of Ibadan politics and society, Denzer examines how the iyalode female chieftaincy institution adapted to unprecedented political changes precipitated by imperialism.50 Although the iyalodes lost their powers to keep slaves and support military exploits, new administrative arrangements transformed their identity and added new roles to preexisting ones. Not only did the female chiefs lead market women in resisting the imposition of a direct income tax by the colonialists, but the British came to depend on them to garner support for wartime policies. As it happened, the iyalodes and other prominent chiefs became indispensable to the colonial matrix that occasionally required women’s support and mobilization for collective gains.51 During the period of decolonization and party politics, the iyalodes’ position according to Denzer was strengthened as they became a major force assisting the realization of politicians’ ambitions. The reconfiguration of the criteria of female elitism is also a feature of colonial transformation. Whereas elite women in precolonial times were wealthy aristocrats and/or members of influential traditional councils, royal families, religious groups, and secret societies, Christianity and colonialism paved the way for the rise of another class of women—those who received Western education.52 Such women became elite by virtue of their acquisition and exposure to Western education and social customs and access to the political infrastructure of colonialism. Although numerically few in number, these women, including Charlotte Olajumoke Obasa and Oyinkan Abayomi, were highly influential. Some of them were direct descendants of Christian converts and ex-slave returnees from Sierra Leone and the Americas who spearheaded the first phase of cultural nationalism in Nigeria during the second half of the nineteenth century.53 As Mba and Denzer demonstrate, they worked for the government as nurses, typists, teachers, and welfare and education officers. They also formed pressure groups such as the Lagos Women’s League, the Nigerian Women’s Party, and the Federation of Nigerian Women’s Associations, which denounced some “uncivilized” customs that obstructed women’s upward mobility.54 Mba shows how the new elites initiated what can be regarded as “the first wave of feminism” in Nigeria. Before the appearance of Mba’s Nigerian Women Mobilized, mainstream African history treated

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nationalism as solely a male story—thus sidelining how women established voluntary associations and pressure groups to demand the improvement of women’s welfare and the removal of the shackles of colonial rule. While male nationalists had one major hurdle—that is, the British male colonial administrators—to contend with, their female counterparts, as shown by Mba, contested both Africans and British chauvinism.55 Women’s political mobilization occasionally defied gentle politicking —exemplified by writing petitions to the government and staging peaceful protests—in demanding better living conditions for women. Women of colonial Nigeria, as in precolonial times, were willing and able to take up arms against the colonialists whenever the situation warranted. Mba’s critical analysis of the famous “Women’s War of 1929”—derogatorily christened by the British colonialists as the “Aba Women’s Riot”— espouses the creative ingenuity of how “ordinary” women battled the government to avoid impending economic stress and register their grievances against the system that threatened their means of livelihood.56 Women, traditionally indexed as weak and submissive, shocked the entire infrastructure of imperialism, not only in Nigeria but throughout Africa. The war, besides compelling the colonialists to abandon the unpopular “Warrant Chief System,” led to serious administrative interest in the history of gender and social relations before the establishment of colonialism. Mba and other historians, including Adiele Afigbo and Judith Van Allen, have argued that the “Women’s War” served as one of the preludes to nationalism and decolonization.57 After critically examining the testimonies given by women at the numerous commissions of inquiry set up after the conflict, Mba concludes the “women’s war was very much a feminist movement in the sense that the women were very conscious of the special role of women, the importance of women to society, and the assertion of their rights as women vis-à-vis the men.”58 The story of colonialism and gendered violence can also be found among the women of present-day western Nigeria. In a book-length biography of Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, the “lioness of Lisabi,” Mba and coauthor Cheryl JohnsonOdim uncover how Abeokuta women waged formidable protests against both the colonial and the traditional authorities. Ransome-Kuti’s Abeokuta Women’s Union (AWU) is “credited with being the primary force behind the abdication of the traditional ruler of the Egba, Alake (King) Ademola II, in January 1949.”59 The above analysis implies that colonialism went beyond the political control of one society by another; it extended as well to the infiltration of ideology, customs, and values that are extraneous to Nigerian society and its established norms. Although most of Awe, Denzer, and Mba’s

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scholarship deals with the political aspects of women’s lives under colonial rule or how they resisted and responded to the colonial state’s policies of marginalization, some of their works examine such aspects of colonial institution as girls’ education, connecting it to the larger imperial practices of molding Nigeria in the British way. In a piece on training in domestic science, Denzer draws on missionary and colonial records to establish the changing perceptions of girlhood education and the idea of domesticity.60 Until the late 1920s, the missionaries were principally responsible for spearheading Western education, to which the colonial government paid lip service. The missionaries established domestic education to prepare girls mainly for roles as wives and mothers in accordance with their broader project of gaining converts. Hence, they basically imported the Victorian idea that women’s place is in the home. According to Denzer, the missionaries’ idea of domesticity did not wholly contravene the Yoruba’s—women were also expected to cook, clean the house, raise the kids, and perform all the main domestic chores.61 However, unlike the middle-class European women who were mainly confined to the private domain, Yoruba women also participated in longand short-distance trade, public politics, and religion. Thus, Yoruba women, as Denzer establishes, played both private and public roles. Denzer unveils how leading educators of the period came to realize the importance of hygiene, orderliness, politeness, comportment, and so on that domestic education offered. If the missionaries felt that domestic training would help raise a new generation of middle-class Christian wives, the colonial state in addition to this saw it as a means of improving the health of the citizenry, especially in the areas of maternal and infant mortality. Implicitly, the focus on domestic science from the midnineteenth century laid the foundation of the marginalization of women in politics. Whereas men were prepared to take up public responsibilities as wage earners and laborers, women were prepared, by missionary and domestic education, mainly for the courtyard. Despite these negative consequences of domestic science, Denzer opines that some women were able to translate skills like dressmaking and needlework into commercial enterprises; the number of seamstresses, most of whom went through missionary and colonial-style domestic science training, grew rapidly from the 1940s through the 1960s in response to the demand of educated women who craved Western-style attire.62 The story of girls’ education is also closely connected with women’s employment in the colonial service. According to Denzer, in a study entitled Women in Government Service in Colonial Nigeria, the limited access to girls’ education before World War II was principally responsible

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for their lack of opportunity in the colonial service. In addition, the curriculum of missionary and early colonial education was tilted toward preparing women for their roles as mothers, not as active participants in the colonial state’s administrative and political affairs, Denzer notes. The Lagos Women’s League and Nigerian Women’s Party put pressure on the colonial government to open up opportunities for girls’ education. They also demanded the recruitment of women into government service, condemned the hiring of white women (mostly wives of European officers) in place of African women, and fought for equal pay for men and women.63 The earliest women employees worked as hostel matrons. Eventually, the Department of Medical Service employed more women than all other government departments combined.

Nigerian Women and Historical Visibility: The Postindependence Period Nigeria’s attainment of self-rule in 1960 heralded new developments, which had far-reaching impacts on the experience of women, the kinds of history written about them, and the methodology deployed. The culture of violent takeover of government in postindependence Nigeria deprived citizens of their democratic rights to elect their leaders, militarized the state, and further worsened the ability of women to mobilize for institutional reforms. In general, the postcolonial African states, managed entirely by elite African men, continued to pay lip service to women’s agency. Hence, the demise of colonialism did not end the marginalization of women in African politics but merely transformed it. Mba sums up the similarity between Nigerian women under colonialism and under self-rule, “Colonial and military states affected women similarly in terms of structures and style of government. Both operated a bureaucratic centralism in which women were either not represented or only marginally so.”64 Awe’s, Denzer’s, and Mba’s works on postcolonial history continue to follow the pattern of unveiling women’s engagement with the state in the areas of political participation, activism, and the birth of scholarly research on women and gender. Mba’s work on women and postcolonial institutions titled “Kaba and Khaki” critically underscores the quest by women to create political agency under military dictatorship.65 The military that seized power from democratically elected male leaders in January 1966 claiming that the country’s extant resources had been poorly managed did not consider women as important political actors. According to Mba, women responded to their political marginalization by forming radical and grassroots-based pressure groups such as the League of

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Women Voters (1978) and Women in Nigeria (1982).66 The appointment of a few women to administrative positions—in response to fervent agitation—did not really translate into the empowerment of the vast majority of women. The stumbling block erected by the military administration coupled with internal divisions within the women’s movement, Mba opines, best explain the inability of women to effectively mobilize for institutional transformation. Military dictatorship (like civilian rule) in postindependence Nigeria was an anomaly—not only because it deprived women of serious political participation and continued some of the practices of the colonial masters, but also because it made influential women the target of state-sponsored violence. No other work appropriately captures the intersection of wealth, power, politics, and state-sponsored assassination than Denzer’s piece on the political circumstances leading to the murders of Alhaja Kudirat Abiola, the wife of Chief M. K. O. Abiola, the presumed winner of the 1993 presidential election; Alhaja Suliat Adedeji, a wealthy Oyo State politician; and Chief Esther Bisoye Tejuoso, the iyalode of Egbaland.67 Although these women belonged to different generations and acquired their wealth in different spheres of the economy, they were all involved in the muck of politics at the national, state, and grassroots levels. According to Denzer, they were involved either in campaigning against the draconian policies of the military leadership and aspiring to become the First Lady (as in the case of Abiola) or attempting to adequately reposition themselves in the politics of their state and community (Tejuoso and Adedeji). Although several critics of the military leaders between 1985 and 1998 were murdered in an extrajudicial manner, the assassinations of Abiola, Adedeji, and Tejuoso in 1996 added a new dimension to political oppression: the public felt that women, as mothers and wives, should not be direct victims of state brutality. Commenting on the paradox of wealth and fame, Denzer opines, “Wealth accumulation and display signifies social independence, but it also entails risk and invites envy. . . . Their political engagement represented a commitment to deploy part of their wealth to actualize their ideas about development and nation building. Tejuoso, Adedeji, and Abiola demonstrated their independence from their male colleagues and showed that they could underwrite their political aspirations through their personal resources.”68 The crisis of development that engulfed Nigeria, like other African states, negatively affected all people regardless of gender. However, economic stagnation seems to have greater impact on women because of their colonially rooted history of economic disempowerment. In a very impressive story of the impact of structural adjustment programs (SAPs)

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and devaluation on Ibadan and Lagos, Denzer unveils the contradictory impact of this controversial economic program on the women’s garment and fashion industry.69 At the outset, SAP brought new opportunities for women seamstresses and tailors who capitalized on the prohibition of imported readymade cloth into Nigeria to launch dressmaking and fashion design businesses. However, during the 1990s, the weakness of Nigeria’s currency (naira) against other world currencies, unemployment, and poverty negatively impacted the garment industry.70 As Denzer notes, tailor-made dresses could not compete with secondhand clothes (locally called okrika, tokunbo, bend-down boutique, and bus corner), which were cheaper and widely available in the major markets. In addition, apprenticeship which supplied much of the labor in the business, and entrepreneurship declined as the cost of setting up a tailoring business increased due to the devaluation of the naira. This is definitely one of Denzer’s most impressive works focusing on “ordinary” women as against the elite.71 Utilizing rare newspapers and hundreds of interviews, Denzer takes a penetrating look into the economy of dressmaking and the fashion industry, situating it within the epileptic character of the Nigerian state. She tells the story of the adaptation of tailors and seamstresses to Nigeria’s fluctuating economy and the internal politics of tailors’ associations that manifested amid the conflict between old and new ideas about “modernizing” the profession.72 But not all of Awe’s, Denzer’s, and Mba’s works focus mainly on women as heroines, agents of social change, or victims of colonial and postcolonial patriarchy. Some focus on women’s contributions to the career of men whose professional and private existence was shaped by postcolonial realities of nation building and neocolonialism. In her essay on Fela Anikulapo Kuti, one of Africa’s most iconic artistes and social critics, Denzer unmasks how his musical career was positively influenced by his mother (Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti), his legal wife (Remilekun Taylor), his mistress (Sandra Izsadore), and dozens of other wives, some of whom were his dancers and staff.73 Indeed, few scholars know how his relationships and contacts with these women of different ethnicities, generations, and ideologies impacted his views about the relationship between the citizen and the state, on the one hand, and the state and the international community, on the other. Furthermore, although academic and popular literature persistently reference women’s contributions to men’s lives, very few scholars critically engage the impacts women have in their various aspects and stages. Having learned about the anticolonialism movement, pan-Africanism, Marxism, and Yoruba spirituality from his mother; and gaining exposure

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to civil rights issues and Black Power through Sandra Izsadore, Fela stormed the musical scene and became one of the most controversial African artistes of all time. As Denzer demonstrates, his dozens of wives not only provided sex, which Fela considered as a major energizing force for his creativity, but also served as links between him and his ancestors. If writing about Fela’s political ideas and public persona is controversial because of his eccentric lifestyle (especially his smoking of Indian hemp on stage), then writing about the women in his life definitely requires even greater caution. Denzer attempts to reconcile some of these contradictions by contextualizing his conduct, which was deemed unacceptable by some highly placed Christian members of the Yoruba elite, within the framework of his critique of poor governance and neocolonialism. As Denzer notes, “Fela’s ideology focused on the primacy of reclaiming and reconstructing African cultural tradition, democracy, equity, personal freedom, and sex.”74 Women were attracted to Fela, not just because of his stardom, but because he provided them with a livelihood and shelter, which the Nigerian state deprived its citizenry of.

Conclusion My primary objective in this chapter is to trace the evolution of scholarly research on Nigerian women and gender by critically engaging the scholarship of Nina Mba, LaRay Denzer, and Bolanle Awe. I argue that historiographical essays on careers of leading or pioneering historians are important to the appraisal of the diverse interpretations given to both well-known and obscure aspects of the human past. Since historians are primarily responsible for retracing the past, critical studies of their academic careers help to map the evolution, trends, and dynamics of branches of history, on the one hand, and the relationship between knowledge and power, on the other. In addition, since knowledge production operates on a continuum, the influence that older historiographies have on newer or emerging ones is important for shedding light into the changing interpretation of a society’s past. Moreover, this chapter corrects an obvious imbalance in historiographical research. While scholars have studied how “mainstream” Nigerian historians tackle various aspects of Nigerian history, little is known about how women’s historians grapple with the challenges of ventilating women’s past. As we have seen, Awe’s, Denzer’s, and Mba’s careers are closely connected to the rise of academic research on Nigerian women. This chapter therefore serves as an entry into the relationship between agency and the production of knowledge. The relatively late start for women’s

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history as a subfield of mainstream Nigerian history is attributable, in part, to the dominance of men in researching the history of the country. The field of academic history in Nigeria is not unlike that in any country of the Western world, which, until the 1980s, translated largely to the history of men and their place in society. Hence from the outset, the task of writing women into Nigerian history—like the writing of Africans into world history—started as a defensive project aimed at exploring the fabulous achievements of women in state formation and empire building. While Dike, Ajayi, Obaro Ikime, and other pioneers of nationalist historiography researched the precolonial history of Nigeria to show the achievements of great men in building and ruling over large expanses of territory and the ability of Africans to rule themselves, Awe, Denzer and Mba have done something similar—researching and bringing into the limelight the careers of powerful women who devoted their entire life’s work to advancing their societies. The highly impressive stories of great queens, queen mothers, female warriors, and chiefs validate the significance of female agency in the history of African civilization. The scholarship of Mba, Awe, and Denzer was purpose driven: they taught and researched various aspects of women’s history because of a shared conviction that African women should be studied in their own right. For them, women’s history must be told through their engagement with the larger society and through the processes and narratives that placed them at the center of their own story. Women must be presented as active, not passive, participants in the making and interpretation of their histories. Denzer’s, Awe’s, and Mba’s contributions to Africanist studies will stand the test of time not only because they were pioneering historians of women but because of their creativity and brilliance, and the credibility of their methodologies, sources, and claims. Although one could argue that they did not venture into certain areas of women’s history, particularly sexuality, and tended to concentrate more on the colonial and postindependence periods, their careers were shaped in part by the sociopolitical atmosphere of the 1980s and 1990s and the politics of the production of knowledge at the time. Access to data also influenced their choice of topics as well as the periods covered. The fact that the Nigerian government’s official documents produced since the late 1950s are as yet unclassified has meant that they and other historians have to wait to study the postindependence era in earnest. This certainly explains why the colonial period is the most studied period of Nigerian history.

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Notes 1

Bolanle Awe, “Writing Women into History: The Nigerian Experience,” in Writing Women’s History: International Perspectives, ed. Karen Offen, Ruth Roach Pierson, and Jane Rendall (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), 211–12; and Paul Tiyambe Zeleza, “Gender Biases in African Historiography,” in African Gender Studies: A Reader, ed. Oyeronke Oyewumi (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 207–32. 2 See Obaro Ikime, ed., Groundwork of Nigerian History (Ibadan: Heinemann Educational Books, 1980). 3 A prominent journal that publishes articles exclusively on African women is Jenda: A Journal of Culture and African Women’s Studies. Articles on African women and gender also appear in such highly rated publications as Journal of Women’s History, Gender & History, and Signs. Research centers include the Women’s Research and Documentation Center, University of Ibadan; and the Institute for Education of Women in Africa and the Diaspora, Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. 4 Examples include the annual Women in Africa and the African Diaspora Conference; the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Conference, University of Texas at Austin, March 2010; the first African Diaspora and Continental Women in Leadership Conference, January 2009; and “Black Women in Africa and the African Diaspora: Identity, Culture, and Politics,” June 2000. 5 See, for instance, Obioma Nnaemeka, ed., Sisterhood, Feminisms, and Power: From Africa to the Diaspora (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1998); and Catherine M. Cole, Takyiwaa Manuh, and Stephan F. Miescher, eds., Africa after Gender? (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007). 6 Nnaemeka, Sisterhood, Feminisms, and Power. 7 Their names are listed in no particular order. 8 See the book edited in her honor: Ifeoma Isiugo-Abanihe et al., eds., Bolanle Awe: Portrait of an Academic and Activist (Ibadan: WORDOC, 1999). As important as this volume is, Awe’s contributions to gender and women’s history do not receive critical attention. 9 Bolanle Awe, “Obituary: Dr. Nina Mba, 24th April 1944–14th January 2002,” Feminist Africa: Intellectual Politics, no. 1 (2002): http://www.feministafrica.org/index.php/dr-nina-mba. 10 See, among others, Bolanle Awe, ed., Nigerian Women in Historical Perspective (Lagos: Sankore Publishers and Bookcraft, 1992); Bolanle Awe, “The Iyalode in the Traditional Yoruba Political System,” in Sexual Stratification: A CrossCultural View, ed. Alice Schlegel (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977), 144–60; Nina Mba, “Olufunmilayo Ransome-Kuti,” in Nigerian Women in Historical Perspective, 135–48; Nina Mba, “Heroines of the Women’s War,” in Nigerian Women in Historical Perspective, 75–88; Cheryl Johnson-Odim and Nina Emma Mba, For Women and the Nation: Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti of Nigeria (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997); LaRay Denzer, Folayegbe M. Akintunde-Ighodalo: A Public Life (Ibadan: Sam Bookman Publishers, 2002);

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LaRay Denzer, “Gender and Decolonization: A Study of Three Women Leaders in West African Public Life,” in Empires and Peoples in African History: Essays in Memory of Michael Crowder, ed. J. D. Y. Peel and J. F. A. Ajayi (London: Longman, 1992), republished in Andrea Cornwall, ed., Readings in Gender in Africa (London/Bloomington: James Currey/Indiana University Press, 2004); and LaRay Denzer, “Women Chiefs in Ibadan Public Life, 1893–1997,” in Indigenous Political Structures and Governance in Nigeria, ed. Olufemi Vaughan (Ibadan: Bookcraft, 2004). 11 LaRay Denzer, “Yoruba Women: A Historiographical Study,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 27, no. 1 (1994): 1–39; LaRay Denzer, “Domestic Science Training in Colonial Yorubaland, Nigeria,” in African Encounters with Domesticity, ed. Karen Tranberg Hansen (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992), 116–39; Nina Mba, Nigerian Women Mobilized: Women’s Political Activity in Southern Nigeria (Berkeley: University of California Press and Institute of International Studies, 1982); Nina Mba, “Kaba and Khaki: Women and the Militarized State in Nigeria,” in Women and the State in Africa, ed. Jane L. Parpart and Kathleen A. Staudt (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1989), 69–90. 12 Mba, Nigerian Women Mobilized; Nina Mba, “Women in Lagos Political History,” in History of the Peoples of Lagos State, ed. Ade Adefuye, Babatunde Agiri, and Jide Oshuntokun (Ikeja, Nigeria: Lantern Books, 1987); and Denzer, Folayegbe M. Akintunde-Ighodalo. 13 Awe, “Writing Women into History,” 211–20; Bolanle Awe et al., “Editorial,” Signs 16, no. 4 (Summer 1991): 645–49; Bolanle Awe, “A Brief Overview of Nigerian Women’s Studies,” in Setting an Agenda for Gender and Women’s Studies in Nigeria, ed. Amina Mama (Zaria, Nigeria: Tamaza, 1996), 3–12; Denzer, “Yoruba Women,” 1–39. 14 Bolanle Awe and Nina Mba, “Women’s Research and Documentation Center (Nigeria),” Signs 16, no. 4 (Summer 1991): 859–64; and Abiola Odejide, “Profile of Women's Research and Documentation Centre, Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan, Nigeria,” Feminist Africa 1 (2002), http://www.feministafrica.org/index.php/profile-of-women-s-research-anddocumentation-centre. 15 Mary Osirim, “Women’s and Gender Studies in English-Speaking Sub-Saharan Africa: A Review of Research in the Social Sciences,” Gender and Society 18, no. 6 (2004): 685–91; Josephine Beoku-Betts and Wairimu Ngaruiya Njambi, “African Feminist Scholars in Women’s Studies: Negotiating Spaces of Dislocation and Transformation in the Study of Women,” Meridian 6, no. 1 (2005): 113–25. 16 For a full discussion of the evolution of Nigerian women’s history, see Toyin Falola and Saheed Aderinto, Nigeria, Nationalism, and Writing History (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2010), 82–96. 17 See, among others, Oyeronke Oyewumi, The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997); Oniawu Ogbomo, When Men and Women Mattered: A History of Gender Relations among the Owan of Nigeria (Rochester, NY: University

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of Rochester Press, 1997); Nwando Achebe, Farmers, Traders, Warriors, and Kings: Female Power and Authority in Northern Igboland, 1900–1960 (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2005); Nwando Achebe, The Female King of Colonial Nigeria: Ahebi Ugbabe (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011); and Gloria Chuku, Igbo Women and Economic Transformation in Southeastern Nigeria (New York: Routledge, 2005). 18 Bolanle Awe, “Reflections on the Conference on Women and Development, Part I,” Signs 3, no. 1 (1977): 314–16. 19 Ibid., 315. 20 Ibid. 21 Odejide, “Profile of Women’s Research.” 22 Awe et al., “Editorial,” 645–49. 23 Bolanle Awe, introduction to Nigerian Women in Historical Perspective, v. 24 Cole, Manuh, and Miescher, Africa after Gender? 25 Saheed Aderinto, review of Africa after Gender?, ed. Catherine M. Cole, Takyiwaa Manuh, and Stephan F. Miescher (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007), in Ethnic and Third World Review of Books 9 (March 2009): 21–22. 26 Ibid. 27 See N. Hoad, African Intimacies: Race, Homosexuality, and Globalization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007); and Stephen O. Murray and Will Roscoe, eds., Boy-Wives and Female Husbands: Studies in African Homosexualities (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998). 28 Ifi Amadiume, Male Daughters, Female Husbands: Gender and Sex in an African Society (London: Zed Books, 1987), 7. 29 Ibid. 30 Awe, “Writing Women into History,” 211. 31 Mba, Nigerian Women Mobilized, viii. 32 See Denzer’s work on iyalode chieftaincy among the Yoruba. 33 Here I have in mind the numerous riots and acts of resistance such as the Women’s War of 1929. See the section on women under colonialism in this chapter. 34 For more on the male-centeredness of imperialism, see Philippa Levine, ed., Gender and Empire (New York: Oxford University Press). 35 Here I have in mind the infamous Hamitic hypothesis. For more on this see Philip S. Zachernuk, “Of Origins and Colonial Order: Southern Nigerian Historians and the ‘Hamitic Hypothesis,’ c. 1870–1970,” Journal of African History 35, no. 3 (1994): 427–55. 36 For a critique of nationalist historiography, see, A. Temu and B. Swai, Historians and Africanist History: A Critique (London: Zed Books, 1981). 37 See Awe, Nigerian Women in Historical Perspective. 38 Bolanle Awe and Omotayo Olutoye, “Women and Warfare in NineteenthCentury Yorubaland: An Introduction,” in War and Peace in Yorubaland, 1793– 1893, ed. Adeagbo Akinjogbin (Ibadan: Heinemann, 1998), 121–30. On Madam Tinubu, another prominent nineteenth-century woman, see Oladipo Yemitan,

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Madame Tinubu: Merchant and King-Maker (Ibadan: Ibadan University Press, 1987). 39 Awe, “Saviours of Their Societies,” 3–9. 40 Ibid. 41 Awe, “Iyalode Efunsetan Aniwura,” 57–71. 42 Denzer, “Yoruba Women,” 8. 43 Ibid. 44 Ibid., 7. For more on Igbo women’s economic activities, see Chuku, Igbo Women. 45 Mba, Nigerian Women Mobilized, 290–91. 46 Denzer, “Yoruba Women,” 36. 47 Mba, Nigerian Women Mobilized, 67. 48 Olatunji Ojo, “More than Farmers’ Wives: Yoruba Women and Cash Crop Production, c. 1920–1957,” in The Transformation of Nigeria: Essays in Honor of Toyin Falola, ed. Adebayo Oyebade (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2002), 383–404. 49 For more on women and divorce under colonial rule, see Judith Byfied, “Women, Marriage, Divorce, and the Emerging Colonial State in Abeokuta (Western Nigeria),” in “Wicked” Women and the Reconfiguration of Gender in Africa, ed. Dorothy L. Hodgson and Sheryl McCurdy (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2001), 27–46. 50 LaRay Denzer, The Iyalode in Ibadan Politics and Society, c.1850–1997 (Ibadan: Sam Bookman Publishers for Humanities Research Centre, 1997); LaRay Denzer, “The Iyalode in Ibadan Politics and Society: A Preliminary Study,” in Ibadan: An Historical, Cultural, and Socio-Economic Study of an African City, ed. G. O. Ogunremi (Lagos: Cargo Press and Oluyole Club, 2000). 51 Denzer, Iyalode in Ibadan Politics and Society. 52 Awe, “The Iyalode in the Traditional Yoruba Political System,” 144–60; and Denzer, Iyalode in Ibadan Politics and Society. On marriage and gender among the educated elite women of Lagos, see Kristin Mann, Marrying Well: Marriage, Status, and Social Change among the Educated Elite in Colonial Lagos (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). 53 For more on this class of Africans see, among others, Jean Herskovits Kopytoff, A Preface to Modern Nigeria: The “Sierra Leonians” in Yoruba, 1830–1890 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1965); J. F. Ade Ajayi, Christian Missions in Nigeria, 1841–1891: Making of the New Elites (London: Longman, 1965); and Patrick Cole, Modern and Traditional Elites in the Politics of Lagos (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). 54 Mba, Nigerian Women Mobilized, 214–33; Johnson-Odim and Mba, For Women and the Nation; Denzer, Folayegbe M. Akintunde-Ighodalo; LaRay Denzer, Women in Government Service in Colonial Nigeria, 1962–1945 (Boston: Boston University, African Studies Center, 1989), 1–21. 55 LaRay Denzer, “Introduction,” African Studies Review 25, nos. 2–3 (1982): 1–4. 56 Mba, Nigerian Women Mobilized, 68–97. 57 Ibid.

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Ibid., 91. Johnson-Odim and Mba, For Women and the Nation, 63. 60 Denzer, “Domestic Science Training,” 119–39. 61 Ibid. 62 Ibid. 63 Denzer, Women in Government Service. 64 Ibid., 17. 65 Mba, “Kaba and Khaki.” 66 Ibid. 67 LaRay Denzer, “When Wealth Kills: The Assassination of Three Yoruba Businesswomen, 1996,” in Nigeria’s Struggle for Democracy and Good Governance, ed. Adigun A. B. Agbaje, Larry Diamond, and Ebere Onwudiwe (Ibadan: Ibadan University Press, 2004), 303–21. 68 Ibid., 320–21. 69 LaRay Denzer, “High Fashion and Fluctuating Fortunes: The Nigerian Garment Industry under Structural Adjustment,” in Money Struggles and City Life: Devaluation in Ibadan and Other Urban Centers in Southern Nigeria, 1986–1996, ed. Jane I. Guyer, LaRay Denzer, and Adigun Agbaje (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2002), 93–114. 70 For a more comprehensive study of the impact of the structural adjustment program on women, see Gloria Emeagwali, ed., Women Pay the Price: Structural Adjustment in Africa and the Caribbean (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1995). 71 Denzer, “High Fashion and Fluctuating Fortunes.” 72 Ibid. 73 LaRay Denzer, “Fela, Women, Wives,” in Fela: From West Africa to West Broadway, ed. Trevor Schoonmaker (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 111– 43. 74 Ibid., 129. 59

PART III: REREADING AND REWRITING COLONIAL NIGERIA

CHAPTER EIGHT “THE OWNER OF THE LAND”: THE BENIN OBAS AND COLONIAL FOREST RESERVATION IN BENIN DIVISION, SOUTHERN NIGERIA PAULINE VON HELLERMANN AND UYILAWA USUANLELE

In 1935, Oba Akenzua II, the king of Benin and sole Native Authority in charge of Benin Division under the colonial government of Nigeria, gave his consent to the Benin Forest Scheme, a system of intense forest management piloted by the divisional forest department. In doing so, he agreed to the reservation of 1,000 square miles of land, even though a substantial part of the division was already reserved. By the end of 1937, there were 2,631 square miles, 64 percent of Benin Division, under reservation, by far the highest percentage of reserved land in southern Nigeria.1 How did such large-scale reservation, which has had significant consequences for the landscape and the people of Edo State to this day, come about? Was reservation enforced by the colonial government, or did Oba Akenzua II, and before him his father, Oba Eweka II, have some choice in the matter? If so, why did they agree to reservation with seeming “alacrity”?2 Forest reservation constituted an integral part of European colonialism in Africa and Asia, and has received much scholarly attention in recent decades. One body of work, which highlights the importance of ideas about environmental conservation and “wilderness” among colonial administrators in Africa, has shown how environmental crisis narratives about deforestation played a key role in justifying colonial interventionism.3 At the same time, forest reservation has been studied as a key arena of colonial territorialization, state making, and resource management.4 Forest reservation generally took place under the terms of “scientific forestry,” a system of forest management originally conceived in eighteenth-century

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Germany and France, then developed in colonial India, and subsequently adopted in other British, French, and German colonies.5 Forest reservation presented one of the most keenly felt experiences of colonial regimes in Africa and Asia and caused many local protests. Forest reserves have therefore also been studied as key sites of resistance against colonial governments, in particular in the South Asian context.6 Somewhat less attention has so far been paid to the actual processes of reserve creation—namely, the negotiations between colonial officers and local authorities. Yet, these negotiations often determined the success of colonial reservation attempts and their effects on local landscapes and people. Moreover, studying these processes provides particular insights into the nature of colonial rule and contributes to current debates about the extent of colonial power, local cooperation in colonial rule, and colonial interest politics. For example, Richard Grove’s study of early attempts at forest reservation in Lagos Colony emphasized the relative weakness of the Forest Department in overcoming local rulers’ resistance to forest reservation;7 meanwhile, Michael Tuck has shown how local rulers were actively involved in forest demarcation processes in Uganda.8 This chapter seeks to provide an examination of the politics of forest reservation in Benin Division. Reservation has had a major impact on the landscape of today’s Edo State and continues to shape current land-use patterns and land politics.9 It is therefore important to understand how such large-scale reservations came about in the first place. At the same time, by closely examining the role of the Benin obas in the reservation process, we explore the nature of indirect rule in the division and the extent and limits of the obas’ powers in the colonial period. On the one hand, we look at the various strategies the colonial forest department employed in order to persuade the oba of Benin—from 1914 to 1933, Eweka II; from 1933 onward, Akenzua II—to agree to forest reservation, and to ensure that both obas had little choice but also strong incentives to agree to reservation. The latter included the promise to remove unpopular forestry restrictions outside reserves and to put forest reserves under the Native Administration. With these strategies, the colonial government exploited the relative political weakness of the obas, who in turn used colonial support to strengthen their own authority—a pattern of collaboration that emerged throughout colonial Africa.10 Moreover, in the course of reservation negotiations colonial officers repeatedly used quite disingenuous methods—repeated delays, hidden loopholes, unfulfilled promises—that considerably helped to advance their aims. In this respect, forest reservation provides important insights into the ways in which the colonial state negotiated with local rulers.

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On the other hand, we review the role the obas themselves played in forest reservation, arguing that each had his own, strategic reasons for supporting reservation. It promised better access to timber revenues but also offered new ways of controlling land. Repeated redrawing of administrative borders created competing claims over land between the Bini and other groups. At the same time, the spread of cash crops brought with it individual forms of land use competing with older, communal forms of ownership and also threatening the oba’s control over land. In this context, we argue that reservation, itself a radical departure in landmanagement practices, presented to both obas a way to assert their authority over land—to become, much more literally than before, “the owner of the land.” The chapter traces how these two factors—colonial strategies and the obas’ own strategic interests—combined to result in such large-scale reservation by 1935. We consider the relative importance of each of these, in order to establish to what extent the obas were forced to give their consent to forest reservation and to what extent they willingly cooperated. In this respect, the continuities but also the changes in Eweka II’s and Akenzua II’s interactions with the colonial government are highlighted. We then go on to examine the wider implications of the 1935 Benin Forest Scheme and its immediate aftermath. Large-scale forest reservation caused much local protest and was increasingly contested by cash crop producers and the Agriculture Department. Not long after the vast extension of reservation in 1935, the first “dereservation” began. In Benin Division, reserve land played a key role in the oba’s land strategies, as well as in local contestations over land, between farmers and forest officers, between local people and chiefs, and between the Forest and Agriculture Departments. Much has been written about colonial land politics in Africa, the contentious nature of “customary land tenure,” and increasing land conflicts;11 however, the key role that forest reservation played in these processes has so far been underappreciated. We will begin with a brief introduction to forest reservation in the early twentieth century, before looking in more detail at reservation under Oba Eweka II and Oba Akenzua II, respectively, and the aftermath of Akenzua’s consent to the Benin Forest Scheme in 1935. We will conclude by discussing the overall picture of colonial politics that emerges from these events.

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The Forest Department and Forest Reservation before the Restoration of the Monarchy, 1897–1914 By the late 1890s, the Benin kingdom was one of the last parts of today’s southern Nigeria not under British control. Once a significant regional power with a flourishing capital city, at the end of the nineteenth century the kingdom had been in decline for many decades.12 Warfare and migration had depopulated the area, resulting in the growth of comparatively large forest tracts.13 Closely guarded by Oba Ovoramwen and difficult to access, rumors were rife about its fabled rich rubber and mahogany forests, which motivated its eventual invasion and conquest by British forces in 1897.14 The Benin kingdom was declared part of the Niger Coast Protectorate, and Oba Ovoramwen and a number of his followers were sent into exile in Calabar. In his stead, the then Commissioner Ralph Moor created a new Native Council, including many chiefs of previously little authority. As soon as Benin City had been captured and the kingdom subjugated, European logging firms and rubber tappers from Lagos Colony began moving into the Benin area.15 This was the time of the rubber boom of the late nineteenth century, and tropical mahogany, too, was in demand. High Commissioner Moor was eager to develop the economic potential of the Niger Coast Protectorate and to create revenue for the colonial government. At the same time, aware of the destruction of much of the rubber forests around Lagos, he was anxious to prevent a similar overexploitation of both rubber and timber in the protectorate.16 Moor initiated the setting up of a forest department in 1899.17 In 1903, H. N. Thompson was appointed as director of forestry. With twelve years of experience in Burma, where the most developed form of scientific forestry in the British Empire was practiced, he was to set up a similar management system in the Southern Nigeria Protectorate.18 His first task was the creation of forest reserves. The main tools of scientific forestry were so-called working plans that coordinated logging activities and scientific regeneration methods. The drawing up of such working plans required complete knowledge of and control over the forest estate, which made the creation of forest reserves essential. In order to justify large-scale reservation, colonial foresters also claimed that reservation was the only meaningful way to conserve forests, and to protect them from destruction through shifting cultivation. Like many other foresters in colonial Africa and Asia, Thompson and his colleagues repeatedly drew attention to the “thousands of square miles of forestcovered land […] denuded annually.”19 They stressed the urgent need for

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reservation: “The rapid extension of reserves is the only way in which this menace can be held in check, and in this case it is a race between the conservative activities of the Forest Department and the destructive activities of the shifting cultivator.”20 However urgent their creation was deemed to be for forest protection and management, reserves presented certain challenges to the Forest Department. In theory, the former Benin kingdom had the status of a conquered territory, which meant that the British Crown had ultimate control over its land.21 But with the exception of Crown land assigned for urban development projects, in practice the colonial government did not insist on this control and did not use it as the legal basis for reservation.22 In contrast to northern Nigeria, in southern Nigeria the overall policy was to respect and uphold “customary” land tenure, and local authorities were recognized as the “owners of the land.”23 Their consent was therefore necessary for the creation of reserves. It was important to the colonial government to follow such procedures so that reservation would not appear as wholesale land expropriation. This was partly to avoid criticism at home;24 for the most part, however, it was a means to prevent popular protest and uprisings within the protectorate. The need for a veneer of legality and local consent made reservation rather slow to begin with, and by 1907, only a provisional game reserve, the Gilli-Gilli Game Reserve, had been created in the whole of the then Central Province. After several unsuccessful attempts, it was the Forest Ordinance of 1908 that provided the necessary legal framework for forest reservation. This made provisions that local communities had to be notified and their consent sought before any land was declared a reserve, and that the rights and privileges of the communities over their lands and forests had to be respected.25 These rights and privileges referred to hunting and fishing rights only, not farming. On the whole, reserves were to be under the control of the government, or the Forest Department, but managed on behalf of local communities, who were still recognized as the official “owners.” Under the 1908 ordinance, the first proper forest reserves were created in the Central Province, all within Benin District, which became, in 1914, Benin Division: Ologbo Reserve (77.7 sq. mi.) in 1911, Okomu Reserve (300 sq. mi.), and Jamieson (later Sapoba) Reserve (196 sq. mi.) in 1912 (see map 1). These were among the areas identified by Thompson in early reconnaissance trips as suitable for reservation because they contained valuable forest tracts.26 However, there is otherwise little documentation about the circumstances of the creation of these early reserves. In the absence of the oba, the “owners of the land” with whom agreements were

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reached most likely were the paramount chiefs in charge of the territory in which the reserve was proposed. These paramount chiefs may have been motivated to agree to reservation because they were entitled to royalties accruing from timber felled in areas under their charge; timber royalties presented a lucrative source of income to paramount chiefs.27

Map 8.1: Reservation in Benin District before 1914.

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There is also no evidence of what local people thought of forest reserves at this time, but they were quite alien to indigenous ideas about forests and land-management practices.28 On the one hand, as in other parts of West Africa, there were strong spiritual associations with different environments—sharp distinctions were made between villages, places where people lived that were spiritually marked by the planting of an ikhimwin (Newbouldia laevis) foundation tree (inyator), and the bush (oha) or forest (egbo) outside villages. It was, for example, a taboo for a couple to have sex in the bush, which would pollute the land.29 Forests, especially high forests far away from villages, were believed to be inhabited by various powerful spirit beings (erinmwin egbo and oso) and dwarfish spirits (eseeku), while the Iroko trees were the supposed lair of witches’ (azen) covens. It was necessary to fortify oneself spiritually before venturing into the forest—hence only powerful hunters, priests, or native doctors entered. The forest was also viewed as the abode of powerful ancestors who turned themselves into bodies of water (streams, rivers, and lakes), hills, or depressions, places that became shrines with sacred groves near villages. During Eken (the fifth day of the week) no one visited the forest because that day was reserved for the spiritual beings to utilize the forest and violation could visit disaster on the person or community.30 In addition to these beliefs, the forest was also protected by the oba and was under the administration of the Asuen titleholder, who controlled the exploitation of the forest, particularly by liaising with strangers that sought to utilize some of its resources. On the other hand, Edo farming practices presented a symbiosis of forest and farm that was quite the opposite of the division European foresters tried to create through forest reservation. People had a few kitchen farms close to villages, but yam farms were farther away, in the higher forest. Farmers chose a suitable farm area by looking at the vegetation and smelling and tasting the soil. Men then cut the bush but left large trees that were difficult to cut, small trees that could be used as yam poles, and the highly useful oil palms. Iroko could only be cut by the Owina ne Igbesamwan, the woodworkers guild working for the oba.31 Farms were then burned and planted with yam by men, and plantain, maize, okra, cocoyam, melon, beans, pumpkin, and pepper in between by women. After one or two years of farming, farms were abandoned, and a new farm cleared elsewhere, while old farms were left to lie fallow. The result was a widespread mosaic of many different kinds of forests of different ages, with different social functions and meanings. Importantly, this kind of shifting cultivation fostered the growth of many of the timber species colonial loggers and foresters were interested in. Mahogany (Khaya

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ivorensis), iroko (Milicia excelsa), Sapele wood (Entandrophragma cylindricum), and many others are light-demanding in their early stages and grow particularly well on abandoned farmland.32 Foresters’ narratives about the destructive effects of shifting cultivation were therefore quite misleading; in fact, by prohibiting shifting cultivation forest reservation disrupted the very conditions responsible for producing the timber trees of the Benin kingdom in the first place. Overall, the creation of forests as separate spaces inaccessible to local people presented a radical departure to previous, more fluid and organic forms of land management that thrived on the interaction between farm and forest. At this early stage, however, reservation had relatively little impact. Early reserves were generally situated in quite remote areas that were neither demarcated nor patrolled. In contrast, later reservation under Obas Eweka II and Akenzua II was more far-reaching and had far greater impact.

Forest Reservation and Oba Eweka II, 1914–1933 Benin District was not the only part of Nigeria where reservation was slow to begin with.33 Meanwhile, the outbreak of World War I brought about severe timber shortages in Britain and proper forest management in the colonies became an important agenda, in order to ensure more reliable timber supplies.34 Reservation was therefore absolutely central to the Forest Ordinance of 1916, which was to form the basis for all future management of Nigeria’s timberland. Following the example of legislation in India, Thompson’s ordinance stipulated that 25 percent of the land of Nigeria should be reserved, this being the amount deemed necessary to secure a sufficient timber supply. The ordinance also gave more legal powers to government, as it contained a clause that enabled the compulsory formation of reserves.35 However, in practice the colonial government was again reluctant to take such measures and continued to rely on local consent for forest reservation. To help in gaining this consent, the ordinance promised that all forestry regulations would be lifted once 25 percent of reservation was achieved. This was an important incentive, since restrictions on local forest use were considerably expanded with the 1916 ordinance. However, it did not have any immediate success; reservation was still slow. In 1921, the Forest Department entered separate agreements with southern Nigerian chiefs, whereby the reservation of 25 percent of land was now to apply on a regional basis, rather than to the whole of Nigeria.36 This made it easier to focus efforts on important timber areas that were deemed to be

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particularly urgent. Moreover, dealing directly with local authorities gave the colonial government much better bargaining power and made the promise to remove restrictions once 25 percent reservation was achieved much more persuasive. It is not surprising that colonial reservation efforts focused on the Benin area, the most important timber area in the colony. It had not only expansive forests but also many rivers that were ideal for the removal of logs, and the Benin area supplied the largest portion of timber exports from the colony throughout the colonial period.37 Its political situation, too, provided good conditions for negotiating forest reservation. In 1914, the death of Oba Ovonramwen in exile coincided with the amalgamation of Nigeria, which brought the Lugardian system of indirect rule to the South. Both events combined to precipitate the restoration of the Benin monarchy, and Oba Ovoranmwen’s son was installed as Oba Eweka II. The installation of the oba as head of the Native Authority of the new Benin Division made it easier for the Forest Department to negotiate forest reservation in Benin Division, as the oba could now be officially declared the overall “owner of the land.” The oba was indeed traditionally referred to as “the owner of the land”; this is evident from the saying Oba o re yan oto (The oba owns the land). All Bini communities had to pay him an annual tribute called ugamwen (service), and people from outside the kingdom had to secure his approval to exploit the land and its resources.38 But because land was very abundant in this part of southern Nigeria, local people did not need the oba’s direct permission to use land, and farmland was controlled by local communities, whose head represented the oba to the local people. The oba’s ownership of land was therefore ultimately quite abstract and symbolic. His status as owner of the land was not an invention of tradition, but it took on a new and more concrete meaning in the colonial period, in particular in the context of forest reservation.39 It was also convenient that the oba’s hold on power was rather shaky to begin with. Eweka was initially only granted a one-year probation period on the throne, which made his position precarious. The oba’s prerogatives of conferring titles, formulating policies, and organizing activities in his domain had to be approved by British officials, who clearly prescribed the limits of his powers.40 At the same time, the oba needed to cooperate with the colonial government in order to strengthen his authority vis-à-vis the Native Council and the paramount chiefs, some of whom had become very rich and powerful during the interregnum.41 Generally, the oba’s authority over not only chiefs but the people of Benin as a whole—frequently contested already in the precolonial period42—was

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far from a given, and after the interregnum Eweka needed to establish himself as the ruler. In this context, the offer to remove forest regulations proved to be a powerful incentive to the establishing of more reserves. The new forest regulations under the 1916 ordinance prohibited the felling of a long list of tree species except on payment of permit fees in Benin City, and violation was punished by imprisonment and fines.43 It was then continuously reviewed to increase the number of protected species of trees and was strictly enforced with prosecutions.44 These measures virtually criminalized farming and caused much hardship for the populace, which led to widespread protests and agitation against the ordinance and its strict implementation.45 There was so much protest by the people under his jurisdiction that Oba Eweka II and his chiefs pleaded with the government against further implementation of the ordinance.46 Ongoing agitations eventually attracted the visit of the governor in 1922, who ruled that permits for felling of most trees should be issued free to farmers by order of the forestry officers or political officers.47 This regulation was to be implemented on the condition that two more forest reserves be created, in order to enable Benin Division to attain 25 percent reservation of its land area, as was required by the ordinance.48 The department capitalized on the consent of the oba and his council, and over the course of the 1920s—a time when the department was expanding and becoming increasingly professionalized49 —not just two but four new reserves were created: the Obaretin Reserve (40 sq. mi.) in 1924, the Gilli-Gilli Reserve (140 sq. mi.) in 1927, and the Ohosu River (400 sq. mi.) and Owan River (80 sq. mi.) Reserves in 1928 (see map 2). Given the pressure to remove forestry regulations, Eweka did not have much choice but to agree to reservation. Nevertheless, the location of these reserves suggests that Oba Eweka may have been able to exert some influence in the process, and may have been able to use reservation to consolidate his hold over Benin territory. After the conquest of Benin City, the Benin territory initially comprised all the areas outside the area of the Royal Niger Company and the Lagos and Yoruba protectorates that were known to pay tribute to Benin at this time, including some northeast Yoruba areas like Akure and Owo.50 These areas were placed under Benin paramount chiefs, contrary to the precolonial practice of autonomy and tribute payment. During the interregnum, there had been several rebellions against the roughshod rule of the Benin paramount chiefs, which forced the British to remove the appointed Benin City chiefs from non-Beninspeaking areas of the kingdom and allow these people to be ruled by their

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own local leaders from 1906. Some of the communities seized the opportunity to assert autonomy from Benin, and the British created for them new administrative areas outside the control of Benin. In addition, the British encouraged the influx of neighboring peoples into Benin territory to exploit the land and trade.51 By the 1910s, some of the migrant and settler communities, particularly around Benin border areas, started claiming ownership of these lands and asserting their independence from the jurisdiction of the oba of Benin.52

Map 8.2: Reservation in Benin Division under Oba Eweka II, 1920s.

Oba Eweka II generally sought to maintain and expand Benin territory. In 1926, for example, he requested that the administration extend his jurisdiction over many areas outside Benin Division that, he claimed, were part of his territory before the British conquest.53 While welcoming migrants as his subjects, he resisted attempts by non-Benin people to take over land he considered to be under the jurisdiction of Benin.54 He

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opposed the sale or lease of communal rubber plantations to non-Benin people, and rejected suggestions by the Agriculture Department to lease out land to European firms.55 While there is no direct evidence that the movement of peoples into Benin areas motivated Oba Eweka to agree to reservation, it seems plausible that, given his generally protective attitude, forest reservation became a means of asserting Benin control over land. This is reflected in the areas chosen for reservation. Potential reserves—areas rich in timber, close to waterways, and sparsely populated—were usually identified by foresters through reconnaissance surveys, but they needed the oba’s permission for their creation. It is noticeable that they are all on the outer boundaries of Benin Division, contested areas where migrants were moving in: the Ohosu Reserve bordering Yoruba-speaking areas in the west; the Obaretin and Gilli-Gilli Reserves in the South, where Urhobos and Itsekiris were moving in; and the Owan Reserve in the North (see map 2). Even if Eweka did not himself suggest areas for reservation, it is very likely that he saw advantages in having reserves in these particular areas, and therefore granted his consent here. Oba Eweka thus had his own motives for agreeing to reservation, and he was not completely powerless in the process. Eweka generally became more successful at asserting his authority over his chiefs and people, earning the nickname ovbi-udu (“the strong willed”). The voluminous correspondence between the oba’s council and the colonial government shows that he fought hard for his own interest and those of the Benin people. In fact, he was forced to fight by the actions of the colonial government itself, since it was continually trying to outmaneuver him. By 1928, the creation of the four new reserves had brought the total area under forest reservation in Benin Division to 1,214 square miles, or almost 30 percent of the land area. In principle, this should have been the end of reservation in the division, and should have brought about the immediate cancellation of forest regulations in areas outside reserves. In practice, however, the Benin forests were deemed to be far too valuable for this to be allowed, and the loss of control over all the unreserved areas was a daunting prospect for the Forest Department.56 The department— now headed by J. R. Ainslie, after Thompson had retired in 1927—used various strategies to maintain control. For one, the removal of the hated forest regulations was delayed by almost a year. It was only when Oba Eweka refused to sign a further reservation agreement, the extension of Okomu Reserve (150 sq. mi.), unless the forest regulations were lifted that finally an order was passed on July 19, 1929;57 government notice No. 144 brought an end to regulations on unreserved land.

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However, even when the oba succeeded and Order No. 144 was passed, it contained a get-out clause, which made it far less effective than it should have been. Crucially, forestry regulations were not lifted from timber areas held by concessionaires, which in fact covered most of Benin Division; here the felling of first-class trees—those that concessionaires were interested in—was still prohibited.58 The continuing protection of licensed areas had been stipulated already in the 1916 ordinance, but it was never mentioned during reservation negotiations. It meant that the area actually “free” was considerably smaller than 75 percent of the land that was generally talked about;59 moreover, most farmers gained nothing from the arrangement. The oba and his council protested furiously to have regulations lifted from licensed areas too, but to no avail.60 The colonial government then simultaneously employed a second strategy to ensure both continuing control over timber and further reservation. This was the creation of a Native Authority Forestry Service, which the oba agreed to in return for having Order No. 144 passed. The idea of involving Native Authorities directly in forest regulation and reservation had already been used in the early struggles with reservation in Lagos Colony;61 however, it was not until the passage of the 1927 Forestry Ordinance that local authorities were empowered to constitute Native Administration (NA) reserves.62 Any royalties, license fees, and other revenue from these reserves would go to the NA. In return, NAs were responsible for the wages of forest guards and the salaries of the forest officers dealing with the allocation of licenses.63 These measures were designed to make forest regulations more palatable to local authorities and appeal to their financial self-interest. In practice, though, they did not represent the concession to local interests they appeared to be, but were effectively a cover-up to gain more control. For one, the rules of the Benin Native Authority (BNA) were drafted by the Government Forest Department, not by the oba or local people. These BNA rules protected nine timber species in unreserved areas. This meant that just as the old hated forestry regulations were finally lifted, a new set of rules, now under the BNA, took over.64 Thus, despite large-scale reservation, no area outside a reserve was ever actually freed from forest regulations, even though this had been used so effectively as an incentive for forest reservation. Furthermore, the potential financial benefits for the BNA were limited. BNA rules only applied to the small areas outside existing timber concessions, and they were soon amended to apply to local contractors only. The issuance and renewal of European timber firms’ concession licenses, even outside already existing timber concession areas, remained

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vested in the Government Forest Department. This was significant as Europeans’ hold on licenses remained very strong; in fact, after the 1929 financial crash almost all European firms were bought up by the United Africa Company (UAC), which now held fifty-one of ninety-three concessions in southern Nigeria.65The oba wrote to this effect to the district officer, asking that the BNA be granted control over licensed areas too.66 While the government delayed making a clear decision over this, and failed to grant the BNA its request, clashes between government forest guards and BNA forest guards became frequent, as both sides operated in each other’s area and caused much general harassment and confusion. Oba Eweka therefore struggled to assert himself against a colonial government that did everything to appear to be to be following legal conventions and acting in the interest of its colonial subjects, but in reality obstructed local interests in order to gain further control over forests. Eweka had some power and his own reasons for agreeing to the creation of reserves, but ultimately, the advance of forest reservation in Benin Division owed more to a series of colonial strategies than to Eweka’s own interests. The government continued to employ such strategies in the 1930s, now negotiating with Oba Akenzua II, Eweka’s son.

Oba Akenzua II and the Benin Native Administration Forest Scheme, 1933–1935 In the early 1930s, triggered in part by the Dust Bowl experience in the United States, there was a renewed wave of concern among colonial administrators in Africa over environmental degradation and the destructive effects of shifting cultivation.67 In Nigeria, following extensive tours by two external experts, E. P. Stebbing in the North and Major J. N. Oliphant in the South, calls for further reservation increased.68 In 1933, the 1921 shift to applying the 25 percent rule to regions was declared invalid, which made it possible to press for further reservation in some areas. These included Benin Division, still the most important timber area of southern Nigeria.69 Following Oliphant’s tour of southern Nigeria, it was chosen for a pilot scheme of intense forest management, as it was deemed to be particularly in need of protection and management. Moreover, it was ideally suited for such a scheme, politically speaking, as Oliphant noted in his report: “It has an enlightened ruler in the Oba, who has full control over the land.”70 This “enlightened ruler” was Oba Akenzua II, who had succeeded his father to the throne when Eweka passed away in 1933. He was indeed a useful negotiation partner; on April 1, 1935, Akenzua II agreed to the

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Benin Native Administration Forest Scheme, and thereby to the reservation of a further 1,000 square miles of land. In doing so, he had to overcome considerable opposition from his council, whose membership had fiercely resisted the scheme.71 Why, then, was Akenzua himself so supportive of a scheme that involved such staggeringly large-scale reservation? As we shall examine in the following, it was again, as for his father, a mixture of both colonial incentives and political considerations that provided the motivation. But in contrast to Eweka, Oba Akenzua II was initially under no direct pressure, and his interaction with the colonial government was overall less confrontational than that of his father. Colonial officers themselves stressed that Akenzua had a genuine concern for forest conservation, and that he was cooperating out of an enlightened understanding of the issues, with wisdom and farsightedness.72 Akenzua had been educated at King’s College in Lagos, had had some training in the Native Authority of Abeokuta, and was generally deemed to be broadly supportive of colonial government. Given his education and self-perception as a modern and responsible ruler, he may well have been persuaded by foresters’ arguments for the need to preserve forests for future generations. However, considerations over revenue and land control also played into his support for forest reservation. For one, the scheme offered further control over forestry to the oba and his council. As a “valuable experiment,” the whole of Benin forestry was put under the Native Administration, since “half measures and any degree of dual control,” as Oliphant maintained, would be undesirable.73 This promised substantial financial benefits in the form of timber revenues and royalties to the BNA, which would increase its overall power and ability to govern. Apart from putting all forestry under the BNA, the colonial government also provided a second incentive—namely, that in return for the reservation of 1,000 square miles of land, each year 1,000 acres of reserve land would be available for Taungya farming.74 Taungya farming was an agro-forestry method developed in Burma, under which reserve forest land was given to farmers to farm for one or two years. In between the food crops, foresters would plant seedlings of a range of economic tree species, which grew particularly well on abandoned farmland. To the oba, it presented a way of making reserve land available for farming in the future.75 Like his father, Akenzua also saw forest reservation as a way to strengthen his hold on Benin land, which continued to be claimed by a range of rival groups. By the early 1930s, agitations of Jesse-Urhobo settlers within Benin Division for the transfer of the land that they

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inhabited heightened as a result of the BNA’s and the Forest Department’s policy of restricting the farming activities of Urhobo migrants.76 Oba Akenzua II came under pressure from the colonial administration to accede to the transfer of the land settled by the Jesse-Urhobo to neighboring Warri Province, in conformity with reforms of indirect rule whereby people were to be grouped and administered strictly along “tribal lines.”77 In 1937, he finally conceded the transfer in return for an annual rent of £50.78 In this context, Oba Akenzua II tried to safeguard Benin land from being expropriated, whether by private or corporate non-Benin interests. He refused a request for a timber license by a Sierra Leonean contractor, stating that in the past such grants had led to loss of land to a neighboring Yoruba community.79 He similarly rejected attempts by migrant rubber tappers to establish plantations because “most of Benin lands already have passed by way of plantations to foreign capitalistplanters including the Nigerian Government.”80 Furthermore, in the 1930s, another form of land use was emerging that also played a role in Akenzua’s II support of forest reservation: the expansion of agricultural cash crop production. Small-scale rubber plantations were set up in the early 1900s but were at this stage not considered a threat to forest conservation; in fact, they were set up and organized by the Forest Department, which until 1910 actually incorporated agriculture. But by the 1930s, encouraged by the Agriculture Department, cash crop production was taking off, and rubber plantations in particular were spreading rapidly. This development caused concern not just for the Forest Department but also for many rural communities and the oba. The very first rubber plantations were set up communally, supervised and coordinated by the Forest Department. But in addition, the Forest Department and later the Agriculture Department encouraged chiefs to establish plantations, employing forced labor from the villagers under their jurisdiction.81 Similarly, urban titleholders, rich traders, and the educated elite began to invest their money in plantation cash crops. These urban dwellers increasingly converted their food crop farms to cash crop plantations and extended them annually using the labor of their peasant relatives and others whom they hired to look after the plantations in their absence.82 As one forest officer critically observed: “The device by which uneducated farmers were induced, in many cases by city-dwellers, to sow rubber seeds in their farms must be condemned: in return for a small outlay on his part the absentee ‘landlord’ becomes the owner of the rubber trees and thereby gains a long lease over the land. The net effect of this and of villagers planting for themselves is that much farm land has gone over to cash crop small-holdings.”83 Such land appropriation through the

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establishment of private cash crop plantations became widespread;84 rural people frequently reported community land being taken over by chiefs and the urban elite.85 Receiving such complaints, Oba Akenzua II himself became increasingly concerned about land alienation, which also affected his own overall hold on land. It effectively presented a change from communal ownership, which ultimately rested in him, to private land ownership. He wrote repeatedly to the district officer and others to prevent the alienation of land, advocating the creation and protection of reserves as a way of preserving community land.86 Not surprisingly, the 1935 plans for large-scale reservation met with much protest from plantation owners, supported by the Agriculture Department. They wrote a petition to the governor protesting against the new reservations and demanding the reservation of land for plantations.87 This demand was resisted by the oba, who argued that anyone wishing to expand an existing plantation had to get permission from the Native Authorities. He explained that: the object and reasons for looking for this safe-guard is to be sure that the remaining Benin land does not unceremoniously fall into the hands of private families. As the Reserves are being constituted for the benefit of the Benin people—present and future generations—there seems to be no reason why private families should have exclusive right to make use of the remaining land outside the Reserves unless and until they can show that their rights so to do are derived from the proper source i.e. if they acquire land in the usual way by applying for them [sic] from the Oba in whom Benin lands are vested from time immemorial.88

Overall, like his father, Oba Akenzua had many specific reasons to support forest reservation, including both incentives offered by the colonial government and his own strategic considerations. But it was also in line with his claim that Benin lands have been vested in the oba “from time immemorial.” Akenzua is thus making full use of his status as the owner of the land, and using reservation to assert his claims. There was an overall affinity between foresters and the oba’s beliefs and interests in centralized land stewardship. These understandings of land control competed with those of chiefs and other urban planters who wanted to gain private control over land, which, in turn, were shared and supported by the Agriculture Department. As a result, local communities increasingly had to compete against both of these alliances to maintain their hold on land. By setting up the Benin Forest Scheme and implementing further large-scale reservation, the Forest Department and the oba were, of all these groups, by far the most successful in gaining control over land. This was in part because their alliance and matching

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interests worked very well together, but also, crucially, because conservation and forest management were a priority for the colonial government as a whole in the 1930s. This situation, however, began to change in subsequent years. Moreover, the alliance between the oba and the Forest Department proved not as strong as it seemed in 1935.

The Aftermath of the Benin Forest Scheme It soon became apparent that the colonial government once again failed to stick to its own terms of the negotiations with Oba Akenzua II. For a start, while Taungya planting never reached the 1,000 acres per year promised, reservation initially far exceeded 1,000 square miles.89 By 1937, an additional 1,377 square miles were reserved, which brought the total of land under reservation to 2,631 square miles, 64 percent of Benin Division. This included Ehor (405.5 sq. mi.), Ekenwan (128.5 sq. mi.), Ekiadolor (272.8 sq. mi.), Usonigbe (257 sq. mi.), Iguobazuwa (218 sq. mi.) and Ebue (73 sq. mi.) Reserves as well as Ologbo Extension (12.8 sq. mi.) (see map 3).90 Moreover, although these new reserves were constituted under the NA, and the existing government reserves were similarly reconstituted (in order to make the scheme more attractive to the oba and his council), the financial gains for the BNA were actually quite limited. Under the original agreement in 1935, it was arranged that revenue deriving from timber licenses would be shared equally between the BNA and the government, which was still in charge of forestry operations.91 The original agreement was supposed to come under review in 1938, and the share going to the BNA possibly increased. This review was delayed, however, until 1939, when the colonial government argued that, due to the outbreak of war, financial insecurity was too great to change financial arrangements. It was decided that the existing arrangements should be continued for another five years.92 In the early 1940s, Oba Akenzua II repeatedly wrote to demand a higher share for the BNA, a position that some colonial officers were quite sympathetic to.93 In 1943, the acting secretary to the Western Provinces recommended that the BNA should receive 100 percent of timber fees, like other Native Authorities. He also stressed the political expediency of supporting the oba and his council, whose goodwill had been so crucial to the establishment of the forest scheme in the first place.94

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Map 8.3. Existing and proposed new reserves under the Benin Forest Scheme, demarcated in 1937 under Oba Akenzua II.

It was finally decided that the BNA should indeed receive 100 percent of timber fees from April 1, 1944, onward;95 it also was agreed that the BNA would pay for forest regeneration, which had been started on a much larger scale under the Benin Forest Scheme. The chief conservator himself pointed out that this again was somewhat unfair, given that before 1935 the government earned considerable revenue and spent hardly anything on regeneration. It was consequently decided to assist the BNA for one year, but not afterward.96 The financial rewards for the BNA were therefore much less than the oba and his council would have expected. Moreover, the timber industry itself remained almost exclusively in expatriate hands throughout this time, despite an ongoing campaign by the oba and others to increase the number of logging allocations made to local logging firms.97 Employing a range of arguments—that local firms did not pay their workers adequately; that they were wasteful and inefficient98—the colonial government largely ignored these calls, and only gradually increased local allocations. In the

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meantime, in the wake of the 1929 financial crash, the United Africa Company (UAC) consolidated its hold on logging allocations. Later known as the African Timber & Plywood Company (AT&P), it held the majority of all logging allocations in Nigeria until the 1960s and 1970s.99 Yet, for the colonial government too, the Benin Forest Scheme was less successful than it first seemed. The massive extension of reserves in 1935 took reserves much closer to settlements and farming areas than previous reservation. This meant that many of the new reserves actually contained little forest. Already in 1937, Chief Conservator Weir noted that “it is evident from the preliminary examination that the proportion of nonproductive land within [the new reserves] is much higher than was anticipated in earlier estimates.”100 Discoveries of substantial amounts of farmland within the reserves were repeatedly reported in subsequent years.101 Reservation now also met with far more protest from rural populations than before. The new reserves severely reduced the total amount of land available to farming communities and forced them to modify their previous practice of having farms far away from villages, even when reserve settlement officers (RSOs) in charge of drawing up reserve boundaries tried to provide adequate farmland. In Udo, on the northern border of Okomu Reserve, elders today still recall the severe effects reservation had on them: “When the reserve was created, people didn’t like it at all, having their land taken away from them. But because it was government, they could not do anything. They had been farming inside the reserve before, but were asked to pack and leave, compartment by compartment.”102 Designated enclaves also did not take account of other, spiritual meanings of forests. During the extension of Okomu Reserve, for example, the Urezen people were told to farm in their Ovia shrines, which they objected to.103 On the whole, there was much protest from the communities affected by these new reserves.104 In 1936, for instance, the Senior Assistant Conservator of Forest wrote that “a number of villages and small camps in these reserves have complained of shortage of farmland and have been allowed to farm for this year only pending investigation of their claims.”105 Urban planters, too, maintained their campaign against the reserves.106 This was all the more the case after the introduction of the Permanent Crops Order of 1937, which was designed to curtail land appropriation through the establishment of oil palm and particularly rubber plantations. The order was worked out at a meeting of the oba, the assistant chief conservator of forests, and the district officer in response to the complaints

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of peasants on the shortage of land resulting from permanent crops; as such, it was strongly supported by the oba but was highly unpopular among the chiefs and rich urban dwellers affected.107 The 1937 order, combined with other, equally unpopular measures imposed by the BNA, culminated in a mass protest meeting in December 1940, following which the BNA was reorganized to include a much wider spectrum of chiefs, and even “ordinary” citizens, giving the planting lobby much more power than before.108 At the same time, an overall shift in colonial land-use policy was taking place in southern Nigeria. With plantations already rapidly spreading in the 1930s, rubber and particularly palm oil production were further encouraged during World War II, when there was higher demand for resources at home in Britain. The Colonial Development Act of 1940 put further emphasis on economic development and agricultural growth in the colonies. While the colonial government as a whole had previously been firmly behind the expansion of forest reserves, this attitude was now changing. By 1945, the Forest Department’s Forest Administration Plan for the next decade stated on its opening page that “agriculture must take priority over forestry.”109 For all these reasons, dereservation started almost immediately after the new reserves had been demarcated. By 1943, substantial parts of the new reserves had been dereserved, including 226 square miles from Ebue Reserve and 300 square miles from Usonigbe Reserve.110 With ongoing protests and petitions by local people, further dereservation was carried out in the Ehor Reserve, reducing its original 400 square miles to 115 in 1944.111 By 1948, reserved land was calculated to be 39 percent of the land of Benin Division, down from 64 percent in 1937.112

Conclusion In the end, forest reservation was therefore not quite as expansive as it had seemed in 1935. Reservation met with increasing resistance from local farming populations, and the relative strength of the Forest Department waned against the rise of agriculture. However, up to 1935, forest reservation had been astonishingly successful in Benin Division, with long-lasting effects on land-use practices. It was under Oba Eweka II and his son, Akenzua II, that such large-scale reservation occurred in Benin Division, and we have sought to explicate how and why these leaders came to give their consent to it. Overall, we highlighted two different factors: various carrot-and-stick strategies employed by the colonial government to persuade Obas Eweka II and Akenzua II to agree to

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reservation; and the obas’ own political considerations and attempts to gain control over land. The relative importance of each of these factors differed between the two obas: while Eweka ultimately had little choice but to agree to reservation in the face of popular resentment of forest regulations, Akenzua agreed to the Benin Forest Scheme more of his own volition, in particular as it gave him the opportunity to strengthen his control over land. Having said this, one cannot from this deduce that Eweka was a victim and Akenzua a successful manipulator of colonial rule; Eweka, too, saw strategic advantages in reservation, while Akenzua also came to experience various subterfuges carried out by the colonial government. The Forest Department and colonial government, in turn, do not emerge as completely powerful, relying as they did not only on local cooperation but also on a series of underhanded maneuvers to achieve their aims. Despite these weaknesses, the colonial government was ultimately successful at achieving reservation, and in many of the negotiations with Eweka and Akenzua it had the upper hand. This chapter speaks to the current scholarly interest in exploring the various weaknesses of the colonial state and the many layers of interest politics and alliances between different colonial and local actors. As we have shown, such a nuanced understanding certainly applies here: there was an alliance of interests between the Forest Department and Akenzua, and both Eweka and Akenzua were strategists who saw advantages in forest reservation. Yet we also show the limits to this approach. Negotiations between the obas and the colonial government were always on the latter’s terms—in the form of agreements, cessions, and forestry regulations that were drafted by forest officers, and which the colonial government was able to use to its advantage. Colonial power, therefore, lay not in outright land appropriation but in making everything appear fair and legal—seeking local agreement for reservation and putting reserves under the NA—while the government went about gaining control over forests and timber revenues. Finally, we have highlighted the key role forest reservation played in the transformation of land tenure and land-use practices in the colonial period in Benin Division. If beforehand the oba was nominally the owner of the land, in practice land was controlled by communities, and villagers could freely choose where to farm. Reservation not only separated the existing mosaic landscape into distinct spheres of forest and farm; it also put forests directly under the control of the oba and the government. At a time when new forms of land competition were emerging, between Edospeaking and other neighboring groups, and between small-scale community farmers and private plantation growers, reservation ensured

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the oba’s and government’s strong hold on land. In this way, reservation fundamentally shaped land politics in Benin Division, and it continues to do so in today’s Edo State, where the allocation of reserve land has become an important political tool.

Notes © Cambridge University Press. Journal of African History 50 (2009): 223-46. 1 Annual Report of the Benin Forest Administration of Nigeria 1937 (Lagos, 1938), 25. 2 Edmund O. Egboh, Forestry Policy in Nigeria, 1897–1960 ( Nsukka: University of Nigeria Press, 1985), 69. 3 David Anderson and Richard Grove, eds., Conservation in Africa: People, Policies, and Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); James Fairhead and Melissa Leach, Reframing Deforestation. Global Analysis, and Local Realities: Studies in West Africa (London: Routledge, 1998); Melissa Leach and Robin Mearns, eds., The Lie of the Land: Challenging Received Wisdom on the African Environment (London: James Currey and the International African Institute, 1996). 4 Kalyanakrishnan Sivaramakrishnan, Modern Forests. Statemaking and Environmental Change in Colonial Eastern India (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999); Peter Vandergeest and Nancy L. Peluso, “Territoralization and State Power in Thailand,” Theory and Society 24 (1995): 385–426; R. L. Bryant, “Rationalising Forest Use in British Burma, 1856–1942,” in Nature and the Orient, ed. R. H. Grove, V. Damodaran, and S. Sangwan (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), 828–50. 5 Ravi Rajan, Modernizing Nature: Forestry and Imperial Eco-Development, 1800–1950 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006); Gregory Barton, “Empire Forestry and the Origins of Environmentalism,” Journal of Historical Geography 27 (2001): 529–52. 6 Ramachandra Guha, The Unquiet Woods: The Ecological Basis of Peasant Resistance in the Himalaya (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989). 7 Richard Grove, Ecology, Climate, and Empire: Colonialism and Global Environmental History, 1400–1940 (Cambridge: White Horse Press, 1997), 147– 78. 8 Michael Tuck, “‘Omugezibezi akuguza ekibira: A clever man sells you a forest’: Forest Demarcation and Usage in Early Colonial Uganda” (paper presented at the International Conference on the Forest and Environmental History of the British Empire, University of Sussex, March 19–21, 2003). 9 Pauline von Hellermann, “Things Fall Apart? A Political Ecology of 20thCentury Forest Management in Edo State, Southern Nigeria” (PhD diss., University of Sussex, 2005). 10 T. Ranger, “The Invention of Tradition Revisited: The Case of Colonial Africa,” in Legitimacy and the State in Twentieth-Century Africa. Essays in Honour of

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A. H. M. Kirk-Greene, ed. T. Ranger and O. Vaughan (Oxford: Macmillan Press, 1993). 11 Sara Berry, “Hegemony on a Shoe-String: Indirect Rule and Access to Agricultural Land,” Africa 62 (1992): 327–55; Michael Cowen and Robert W. Shenton, “British Neo-Hegelian Idealism and Official Colonial Practice in Africa: The Oluwa Land Case of 1921,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 22 (1994): 217–50; Richard Rathbone, “Defining Akyemfo: The Construction of Citizenship in Akyem Abuakwa, Ghana, 1700–1939,” Africa 66 (1996): 506–25; M. Chanock, “Paradigms, Policies, and Property: A Review of Customary Law of Land Tenure,” in Law in Colonial Africa, ed. K. Mann and R. Roberts (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1991). 12 Jacob U. Egharevba, A Short History of Benin (Ibadan: Ibadan University Press, 1968); Isidore Okpewko, Once upon a Kingdom: Myth, Hegemony, and Identity (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1998). 13 Ibid.; Hellermann, “Things Fall Apart?”; John F. Redhead, “The Forest Kingdom of Benin, Nigeria,” Nigerian Field 57 (1992): 113–18. 14 Joseph C. Anene, Southern Nigeria in Transition, 1885–1906: Theory and Practice in a Colonial Protectorate (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968). 15 The main logging companies at this time were the Glasgow-based Miller Brothers, Messrs Bey & Zimmer, and Scott McNeill & Co. 16 Adiele E. Afigbo, “Sir Ralph Moor and the Economic Development of Southern Nigeria, 1896–1903,” Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria 5 (1970): 371– 97. 17 Ibid.; Egboh, Forestry Policy in Nigeria; Olufemi Omosini, “Background to the Forestry Legislation in Lagos Colony and Protectorate, 1897–1902,” Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria 9 (1978): 45–69. 18 National Archives (NA), CO 879/69, Enclosure 3 in No. 138, 1904, Address by the Conservator of Forests, Southern Nigeria, before the Chamber of Commerce, Liverpool. 19 Fairhead and Leach, Reframing Deforestation; quote from Annual Report on the Forestry Administration for the Year 1917 (Lagos, 1918), 2. 20 Annual Report of the Forest Administration of Nigeria, for the Year 1928 (Lagos, 1929), 7. 21 T. Olawale Elias, Nigerian Land Law and Custom (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1951). 22 Philip A. Igbafe, Benin under British Administration: The Impact of Colonial Rule on an African Kingdom, 1897–1938 (London: Longman, 1979). The government in fact tried to use its control over land for the forced creation of reserves with the 1901 Forestry Proclamation, but this met with widespread protest and could not be implemented. See Edmund O. Egboh, “British Colonial Administration and the Legal Control of the Forests of Lagos Colony and Protectorate, 1897–1902: An Example of Economic Control under Colonial Regime,” Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria 9 (1978): 70–90; Omosini, “Background to the Forestry Legislation.”

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23 For a discussion of colonial preoccupation with customary land tenure and its roots in British idealism, see Cowen and Shenton, “British Neo-Hegelian Idealism.” 24 Criticism came in particular from the Aborigines Protection Society. See Egboh, “Legal Control of the Forests,” 83. 25 Egboh, Forestry Policy in Nigeria, 47. 26 NA, CO 879/69, Enclosure 1 in No. 83, 1903, Report by Conservator of Forests. 27 Nigerian National Archives Ibadan (NAI), BP 709/1914, Claim by Chief Eson for Royalties for Timber felled under his charge since 1907; NAI, BP 344/1, Conservator of Forest, Benin Circle (BC), to Senior Conservator of Forest, Olokomeji, June 3, 1915. See also Igbafe, Benin under British Administration. 28 For studies of the contrasts between colonial and indigenous environmental ideas, see Tamara Giles-Vernick, Cutting the Vines of the Past: Environmental Histories of the Central African Rain Forest (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2002); and James Fairhead and Melissa Leach, Misreading the African Landscape (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 29 Interview with Pa Omoigui Oviawe, trader and farmer (Odionwere village head of Igue-Iyase), aged about 106, April 16, 1998. See also Fairhead and Leach, Misreading the African Landscape. 30 Interview with Chief Thompson Imasogie, trader, farmer, and politician, aged about 91, at his Benin City residence, May 17, 1986. 31 Interview with Pa Omoigui Oviawe, April 16, 1998. 32 Philip A. Allison, “From Farm to Forest,” Farm and Forest 2 (1941): 95–98; William D. Hawthorne, Ecological Profiles of Ghanaian Forest Trees (Oxford: Oxford Forestry Institute, 1995). 33 Egboh, “ Legal Control of the Forests”; Egboh, Forestry Policy in Nigeria. 34 Michael Worboys, “Science and British Colonial Imperialism, 1895–1940” (PhD diss., University of Sussex, 1979). 35 This was clause 4 (iv). Frederick Lugard, Political Memoranda: Revision of Instructions to Political Officers on Subjects Chiefly Political and Administrative, 1913–1918 (London: Frank Cass & Co, 1970), 439. 36 Egboh, Forestry Policy in Nigeria, 69. 37 Benin Province (with the bulk coming from Benin Division) on average accounted for about 70 percent of Nigeria’s annual timber exports from the 1920s to the 1940s. See annual reports of the Forest Department of Nigeria, 1923–1942. 38 Unused forest land was under the supervision of the Eson titleholder; migrant fishermen and palm produce collectors needed his permission and paid rent to the oba for exploitation of land resources. See U. Usuanlele, “Pre-Colonial Benin: A Political Economy Perspective,” in Pre-Colonial Nigeria: Essays in Honour of Toyin Falola, ed. A. Ogundiran (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2005). 39 T. Ranger, “The Invention of Tradition in Colonial Africa,” in The Invention of Tradition, ed. E. Hobsbawm and T. Ranger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 211–62; Ranger, “Invention of Tradition Revisited.” 40 Mr. F. S. James, for example, the acting lieutenant governor of the Southern Provinces (SP), told a meeting of the oba and chiefs that “although the Oba is

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called the Oba and head of the Binis, he is also the Oba of the British government and he will continue to remain Oba only so long as he carries out the order of the government.” NAI, BP 665/1914, Minutes of Meeting of Mr. F. S. James, Ag Lt. Governor (SP), with the Oba and Council Chiefs, October 21, 1914. 41 Igbafe, Benin under British Administration. 42 Egharevba, Short History of Benin; Okpewho, Once upon a Kingdom; Paula Ben-Amos and John Thornton, “Civil War in the Kingdom of Benin, 1689–1721: Continuity or Political Change?” Journal of African History 42 (2001): 353–76. 43 NAI, BP 508/1916, 5, Resident, Benin Province (BP), to Secretary (SP), August 21, 1916, 5. 44 NAI, BP 490/18, Resident (BP), to Secretary (SP), November 27, 1918; NAI, BP 725, Forestry offences prosecution: Procedure for. 45 NAI, BP 508/1916, Ag District Officer, Benin Division (BD), to Resident (BP), July 8, 1918, 8, and forwarded in another memo of Resident (BP) to Secretary (SP), August 3, 1918,14. In 1920, the Ogbeleka, the royal guild of guards, composed a protest song. Ekhaguosa Aisien, Benin City: The Edo State Capital (Benin City, 1995), 50. 46 NAI, BP 686/1917. Oba Eweka’s protest and plea were forwarded in memo, District Officer (BD) to Resident (BP), November 11, 1920, and Resident (BP) to Secretary (SP), November 25, 1920. 47 Ibid. 48 Ibid. 49 The 1920s saw increased professionalism throughout the colonial service, but forestry had particularly strong support by Colonial Secretary Ralph Furse. See Robert Heussler, Yesterday's Rulers: The Making of the British Colonial Service (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1963). 50 Nigerian National Archives at Enugu (NAE), Cal Prof 8/2, II, Report of tour of Benin Country to Akure, Roupell to Turner, April 22, 1897; Igbafe, Benin under British Administration, 133, 149. 51 For an invitation to Itsekiri traders to establish trading camps on Ogbese and Ossiomo Rivers, see NAI, BD 13/2, Quarterly Report of Benin City District for Quarter ended March 31, 1905. For land negotiation on behalf of Yoruba farmers to establish cocoa farms in the Ogbese and Olumoye areas, see NAI, BP 89/22, District Officer (BD) to Resident (BP), May 30, 1929, and June 11, 1929. 52 The Oghara Urhobo, for instance, laid claim to land around Jesse (in Benin Division) in the provincial court in 1917, while the Jesse Urhobo migrants and settlers on Benin land started agitating from 1921 to be transferred from under the jurisdiction of the oba in Benin Province to neighboring Warri Province. NAI, 26/2, File 14617, vol. 1, Benin Province: Annual Report 1924. 53 Ministry of Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs Library, Benin City (hereafter cited as MLGCAL), BP 44/vol. 1, The Oba of Benin—Oba Eweka II to Resident (BP), 1926; MLGCAL BP 44/vol. 1, Oba Eweka to Resident (BP), 1926. 54 NAI, BP 71/1930, 13, District Officer (BD) to Resident (BP), September 22, 1931.

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55 NAI, BP 89/22, 42, Minutes of meeting of Resident (BD); O. T. Faulkner, Director of Agriculture; Mr. Aveling, District Officer (BD); Mr. Nicol, Superintendent of Agriculture, Benin; Oba Eweka and Council; and Benin Agricultural Society, January 10, 1923; NAI, BP 89/22, 218, District Officer (BD) to Resident, April 12, 1929. Another meeting to persuade the oba to accede to the proposal in May was refused. NAI, BP 89/22, 220, Minutes of Council meeting, May 2, 1929. 56 NAI, BP 80/29, Letter from the Senior Conservator of Forests to the Conservator of Forests (BC), May 6, 1929. 57 NAI, BP 103/1925, Letter from Oba Eweka to the District Office, April 5, 1929; NAI, BP 80/29, Letter from the Director of Forests to the Chief Secretary of Government in Lagos, November 22, 1929. 58 NAI, BP 80/29, Letter from Senior Conservator of Forests, Western Provinces (WP), H. C. Tebbutt, to the Conservator of Forests, May 14, 1928, quoting an earlier statement by Thompson. 59 NAI, BP 80/29, Ben Prof 2/16, Removal of Forestry Restrictions in Forests other than Reserves. 60 Ibid. 61 Grove, Ecology, Climate, and Empire. 62 Egboh, Forestry Policy in Nigeria, 57–58. 63 Ibid. 64 NAI, BP 80/29, Ben Prof 2/16, 116. 65 Annual Report on the Forest Administration of Nigeria for the Year 1929 (Lagos, 1930), 19. 66 NAI, BP 80/29, Letter from the Oba to the District Officer, February 4, 1931. 67 David Anderson, “Depression, Dust Bowl, Demography and Drought: The Colonial State and Soil Conservation in East Africa during the 1930s,” African Affairs 83 (1984): 321–43; Fairhead and Leach, Reframing Deforestation. 68 NAE, Cal Prof 53/1/558, J. N. Oliphant: A further report on forestry development in Nigeria, 1934. 69 NAI, CSO 26/30802, 5, Comments on the points raised in the Tabular Statement attached to the Honourable Chief Secretary’s Letter No. 30802/3, July 21, 1936. 70 NAE, Cal Prof 53/1/558, 5. 71 NAI, CSO 26 29697/V, 416, Comments on a letter from the Acting Chief Conservator of Forests to the Chief Secretary, June 11, 1938, 416; NAI, CSO 26 29697/V, 511, Letter from the Acting Secretary (WP) to the Chief Secretary, August 31, 1943. 72 Ibid. 73 NAE, Cal Prof 53/1/558, 5. 74 NAI, Ben Prof 1, BD 27/vol. 10, Annual Report of the Benin Native Administration Forest Circle 1943. 75 NAI, BP 999, 44, Oba Akenzua II to Resident (BP), August 28, 1935. 76 U. Usuanlele, “Urhobos in Benin, 1897–1945: Changing Patterns of Relations under Colonial Rule,” in History of the Urhobo People of Niger Delta, ed. P. Ekeh (Lagos, 2006), 576.

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77 These reforms were started under Governor Hugh Clifford (1919–25) and continued into the 1930s. See Harry A. Gailey, Clifford: Imperial Proconsul (London, 1982), 137. 78 Usuanlele, “Urhobos in Benin,” 577. 79 NAI, BP 1021A, Oba Akenzua II to District Officer (BD), May 11, 1935. 80 NAI, BP 1273/vol. 2, Oba Akenzua II to Ag District Officer (BD), May 11, 1944. 81 NAI, BP 334/1, Conservator of Forest (BC) to Senior Conservator of Forest, Olokomeji, May 3, 1915; NAI, BP 628/1915, Agricultural report for half year ending June 30, 1915, 1. 82 NAI, BP 1273/vol. 2, Report on the rates of wages and conditions in Africanowned rubber plantations in Benin Division by J. G. C. Allen, 1944, 355. 83 NAI, Ben Prof 1, BD 27/vol. 10, Annual Report of the Benin Native Administration Forest Circle, 1943. 84 Igbafe, Benin under British Administration, 311. 85 NAI, BD 207/124, Petition by Odighi Villagers, regarding the farming interests of Edionwe at Odighi, April 17, 1941. 86 NAI, BP 999, 41, Letter from Oba’s Council to the District Officer, June 10, 1935; NAI, BP 999, 43, Letter from Oba to the Resident of Benin City, August 28, 1935. 87 NAI, BP 1132A, Petition by Benin citizens against the proposed forest reserves, Yesufu Eke and 74 others, September 13, 1935. Apart from petitions, they mobilized the Nigerian press to publish articles against the reserves. See Daily Times, May 15, 1936, and “The Benin Forest Reserves,” Eastern Mail, June 25, 1938. 88 NAI, BP 999, Letter from Oba’s Council to the District Officer, June 10, 1935. 89 NAI, Ben Div 6, BD 27/XV, Annual Report on Benin Division, 1948. 90 NAI, CSO 26 29697/V, 437. The overall area covered by the new reserves was 1,770 square miles, but from the beginning they included many enclaves, which reduced the actual reserved area by 400 square miles. Enclave areas have already been subtracted from the figures used here. 91 NAI, CSO 26 29697/V, 423, Report from Acting Chief Conservator of Forests to the Chief Secretary in Lagos, June 21, 1938, which contains a copy of the original 1935 Benin Forest Scheme agreement. 92 NAI, CSO 26 29697/V, 489, Chief Secretary to the Government to Secretary (WP), Confidential Letter, November 30, 1939. 93 NAI, CSO 26 296797/V, 507–12, Acting Secretary (WP) to Chief Secretary to the Government, August 31, 1943. 94 Ibid. 95 NAI, CSO 26 296797/V, 526, Chief Secretary to the Government to Secretary (WP), January 14, 1944. 96 NAI, CSO 26 2967/V, 538–40, Chief Conservator of Forests to the Chief Secretary of Government, June 13, 1945. 97 In 1944, European concessions covered a total of 2,657 square miles, while the four African licenses covered 313 square miles. NAI, BP 1217, Memorandum on

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the proposed changes in the granting and working of timber concessions in Nigeria, 1944, 59. 98 Annual Report on the Forest Administration of Nigeria for the Year 1938 (Lagos, 1939), 12; NAI, IB FOR DEP 1, 1897 F, 33. 99 Hellermann, “Things Fall Apart?” 100 Annual Report on the Forest Administration of Nigeria for the Year 1937 (Lagos, 1938). 101 Annual Report on the Forest Administration of Nigeria for the Year 1940 (Lagos, 1941), 2. See, for example, NAI, BD 207/73, 1939, Conservator of Forests (BNA) to the Resident, Benin City, January 6, 1939. 102 Interview with the Esogban of Udo, November 29, 2002. 103 NAI, BD 450, Report on a letter of complaint by the people of Okomu, undated. Urezen is still famous for its ovia shrines. 104 Interview with Pa Omoigui Oviawe, April 16, 1998. 105 NAI, BP 1223, 2, SACF (BNA) to Resident (BP), April 20, 1936. 106 Interview with Chief Thomson Imasogie, May 29, 1998; “The Benin Forest Reserves,” Nigerian Eastern Mail, June 25, 1938. 107 NAI, BP 1470/vol. 2, Permanent Crops in Benin Division: Planting of, Order No. 28 (Nos. 1 and 2), 1939; BP 1470/vol. 2, 119, Ag. Resident (BP) to Secretary (WP), April 2, 1941. 108 Igbafe, Benin under British Administration, 316. 109 Forest Administration Plan, 1946–1955 (Lagos, 1948). 110 NAI, BD 27/vol. 10, Annual Report of the Benin Native Administration Forest Circle, 1943. 111 NAI, BP 999, 132, Joseph Olotu and E. O. Amayo, representing Uyere Court group of villages and people of Odighi, Odiguetue, Ugboki, Onwan, and Agbelikaka, to Resident (BP), May 19, 1944; BD 27, Annual Report on the Benin Division 1945, 5. 112 NAI, BP 1470/vol. 2, 162, H. Spottiswoode, Ag Resident, Benin Province, to Secretary, Western Provinces, June 26, 1948.

CHAPTER NINE NATIVE COURTS, THE COCOA ECONOMY, AND LAND “PALAVER”: IJESA AND EKITI, 1900–1948 OLATUNJI OJO AND LAWRENCE K. ALO

This chapter examines the impact of British rule on the administration of land laws in northeastern Yorubaland between 1900 and 1948. It argues that colonialism led to the creation of native courts where indigenous Yoruba laws were administered insofar as they were consistent with British legal ideas and “not repugnant to natural justice, equity and good conscience.”1 Although Ekiti and Ijesa were two of the last Yoruba districts to come under European influence, they shared experiences of British courts similar to those of regions with older contacts. Native courts were popular as evidenced by the number of cases reported and the class of litigants. Everywhere the courts provided an unequal but not so distinct playing field for litigants regardless of class and gender. It empowered commoners and women to challenge their chiefs and gerontocratic rule. How did the native courts, which combined the Yoruba and British legal systems, shape land cases in Ijesa and Ekiti Districts? How did the British legal code and the associated social and economic changes impact gender, class, and property relations? How well did the new courts perform in settling conflicts brought before them? Further, to the extent that the indigenous family and chiefs’ courts continued to function parallel to the new colonial courts, how were similar cases involving land handled in these courts, and why was it that individuals sought to have their disputes settled in the new courts? This chapter draws on extensive archival sources including the records of native courts, the diaries of colonial commissioners whose pronouncements had legal implications, and the files of Western Nigeria’s regional land ministry. In 1904, at Efon-Ekiti, a man Osunrinde, recently freed from slavery learned that one Ogunmudimu had encroached on his land while he was

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away in captivity. He sued the man to the alaaye’s (king’s) court. His suit was to reclaim a farm at Ilase that he had abandoned for about thirty years while he was in slavery. The details of the case are as follows: around 1866, Ijesa forces attacked and sacked Efon-Ekiti and carried some of its people into slavery including the plaintiff, his father, Ologunede, and other members of his family. Subsequently, the defendant, who escaped enslavement, took over the farm at Ilase, hitherto farmed by the plaintiff’s father. The defendant denied the charge claiming instead that the plot belonged to his father. The court rejected the plaintiff’s claim on the basis that his father had no boundary with the defendant’s father. Not satisfied with the ruling, in 1905 the plaintiff appealed to the British commissioner for northeastern Yorubaland and reiterated his claims. The defendant again denied the plaintiff’s claim. In his defense, he pointed out that the land in dispute was a neglected farm near his farm, a fact the plaintiff seemingly agreed with when he stated that “there were two farms divided by a stream.” However, he stressed that “the defendant has crossed the stream and encroached on his farm which he had not occupied for thirty years while he was in slavery.” When the commissioner asked if a farmer could occupy and get title to a farm abandoned by another person for many years, the alaaye replied that a landowner had the right to reclaim his farm: “[when an] owner returns he gets his farm back, however long he is away.”2 The commissioner also asked about when the plaintiff returned to Efon and when he reclaimed his land—to which the plaintiff responded that he repossessed the farm in 1904, two years after he returned from slavery. The reason why he did not reclaim the land in 1902 was lack of knowledge about it until another farmer, Lokosan, told him about it. Two witnesses, Olagunju and Atoye, denied Osunrinde’s claim to the land. In his ruling, the commissioner awarded judgment for the defendant and sentenced the plaintiff to six months’ imprisonment “for stirring up trouble by driving people out of their farms.”3 This case is symptomatic of the changes brought about by the imposition of British rule and British-style court systems in Yorubaland as well as other parts of Africa. It shows how through the intervention of British officials and courts in local disputes new legislative and arbitration processes evolved.4 For example, had the case came up ten years earlier, there would have been no appeal beyond the alaaye’s court. Second, the case shows how the commissioner overruled the alaaye on tenure rights. The alaaye believed that a person cannot be denied ownership of their land no matter the years of neglect, but the commissioner seemingly rejected this view. Instead, he was of the opinion that long usage of the farmland in question by Ogunmudimu had changed the ownership of the land, and that

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farmers could not be separated from the improvements such as crops planted on a piece of land.5 There are works on the Yoruba legal system under British colonial rule, though very little has been written specifically on Ekiti and Ijesa Districts. Omoniyi Adewoye, Teslim Elias, and Gabriel Coker have examined the development of the British legal system in Nigeria with an emphasis on court operations and legal practitioners.6 Kristin Mann explores how Lagosians used British courts as they pursued property rights in land and buildings.7 Peter Lloyd’s magisterial work on Yoruba land law examines land disputes in mostly native courts in four Yoruba districts—Ondo, Ekiti, Ijebu, and Abeokuta. The work provides many court cases relating to access, ownership, lease, and pawning, but the reader does not get a good idea of the growth and evolution of customary courts. While customary courts had been established in Ekiti as early as 1914, the oldest case from Ekiti that Lloyd cites is from 1949 after the courts had consolidated their operations, and thus not from the initial period of encounter and friction.8 In other parts of West Africa, Richard Roberts uses early colonial court records to examine social change in French Soudan (modern Mali) during the period when colonial rule was consolidated over the interior of West Africa. The French courts were new, introduced to replace existing Islamic courts and local tribunals in non-Muslim areas, and became a focal point for contesting power and seeking to acquire or confirm rights to property, inheritance, marital assets, and the custody of children.9

Overview of Land Law in Precolonial Yorubaland The nineteenth century was very significant in the history of Yorubaland. To some observers, it was the “age of confusion”—a sobriquet earned from the wars fought intermittently between 1817 and 1893. Warfare brought with it banditry, death, trade disruption, enslavement, ethnic tension, and population displacement. The crises were accentuated by social, political, and economic changes linked to the extension of the Sokoto jihad into Yorubaland as well as the region’s involvement in the Atlantic slave trade and later the legitimate trade in agricultural crops along the coast.10 Some of the conflicts had their origins in disputes over land. Although land did not become a market commodity in Yorubaland prior to the British takeover of Lagos in 1851, and not for decades in the interior, land disputes nonetheless fueled and prolonged Yoruba warfare.11 It is impossible to fully understand the perennial Ife-Modakeke crisis without

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factoring in land litigation. As the northern Yoruba kingdom of Oyo disintegrated between the 1790s and 1830s, refugees pushed southward and settled among local people. A large number found refuge at Ile-Ife, the mythical “cradle of the [Yoruba] race.”12 Not later than 1850, the refugees who mostly settled in Iraye Quarter and later Modakeke Ward were no longer wanted. Subsequently, they were treated like slaves and at best as tenants and stragglers. The people of Ife wanted the settlers to pay tribute in the form of payments (Yoruba: isakole, iwifo) for the right to farm and build houses. Sometimes the settlers complied; other times they refused.13 In 1886, Ife chiefs accused the settlers of not acting “like their fathers who used to supply them with food.”14 As seen in the Ife-Modakeke contests, Yoruba warfare and the attendant destruction of towns, creation of new ones, and movement of mass populations resulted in people newly occupying abandoned lands by forcing out the original inhabitants. Ironically, the wars also generated economic activity. Soldiers, slaves, traders, and refugees all required food, and their demands were met largely by farmers who increased food production. In 1855, shortly after Ibadan soldiers returned from the wars against Ekiti, David Hinderer of the Church Missionary Society (CMS) recorded his experiences in Ibadan. On agriculture he noted: The Ibadan war [against Ekiti] has at last terminated, and the warriors have come home with great riches alas! I say, with hosts of slaves. Though not many are sold down to the coast except to Porto Novo by way of Abeokuta, yet is the high price. Their farms are filled with them and many of the rich warriors make new farms for them and not a few of the free farmers have long been saving money to buy slaves for their farms.15

By “free farmers” Hinderer meant mostly civilians who bought slaves from the market. Such farmers, especially those with military backgrounds, appropriated abandoned lands and drove people off their farms. The expulsion of the Egba from their original homelands by the Oyo in the 1820s and the Egba’s desire to reclaim their old homes provide a crucial context to understanding persistent Oyo-Egba friction during the nineteenth century.16 However, if we grant that the aim of the British legal system was to resolve or minimize conflicts, then to the extent that it altered the existing social equilibrium, it actually created new disputes. Initially, British officers used force as a conflict-management tactic. Some towns were leveled with military force, and others were partially sacked. For instance, Lagos and Ijebu were bombarded in 1851 and 1892, respectively, and Ilorin and Oyo in 1895. Many residents in these towns who lived in

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thatched houses had their buildings burned and their property destroyed during the pacification process.17 Other cities were emotionally overwhelmed by the demonstration of military might. A British delegation to the Yoruba hinterland in 1886 had an escort of fifty Hausa soldiers, carrying twenty-five hundred ball cartridges, a seven-pounder gun, and a rocket launcher. According to Acting Governor Fred Evans, the troops were intended, not to overawe the Yoruba, but to safeguard the commissioners. However, given the mistrust between the Yoruba and many Hausa slaves and/or soldiers, many people perceived the contingent as an occupation force.18 Seven years later, Britain again used Hausa soldiers to force Ibadan chiefs into submission. In 1893, Governor Gilbert Carter made Ibadan the administrative capital of the Yoruba hinterland with a resident British officer assisted by fifty to one hundred Hausa soldiers to maintain peace.19 Carter ordered “two maxim guns,” knowing that a display of military power would frighten the Ibadan chiefs from starting new wars. He writes: “There is no doubt that these guns are much needed, not necessarily for use, but it has been found that the mere sight of them has a soothing effect upon the native mind.”20 With the consolidation of British rule it was clear that force alone would not resolve conflicts; hence, new tools were adopted. One such measure was the creation of a legal system drawn from Yoruba and British judicial models. Under the new framework, native courts were set up to administer justice through local laws under colonial supervision.21 The guiding principle thus was the administration of justice based on practices that were compatible with British morality, natural justice, equity, and good conscience.

Origin of the British Northeastern Yoruba District Immediately after the British conquest of Yorubaland in the 1890s, a program to ensure effective control of the region started in earnest. It was in this pursuit that Ekiti and Ijesa Districts were merged into the Northeastern Yoruba District with headquarters in Ilesa in 1899.22 The district was placed under Major William Reeve-Tucker, a traveling commissioner who exercised wide military, judicial, and administrative powers for the purpose of maintaining law and order. As if to further enhance peace, law and order, and “development” in the district, and in line with Britain’s policy of “native authority” (later renamed indirect rule), a federated Ekitiparapo council was inaugurated in June 1900, composed of senior chiefs in Ekiti and Ijesa. The choice of Ilesa as council

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headquarters made the Ijesa and their king the senior partner and ruler in and of the alliance.23 The council’s activities were, however, short-lived. First, it was only in the face of a common enemy—opposition to the Ibadan and Ilorin military machines—and later at the official level that the Ekitiparapo alliance presented a semblance of unity.24 Ekiti chiefs did not recognize the owa (king) of Ilesa as the most senior chief, or his people, as the senior partner in the alliance.25 The people of another Ekiti district, Akure, distrusted the Ijesa almost as much as they disliked Ibadan and Ilorin. In a report from 1897, Captain E. P. S. Roupel, an officer of the British Niger Coast Protectorate, sent a letter to his counterpart at Odo Otin (on the boundary between the Ilorin and Ekiti forces) relating to a complaint made by Akure chiefs against the king of Ijesa: “Akure chiefs complained against Owa of Ilesa who was demanding gifts from Akure as an overlord. They sent to him a slave and 300 shillings.”26 Since it was the Yoruba wars that brought about the alliance, the cessation of hostilities rendered the coalition redundant. Second, there was also significant division among the Ijesa themselves. At Ilesa there was periodic tension between civil and military chiefs as well as between the chiefs and the king. For example, in 1896, Frederick Haastrup Akinmokun, an ex-slave, merchant, and Christian, ascended the throne and took the title Ajimoko I. Although he was of royal blood, some of his subjects considered him an “outsider” because he had lived the previous fifty years outside Ilesa, first as a slave and later as a trader operating from Lagos and Ayesan.27 Others were angry that he encouraged a number of his chiefs to attend church services and that his Christian faith could undermine local belief systems. Paradoxically, members of the Christian elite did not see Ajimoko I as a true believer. A clergyman, having complimented Ajimoko for bringing his chiefs to church, wrote: “His [Ajimoko’s] addictedness to polygamy causes much embarrassment to our agents and he encourages the inconsistent members of the church by his example.”28 The differences continued during the regime of Ajimoko’s successor, Owa Atayero (1901–20). In 1903, for instance, there were animosities between the owa and his chiefs led by Obanla Ogedengbe (the second-ranking chief), who before his elevation in 1896 was Ijesa’s army chief, Seriki.29 Indeed, there is a belief that the obanla chieftaincy was conferred on Ogedengbe to placate him and make him pledge loyalty to the king. One of the obanla’s grievances was that the owa was too close to Ijesa residents in Lagos, and less attached to his chiefs domiciled at Ilesa.30 Other chiefs complained that some of the owa’s authority had been usurped by a very powerful daughter, Princess Adenibi.31 It did not take

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long before the owa was accused of high-handedness in his dealings with his chiefs.32 Before British rule in Ilesa, there existed an executive council composed of the six leading chiefs. This was reactivated after the Ekitiparapo Council collapsed. The council deliberated on issues affecting its people both in the capital city and in the countryside.33 It has been noted earlier that this council was reorganized. It was partly for this reason that Governor William Macgregor of Lagos introduced the Native Councils Ordinance of 1901, which stipulated the creation of a council of chiefs in each district under the headship of the person recognized by the British governor as the senior chief. The council had the task of advising the governor and colonial officers on local laws and customs and helping carry out colonial policies.34 It seems obvious that early in the life of the Ekitiparapo Council, it was unprepared to cope with some of the administrative challenges facing it, particularly the settling of the huge number of cases reaching the colonial officer.35 In the precolonial period, family heads and quarter chiefs adjudicated in petty cases such as spousal abuse, theft, adultery, and boundary disputes between close relatives. More serious cases like kidnapping, rape, robbery, treason, and murder and appeal from lower courts were handled by the king-in-council—that is, the king assisted by a hierarchy of chiefs that varied according to the size of the town. For cases with religious elements, such as violation of local taboos, exposure of religious secrets, and witchcraft, the king-in council was assisted by religious cults like the Ogboni and Egungun.36 Disputes between women and quarrels from the marketplace were settled by the head of female chiefs, the arise in Ilesa and the eyegba at Ado-Ekiti.37 Occasionally, trade disputes such as over debts, allocation of stalls, and sanitation were reported to and settled by the iyaloja (head of the market) and the heads of market guilds.38 The judges received payment for their services in palm wine, kola nuts, imported liquor, and cash. Fines paid by offending parties and properties seized from criminals were appropriated by the judges.39 Therefore, litigation provided an important source of income for local chiefs. Colonialism changed the arrangements described above. The council of chiefs no longer had the power to dispense capital punishment, and the king’s court was no longer the highest court of the land. The colonial administration also gradually took over the collection and administration of tolls and market fees, thus reducing the king’s source of income. Fines collected from the courts must also be reported to the government as part of overall revenue collection. Since the king’s court was no longer

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supreme, and the general feeling was that the chiefs were corrupt, especially when they presided over cases in which they had a vested interest, the common people began to take their cases directly to the British district commissioner, to the detriment of chiefly power. Stripped of the aura that had hitherto surrounded the palace, the king’s council, being subject to colonial laws, fought back by resisting British interference in judicial administration.40 Furthermore, it also seems that the government did not trust the chiefs and viewed their judicial power as, to quote Governor Macgregor, “a temporary one, calculated to take the chiefs only one stage onward in their administrative education”;41 for the administration, “in a very few years something more elaborate will be necessary.”42 The elaborate institution to which he referred was a formal court. But it is important to note that the colonial administration could not just establish a formal court without creating a basis for it. The agreements reached with the various Yoruba states on the eve of colonial conquest had tended to guarantee their independence, so for the colonialists to establish any formalized court would be contravening these treaties.

Creating the Native Courts The creation of native courts in Ekiti and Ijesa benefited from centuries of British confrontation with non-European legal systems whether this was in the Americas, Asia, South Africa, or Sierra Leone. This knowledge was imported into Yorubaland beginning with the British conquest of Lagos in 1852 and the introduction of a British-style legal code. For example, the first treaty signed between British and Lagos officials immediately after conquest contains clauses dealing with commercial litigation, punishment for civil and criminal offences like indebtedness and slave trading, and the process of appeal. During the following decade, Lagos had four courts, two of which adjudicated in trade and land cases.43 Lagosians moving into the Yoruba hinterland and later the British colonialists extended European legal values into the relationships with the interior dwellers. Police courts existed at Lekki and Badagry east and west of Lagos, respectively, in the 1860s.44 At Abeokuta, Egba traders of Sierra Leonean origin founded a trade tribunal in 1860 to adjudicate in commercial disputes between them and Lagosians.45 In the east, Governor Alfred Moloney decided in 1886 to subject the coastal portion of eastern Yorubaland embracing Mahin to laws applicable at Lekki.46 Finally in 1893 and 1897, British commissioners were stationed at Ibadan and Igbobini (Ilaje).47 These officers toured towns and villages in their jurisdiction, where they served as judges in a

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number of cases. Governor Gilbert Carter visited Ijebu Ode in December 1893, and during his stay he reviewed a case involving a man whom the awujale (king) of Ijebu had sentenced to twenty years’ imprisonment with hard labor plus one hundred lashes for opening an umbrella in the street— a royal privilege.48 Before then, no one in Yoruba towns including Ijebu territory except the king could open their umbrellas on the street. They must fold it and carry it on their heads. Although the awujale insisted that his sentence was lenient because the original punishment was death, Carter reduced the sentence to one-year imprisonment.49 Thus, the introduction of a new legal system for Yorubaland in 1903 occurred in the context of a long history of legal interactions. However, while British legal intervention from 1852 to 1902 had usually been tied to military considerations— conquest and pacification—the legal reforms after 1903 were related to the consolidation of a colonial state. Macgregor understood that the hold Britain had over most Yoruba states was fragile, such that, on a tour of the hinterland in 1903, he noted that the British “position . . . was a weak one [and] the people are frequently encouraged to assert their independence of the British government.”50 Again, the British government realized that courts in Lagos where the colonial administration had operated since 1852 possessed practically no jurisdiction in the interior. No jurisdiction “whatsoever has been established” in these places by the British by force, Macgregor further remarked, and “none has been ceded and no jurisdiction has grown up by use or custom.” It was for this reason that Britain initiated the Judicial Agreement of 1904 with the major Yoruba states.51 This agreement not only helped the British to formalize their jurisdiction; it also enabled the introduction of a European legal and judicial system in Yorubaland.52 By 1903, it was obvious that the machinery of justice had to be overhauled. Some factors necessitated the establishment of a colonial court in Ilesa as elsewhere in Southern Nigeria. These factors were political and economic. Politically, the native court that was established for resolving conflicts was to be an instrument in the hands of the colonial state for wielding power in its colony. The native courts were seen as of immense value to the colonial government perhaps because they rendered “material assistance” in the control of the colonies. These courts were charged with the responsibility for “all administration and executive works among the natives for the furtherance of trade, education and agriculture.”53 It is against this background that the role of the native court as an instrument of conflict resolution can be appreciated.

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In 1905, the Ilesa Native Court was established in accordance with the provision of the Native Council Ordinance of 1900.54 The court members were the owa and his principal chiefs: the obanla, the loro, the risawe, and the ogboni of Ilesa. The owa’s appeals court was made up of the kings (ogboni) of the three principal Ijesa towns: Ijebu-Jesa, Ipole, and Ibokun.55 The Ilesa Native Court originally handled all cases—criminal, civil, and land. By 1914, when the Native Courts Ordinance was amended, the courts were ranked from A to D, with grade A courts having as judges the district officer and senior monarchs like the kings of Oyo, Abeokuta, Ijebu, and Ile-Ife. Grade D courts had the least power and adjudicated only minor cases. Grade A and B courts were divided into sessions and heard cases separately—civil and criminal were heard in a court in two sessions, and land cases in another session. The Ilesa court, a grade B court, could pass a sentence of two years in jail, up to £50 in fines, and twenty-four lashes in criminal cases.56 Ekiti, with its sixteen kingdoms, had a slightly different arrangement. Until the dissolution of the northeastern district council and the creation of Ekiti District with headquarters at Ado-Ekiti in 1913, cases from Ekiti were taken to the Ilesa Native Court. Occasionally, however, the British district officer (DO), who had his headquarters at Ilesa, toured Ekiti, during which litigants brought their cases to him in designated towns. The creation of Ekiti into a separate administrative unit saw the further creation of a C-grade native court at Ado-Ekiti in 1915 and later at Oye-Ekiti and Ido-Ekiti in 1916, Ikere-Ekiti in 1917, and Akure in 1918.57 Each court had the king as president assisted by his senior chiefs and selected kings from neighboring villages. The Ado court covered central and southern Ekiti, so it had among its judges the kings of Ikere, Ise, Emure, Ilawe, and Igbara-Odo.58 The grade C court heard cases where the claims did not exceed £25, and it could not impose fines of more than £10 or punishments exceeding twenty-four lashes.59 How did the native court function? The procedure of the court was that cases emanated through the service of civil summons on a defendant or accused person subsequent to a suit at court by a plaintiff. An akoda (sword bearer), later olopa (staff bearer), served the summons. When a plaintiff failed to appear in court, the case was to be struck out, unless notice was given that an adjournment was required and the necessary fees were paid. At the end of the day’s hearing, any case remaining on the case list was adjourned and the dates of hearing of such adjournment were announced in the open court.60 The cases that came before the courts can be grouped into civil and criminal disputes. When it comes to civil cases,

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we will focus on certain cases as representative of the role they played in social change. These cases were largely land and matrimonial disputes.

Economic Change and Land Disputes The economic base of Ijesa and Ekiti was farming, and until the 1890s they specialized in food crops, especially yam, maize, guinea corn, and vegetables. They also produced kola nuts and cotton. However, a different wind was blowing. Starting around 1850, commercial activities in such nonfood products as palm oil, palm kernels, and tobacco—popularly called cash crops—began and expanded first in response to Ibadan imperialism and later to the “legitimate” trade in farm products. The people of Ekiti and Ijesa traded in palm oil, yams, kola nuts, mats, and woven textiles, among other items to raise money for themselves. Other times these products were sent to Ibadan as tribute payment (Yoruba: iwisin).61 In 1885, Are Momoh Latoosa, the senior chief at Ibadan, described the people of Ijesa and Ekiti as “our [Ibadan] wives, yams and palm oil,” the terms referring to the enslavement of their women for the purpose of supplying free and cheap wives and workers but also for the agricultural goods collected as tax from the two districts.62 The most fundamental incentive came after the end of the Yoruba wars as demobilized soldiers settled back into civilian life as farmers and traders, and as the colonial government encouraged tree crop production for revenue purposes.63 The soldiers first adopted rubber production around 1893, but this lasted a very short time. By 1898, most of the rubber vines in Ijesa and Ekiti had been destroyed, and they were replaced by the production of cocoa, kola nuts, and palm produce.64 It is impossible to date accurately when cocoa was introduced into either Ijesa or Ekiti, but its cultivation was closely associated with the return of ex-slaves and Christian converts from Lagos, Sierra Leone, Abeokuta, and Ayesan. Consequently, cocoa would have been introduced no later than 1898, following first the collapse of rubber production and the extension of the missionary policy of “the bible and the plough.”65 By 1920, the colonial state was more or less dependent on cocoa, palm products, timber, cotton, and peanuts for its foreign trade and the local payment of taxes. Given the low income from food crops, farmers took to tree crop production and other remunerative vocations. In northern Ekiti, for example, although the land was not very good for cocoa, it still attracted many farmers, some of whom soon built new houses and acquired more wives and titles.66 Unlike Ijesa, however, cocoa farming took off late in Ekiti—active production did not begin until the

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1920s. The change of attitude was partly a response to a combination of a number of socioeconomic factors. First was the impact of the periodic droughts, which destroyed agricultural crops during World War 1. Second, in 1919, the colonial administration introduced a flat tax of six shillings on adult males, with nonpayment resulting in imprisonment. The family members of tax evaders who went into hiding were arrested and punished. Upon arrest, tax defaulters were rounded up and fined four years’ tax three times over, just as people were also conscripted to do public works like road construction.67 Aware of the potential income from cocoa, a significant number of Ekiti youth traveled to Ijesa, Ibadan, and Ondo, where they worked as wage laborers on cocoa farms.68 Many also used the opportunity to learn the art of cocoa cultivation. These young men began returning to Ekiti in the 1930s, signaling the beginning of a farming revolution in Ekiti. Many received plots from their families on which they created cocoa farms. Individuals with inadequate fertile soil leased land from other farmers. Lease agreements involved an annual fee paid to the landlord. Payments were usually made in cash but also in palm oil, yams, palm wine, labor, and cocoa seeds.69 How did cocoa cultivation change Yoruba land tenure and use? Cash crop production attracted people to farming, and many hitherto virgin forests were converted into farmland. Indeed, higher reliance on farming soon converted land into a commodity of exchange used in raising loans, winning followers, and as an instrument of social control. Consequently, ownership of virgin forest became a principal source of wealth. Adventurous farmers began to appropriate every available virgin forest. Therefore, it was unavoidable that disputes would arise over land access, use, and ownership to accommodate these new farms. The disputes were even more contentious when land redistribution amounted to a reduction in chiefly power. The introduction of cocoa into the economy of Yorubaland fundamentally changed local valuation of land. In precolonial Ekiti and Ijesa, the most valuable possession that a man had was the control over another person.70 People saved money to buy slaves and rent pawns, husbands obtained more wives so they could control them and their children, and senior lineage members controlled their juniors. However, when cocoa became a commodity that offered the possibility of substantial profit, land on which to grow cash crops became equally as important, and property rights became heavily disputed.71 Thus, the fact that land could not be jointly owned within a marriage meant that in the event of divorce, one party lost the wealth that was associated with landholding. More important than land

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ownership, though, was the mental shift regarding the purpose of farming that occurred with the development of cocoa production. As has been mentioned, cash crops had the potential for huge economic gains. Consequently, the purpose of farming changed from survival or subsistence to profit. This shift in purpose meant that the family food farm and the most fertile land would be converted into cocoa plots, and family foodstuffs had to be procured from other sources or cultivated on less fertile soils. The imposition of a hierarchy of crops resulted in enormous changes in land use and property rights. Intense labor and extensive land use were necessary in order to establish a successful cocoa farm, and as farmers searched for lands on which to farm cocoa, cultivation increasingly took place farther away from a farmer’s primary residence. Thus, many cocoa farms were located five to fifteen miles beyond the town walls. Farmers built temporary houses and huts on their farms so that they could sleep while on the farm; they returned to their homes in town during weekends and public holidays.72 Where a farmer did not get adequate land, he leased from friends or seized other people’s lands. Land-grabbing or theft was a major cause of the conflicts that reached colonial courts.73 One such litigation took place in the 1930s in the Ekiti town of Ikole. The Ikole or Lemomu Yesufu case was similar to the Efon case cited above, but it also has other unique features. The issue at stake was to establish whether a disputed land, called Erijiyan, belonged to a lineage, thereby making it a private holding, or to the entire Ikole community—that is, a public land. Ikole authorities contended that the disputed land was the original location of their town, from where they were forced out by war. However, unlike communities who completely abandoned their old locations, Ikole chiefs placed an emese (royal slave), the sajiyan, to watch over their old relics, especially the shrines and the palace. This arrangement of having an officer watch over the site was maintained until 1915 when villages in Ikole District agreed to abandon their hilly and “inaccessible” locations, where they also had sought refuge during the nineteenth-century Yoruba wars, for the more habitable plains. Thus, one of the villages, Ikoyi, was the first to relocate and resettle at Erijiyan.74 By this time, however, slavery had been abolished; and as we will see, the descendants of sajiyan no longer accepted their slave ancestry. They identified themselves as freeborn and landowners rather than agents designated to monitor a communal property. Shortly before the relocation of Ikoyi, a portion of Erijiyan land was allocated to the family of Imam Yesufu for purposes of farming and residence. The story of Yesufu goes back to about 1875. His grandmother,

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Mokoku (daughter of Onibedo), was captured by Ibadan soldiers in 1875. At Ibadan, Mokoku became the slave wife of a soldier belonging to the Elesin Nla family of Oritamerin, and the couple gave birth to a boy, Muritala (Yesufu’s father). A trader in his early adulthood, Muritala traveled to Ikole several times in the 1890s, and later his grandfather, Onibedo, persuaded him to settle and not go back to Ibadan. Muritala agreed and happily settled with his maternal relations. Through Onibedo, the Elekole granted a section of Erijiyan land to Muritala, and he also became the first imam of Ikole.75 Having come from Ibadan, renowned for its large-scale slave- and landholdings, and where private rights in land were better developed than at Ikole, Muritala planted his plots with cocoa, sugarcane, and vegetables. Because the plot originally allocated to him was inadequate, he chose to encroach on virgin lands adjacent to his farm, but without seeking the approval of Ikole chiefs. The latter condemned Muritala for land-grabbing, and in disgrace he abandoned his farm and moved back to Ibadan—but not before leaving his estate to his son, Yesufu. It was shortly after this episode that the Ikoyi arrived in the territory. Yesufu ordered the new settlers to leave Erijiyan unless they acknowledged him as the owner, and as one to whom they must pay rent. Yesufu’s defense basically confirmed this extended narrative. His major contention was that the land in dispute belonged not to Ikole authorities but to the family of the sajiyan, to which he had a maternal link.76 In this case, Ikole authorities collectively fought against someone they deemed a usurper. Other cases show how farm entrepreneurs with no ancestry tie to a specific land yet received enough court support to pursue their claims. In 1945, Ali Babalola sued Oloja Isireyun claiming the ownership of a farmland at Isireyun village near Ilesa. Babalola’s father was the previous oloja (village head) and for this reason had a farmland attached to his office (ile oye, “chieftaincy land”), which his son inherited from him. Cocoa and kola nut plants were cultivated on it. But when his father died, the plaintiff refused to take up the oloja of Isireyun chieftaincy title, which another man accepted, and the latter claimed the said farmland as a chieftaincy land.77 At the lands session of the native court, the judge, Chief S. Latunji, the ogboni of Ilesa, ruled that the land was an official property of the oloja of Isireyun, which belonged to Ali Babalola’s family but that since Babalola refused the title, the right to the land must go to the titleholder (the defendant). However, since Babalola had developed the plot by planting permanent crops like kola nuts and cocoa, the court ordered that he should be allowed to harvest his crops while paying rent (isakole) on the land to the “new” oloja of Isireyun. This case has a dual significance. In the first instance, it shows the transition of the plaintiff,

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Babalola, from a “landowner” to a “tenant.” Second, it also shows how tree crop production altered land ownership. While the court rejected the oloja’s attempt to appropriate a family (collective) land, it acknowledged the inseparability of land and the crops on it. In essence, the court ruled that farmers of cash crops should not be separated from their property.78 In the following year, the court heard the case of the Fagbulu family versus Ajakaye, both of Ilesa.79 Both claimed ownership of a farmland at Orogoji on the road to Iwara. In the course of the court’s investigation, it became evident that Ajakaye was not an Ijesa but a slave of the late warrior Ogedengbe (d. 1910).80 Ajakaye was only a tenant of the Fagbulu, and he paid rent for farming on his land. In 1916, Ajakaye went to the native court, banking on the influence of his deceased but still popular overlord, Ogedengbe, to press his claim for ownership of the said land. When he could not do this, he rescinded his claim over the land. Twenty years later, the obaodo, another member of the owa’s inner cabinet, incited him to take a fresh action over the land with a promise that he, the obaodo, would help in the case and that if he succeeded they would share the farmland between them.81 It was, however, clear that Ajakaye was making a wrong and deceitful claim, his effrontery motivated by the obaodo’s membership on the court. The fortitude of other members of the court helped bring out the facts of the case. It is significant to note that this case evinced the importance that was placed on land, particularly farmland that could be used to cultivate economically productive trees for such products as cocoa and rubber. Again, this case also shows how attempts were made to use position and wealth to dispossess people of their property in the court. Had the members of the court been lax in their duties, Ajakaye would have been wrongfully upheld as the owner of the farmland. This was a typical example of how the native court was used by the rich and privileged in the society against the poor. Another case, between David Jegede and David Ibidapo, the lemodu of Ilesa, came before the Ilesa Native Court presided over by Chief Olaitan, the obaodo, in 1947. Jegede wanted title to all portions of land that were leased to “the CMS Bookshop” on Okesa Street as well as the rent already paid to Ibidapo.82 Ibidapo, for his part, claimed ownership, having inherited the land from his father, a previous lemodu, who had held the land as his personal property. The value of the land in dispute was approximately £100. According to Ibidapo, it was the king of Ilesa, Owa Aromolaran I (1920–42), who granted this land to the CMS through his father and predecessor in office, Chief Lemodu Ajayi. The transfer was approved by Aromolaran’s successor, Fidipote Ajimoko II (1942–56). In spite of evidence that Aromolaran and Lemodu Ajayi used their chiefly

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power to seize the land from Jegede’s father in return for huge rent paid by the CMS, the native court decided the case in Ibidapo’s favor. The judge, Chief S. Latunji, declared: “I still maintain my previous judgment in this case according to the decision of the Owa and Ijesa chiefs, that Lemodu David Ibidapo is the owner of the disputed land.”83 The plaintiff, David Jegede, disagreed and appealed the judgment to the owa’s Native Court of Appeals. In the course of the appeal, it was proven that the plaintiff was the rightful owner of the said land, thereby setting aside the ruling of the lower court. The appeals court president, Owa Ajimoko II, declared: “In this case, we now see clearly that the land is not a chieftaincy land as we had thought it; therefore, this court shall decide that the rent collected on the land from the CMS Bookshop shall henceforth have to be divided into two equal parts between the plaintiff and the defendants.”84 Both plaintiff and defendant, for different reasons, expressed dissatisfaction with the judgment and wished to appeal. Admittedly, the plaintiff did not want to share the proceeds from the land with the defendant, while the latter was dissatisfied since he believed that the owa had used his chiefly prerogative to favor the defendant, another chief. For this reason, David Jegede immediately sent a petition to the DO for Ilesa Division. When the case came before the DO, he upheld the judgment of the Native Court of Appeals. But he added that “the Defendant/Respondent, David Ibidapo, must keep all monies received as rent up to and including March 31, 1948, when judgment was delivered, while the Plaintiff/Appellant should receive full rent with effect from April 1.” He also ordered that the plaintiff/appellant should enter into an agreement with the owa-in-council along the lines of the agreement drawn up between the owa-in-council and the defendant/respondent. After the expiration of the lease in 1956, a renewal could be contemplated and the plaintiff/appellant was to become the leaser in the place of the Native Authority.85 This was a case of direct conflict of evidence. The owa’s previous recognition of the land as chieftaincy land stood in contrast with his later acceptance of the land as private property. This case was significant in that, first, it showed the importance that was placed on land; and second, it showed clearly the delicate lines walked by all the parties involved. The plaintiff believed that this was a new era in which individual rights should not be trampled upon and that courts and the law should be respectful of everyone, regardless of status. To the courts, however, it was an era of ambivalence where private property should be protected, but in a way that a chief and the chiefly institution would not be humiliated.

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Land disputes were not limited to men. Clearly, the spread of “cocoa fever” in Yorubaland, as cocoa’s value as a commodity of the colonial economy soared, had important consequences for women’s land rights. Changes to the value of land brought about by the encouragement of cocoa production often reduced women’s access to land for the growing of food crops and vegetables, and for gathering palm kernels from trees growing wild in the forests. Also, as male farmers made additional demands on familial labor, cocoa farming forced women to devote more time to working for their husbands at the expense of developing their own sources of personal income. Cocoa crops greatly restricted the independence of women, who became increasingly dependent on their husbands to provide the necessities of life. A woman was no longer a partner in a reciprocal relationship designed to facilitate the survival of the family unit. Rather, her value was primarily centered on her labor on the husband’s farm, while she received compensation in cash, gifts of textiles, cocoa seeds, and help in food farming. Some men rewarded their wives with small cocoa plots. Thus, cocoa farming, while sapping the energy of the Ijesa and Ekiti women and increased their subjugation, made only a few women cocoa farmers in their own right.86 Unlike the precolonial period when very few women sought to inherit land, cash crops became attractive to women because they yielded good profits. Thus, a number of women took to cocoa, palm oil, and kola nut production by establishing personal farms or buying them with their savings. Others also inherited from their deceased husbands and parents. In Ekiti, the earliest women to engage in cash crop farming were widows, who after the death of their husbands took over their farms and managed them together with their children. Earlier, the tradition was that a deceased man’s property, including his wife (wives) and children, were inherited by his relations, especially when the children were young.87 As we shall see below, the legalization of divorce permitted women the opportunity to leave marriages in which they were unhappy. In selecting new husbands, women were guided by their personal aspirations and economic and social needs. From 1940 onward, a widow who had children in school could no longer tolerate a situation whereby she would become the inheritance of a brother-in-law unwilling to sponsor her children’s education. Such widows would persuade their children to refuse the inheritance of their father’s farm by any uncle. Instead, the widows and their children worked the farms themselves, thereby allowing widows to become cocoa farmers and household heads.88 Apart from widows, other hardworking women also bought cocoa farms, while others inherited farms from their parents, sometimes at the

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expense of their brothers. In 1944, one Victoria Bola of Ikere-Ekiti sued her husband, Samuel Ojo, for divorce. She told the court that she had inherited a cocoa farm from her late brother, Komolafe. From the money she realized from the sale of the cocoa harvest, she kept £33.10s, which she gave to her husband for safekeeping. Without her knowledge or permission, Ojo then spent £6 of this amount making bridal payment on a new wife. Infuriated, Bola broke into Ojo’s room and removed £14, and sued her husband in court to get the remaining balance of £8.10s. She won her case.89 Another case involved a Mrs. Kolade, who was sued by her brother, Gabriel Ojo, who objected to her inheriting her father’s farm at Ogotun. He accused Mrs. Kolade and her husband, along with the Ologotun-in-council of wrongfully dividing the property of his father, who had died in 1945. He claimed that a woman should not inherit land. The Ologotun-in-council that had presided over the original division, however, justified their action on the grounds that only Mrs. Kolade had financed the burial and the clearing of her father’s debts, amounting to £22.11s.90 Although the case file did not contain the ruling of the appellate court, the fact that the oba’s court accepted Kolade’s right to inherit her father’s farm was an evidence of social and economic change in Ekiti. Women’s rights over land were also upheld in a number of other cases. One example is that of Oluseju of Arigidi-Ekiti (now Ayegbaju), who gave his daughter a portion of the family’s lineage land to farm. Through this woman, the land passed on to her son, who planted both cash and food crops. Sometime later, a land dispute arose between Arigidi and Ifaki in which one James Dada, a grandson of Oluseju from a paternal line, lost his portion of family land to Ifaki. He then decided to claim land farmed by J. K. Daramola, a grandson of Oluseju’s daughter, on the basis that the land belonged to his lineage and not to Daramola, whose rights derived from a woman. The native court at Oye-Ekiti, however, ruled against Dada, stating that the plot belonged to Daramola, who might, if he so wished, permit Dada the use of part of it. Not content with this decision, Dada appealed to the divisional court, which upheld the decision of the lower court, that long usage had changed the ownership of the land. Planters of cash crops could not be separated from their land.91

Conclusion If one charts the legacy of colonialism in what is now Nigeria, it is clear that its consequences on the history of Yorubaland are far-reaching and profound. Focusing more specifically on Britain’s colonization of Ijesa and Ekiti, the issues involved were relatively complex. While it is

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certainly true that British courts introduced some positive changes to the region, they also fundamentally altered important parts of Yoruba culture. This is particularly true for the court decisions concerning land ownership, access, and use. Undoubtedly, the native court was not the only instrument of conflict resolution that was available during this period. The government also resolved conflicts through treaties. Nevertheless, the court became the most “convenient” and most adaptive means of resolving conflicts, which role fitted and enhanced the policy of the colonial administration. As is evidenced by their relationship with agriculture, virgin and forest lands increased in value during the colonial period due to the emphasis on perennial crops—palm trees, cocoa, rubber, and kola nuts. The value of these crops resulted in the attachment of their production to high profits in cash—hence the name “cash crops”—and increased demand. In turn, there commenced competition for these crops and the land supporting them. How did the native courts in Ijesa and Ekiti successfully resolve conflicts? The diversity and huge number of cases in courts and the social status of the litigants are indicative of the popularity of the courts as an avenue for conflict resolution. The people patronized this type of court with the expectation that they would get better justice than was possible in precolonial courts. Entrepreneurial farmers and women used the courts and the process of appeal to higher courts to advance their property and marital rights. Cocoa production altered existing land rights as farmers, including commoners, converted communal forests into private farms at the expense of some powerful chiefs. More than ever, the new legal system advocated personal and individual rights over communal rights. Among the new farmers were women who used the colonial courts to challenge patriarchal and male-biased social institutions. Apart from asserting their rights to land, women also gained from a legal system that improved women’s status in property contestations.

Notes 1

See Lagos Supreme Court Ordinance, No. 4, 1876, section 19, in George Stallard and E. H. Richards, Ordinances, and Orders and Rules thereunder, in force in the Colony of Lagos on December 31st, 1893 (London: Stevenson and Sons, 1894). 2 Oshunride v. Ogunmudimu, August 3, 1905, Ekiti Div 4/4, National Archives, Ibadan (hereafter cited as NAI). 3 Oshunride v. Ogunmudimu, August 3 and 21, 1905, Ekiti Div 4/4, NAI. 4 See Kristin Mann and Richard Roberts, eds., Law in Colonial Africa (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1991); Kristin Mann, “Interpreting Cases, Disentangling Disputes: Court Cases as a Source for Understanding Patron-Client Relationships

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in Early Colonial Lagos,” in Sources and Methods in African History: Spoken, Written, Unearthed, ed. Toyin Falola and Christian Jennings (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2003), 195–218; Richard Roberts, Litigants and Households: African Disputes and Colonial Courts in the French Soudan, 1895– 1912 (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2005). 5 On the impact of slavery on Yoruba land holdings, see Olatunji Ojo, “Warfare, Slavery, and the Transformation of Eastern Yorubaland, c. 1820–1900” (PhD diss., York University, Toronto, 2003), ch. 2; and James Fenske, “Land abundance and Economic Institutions: Egba Land and Slavery, 1830–1914,” Economic History Review, 65.2 (2012), 527–55. 6 Teslim O. Elias, Nigerian Land Law and Custom (London: Routledge, 1962); G. B. A. Coker, Family Property among the Yorubas (London: Sweet & Maxwell, 1966); Omoniyi Adewoye, The Judicial System in Southern Nigeria, 1854–1954: Law and Justice in a Dependency (London: Longman, 1977). 7 Kristin Mann, “Women, Landed Property, and the Accumulation of Wealth in Early Colonial Lagos,” Signs 16, no. 4 (1991): 682–706. 8 Peter C. Lloyd, Yoruba Land Law (London: Oxford University Press, 1962). 9 Roberts, Litigants and Households. 10 Samuel Johnson, History of the Yorubas: From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the British Protectorate (1921; reprint, Lagos: CSS Bookshops, 1976); Idowu A. Akinjogbin, ed., War and Peace in Yorubaland, 1793–1893 (Ibadan: Heinemann Educational Books, 1998); Olatunji Ojo, “Warfare, Slavery, and the Transformation of Eastern Yorubaland, c. 1820–1900” (PhD diss., York University, Toronto, 2003). 11 See A. L. Mabogunje, “Some Comments on Land Tenure in Egba Division, Western Nigeria,” Africa 31 (1961): 258–69; and Kristin Mann, Slavery and the Birth of an African City: Lagos, 1760–1900 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007), 237–76. 12 A. Akinjogbin, introduction to The Cradle of a Race: Ife from the Beginning to 1980, ed. A. Akinjogbin (Port Harcourt: Sunray Publications, 1992), xi–xv. 13 For details of the Ife-Modakeke uprising, see Olatunji Ojo, “From ‘Constitutional’ and ‘Northern’ Factors to Ethnic/Slave Uprising: Ile-Ife, 1800– 1854,” in The Changing Worlds of Atlantic Africa: Essays in Honor of Robin Law, ed. Toyin Falola and Matt D. Childs (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2009), 233–52. 14 Henry Higgins and Oliver Smith, journal, October 10, 1886, C4957, British Parliamentary Papers (hereafter cited as PP), vol. 60; “Re-Migration of Modakeke, 1908–1928,” Oyo Prof 1/1929, vol. 1, NAI; “Ife Division: Modakeke Dispute1949–1957,” Oyo Prof 1/1929, vols. 2–3, NAI; and “Payment of Isakole 1947,” Oyo Prof 1/1929/1/47, NAI. 15 David Hinderer to Henry Venn, October 26, 1855, CA2/049b, Church Missionary Society Archives (hereafter cited as CMS); and Johnson, History of the Yorubas, 324–25.

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16 William Moore, journal, July 7, 1851 and August 6, 1855, CA2/071, CMS; James Maser, journal, May 22, 1855, CA2/068, CMS; and Mabogunje, “Land Tenure in Egba Division.” 17 Obaro Ikime, The Fall of Nigeria: The British Conquest (London: Heinemann, 1977). 18 Instructions to Henry Higgins and Oliver Smith, August 14, 1886, C4957, PP, vol. 60. 19 Gilbert Carter to Marquis of Ripon, April 6, 1893 and January 18, 1894, Colonial Secretary’s Office (hereafter cited as CSO) 1/1/14, NAI; William Macgregor to Ripon, July 3, 1893, CSO 1/3/2, NAI. 20 Carter to Ripon, December 11, 1893, CSO 1/1/14, NAI. 21 Adewoye, Judicial System in Southern Nigeria, 37–42; and Mann and Roberts, Law in Colonial Africa, 3. 22 Traveling Commissioner, journal, August 19, 1897, Ibadan Prof 3/6, NAI. 23 “Report on the North-Eastern District by W. G. Ambrose,” Lagos Annual Report, 1900–1901 (Lagos: Government Printers, 1901), 12–13; Akintoye, Revolution and Power Politics in Yorubaland, 1840–1893: Ibadan Expansion and the Rise of Ekitiparapo (London: Longman, 1971), 220–28. 24 See Akintoye, Revolution and Power Politics. 25 In 1902, Rev. Mojola Agbebi wrote that “in some parts of Ekiti to be styled an Ijesha is to be regarded as an opprobrium.” Cf. Lagos Standard, March 16, 1902. On the alleged arrogance of Ijesa people, see John D. Y. Peel, Ijeshas and Nigerians: The Incorporation of a Yoruba Kingdom, 1890s–1970s (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 95–96. 26 Akure Chiefs to E. P. S. Roupell, April 21, 1887, Ben Dist 3/1/1, NAI; Roupell to Officer Commanding the Odo Otin contingent, May 18, 1897, CSO 1/1/18, NAI. 27 Rev. Robert Scott Oyebode, journal, Ilesa, March 28–April 14, 1896, in Bishop Charles Phillips diary, 1896, Phillips 3/7, NAI. 28 Charles Phillips to Rev. Baylis, August 3, 1896, in Phillips diary, 1896, Phillips 3/7, NAI. 29 Ibid. Ogedengbe became the obanla on May 20, 1896. See Phillips diary, May 20, 1896, Phillips 3/7, NAI. 30 Phillips diary, April 14, 1903, Phillips 3/13, NAI. 31 Macgregor, journal, April 4, 1900, in “Report of tour of the interior, April 3– May 8, 1900,” in Macgregor to Chamberlain, June 19, 1900, CSO 1/1/21, NAI; Phillips diary, April 14, 1903, Phillips 3/13, NAI. On princess Adenibi, see Oyebode, journal, March 28–April 14, 1896, in Phillips diary, 1896, Phillips 3/7, NAI; and Phillips diary, January 19 and August 15, 1898, Phillips 3/8, NAI. 32 “Report on the State of Affairs at Ilesha,” CSO 12/19/5384, NAI; “Health of Chief Loro and Affairs in Ilesha,” CSO 16/7/106/158/1905, NAI; “Citation of Several Cases as Instances of the Chicanery and Corruption Prevalent in the Ilesha Country,” CSO 16/7/110/162/1905, NAI; Peel, Ijeshas and Nigerians, 97–106. 33 For a detailed history and political organization of Ilesa, see Peel, Ijeshas and Nigerians.

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William Macgregor to Colonial Office, November 11, 1901, CSO 1/3/5, NAI. Macgregor to the Colonial Secretary, December 15, 1903, CSO 1/3/7, NAI. 36 Interview with Chief Olabode Phillips, Aduloju II, the ogboni of Ilesa, January 29, 1999. 37 Weir, “Intelligence Report for Ado District of Ekiti Division,” 1933, para. 126, CSO 26/29734, NAI. 38 Interview with Chief Eyeloye of Itapa Ekiti, March 24, 1996 (interviewed at Demigbeje market, Omu-Ekiti). 39 See G. J. A. Ojo, Yoruba Palaces: A Study of Afins of Yorubaland (London: University of London Press, 1966); Olufemi B. Olaoba, “Palaces and Court of Arbitration in Traditional Yoruba Societies,” West African Journal of Archaeology 27, no. 2 (1997): 81–99; and Tunde Onadeko, “Yoruba Traditional Adjudicatory Systems,” African Study Monographs 29, no. 1 (2008): 16–19. 40 On loss of revenue see J. M. Rutherford, Assistant District Officer (ADO), Ife/Ijesa to Commissioner Oyo Province, August 17, 1915, Oyo Prof 2/3/C./132, NAI. 41 Macgregor to Secretary of State for Colonies, December 15, 1903, CSO 1/3/7, NAI. 42 Ibid. 43 Robert Smith, The Lagos Consulate, 1851–1861 (London: Macmillan, 1978); Mann, Slavery and the Birth of an African City. 44 J. D. Dumaresq to C. C. Lees, September 9, 1876, CSO 1/1/6, NAI. 45 “Rules of Abbeokutan Mercantile Association, July 16, 1860,” in Henry Hand to Russell, August 13, 1860, National Archives of the United Kingdom (NAUK). 46 Moloney to Earl Granville, April 21, 1886, CSO 1/3/1, NAI. 47 See Commissioner’s Traveling Journal, 1897–1899, Ibadan Prof 3/6, NAI; and Traveling Commissioners Journals and Diaries, 1897–1900, Ondo Div 8/1, NAI. 48 Carter to Marquis of Ripon, January 18, 1894, CSO 1/1/14, NAI. 49 Ibid. Yoruba CMS missionaries were harassed for using umbrellas. In 1852, during his journeys to Ijebu, James White was “humiliated, [and] scolded for his imprudence at using an umbrella and for wearing shoes and for suggesting that a white man should reside in Ijebuland.” See James White, journals, quarter ending December 25, 1852,” CA2/087, CMS. A quarter century later, when James Johnson traveled to Oyo and Ogbomoso in 1877, his assistant was asked to “furl his umbrellas which was [sic] shading him from the sun, because it was a privilege that belonged only to his master the Alaafin.” During the following year at Ijebu Ode, Johnson disguised himself in order to travel freely. He “threw up the legs of his trousers . . . dispensed with his shoes and hid his umbrella.” See James Johnson, “Report of visit to Oyo, 1877,” CA2/056/51, CMS; and James Johnson and H. J. Mellor, Two Missionary Visits to Ijebu Country—1892 (Ibadan: Daystar Press, 1974), 14. 50 Macgregor to Secretary of State, December 15, 1903, CSO 1/3/7, NAI. 51 See Adewoye, “The Judicial Agreement in Yorubaland, 1904–1908,” Journal of African History 7, no. 4 (1971): 607–27. 35

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52 “Yorubaland Jurisdiction Ordinance, #17, 1904,” in Laws of the Colony of Southern Nigeria (Lagos: Government Printers, 1908), 260. 53 Adewoye, Judicial System in Southern Nigeria, 40. 54 “Native Courts, Establishment of,” Oyo Prof 1/3274, 3 vols., NAI; and Ilesa Native Courts, Ile Div 1/1/827, NAI. 55 The ogboni of Ilesa is a senior chief, whereas the ogboni in neighboring villages served as kings. 56 Native Courts, Reorganisation, Ile Div 1/1/353, NAI; “Native Courts Ordinance, 1914,” in Nigerian Government Gazette, Supplement No. 4 of February 2, 1914; Lloyd, Yoruba Land Law, 20–26. 57 Weir, Intelligence Report on Ado District, para. 81, CSO 26/29734, NAI; A. C. C. Swayne, Intelligence Report on Oye District (1936), para. 40, CSO 26/1/31318, NAI; and Intelligence Report on Ikere District (1933), para. 130, CSO 26/1/29799, NAI. 58 O. V. Lee, Intelligence Report on Ekiti Division, Ondo Province (1942), Ekiti Div 1/1/301, NAI. 59 Native Courts Ordinance, 1914, Section 4. 60 Native Courts Institutions, Ministry of Justice Western Region of Nigeria (MJW) 1/1/260, vol. 1, NAI. 61 Akintoye, “The Economic Background of the Ekitiparapo, 1878–1893,” ODU: A Journal of West African Studies 4, no. 2 (1968): 31–52. 62 J. B. Wood, “Account of visit to Kiriji Camp in March 1885,” CMS (Y) 1/7/5, NAI. 63 Sara Berry, Cocoa, Customs, and Socio-Economic Change in Rural Western Nigeria (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975); Peel, Ijeshas and Nigerians. 64 See “Report on Nigerian Forests” by F. R. George Leigh and Thomas B. Dawodu, May 25, 1897,” in McCallum to Chamberlain, June 24, 1897; George Denton to Chamberlain, June 28, 1898, CO 879/65, NAUK; and Berry, Cocoa, Customs. 65 Sara Berry, “Christianity and the Rise of Cocoa Growing in Ibadan and Ondo,” Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria 4, no. 3 (1968): 439–51. 66 Interviews with Joel Ige, age 90, Ataroke Street, Omu-Ekiti, June 23, 199, Samuel Ojo, age 65, Oke Oniyo, Ikole Ekiti, June 10 and 13, 1999; and David Ajibade, age 70, Abudo Street, Omu-Ekiti, December 24, 1997. 67 W. J. Payne to Claude, April 12, 1923, CMS (Y) 2/2/16, NAI. 68 Annual Report, Oyo Province, 1921, CSO 26/06027, NAI; Peel, Ijeshas and Nigerians, 122. 69 Lloyd, Yoruba Land Law, 88–94, 198, 207–22. 70 Ibid., 47. 71 See “Re-Migration of Modakeke, 1908–1928,” Oyo Prof 1/1929, vol. 1, NAI; “Ife Division: Modakeke Dispute 1949–1957,” Oyo Prof 1/1929, vols. 2–3, NAI; “Payment of Isakole 1947,” Oyo Prof 1/1929/1/47, NAI; R. Galletti, K. D. S. Baldwin, and I. O. Dina, Nigerian Cocoa Farmers (London: Oxford University Press, 1956); Lloyd, Yoruba Land Law; and Berry, Cocoa, Customs. 72 Lloyd, Yoruba Land Law, 54–57.

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Galletti, Baldwin, and Dina, Nigerian Cocoa Farmers; Rolf Gusten, Studies in

the Staple Food Economy of Western Nigeria (Muɰnchen: Weltforum Verlag, 1968). 74 Akinyede (the Oloka) v. Yesufu Lemomu of Ikole—Dispute over Erijiyan land, Ondo Prof 1/240/468, NAI. 75 Interview with Chief Imam Kareem Falayi, Ikole Central Mosque, July 5, 2001. 76 Akinyede v. Yesufu Lemomu, Ondo Prof 1/240/468, NAI. 77 Ali Babalola v. Oloja Isireyun, Ile Div 1/1/1461, NAI. 78 Ibid. See also Ekiti Divisional Court, 134/1949; and Oye Native Court, 2/1949. Cf. Lloyd, Yoruba Land Law, 212–13. 79 Fagbulu of Ilesa v. Ajakaiye of Ilesa, Ile Div 1/1/1462, NAI. 80 On Ogedengbe see and Isola Olomola, “The War Generals in Eastern Yorubaland,” in War and Peace in Yorubaland, 173–88. 81 Fagbulu v. Ajakaye, Ile Div 1/1/1462, NAI. Obaodo is the seventh-most senior ijesa chief. 82 David Jegede v. Chief David Ibidapo, Ile Div 1/1, 1843, NAI. 83 Ibid. 84 Ibid. 85 Ibid. 86 Baldwin, Galletti, and Dina, Nigerian Cocoa Farmers; Jean Davison, ed., Agriculture, Women, and Land: The African Experience (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1972). 87 Olatunji Ojo, “More than Farmers’ Wives: Yoruba Women and Cash Crop Production, c. 1920–1957,” in The Transformation of Nigeria, ed. Adebayo Oyebade (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2001), 383–404. 88 Interviews with Madam Abike Ogunbiyi, Ijoka Street Ado-Ekiti, July 13, 1993; and Madam Comfort Olaoba, Abudo Street, Omu Ekiti, May 10–12, 1995. 89 Ikere Native Court case #14/1944: Victoria Bola v. Sam Ojo, January 20, 1944, Ekiti Div 1/1/153/1, NAI. 90 “Ogotun district, Matters arising,” 83, 84, 93, 97, Ekiti Div 1/1/77, vol. 2, NAI. 91 Ekiti Divisional Court, 134/1949; and Oye Native Court 2/1949; cf. Lloyd, Yoruba Land Law, 212–13.

CHAPTER TEN TOWARD NEW APPROACHES TO NIGERIA’S RAILWAY HISTORY: THE RURAL AND AGRICULTURAL ALTERNATIVES SHEHU TIJJANI YUSUF

This chapter examines the impact of the railway on the economic and cultural landscapes of Madobi, a small rural community in Kano, with emphasis on the development of the groundnut economy, the activities of trading firms, and Yoruba migrants between 1919 and 1960. It seeks to highlight the role of Yoruba migrants in the groundnut trade and why they were appointed to administer the Sabon garis (strangers’ quarters). Although scholars have examined the relationship between the railway and labor and the rise of major centers of economic activity, they have largely neglected how the railway economy contributed to the growth of small rural communities. I propose that new research on the impact of the railway on Nigerian peoples and societies should focus on smaller rural communities and centers of agricultural production. My sources include primary documents on Northern Nigeria deposited at the Kano State History and Culture Bureau, Kano and National Archives, Kaduna. This genre of sources complements oral interviews that I collected between 2005 and 2006 among Yoruba migrants and their Hausa hosts in Madobi and other locations in Kano. Madobi is a village situated southwest of Kano city in Kura District. The village was originally founded by a group of Fulani nomads in the early nineteenth century. It is currently the headquarters of the Madobi Local Government Area. It shares borders with Gora to the north, the Challawa River to the northwest, Rikadawa to the east, and Bebeji to the south.1 The area is topographically flat and slightly undulating. The Challawa River is a major physical attraction in the area. Madobi’s fertile

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soils support the cultivation of both food and cash crops. The sandy, loamy composition of the soil creates a water-holding capacity that permits crops to respond well to the application of manure. The proximity of the village to the Challawa is advantageous, for the river waters the ground and nourishes it with mineral content that supported the cultivation of vegetables and grain crops such as maize, guinea corn, and millet as well as cotton and groundnuts. Animal husbandry was also an important economic activity practiced in Madobi. Almost every household kept animals such as fowls, goats, sheep, and some cattle. Farming activity, as elsewhere in the Kano Emirate, was supported by hunting. Hunting was a part-time activity exclusive to men. Trading (both domestic and longdistance) was also an important economic activity, next to farming in terms of importance.2 Domestic trading usually took place at the periodic local market where traders sold their wares. There were also petty traders who moved about from house to house within the locality marketing their goods. The Agalawa and Tokarawa residents of Madobi were known for their long-distance trading activity that took them to as far as southern Ghana. Industrial activities such as weaving, blacksmithing, leather working, and pottery making were also practiced, in addition to other economic activities. By the turn of the twentieth century, following the British conquest of Kano in 1903, Madobi, like other villages in the emirate, was brought under the influence of British rule. By virtue of its status as one of the biggest villages in Kura District, Madobi was made a subdistrict—together with Bebeji, another important village.3 This subdistrict status was later abolished in 1908, and the village head was deposed following allegations of financial misconduct leveled against him. The subdistrict status was, in effect, transferred to Gora—a neighboring town, north of Madobi village.

The Literature: The Railway in Nigerian History The past five decades have witnessed an outpouring of literature that has transformed the history of the colonial Nigerian railway from a dormant to a vibrant academic enterprise. Tekena Tamuno’s article “Genesis of the Nigerian Railway,” published in the 1960s, is generally accepted as the first academic work on the development of the Nigerian railway. He gives a critical analysis of why the British established the railway in the second half of the nineteenth century, locating it within the framework of colonial capitalist expropriation.4 The story of the railway, as Tamuno establishes, is summarily the history of colonial capitalism in Nigeria. Since the appearance of this piece, a number of scholars have also

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written on various aspects of the Nigerian railway and colonial capitalism. Olufemi Omosini, in an interesting article, examines the attitude of British merchants toward railway construction in Nigeria in particular.5 However, he glosses over the impact of the railway on both the economy and the people. In another vein, Olasiji Oshin’s article “Railway and Urbanization” discusses the impact of the railway on the growth of colonial urban centers. He places emphasis on major economic centers, with just a passing remark on small towns.6 Tokunbo Ayoola’s work examines the politics of railway extension to Bronu Province of Northern Nigeria. This work explicates why the British extended the railway to the region despite controversies and opposition from the government of Lagos and the Nigerian Railway Corporation. Here as in other scholarship, the focus is on big cities or major centers of economic development.7 Another array of scholarly works focus on the relationship between labor and migrancy, and the railway economy. A ready example is Michael Mason’s work that explores the use of forced labor in the construction of rail lines in the whole of Northern Nigeria—with ephemeral treatment of small communities.8 Wale Oyemakinde also examines railway construction, the labor problems encountered by the authorities, and how cheap labor was recruited.9 Although his work highlights the impact of the railway on socioeconomic activities, it focuses on big cities with a strong prolabor bias. In her work focusing on the impact of wage labor and post–World War II labor policies on household structure and family life among Yoruba railway workers of southwestern Nigeria, Lisa Lindsay argues that wives of railway workers engaged in vocational trade that gave them a considerable degree of economic independence with which they supported their husbands.10 Here, too, the focus is on major centers of economic production. In sum, all the aforementioned works, among others, have generally advanced our knowledge of the complex impact of the railway on traditional African societies, but they have ignored the response and coping strategy of smaller towns. This chapter is an attempt to redress this shortcoming by looking at the impact of the railway on Madobi, a village setting within the context of the cash crop economy and agriculture, and intergroup relations.

The Railway and Colonial Capitalism in Madobi Some of the challenges faced by the British following the conquest of Southern Nigeria included how to administer the newly acquired territory, curtail “insurgencies,” and deal with the effects of toll exactions imposed

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on European goods by the Yoruba communities through whose territories important trade routes passed.11 The effect of such tolls was often to increase the cost of European goods passing through the hinterland and Northern Nigeria. The natives refused to give up the practice despite the promise of subsidies by the government of Lagos.12 The activities of the Ijebu and Egba middlemen in the trade between Lagos and the Yoruba hinterland also constituted a serious barrier to the extension of British trade inland.13 The treaty of friendship and commerce of 1893, between the British and the Yoruba chiefs, addressed this trade impediment and sought to connect Lagos with the Yoruba hinterland via the railway. In March 1896, the British imperial government approved the construction of the Lagos–Ibadan rail line as the first railway project in the British colonies in West Africa. Construction work on the Lagos–Ibadan railway had reached Otta by September 1897; Abeokuta, in April 1899; and Ibadan in 1900. On March 4, 1901, the Lagos–Ibadan line was formally opened for traffic.14 The opening of the Lagos–Ibadan line was a watershed in the economic history not only of Southern Nigeria but of Nigeria as whole. The railway stimulated agricultural production for export in addition to other forest products. European trading firms also opened buying stations in Lagos and Ibadan in response to the agricultural economy stimulated by the railway. The railway also marked the beginning of railway operations that again opened greater opportunities to Yoruba who were employed on the railway.15 (The impact of the railway on Yorubaland and its hinterland has received attention in the literature and therefore needs no recapitulation here.16) After several failed attempts, the proposal for the rail line linking Southern Nigeria with the North was eventually approved. In 1908, construction work began on the line from Baro on the Niger to Kano and a link to the Lagos–Ibadan line via Ilorin. By 1911, construction work reached Kano Emirate along a route running southwest of Kano city and finally to metropolitan Kano. The opening of the Northern Nigerian railway in 1912 had a transformative impact on the economy of Kano Emirate and Northern Nigeria in general. The railway stimulated groundnut production and purchases on a scale hitherto unknown in the region.17 The price of groundnuts was so attractive that it encouraged farmers to forgo cultivation of other farm produce including food crops that hitherto was the main source of income. For example, in 1912, the price of groundnuts at the Liverpool market stood at £13.4d per ton. At the beginning of the buying season of that year, a ton of decorticated nuts was offered at £5.10s in the Kano market. By the end of that year, the price rose to £7 in

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response to demand from Europe.18 The increase in quantities of groundnuts that were brought for sale created transport difficulties, for the railway could not cope with the increased traffic and daily trains had to be run to cope with the volume. By 1913, about £16.7s 8d (with a maximum of £18) was offered per ton of the nuts in Liverpool.19 In the Kano market, between £10 and £11.10s was offered per ton.20 This attractive price encouraged not only farmers from the countryside bordering metropolitan Kano to bring their crops for sale, but also those from as far as Maiduguri (now the capital of Borno State) and Zinder in the neighboring Republic of Niger.21 The implication was that only small quantities were being set aside for food and cooking oil and as seedlings for planting in the next season. By the end of the year there was a shortage of foodstuffs and Kano traders had to import grain at high prices from other areas. The rain shortfall of that year further caused famine, for the price of grain was four times higher than it was in the prefamine period. In the face of this crisis, farmers responded by increasing their acreage of food production.22 The outbreak of World War I in 1914 also had adverse effects on the groundnut trade in Kano Emirate and elsewhere in Northern Nigeria. The impact of the war was much felt during the buying season of 1914. The price of groundnuts drastically fell—between £4 and £5 was offered per ton of the nuts in the Kano market against the £12 offered in Liverpool. Farmers reacted by withholding their crops. The groundnut trade almost ceased and export of the product was almost suspended between August 1914 and October 1915.23 Although the initial groundnut boom was shortlived, the trade further picked up despite the fall in price. By the end of World War I in 1918, the price of groundnuts had appreciated due to a new demand for Nigerian groundnuts in Europe. Expectations for success in this sector were high, and it was envisaged that the price would rise above that reached during the prewar period. The firms also extended their network across the countryside in anticipation of a groundnut boom. The freight tonnage for groundnuts and other products railed from Kano Station from 1912 to 1918 are presented in table 1. From the table, it is clear that groundnuts were the major products on the southbound railway traffic in Kano Emirate. The table also shows that groundnut exports slumped to the lowest point following the outbreak of World War I and suddenly picked up again despite the price decline. A further increase in groundnut exports was realized in 1918. The increased demand for Nigerian groundnuts from the United Kingdom at the end of the war stimulated a corresponding demand for Kano groundnuts. A colonial report recorded how trading firms in metropolitan Kano were

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competing to establish buying stations in the countryside, including areas along the railway.24 This development was checkmated by the British policy of issuing certificates of occupancy to firms before they could operate in such areas. In areas along the railway where the British had planned to establish railway stations the firms were restricted from operating. The firms could only operate in such areas after the sites had been mapped, surveyed, and allocated.25 Table 10.1. Tonnage of groundnuts and other products transported by railway from Kano Station, 1912–1918 Year

Groundnuts

1912 1913 1914 1915 1916 1917 1918

10,087 16,533 66 12,580 38,114 42,550 51,182

Hides and Skins (Dressed) 149 459 N/A N/A N/A 605 745

Hides and Skins (Undressed) 376 1,059 N/A N/A N/A 4,021 1,135

Potash

Beans

Onion

13

229

231

N/A N/A N/A 1,667 1,243

N/A N/A N/A 3,555 4,466

N/A N/A N/A 251 359

Sources: NAK, Kan Prof 717/1913; NAK, Kan Prof 270/1913; NAK, Kan Prof 717; KSHCB, Kan Prof 412/1916, Kano Province Annual Report for half year Ending 1916; KSHCB, 179P, Kano Province Annual Report for 1917; KSHCB, 93P, Kano Province Annual Report for 1918.

Following the mapping and surveying of the proposed sites for stations, the British administration established a railway station in Madobi in 1919.26 The establishment of the station was a watershed in the history of Madobi village. The railway station, especially its corrugated iron roofs reinforced with concrete bricks, came to represent a sign of modernity in the area. The physical structures in the community were, prior to establishment of the station, traditional rectangular mud houses with thatched roofs. This new structure altered the traditional architectural designs in the locality.27 The railway also stimulated new intercommunal relations in Madobi, as elsewhere in Nigeria. The Nigerian Railway was the largest employer of labor, employing staff from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds. In Madobi, the railway workers were predominantly Yoruba and Igbo from Southern Nigeria. Other ethnic groups across the country, including nationals from neighboring Chad Republic, were also found in Madobi.28

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The people of Madobi were also not passive recipients of railway services. From the time of constructing the station onward, they were engaged in railway development in their capacity as suppliers of labor and food for the railway workers. As construction work came to an end, the people also came to depend on the services of the railway. The passenger and goods trains that stopped daily at the station also depended on the agency and initiative of the local people, who in turn depended on the train for their mobility and for the movement of goods. Prior to this time, the train usually passed without stopping at Madobi.29 Traders also brought goods from the city and elsewhere to sell in the locality. Foodstuffs like yams, gari, palm oil, and fruits as well as European manufactured goods were brought to the area from Southern Nigeria. Agricultural products and livestock were also railed from the locality to the South. The people also crafted multispatial livelihoods by moving between rural and urban areas and from one rural location to another.30 The passenger traffic at Madobi station is presented in table 2, which shows the volume of passengers’ trips and revenue realized by the Nigerian Railway from Madobi station in 1939. Table 10.2. Railway passenger traffic at Madobi Station, 1939 Station

Passenger Trips

Madobi

19,149

Revenue (£) 865

Average per Trip (s.d.) 10 ¾

Source: AHAK, 3/3/16, Report on Transport in Nigeria.

The Commercial Trading Firms and the Groundnut Trade The establishment of a railway station in Madobi attracted trading firms from Kano to the area. These businesses established groundnutbuying stations in response to improvements in the process of hardening liquid oil, which took place in Europe in the early 1920s. This improvement allowed the use of very large quantities of hardened groundnut oil for production of margarine with less than 20 percent of its contents being made up of other added ingredients.31 This change was a result of demand for oilseed from Northern Nigeria. Trading firms were extending their buying stations away from metropolitan Kano to new areas in the countryside, considered to be sources of groundnuts. The prices offered at gazette stations were profitable compared to nongazette stations.

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The prices in the former were set by the government to include a differential price for handling.32 The minimum buying prices were usually determined by deducting the fixed transport differentials from the railway line price, subject to the minimum buying price at the buying stations. Where the approved transport differential between gazette stations and the railway exceeded the minimum ceiling, the excess was covered by a subsidy from the government produce board.33 It is evident from the number of operating firms in Madobi that trading firms preferred to operate in a gazette station because of the incentives that were opened to the firms. As part of the attempt to monitor the activities of the firms, the British administration mapped out an area in the emirate designated for government trading layouts.34 In Madobi village and elsewhere in the emirate, a number of plots measuring about 300 feet by 100 feet were leased to the firms in 1924.35 When the trading plot was formally opened in 1924, only six firms initially established buying stations in Madobi; by the 1940s, the number of operating firms in the area had increased to about seventeen.36 Lebanese and Syrian firms were the first group of businesses to establish stations in the area. Others, like the Europeans and indigenous African firms, began to operate in the area afterward. This is in contrast to what obtained in Kano metropolis, where non-European firms like those owned by the Lebanese and Syrians were discriminated against and denied trading plots in the same location with the Europeans; meanwhile, the nonEuropean firms as well as the indigenous firms in Madobi were allocated plots in the same place with the European firms.37 The list of operating firms in Madobi station and the period they began operating in the area is presented in table 3. From table 3, it is clear that the number of operating firms in Madobi village was enormous considering the small size of the community. It also shows that both European and non-European firms operated in the same location. The concentration of the firms in the area is a demonstration of the economic opportunities open to them. Although the firms did not grow groundnuts, their activities stimulated groundnut production and trade. They employed the services of middlemen such as Yoruba and Igbo of Southern Nigerian origin and the local Hausa, to whom they advanced loans in the form of cash, cloth, bags, and twine to purchase the nuts from farmers.38 Of all the middlemen in Madobi, the Yoruba were the most popular, for they had the most extensive networks covering the outlying groundnut-growing areas southwest of Kano. Some of them have been living in the area before the trading firms began to operate in Madobi.39 A British colonial officer in Kano Province, H. H. Middleton, whose report

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of the groundnut trade there was published in 1924, observed that the Yoruba were the dominant middlemen in Madobi, and that the firms purchased the groundnuts through their agents, most of whom were also permanent residents in Madobi.40 The Yoruba middlemen, according to the report, also enjoyed monopoly control over the groundnut trade in the area.41 Table 10.3. Trading firms operating in Madobi village, ca. 1924–1940s Name of firm M. A. Bugren L. A. Ambrosini Abdul Hussain S. Raccah Miller Brothers Manaise Brothers John Holt Alhassan Dantata Musa Tahir Niger Properties Olude Stores Michael Nwankwo

Plot no. 1 8 9 10 11 13 2 3 12 5 6 4

Value of plot (£) 200 100 100 500 200 200 1.170 300 201 200 100 100

Date established July 24, 1924 July 24, 1924 July 24, 1924 July 24, 1924 July 24, 1924 July 24, 1924 March 1, 1933 January 1, 1934 January 1, 1936 August 30, 1941 October 5, 1943 August 1, 1947

Sources: KSHCB, Acc. no. 68, Kura Inspection Notes, vol. I; KSHCB, 512 Kano Provincial Gazetteers; KSHCB, Kano Provincial Annual Report 1924; KSHCB, MLG 9117/1929, Kura District of Kano Emirate Reassessment; KSHCB, 2568/1933, Provincial Gazettes, vol. 2.

Although men controlled the largest chunk of groundnut related wealth and activities, women’s involvement was also important and should not be glossed over. A colonial record observed that two women could decorticate one ton of groundnuts in less than seventy hours, at a fee that ranged from 8s to 10s. This fee also varied from one district to another.42 The groundnut trade also created opportunities for people who offered their labor to sort and package groundnuts, in addition to creating opportunities for those who transported the groundnuts from the various bulking points to the trading plot in Madobi. Most farmers and groundnut traders owned donkeys; those who did not own one either borrowed or hired the services of transporters.43 The transporters of nuts to the buying stations were paid the minimum price to cover their costs. This form of transport complemented the railway system by feeding it with groundnuts

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traffic. The tonnage of groundnuts freighted at Madobi station is presented in table 4. Table 10.4. Tonnage of groundnuts transported by railway from Madobi Station, 1924–1962 1924

1930

1931

1945

3,00 0

3,08 4

3,32 5

9.18 7

1950 –51 1,310

1951– 52 10,15 4

1952 –53 4,112

1953– 54 12,71 2

1961 –62 4,418

Sources: AHAK, 3/3/16, Report on Groundnut Trade in Kano Province; KSHCB, Kura Gazetteers, 19/ vol. 2; NAK, Kano Prof 6179/5.3, Groundnut Buying Stations and Points.

From table 4, we see that from 1924, when the firms began to operate in the area, there was a gradual increase in the groundnut tonnage freighted from Madobi station until it suddenly fell during the 1950–51 and 1952–53 groundnut seasons. The groundnut tonnages reached their peak in the 1953–54 season and suddenly fell in 1961.

Migration and the Creation of a Sabon gari in Madobi Following the establishment of trading firms in Madobi, migrants from Southern Nigeria, such as the Yoruba and the Igbo, and the Hausa from Northern Nigeria arrived in the area, in response to the economic opportunities created by the groundnut trade. Elsewhere in Kano metropolis, there was general migration of southerners during the 1920s, largely because of the intensification of the activities of the European trading firms, the groundnut boom, and the establishment of the Sabon gari market in 1918.44 The first generation of migrants in Madobi, as in metropolitan Kano, were predominantly Yoruba groundnut traders who settled in the area following the establishment of the railway station.45 These migrants acted as middlemen to the European firms in Kano who financed their activities. The influx of migrants into the area in appreciable number began in 1924, when the firms began to operate in the area. A number of the migrants, including the Hausa, acted as middlemen to the firms who advanced cash to them to purchase groundnuts on their behalf.46 Of all the middlemen in the area, the Yoruba were the dominant, for they controlled the groundnut trade.47 Some of them had been operating in the area before the coming of the firms. Ethnic kinship ties were effectively utilized for the creation of a commercial network. The cultural

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homogeneity of the Yoruba middlemen led to ethnic control or monopoly of the groundnut trade. The Yoruba migrants provided a commercial linkage between the firms and the farmers. Hence, their commercial exploits facilitated the free flow of groundnuts from seller to buyer. Writing on the activities of the Yoruba middlemen in Madobi, H. H. Middleton observed that “the Yoruba middlemen are permanently resident there and seem to enjoy what almost amounts to a monopoly in the ground-nut trade in that locality.”48 The firms came to depend on them for their supply of groundnuts.49 In addition to this intermediary role, the Yoruba and the Igbo were employed as clerks by the firms. Some of them also engaged in vocational activities such as trading and tailoring. 50 Table 5 lists the groundnut middlemen in Madobi. It is obvious from the table’s composition of groundnut traders operating in Madobi during the colonial period that, in terms of ethnic affiliation, the Yoruba were in the majority. The burden of taxation and other economic difficulties encountered in the 1930s also stimulated migrations to various centers of economic opportunity such as Kano.51 The inadequate supply of suitable uncultivated land as well as poverty experienced by cocoa farmers of Western Nigeria, as a result of the commercialization of the rural land tenure system, also increased migration of southerners, especially the Yoruba, to Kano.52 The new migration alarmed the British, who feared that intercommunal relations between the migrants and the local people might endanger the Islamic norms and values that prevailed in the area. Intercommunal relations in Madobi and elsewhere in Kano were enforced within the political and economic framework of British colonialism. Britain’s divisive policy created a dichotomy, between, on the one hand, the migrants, who were considered strangers, and on the other hand, the members of the host community, who were considered indigenes. The British Cantonment Proclamation of 1914, which gave birth to this divisive policy, was theoretically conceived for housing “natives” and “nonnatives” in the employ of the government, trading firms, and others.53 In practice, however, the policy in effect resulted in the creation of segregated settlements like the Sabon gari and Tudun wada across Nigeria.54

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Table 10.5. Groundnut middlemen in Madobi Name A. T. A. Dawodu B. A. Ade Ojo E. S. Shokanmi Garuba Maidoki Bello Koli Mohammed Ade Mohammed Teslimi Reverend Ogunsanmi S. J. Akinbolusere Abdul Rahimi Ogunlade Abdul Kareem Tela Liadi Adams H. B. Pedro G. L. Kosoko Kasimu Michael Nwankwo J. O. Ekwudinka C. Ikemefuna B. C. Efedodama B. C. Ekpechi Alhaji Akilu Sambo Alhaji Hamza Na Dan Da’u Audu Dan Jolanga Malama Amina Garuwa Tafisikeli Malam Halilu Madobi Malam Bala Sambo Madobi Malam Sule Na Malam Bako Malam Inusa Akawun John Holt Yeriman Zaria Abdul Wahab Bala Gora

Ethnic affiliation Yoruba Yoruba Yoruba Yoruba Yoruba Yoruba Yoruba Yoruba Yoruba Yoruba Yoruba Yoruba Yoruba Yoruba Yoruba Igbo Igbo Igbo Igbo Igbo Hausa Hausa Hausa Hausa Hausa Hausa Hausa Hausa Hausa Hausa Hausa

Source: Compiled from interviews conducted by the author in Madobi, 2005–6.

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The establishment of Sabon gari, Madobi, in 1935 marked the beginning of Britain’s divide-and-rule system upon which the British segregation policy was anchored.55 It resulted in the emergence of two separate settlements, one settled by the host community and the other by migrant settlers. Sabon gari, Madobi, was established outside the “native town” in an area designated for Southern Nigerian migrants. The British also created the office of village head, sarkin Sabon gari, who was appointed from among the migrants to administer the area. Abdul Rahimi Ogunlade, a Yoruba from Lagos, was appointed the village head of Sabon gari, Madobi, and he was placed on a salary scale of £12 per annum.56 The various ethnic groups in the area were not opposed to Ogunlade’s appointment, for he was among the first generation of migrants in Madobi and also the most popular of all the Southern Nigerian migrants there.57 It was also said that his kinsmen, the Yoruba, were the dominant migrant population in Sabon gari, Madobi.58 Until his appointment, he was the leader of the Yoruba community, sarkin Yarabawa, in Madobi.59 However, as a village head, Ogunlade was, in practice, appointed to assist the British in collecting taxes and in regulating relations between the residents of the Sabon gari area, the British, and the host community.60 It was within this settlement that the migrants constructed their migrant and diasporic identities. They settled within the segregated area, carried out their activities there, and also developed strong ties among themselves. The Sabon gari also came to serve as a base from where the migrants relate with their hosts, for it was the commercial nerve center of the town, where the trading firms and the railway station were all located. The varied ethnic groups who occupied the area and the complex economic activities that took place therein gave the area a sort of cosmopolitan outlook.61 Oral tradition recounts that the residents of Sabon gari, Madobi, and their Hausa hosts lived peacefully with one another.62 By 1943, the population of Sabon gari, Madobi, included Hausa, Kanuri, Yoruba, Igbo, and other ethnic groups from across Nigeria. A population survey taken in 1939 gives the number of ethnic groups in Sabon gari, Madobi, at 208.63 This figure is inaccurate for it only contains a list of taxable male adults, exclusive of women and children. Despite the British policy of divide-and-rule, the relations between the migrants and their Hausa hosts were cordial. The migrants solidified their interests by establishing social relations with the local people in a number of ways. One was the use of language (Hausa) to create social relations and economic ties with the host community. Hausa, the predominant local language, was widely spoken by the migrants, especially during commercial transactions. Those who did not understand the language endeavored to

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learn it. This helped greatly in cementing and consolidating the relations between them and their hosts. Marriage was another factor in determining social relations. Yoruba Muslim men in particular married women from the host community.64 Abdul Rahimi, the head of the Yoruba of Madobi, married a Hausa woman whose children were assimilated into the host community and even held important positions in Kano State.65 A noticeable feature about migrants who were integrated into the host community is that they threw away their original ethnic identity and assumed the Hausa identity. This is a logical step given that the Hausa may accept Yoruba Muslim migrants as part of their community when such persons see themselves as Hausa and behave accordingly. Other areas of cultural exchange included food. The Yoruba popularized the consumption of southern foods such as palm oil and gari in this village community. The Yoruba also pioneered the establishment of a communitybased school in this village where Islamic education was predominant.66 When the school was established in 1941, it catered not only to residents of Sabon gari, Madobi, but also to members of the host community.67 This school was the second to be established in the whole of Kura District, the first being the Kura elementary school established by the British in 1935.68

Conclusion The thrust of this chapter is the impact of the railway and cash crop economy on the small village of Madobi between 1919 and 1960. Unlike existing works that dwell principally on the modus operandi of the railway economy and its impact on large cities, this chapter focuses on a small community in rural Kano. It integrates agricultural activities in the area within the larger framework of colonial capitalist expropriation, intergroup relations, and the interaction between the local and international economies. How a small community contributed to the sustenance of an elaborate imperial network is important for broadening our understanding of the immediate and long-term impacts of British imperialism in Northern Nigeria. The establishment of the railway station in Madobi village in the early twentieth century had a transformative impact on the socioeconomic and cultural landscapes of the area. The activity of the railway, as exemplified in the case of Madobi, shows that it contributed to socioeconomic production. It has been shown that the motivating factor for establishing a railway station in Madobi was, as elsewhere in Kano Emirate, based on the groundnut trade. The railway stimulated groundnut production and trade in the Madobi area, which led to increased activity by the trading firms and

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massive immigration from Southern Nigeria. A number of the new immigrants acted as middlemen to the firms that financed their activities in Madobi. The dominant position of the Yoruba also gave them the opportunity to control the groundnut trade in the area. In addition to their role in the groundnut trade, the Yoruba were appointed to administer the Sabon gari village where the migrants’ community resides. Oral history of Madobi reveals that the host community and the strangers lived peacefully with one another. The Yoruba learned Hausa and even intermarried. Some of the descendants of Hausa-Yoruba marriages occupy significant positions in mainstream Hausa politics.

Notes 1 S. T. Yusuf, “The impact of the Railway on Kano Emirate, c. 1903-1960s: The Case of Madobi and Kwankwaso Towns, (Germany: Lambert Academic Publishing, 2010) 10. 2 Ibid., 20-21. 3 Kano State History and Culture Bureau (hereafter cited as KSHCB) Kura Gazetteer 19/vol. 2. 4 T. N. Tamuno, “Genesis of the Nigerian Railway-1,” Nigerian Magazine, no. 83 (1961): 279–92. 5 O. Omosini, “Railway Projects and British Attitudes towards the Development of West Africa, 1872–1903,” Journal of Historical Society of Nigeria 5, no. 4 (1971): 491–507. 6 O. Oshin, “Railways and Urbanization,” in Nigerian Cities, ed. Toyin Falola and Steven J. Salm (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2004), 101–26. 7 T. A. Ayoola, “The Political Economy of Railway Construction in Nigeria: The Bornu Railway Extension,” Lagos Historical Review 6 (2006): 148–70. 8 M. Mason, “Working on the Railway: Forced Labor in Northern Nigeria, 1907– 1912,” in African Labour History, ed. Cohen Gutkind et al. (London: Sage Publications, 1978), 56–79. 9 W. Oyemakinde, “Railway Construction and Operation in Nigeria, 1850–1911: Labor Problems and Economic Impact,” Journal of Historical Society of Nigeria 5, no. 2 (1974): 303–24. 10 L. A. Lindsay, Working with Gender: Wage Labor and Social Change in South Western Nigeria (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2003). 11 Tamuno, “Genesis of the Nigerian Railway,” 280. 12 O. Oshin, “Extending Lagos Commercial Frontiers: The Background to the Nigerian Railway Revisited, 1880–1896,” TransAfrican Journal of History 18 (1989): 103. 13 Ibid. 14 Tamuno, “Genesis of the Nigerian Railway.” 15 Oyemakinde, “Railway Construction and Operation,” 308. 16 See ibid.

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17 For details on groundnut production see F. A. Okediji, “An Economic History of Hausa-Fulani Emirates of Northern Nigeria, 1900–1939” (PhD diss., Indiana University, 1972), 192. 18 Ibid., 189. 19 Ibid., 192. 20 Ibid. 21 Ibid., 192–93. 22 Ibid., 195. 23 Ibid., 196. 24 Kano State History and Culture Bureau (hereafter cited as KSHCB) 120P, Kano Province Report for 15 months ended March 31, 1921. 25 National Archives Kaduna (hereafter cited as NAK), Secretariat of Northern Province (hereafter cited as SNP) 7/7/6/1913, Railway Station, Naming of. 26 Ibid. 27 Malam Muhammadu Nayi, age sixty-eight, a farmer interviewed at Gidan Radiyo, Madobi, October 23, 2005. 28 Ibid. 29 Ibid. 30 Ibid. 31 Okediji, “Economic History of Hausa-Fulani Emirates,” 200. 32 NAK, Kano Prof 6179/S.2, Groundnut Buying Stations and Points. 33 NAK, Kano Prof 6179, vol. 4, Buying Stations and Points. 34 NAK, KSHCB, 635/SNP 9/12, Kano Province Annual Report 1924. 35 Ibid. 36 NAK, KSHCB, Acc. no. 68, Kura Inspection Notes, vol. 1. 37 Yusuf, “Impact of the Railway,” 128-130. 38 KSHCB, Acc. no. 68, Kura Inspection Notes, vol. 1; and interview with Malam Abubakar Abubakar, age 75, village head of Tudun wada, Tudun Wada, October 2, 2005. 39 Ibid. 40 Arewa House Archives, Kaduna (hereafter cited as AHAK), 3/3/16, Report on Groundnut Trade in Kano Province, 15–16. 41 Ibid., 19. 42 Ibid. 43 Ibid. 44 For more on the history of Yoruba migrants in Kano see, among others, R. Olaniyi, “From Citizens to Strangers: British Rule and the Transformation of Yoruba Migrants’ Identity in Kano, c. 1913–1953,” in Inter-Group Relations in Nigeria during the 19th and 20th Centuries, ed. Olayemi Akinwumi, Okpeh Okpeh Jr., and Gwamna D. Je’adayibe (Makurdi, Nigeria: Aboki Publishers, 2006); I. O. Albert, Inter-Ethnic Relations in a Nigerian City: The Historical Perspective of the Hausa-Igbo Conflict in Kano, 1953–1991 (Ibadan: IFRA, 1993); and A. Bako, Sabon Gari Kano: A History of Immigrants and Inter Group Relations in the 20th Century (Sokoto: Usman Danfodio University Press, 2009). 45 Interview, Malam Abubakar Abubakar.

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Ibid. AHAK, 3/3/16, Report on Groundnut Trade, 15–16. 48 Ibid. 49 Ibid. 50 Interview, Alhaji Bala Gora, Gora village, May 5, 2006. 51 Olaniyi, “From Citizens to Strangers,” 395. 52 Ibid. 53 Oshin, “Railways and Urbanization,” 113. 54 Ibid. 55 KSHCB, Acc. no. 68, Kura Inspection Notes, vol. 1. 56 Ibid. 57 Abdul Rahimi Ogunlade was one of the few Muslims among the southern Nigerian migrants in Madobi. As a Muslim he related well with the members of the host community. He observed his daily prayers in congregation with them. The fact that he married from the host community also makes him popular among his peers in Madobi. 58 Interview, Alhaji Usman Abdurrahim, NNDC Quarters Kano, January 1, 2006. 59 Ibid. 60 KSHCB, Acc. no. 68, Kura Inspection Notes, vol. 1. 61 Interview, Malam Shehu Madobi, Madobi Village, September 18, 2005. 62 Ibid. 63 KSHCB, Acc. no. 68, Kura Inspection Notes, vol. 1. 64 Interview, Alhaji Usman Abdurrahim. 65 For an example of such relationships, Abdul Rahim, the commissioner of finance during the regime of Alhaji Abubakar Rimi, the first civilian governor of Kano State (1979–83); and Alhaji Usman Abdurrahim, former registrar of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria (1981–92), and of Kano State University of Technology, Wudil (2001–5); are biological children of Abdul Rahimi Ogunlade. 66 NAK, Kano Prof 4171, Elementary School at Madobi. 67 Interview, Alhaji Usman Abdurrahim. 68 NAK, Kano Prof 4171, Elementary School at Madobi. 47

CHAPTER ELEVEN INVENTING CITIZENSHIP, CREATING OTHERNESS: MEMORY AND THE POLITICS OF IDENTITY IN YORUBALAND SAHEED ADERINTO

Ijebu a b’eyan? Boba ri Ijebu ati ejo, pa Ijebu, kio fi ejo sile. Ijebu or a human being? If you run into Ijebu and a snake, kill the Ijebu and spare the snake.

The quotation here is a popular saying attributed to the Ibadan probably from the nineteenth century. It was used to describe the Ibadan’s prejudice against Ijebu strangers in colonial Ibadan, the period spanning 1893 to 1960. To suggest killing an Ijebu while sparing a snake reflects a belief that the Ijebu were the more dangerous of the two. A Yoruba subgroup, the Ijebu were one of the many groups inhabiting precolonial Ibadan between 1830 and 1893.1 The history of their presence dates back to the founding of Ibadan around 1830. Indeed, they were among those who settled at the place that would later become Ibadan after the destruction of Owu around 1825 and the sacking and displacement of the Egba-gbagura, the indigenous population, and their villages.2 Other Yoruba cofounders included the Egba, the Ekiti, the Ife, and the Oyo Yoruba. During the period 1830–1893, wars and diplomacy dominated the affairs of the town and paved the way for the ascendance of the Oyo Yoruba as the majority. This group displayed tremendous military prowess and later established the principles of citizenship for the emergent minorities.3 As we shall see, the criteria for citizenship were not only

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stringent but targeted toward creating perpetual minority status for some of the cofounders, including the Ijebu. The imposition by the British of colonial rule in 1893 and the incorporation of Ibadan into the vortex of colonial capitalism increased the Ijebu’s presence in the town.4 They were the most populous minority group in the town throughout the colonial era.5 As we shall soon see, although the history of the Ijebu’s presence dates back to the founding of Ibadan, a series of laws passed in the nineteenth century denied them citizenship. Hence, they were treated as “strangers.” The need to maximize the economic opportunities created by colonial capitalism created new situations that intensified preexisting discontentment between the hosts and the various minorities.6 I agree with Obaro Ikime’s erudite position about the changing nature of intergroup relations in Nigeria: “In terms of inter-group relations, colonial rule was something of a paradox: on the one hand, it brought Nigerian peoples together in new groupings and for new purposes; one the other, it emphasised already existing differences and introduced new ones.”7 The Ijebu residents in colonial Ibadan (1893–1960) faced institutionalized discrimination, which posed a formidable barrier to integration and assimilation. In spite of intermarriage and other avenues of relations, assimilation remained a serious challenge partly because citizenship was given just to the Oyo Yoruba section of the town, and not extended to the Ijebu throughout the period up to the 1960s.8 The hosts continuously defined and redefined the laws for citizenship in order to limit the access of the minorities to wealth, power, and agency. Discrimination also took the form of labeling the social character of the Ijebu as “untraditional” just because it did not concur with the Ibadan’s construction of normality and tradition. Not only did the Ibadan invent their own ideals and ideas of tradition; they also viewed the strangers’ worldview as “untraditional.” What constituted “traditional” or “untraditional” behavior could be both time- and occasion-specific, but it was determined predominantly by those who did the labeling—the Ibadan. Noxious stereotypical statements such as “Ijebu o da” (“Ijebu is not good”) featured prominently in daily living and served to legitimize the perception.9 Not one aspect of the Ijebu’s lifestyle—from accumulation of wealth and investment to socialization and politics—escaped the Ibadan’s labeling.10 For instance, the Ibadan perceived the Ijebu as penny-pinchers because they did not believe in lavishing their money on ceremonies. A popular saying—Airise ni m’ onilu r’ Oke Ado (“It is lack of patronage that drives a praise-singer to Oke Ado”)—validates this well-received stereotype that the Ijebu were stingy.11 In the first place, praise-singers

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were expected to do well with the Ibadan, who believed in celebrating success by patronizing praise-singers. The unsuccessful praise-singer who went to Oke Ado would return empty-handed because the Ijebu, though economically successful, rarely spent money on praise-singers. In 1946, Obafemi Awolowo, an Ijebu resident and one of the founding fathers of Nigerian independence, wrote a petition to the district officer and olubadan (king) of Ibadan condemning verbal abuse and the practices of dedicating licentious songs—like “Obo Ijebu bii ikeemu, epon Ijebu woruwowu” (“Ijebu’s vagina resembles a wide chalice; Ijebu’s scrotum is shapeless”)—to the Ijebu elements during the annual Oke ‘Badan festival.12 Literate Ijebu residents of Oke Ado also used the Southern Nigeria Defender, one of Nnamdi Azikiwe’s newspapers, to protest against the alleged neglect of their neighborhood.13 Although hatred was mutual in that the Ijebu also detested the Ibadan and rejected their attitude toward accumulation and investment of wealth, the numerical advantage of the majority facilitated the entrenchment of discrimination. This is because, in most cases, the public majority, through networks and social structures, stressed differences and transmitted the rhetoric of otherness to incoming generations via a variety of means, some of which will be discussed below. I am not suggesting that minorities cannot manipulate the majority or determine how their identities should be valued or judged. Indeed, history is replete with examples of how minorities seized power from the majority, changed their social and political destinies, and set the standards of morality. Colonialism itself is a good example on a continental basis. At the regional level, the Fulani Jihad of 1804 (variously called the Uthman Dan Fodio Jihad and the Sokoto Jihad) and the emergence of a theocratic state (the Sokoto Caliphate) in the region that would later become Northern Nigeria are instructive as to how a minority can unleash changes of unquantifiable impact on the majority. In the case under examination, the Ibadan majority had power while the Ijebu minority did not. So the Ijebu during the precolonial and colonial periods contended with two significant forces of social change—power and population. From what follows, memory and historical antecedents play a significant role in determining social identity and the framing of otherness. Construction of otherness cannot exist in a vacuum but within the framework of social, political, and economic developments and interactions between and among groups over a period of time. In this chapter, I argue that in order to understand the construction of pathological otherness for Ijebu strangers in colonial Ibadan, a critical appraisal of unpalatable nineteenth-century political and economic relations between

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the states of Ibadan and Ijebu is needed. I also look at the invention of citizenship and the emergence of the Ijebu as a minority group as two developments that laid and shaped the pattern of relations.

Unpacking the Historiography of Ibadan-Ijebu Relations and Searching for the Missing Links: Memory, History, and Identity Politics, 1893–1960 The literature on relations between the Ibadan and the Ijebu is extensive.14 In fact, it is impossible to write about Ibadan’s relations with its neighbors without mentioning Ijebu and vice versa. In terms of periodization, the literature covers the precolonial and colonial periods. As shown by Samuel Johnson, Toyin Falola, Bolanle Awe, E. A. Ayandele, and Babatunde Sofela, the tension between the Ibadan and the Ijebu during the nineteenth century had political and economic undertones.15 Johnson, whose classic The History of the Yorubas remains the “holy book” on precolonial Yoruba history, discusses (either in passing or elaborately) the relations between these peoples. Johnson paints the picture of how Ibadan tried to break the Ijebu’s middlemen monopoly of the coast–hinterland trade by creating alliances with the British and some loyal Ijebu towns. When it comes to the matter of blame, Johnson summarily identifies the Ibadan, who were well known for their “aggressive” military expansionism during the nineteenth century, as victims of the Ijebu’s commercial and trade cruelty.16 Johnson’s bias is partly influenced by his ethnicity (he was Oyo Yoruba).17 Also, he and his fellow African Christian converts and white missionaries frowned at the Ijebu’s apathy for Christian evangelical activities in their territories.18 Indeed, the missionaries had to wait until 1892, when the British militarily subdued the Ijebu, for Christian missionary activities to commence. Awe’s, Falola’s, and Ayandele’s data do not contradict Johnson’s— although as academic historians, they do not deploy the latter’s style of exposition that conspicuously establishes his biases against the Ijebu.19 These acclaimed professional historians of the Yoruba use Johnson’s data in addition to missionary and explorers’ sources and oral traditions to create a nuanced analysis of how warfare created economic and political tension between the Ibadan and the Ijebu. Falola aptly describes the major interest of the Ibadan and the Ijebu: “While Ibadan was imperialist in its agenda, the Ijebu were interested more in trade and profit.”20 The wide disparity in the domestic and foreign policies of the two states created an atmosphere of mutual distrust and discontentment. Sofela’s findings do not contradict those of his colleagues. However, he presents other ways or

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avenues the Ijebu would have monopolized their middleman role in the coast–hinterland trade without necessarily exploiting the Ibadan and other neighbors.21 On the citizenship statutes of Ijebu residents in precolonial Ibadan, Falola’s essay “From Hospitality to Hostility” examines how Ibadan’s hospitable disposition toward strangers degenerated into hostility during the nineteenth century as well as the trajectories associated with the construction of citizenship, civil authority, and agency.22 He discusses how the Oyo Yoruba overpowered other groups on the way to becoming the majority in a state cofounded by several Yoruba subgroups. He also demonstrates how access to political and economic power by non-Yoruba ethnic groups was trimmed. But the main contribution of this essay to Yoruba studies is the antithesis that challenged a well-established idea that Ibadan gave strangers unlimited access to wealth and power.23 While these authors’ data give enormous insight into the relations between the Ijebu and the Ibadan during the nineteenth century coupled with the entire history of political development, which led to the establishment of civil society and citizenship construction, they do not provide any information or arguments about the effects of these trajectories on the experience of Ijebu residents in colonial Ibadan. One does not expect Johnson to do this because he completed his book in 1897 and died in 1901.24 However, professional historians of the nineteenth century who wrote during the twentieth century and witnessed the prejudices against Ijebu strangers in Ibadan would be expected to create discourses encompassing the origins of the intraethnic friction. Why does one expect a historian of nineteenth-century Yorubaland to use developments of the period to establish the origins of inter- and intraethnic differences during the colonial and postindependence periods? Here, I am influenced by Ikime’s well-received criticism that Nigerianists should tailor their research to address the origins of inter- and intraethnic differences and crises in colonial and postindependence Nigeria.25 For Ikime, historical research is less valuable if it cannot answer questions as to what threatens the peaceful coexistence of Nigeria’s multiethnic cleavages. Ikime criticizes his colleagues (notably J. F. Ade Ajayi, J. A. Atanda, Ayandele, A. E. Afigbo, T. N. Tamuno, and R. A. Adeleye) for not establishing a link between the period they study and the time in which they live—more so since the effects of the nineteenth-century tension among the groups they study manifested during the period they were writing. For Ikime, the foundations of the crisis of disunity that rocked Nigeria immediately after the demise of colonialism in 1960 were laid

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during the precolonial times, on which all his colleagues have invested quality scholarship. If the preceding authors are less sensitive to the long-term effects of nineteenth-century differences between the Ibadan and the Ijebu, the scholars we are about to discuss examine the Ijebu’s identity as strangers and their relations with their Ibadan hosts during the colonial period but do not see intraethnic hatred and distrust as a spillover of nineteenth-century tensions that arose through political and economic rivalry. Akin Mabogunje, whose essay on the Ijebu stranger community in Ibadan is perhaps the first comprehensive account of the experience of this people in Ibadan, does not discuss the tension between the hosts and the strangers and makes no reference to how nineteenth-century developments affected the posterity of Ijebu settlers in colonial Ibadan.26 In his Politics and Economy in Ibadan, Falola dedicates five pages to the discussion of the Ijebu’s relations with their Ibadan hosts. He mentions why the Ibadan disliked the Ijebu’s attitude toward accumulation and investment of wealth. The political developments that led to a popular chieftaincy dispute in which a man of Ijebu origin was denied a chieftaincy title is also discussed. However, the nineteenth-century origin of this crisis is not given.27 Dan Aronson’s work The City Is Our Farm examines the life histories of seven migrant Ijebu families in Ibadan. Aronson does not take up the issues of discrimination and how the seven families contested social, economic, and political space with their hosts.28 In spite of his lack of treatment of the subject of citizenship and difference, his brief observation in Chapter 3 runs contrary to the well-established notion that the Ijebu were the “aggressors” in Ibadan: “A summary statement of the known facts of the situation could suggest that Ijebu are distributed throughout the occupation range in urban Ibadan, are probably underrepresented at the lowest levels and overrepresented at the higher levels, are probably the single most successful migrant group in trade and commerce but hold a monopoly nowhere.”29 Another brilliant observation that is close to the subject of discrimination goes thus: “The Ibadan speak of the Ijebu not as ‘alejo’; strangers and guests to be accorded generous hospitality in the cultural expectation that such action is reciprocal and pleasurable, but as ‘ajeji’ that is strangers who ‘eat in two places,’ make of hospitality a one way street, or do not reciprocate at all.” Because Aronson did not examine this contentious debate in detail but in passing, his contribution to the issue of citizenship and minority is inadequate. To date, two authors, Olufunke Adeboye and myself, have developed the most elaborate discussions of the various avenues that created tension between the Ijebu and their Ibadan hosts during the colonial period.30

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Adeboye argues along the theme of urban segregation. She posits that the social and political history of intraethnic segregation manifested in the development of Ijebu residential districts in Ibadan and the labeling of the various aspects of the Ijebu’s life in the city. I have extended this argument by looking at how discrimination was practiced—socially, politically, geographically, and economically. I looked at how oral literature (e.g., songs, popular sayings, proverbs) was used as a tool of pathologization and at the social interactions that allowed various oral traditions to emerge. This approach enhances our understanding of the degree of institutionalization of otherness, a theme that is absent in existing work. Like others, Adeboye and I do not discuss the origin of discrimination. Instead, we focus on the various aspects of the Ibadan’s relations with Ijebu settlers and how segregation and discrimination was practiced. From the foregoing, it is obvious that we have two bodies of literature (in terms of themes and periodization) that do not speak to each other. That which dwells on the nineteenth century does not discuss the longterm effects of interstate rivalry and construction of citizenship, while that which discusses how segregation and discrimination were practiced does not examine their nineteenth-century origin. In this work, I build on the existing literature and use the case of Ibadan-Ijebu relations to posit that in order to understand why the hosts treated migrant or stranger communities as they did during the colonial period of Nigerian history, attention should be given to relations between and among empires and states before the establishment of imperial rule. The construction of citizenship and the changing nature of relations between the majority and minority in precolonial times are capable of allowing us to understand how the pattern of inter- and intraethnic relations in colonial and postindependence Nigeria are configured and reconfigured. As previously mentioned, the construction of otherness of the Ijebu settlers in colonial Ibadan was institutionalized.31 It was not only practiced by Ibadan elites who denied a resident of Ijebu ancestry an important chieftaincy title in 1941, but by the public majority, most of whom did not have firsthand information or experience of Ibadan-Ijebu relations during the nineteenth century. But institutionalized discrimination cannot exist without memory. Memory in this connection is defined as how groups narrate stories of peace and conflict and how intra- and interethnic differences or harmony entered the social lexicon of the society. For the Yoruba, sayings, proverbs, songs, and popular history—in fact, oral literature in general—link people to the past, consciously or unconsciously.32 A good number of unpalatable sayings, songs, and statements used by the Ibadan in describing the behavioral patterns of the

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Ijebu were of nineteenth-century origin. A content analysis of oral literature reveals strong historical connections to the well-documented histories of unharmonious relations. For instance, the epigraph of this chapter indicates that the Ijebu were more dangerous than a snake presumably because they were the main suppliers of instruments of human destruction (arms and ammunition) and because, according to Johnson, they cherished slaves more than any other item of trade during the 1880s.33 The Ibadan citizen who made illiberal comments about the Ijebu strangers during the colonial period relied on evidence of the period (that is, competition over scarce economic and social capital) as well as established patterns of belief and dispositions that predated the colonial period. But he or she did not require firsthand knowledge or experience of what “actually” transpired during the nineteenth century in order to form opinions since oral literature and public memory readily provided the justification for otherness. Robert Daniels captures the interconnectivity between history and memory and group consciousness thus: “History is the memory of human group experience. . . . It is the events recorded in history that have generated all the emotion, the values, and ideals that make life meaningful, that have given men something to live for, struggle over, die for. Historical events have created all the basic human groupings—countries, religions, classes—and all the loyalties that attached to these.”34

The Invention of Citizenship and the Establishment of Civil Society: The Emergence of Ijebu Minority Status in Ibadan, 1830–1893 A major factor that determined how Ijebu residents were treated during the precolonial and colonial periods was their status as strangers. But their emergence as such is a manifestation of how the dominant group imposed and maintained its hegemony over minorities through a combination of war and diplomacy. At the head of the new hegemonic force were the Oyo Yoruba coinhabitants of Ibadan (people from places such as Ogbomoso, Ijaiye, Ede, Oyo, Iwo, Ikirun, and Ilora). The rivalry that dominated the affairs of the nascent settlement during the 1830s tilted in favor of this group, which expelled a good number of their main rivals—the Ife—and emerged on top, both politically and militarily. Significantly, it is difficult to know in concrete terms the population of the various Yoruba subgroups during this formative period. Demography is important because it allows us to consider the relationship between power derived from military might and that derived from numerical strength. These types of power are not

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mutually exclusive, since in some cases a numerically insignificant group might dominate the majority through the possession of superior weaponry and appeal to a commonly accepted cultural or mythical bond. The Oyo Yoruba were probably the majority because members of this group were drawn from many towns and villages, including the defunct Old Oyo Empire. In terms of the construction of citizenship, this emergent domineering power had an unwritten constitution that defined who made up the Ibadan citizenry: citizens were those Oyo Yoruba driven from the Old Oyo Empire by the Fulani jihadists around the second decade of the nineteenth century. This definition is important for two reasons: first, it relegated the Ijebu and other cofounders to “stranger” status; and second, it determined access to power and wealth. The second construct is much more important. This is partly because the possession of wealth does not necessarily guarantee access to power. In Ibadan, the most militarized Yoruba state in nineteenth-century Yorubaland, power was derived through military exploits, which brought wealth and the ability to maintain a large following of “war-boys” and hangers-on. Warlords demonstrated military might via waging wars and extending Ibadan’s territorial influence. Only a militarily active war chief could vie for chieftaincy titles and move up the ladder of succession. Wars brought wealth through collection of tributes from the subjugated and the booty obtained. In sum, power automatically brought wealth, but wealth was not a guarantee of power.35 It was virtually impossible for the Ijebu to possess power, not because of their alien status and lack of involvement in commercial activities that can create wealth, but because they did not have the prerequisite—the ability to raise private armies and wage wars. They could not hold chieftaincy titles, which conferred power, because they did not join the Ibadan army. Ijebu residents in Ibadan and at home were principally interested in trade. The various Ijebu towns and villages participated in long- and short-distance trade and were in firm control of coast–hinterland commercial interactions. And as we will see, they had a well-established network that connected people and trade between their quarters in Ibadan and various parts of Yorubaland. A few Ijebu also owned land, but the size of their holdings was not large enough to create the type of wealth war chiefs, who had greater access to land, possessed. Trade and agriculture brought wealth, no doubt, but they did not yield power. Wealthy Ijebu who were not soldiers had no qualifications to join in the race for titles since they could only receive one through bravery and military exploits.36 The only exception to this general rule was Sodeinde of Ijebu Remo, who was honored with the chieftaincy title of Balogun Elesin in appreciation

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for his contribution to the victory of Ibadan in the Iperu War (1862–65). Sodeinde fought in support of the Ibadan against his own people, to the extent of ignoring the threat that all his relatives in Ijebuland would be liquidated. In spite of his contribution to the development of Ibadan, Sodeinde was not promoted beyond the rank of the Balogun Elesin until his death on April 16, 1880. Two of his descendants, Solaja and Folarin, later distinguished themselves in the twentieth century. They rose to the ranks of Ekefa Baale and Osi Balogun, respectively. However, Folarin was not promoted beyond this rank when the Otun Balogun title became vacant in 1941 because he was accused of maintaining his “Ijebu” ancestry—a sort of dual citizenship. One of the numerous protest songs of the period goes thus: E so f’ Alake E so f’ Awujale Ki won o wa mu Folarin Awa o ni i le sin Ijebu Tell the alake [the paramount king of the Egba] Tell the awujale [the paramount king of the Ijebu] They should come and take Folarin We cannot serve Ijebu.37

The Ijebu were segregated politically and geographically from their hosts. Newcomers readily settled among their kinsmen in the Ijebu quarters of Isale Ijebu. However, some were integrated into the household of a war chief through enlistment in their armies. These Ijebu elements of Ibadan households were regarded as ara ile (coinhabitant—different from omo ile—that is, people related by blood to the founder of the compound, who of course was also a war chief). The presence of the Ijebu and other strangers in the armies of the war chief conferred respect and power. But such power did not translate into possession of important chieftaincy titles because another citizenship law passed in the 1850s created a barrier. This law stipulated that all compounds must have a head (mogaji) that must compete to occupy a vacant chieftaincy title at the town level. Expectedly, potential candidates were war chiefs of Oyo Yoruba origin related to the founder of the compound by blood (omo ile). This implies that an Ijebu member of a war chief household/compound, irrespective of successful military exploits, could not vie for the headship of the compound by the virtue of not being omo ile. It was also not in the best interest of a compound to present an ara ile for a chieftaincy title because other competitors would readily expose the ethnic identity of their rival claimants.

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Trade Relations during the Nineteenth Century In order to understand how trade and political relations between the Ibadan and the Ijebu created tension during the period, it is important that we reemphasize the general character of these two groups. The Ijebu were known for their “irrepressible flair for trading.”38 Because of this characteristic, in conjunction with their versatility in countless other productive ventures, they were called by some “the Jews of Nigeria.”39 Some Ijebu towns, such as Ikorodu and Oru, were located along the coast. They were therefore indispensable middlemen in the coast–hinterland trade, which probably dates back to the sixteenth century.40 The Ijebu traded in a variety of imported commodities including chinaware, printed cloths, rum, gin, guns, and beads in return for slaves. The main sources of their commercial prosperity up to the 1870s were slaves and ammunition. The wars and population dislocations of the nineteenth century yielded slaves, which the Ijebu sold to their Portuguese and other European trade partners.41 From a war camp inhabited by a few thousand in the third decade of the nineteenth century, Ibadan grew steadily, and by the 1850s, missionaries estimated the town’s population as 60,000 to 100,000.42 Population growth heightened all aspects of human relations and activities, including trade. European and locally manufactured goods found their way from the coast to the hinterland and vice versa. Although nineteenth-century Yorubaland was characterized by wars and revolution that threatened civil order and economic development in the entire region, trade relations were central to the execution of wars and the survival of the belligerents. In other words, trade relations and other economic activities, such as agriculture and craftmaking, flourished in spite of the conflicts that engulfed the Yoruba region. Between the 1830s and 1850s, trade between the Ibadan and the Ijebu appears to have worked perfectly. Isale Ijebu, the Ijebu quarters in Ibadan, among other social and economic functions, served as entrepôts where goods were transported to various parts of the city and Yorubaland.43 Isale Ijebu played a greater commercial role because, as we will see, the Ijebu confined trade to the outskirts of their towns and barred foreign traders from entering their territories. Ann and David Hinderer, the pioneering European missionaries in Ibadan, noted that large caravans came from Ijebu twice a month, while another came on a weekly basis.44 The Ibadan also sent caravans to Ijebu. What appeared like peaceful trade relations degenerated into mutual distrust and hostility by the 1850s. Ibadan during this period had emerged as a major military power in Yorubaland. The Ijebu, like the Egba, began

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to fear an imminent military attack by the Ibadan, whose wars of military expansion seemed to have had no bounds. And in order to safeguard their territorial integrity and weaken the Ibadan militarily, the Ijebu were quick to see the need to impose trade embargoes, especially on the sale of firearms. It was during the Ibadan-Ijaye War (1860–62) that the Ijebu effectively used a trade embargo to limit the Ibadan’s access to ammunition. This trade embargo, to use the words of Ayandele, “amounted to an economic stranglehold.”45 Some Ijebu towns such as Oru secretly sold ammunition to Ibadan in spite of the trade embargo. In this unusual situation, arms and ammunition were sold at terms inimical to Ibadan’s trade interest. A good example included the alleged exploitation by Chief Kuku, a prominent Ijebu chief who supplied Ibadan with ammunition. He was accused of fixing prices at abnormal rates for the purpose of exploiting the Ibadan. According to Johnson, “Through Chief Kuku of Ijebu Ode, who had resided at Ibadan for many years, as well as through the Ijebu country, the Ibadans were now able to obtain at very high prices some riffle [sic] and ammunition. . . . The guns were sold to them at the rate of £10 to £15 a piece, and the cartridges at 6d. each— prices which, considering the scarcity of money and the general impoverishment induced by this prolonged war, only men in desperate condition would care to pay.”46 The Ibadan exchanged slaves for firearms; and so important were slaves to the Ijebu that, as late as 1887, they would not take any other commodity in trade. This situation compelled Ibadan authorities to do an unusual thing—reenslave slaves who had redeemed themselves and former slaves who had been fully integrated in families.47 The Ijebu were said not only to have maximized all opportunities outside their homeland in prescriptive terms but were “unabashedly aggressive, displaying a unique disposition for economic buccaneering.”48 Ijebu’s unfriendly trade relations reflected in this statement attributed to an Ijebu chief: Afi Oyinbo afi Ijebu dede aiye dede eru niwon kosi oja ti a ita Oyinbo ko si oja ti a ita Ijebu Except the white man and the Ijebu The whole world besides are slaves There is no market in which a white man may be sold and none where Ijebu may be sold.49

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Awe aptly captures the nature of trade unfriendliness during the tail end of the nineteenth century: During the Kiriji War of 1877–86, and up to 1892, when their country was overrun by the British, the Ijebu became so powerful that they dictated the terms of trade to Ibadan traders. They were alleged to have fixed arbitrary prices for selling to and buying from them, and to have resorted to a number of sharp business practices; for instance, it was alleged that they mixed ashes with their imported salt. Moreover, their traders could not be brought to justice before the Ibadan authorities; on the contrary, they constituted themselves into a kind of court for trying Ibadan traders who broke their rules. . . . They also had a free run of Ibadan markets, but they never gave Ibadan traders free access to their own country; instead they delineated markets on the outskirts where the exchange of goods could take place.50

The Ibadan were not hapless in the wake of the trade imbalances between them and the Ijebu—attempts were made to end the rivalry. Indeed, Ibadan authorities allowed the continued growth of an Ijebu quarter in Ibadan, where Ijebu resident traders preempted from their Ibadan counterparts the landlord and brokerage rights that the latter normally enjoyed.51 Also the Ibadan made efforts to break up Ijebuland by encouraging the Remo, a subgroup of Ijebu, to break away from the awujale’s overlord. This approach could not work because the Ijebu and Egba forces punished the Remo towns that supported Ibadan during the Ibadan-Ijaye War. The trauma of the post–Ijaye War period served as a deterrent and prevented further assistance from the Ijebu Remo. In 1888, the Ibadan expelled Ijebu consuls from their city and prevented them from buying slaves and oil until they opened their territory to trade. Similarly, the Ibadan between 1880 and 1891 petitioned the British government in Lagos complaining bitterly about the Ijebu’s exploitation and urging intervention to break their monopoly. At this point, the British in Lagos were also uncomfortable about the effects of the wars on trade relations with the people of the hinterland and were fervently looking for an opportunity to intervene. This chance came in 1892, when the British ordered an expedition that terminated the Ijebu’s independence and opened their territories to trade and Christian missionary activities. A major historiographical problem historians face in discussing the pattern of trade relations between Ibadan and Ijebu during the period under examination is that most, if not all available sources point in one direction—the Ijebu were unfair to the Ibadan. We do not have evidence that argues the other way. Sofela does not disagree with the observation of Johnson and the conclusion of his professional colleagues that the Ijebu

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commercially exploited the Ibadan and other Yoruba neighbors. However, he suggests other ways the Ijebu could have monopolized trade other than directly exploiting their neighbors: First, they could allow traders to pass through their territory and collect tolls from them at their town gates; second, they might allow other traders to pass through their territory but the roads might be so unsafe that going through them would be almost impossible; and last, the Ijebu could have made friends with Portuguese traders on the coast and then prevent the latter from patronizing other traders from the hinterland.52

Political Strains and “Splendid Isolation” In nineteenth-century Yorubaland, as elsewhere in Africa and the world, political and economic policies were closely intertwined to the extent that a clear-cut dichotomy between the two is difficult to establish. The Ijebu’s economic policies were partly informed by the character of their foreign policy and vice versa. The Ibadan and Ijebu had rosy political relations before the mid-nineteenth century, as the preceding sections show. At this time, their domestic and foreign policies were in tandem. Indeed, they both had a common enemy that needed to be subdued—the Egba who had settled Abeokuta.53 By 1830, the emerging settlement of Abeokuta had started to interfere with the lucrative commercial activities of the Ijebu. Sodeke, the legendary leader of the Egba, soon discovered that the Ijebu constituted a major threat to the survival of the nascent state.54 Also, the survival of the Egba settlement depended on direct access to arms and ammunition from the coast. To achieve this objective, they began to move southward in search of farmlands and to have access to the coastal trade. A clash between the Ijebu and Abeokuta was inevitable if the former’s monopoly status was to continue. The Ibadan also viewed the growth of Abeokuta as a potential threat since the land the Ibadan occupied had previously belonged to the Egba. The Ibadan foresaw a situation whereby the Abeokuta state would seek to recapture its sequestered territory and so allied with the Ijebu against the Egba in the Owiwi War (1832). The Egba won this conflict decisively in spite of the Ibadan-Ijebu coalition. After 1832, new developments altered the pattern of political and military relations between the Ibadan and the Ijebu. By the 1840s, the Ibadan had been able to—among other significant military engagements— halt the advancement of the Fulani jihadists at the famous Battle of Osogbo.55 The Ibadan capitalized on their assigned task of defending the north and northeastern parts of Yorubaland against further jihadist

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incursion by subduing some of their neighbors, including the Ekiti, the Ijesa, and the Igbomina. However, the Ibadan did not restrict their military aggressiveness to these groups; on some occasions, Ibadan troops unleashed terror on Ijebu caravans and traders stationed in Ibadan markets. This, coupled with the fear that the Ibadan might invade Ijebu towns and villages, made Ijebu authorities redefine their foreign policy. In the emergent power equation, the Ijebu found an ally in their erstwhile enemy (the Egba).56 The two states discovered the need to tame the Ibadan’s military restlessness. This decision resonates in a statement credited to Ashipa of Ijebu Ode: “If the Ibadans had been allowed to get down to Lagos and had had the opportunity of buying ammunition from white man, they would have by this time devastated all the countries in the interior.”57 In spite of the support the Egba-Ijebu alliance gave Ijaye during the Ibadan-Ijaye War (1860–62), the Ibadan were able to destroy the town, causing its inhabitants to be dispersed all across Yorubaland to as far as what is now the Republic of Benin. The sacking of Ijaiye did not change the character of the Egba-Ijebu alliance against the Ibadan. Indeed, during the last major war of the century, the Ekitiparapo War (1886–93), the Egba-Ijebu alliance posed a formidable threat to the success of the Ibadan against the insurgency of the Ekitiparapo confederacy.58 This war was not decided until the British made the belligerents sign a trade and peace treaty. Aside from military and political strains discussed above, another cause of conflict was the Ijebu’s policy of “splendid isolation.” Before 1892, when the British military attacked the Ijebu and ended their centuries of political autonomy, the latter adopted a unique policy unlike the general pattern of foreign relations among precolonial Yoruba societies. They isolated themselves and prevented strangers from venturing into their territory.59 This policy was not directed toward Yoruba or other Africans only. In fact, while the Ijebu’s neighboring states, such as Abeokuta, Ibadan, and Ijaye, opened their borders to Christian evangelical activities from the 1840s and 1850s, the Ijebu did not allow missionaries to operate within their domain. This policy is registered in a popular saying about Ijebu Ode: “Ijebu Ode Ajeji, ko wo; bi ajeji bawo laro, nwon afi se bo lale” (meaning “Ijebu Ode a town forbidden to foreigners: if a foreigner entered it in the morning, he was sure to be sacrificed in the evening”).60 It is interesting to see the contradiction associated with the Ijebu’s attitude toward strangers and their presence outside the Ijebu domain. Logically, one does not expect the Ijebu to migrate or settle in other Yoruba towns and villages if they would not allow foreigners to reside in their own

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communities. However, their presence in Ibadan increased throughout the nineteenth century. By 1887, alarmed by the influx of strangers into their country, some angry Ijebu youth accused Balogun Onafowokan and the awujale (the paramount head of all Ijebu towns and villages) of facilitating the influx. While the former was withdrawn from his base at Oru and subsequently had his military title changed to a civilian one, the latter was forced to pass a law forbidding the Oyo Yoruba from entering Ijebu territory and ensuring that no commercial transactions went beyond the border town of Oru. The Ijebu did not restrict their immigration policy to preventing strangers from entering their country. They were said to have asked Ibadan authorities to repatriate missionaries and pro-Ibadan elements of Ijebu origin from their town. Examples include Solaja, who supported the Ibadan against the Ijebu at the Kutuje War; Kuku, who was reputed to have sold ammunition to the Ibadan, albeit at unreasonable rates; and Rev. D. Olubi, who was accused of facilitating the influx of missionaries from the coast into the hinterland. All these men of Ijebu origin were prosecuted in one way or another for supporting Ibadan militarily or otherwise. As the Ekitiparapo War dragged on, Ibadan petitions to the British colonial government at Lagos about the Ijebu’s trade unfriendliness intensified. The missionaries (both whites and blacks) were equally unhappy that the Ijebu did not permit Christian evangelical activities in their country. By the early 1890s, the British at Lagos had accumulated enough evidence and justification to break the Ijebu trade monopoly. Ibadan supplied 100 out of the 284 troops deployed for the attack. Apparently the war was not just between the Ijebu and the British, but also between the Ijebu and the Ibadan, as indicated by the enormous support the British received from the Ibadan. The expedition terminated the Ijebu’s centuries of independence and opened their territories to economic and missionary activities. The Ibadan achieved their age-old dream of dominance over the Ijebu, only to succumb to the more superior power of the British. The two states, inclusive of all Yorubaland, were gradually incorporated into colonial rule after 1893.

Conclusion The main focus of this chapter is how the construction of citizenship in precolonial Ibadan and political and economic unfriendliness between the Ibadan and the Ijebu laid the foundation of discrimination against the people of Ijebu origin in colonial Ibadan. A tributary of the chapter’s argument is that, in order to understand the nature of intergroup relations

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in colonial and postindependence Nigeria, a close look at precolonial patterns of relations is imperative. Colonialism represents one of the numerous facets of inter- and intraethnic engagement. To see alien rule as the most important period of intergroup relations is to undermine the creative ingenuity of Africans in the arts of making peace and war. The establishment of colonial rule in 1893 ended the century-long wars and upheavals in Yorubaland and put a permanent halt to the Ibadan’s warlike tradition. The Ijebu not only lost their monopoly of coast– hinterland trade but were forced by the British to throw their territories open to missionary activities. The new colonial machinery of administration allowed the Ibadan and Ijebu kingdoms to be governed separately, thus eliminating any strife between the two archrivals. As a result of the Pax Britannica, the Ijebu presence in Ibadan increased as they migrated to partake in the new economic opportunities that came through colonial capitalism. In the absence of war and other causes of precolonial relations and tension, new forms of discrimination emerged. Although the Ijebu were discriminated against in precolonial Ibadan (for example, they were denied citizenship), the social, political, and economic changes precipitated by colonial rule introduced new forms of relations without eliminating the older, preexisting biases. But these new elements of discord would not have manifested the way they did without the influence of the past.

Notes 1 The Ijebu, a Yoruba subgroup, speak mutually intelligible dialects. The awujale of Ijebu Ode is the primus inter pares of the chiefs and kings of Ijebu towns and villages. For a general reading on Ijebu history and culture, see, among others, G. O. Oguntomisin, ed., Studies in Ijebu History and Culture (Ibadan: John Archers, 2002); and E. A. Ayandele, The Ijebu of Yorubaland, 1850–1950: Politics, Economy, and Society (Ibadan: Heinemann, 1992). 2 On the Yoruba civil wars of the nineteenth century, see, among others, S. A. Akintoye, Revolution and Power Politics in Yorubaland, 1840–1893: Ibadan Expansion and the Rise of Ekitiparapo (London: Longman, 1971); Adeagbo Akinjogbin, ed., War and Peace in Yorubaland, 1793–1893 (Ibadan: Heinemann, 1998); J. F. Ade Ajayi and Robert Smith, Yoruba Warfare in the Nineteenth Century (London: Longman, 1964); Toyin Falola and G. O. Oguntomisin, The Military in Nineteenth-Century Yoruba Politics (Ile-Ife: University of Ife Press, 1984); Yoruba Warlords of the Nineteenth Century (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2001); R. C. C. Law, “The Chronology of the Yoruba Wars of the Early Nineteenth Century: A Reconsideration,” Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria 2 (1970): 212–22; and Bolanle Awe, “The Rise of Ibadan as a Yoruba Power, 1851–1893” (PhD diss., Oxford University, 1964).

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Toyin Falola, The Political Economy of a Pre-colonial African State: Ibadan, 1830–1900 (Ile-Ife: University of Ife Press, 1984), 15–22; Toyin Falola, “From Hospitality to Hostility: Ibadan and Strangers, 1893–1904,” Journal of African History 26, no. 1 (1985): 51–68. 4 The imposition of colonial rule created more economic opportunities, of which new migrants wanted to partake. 5 Interview with Chief Bisiriyu Ajadi of Bere Ibadan in Ibadan, Nigeria, July 17, 2004. All my informants agreed that the Ijebu were the most populous strangers in colonial Ibadan. The following documented source corroborates my oral evidence: Dan R. Aronson, The City Is Our Farm: Seven Migrant Ijebu Yoruba Families (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1978), 28. 6 Saheed Aderinto, “Discrimination in an Urban Setting: The Experience of Ijebu Settlers in Colonial Ibadan, 1893–1960,” in Inter-group Relations in Nigeria during the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, ed. Olayemi Akinwumi, Okpeh O. Okpeh Jr., and Gwamna D. Je’adayibe (Makurdi, Nigeria: Aboki Publishers, 2006), 356–86. 7 Obaro Ikime, In Search of Nigerians: Changing Patterns of Inter-group Relations in an Evolving Nation State (Lagos: Impact Publishers, 1985), 17. 8 Aderinto, “Discrimination in an Urban Setting,” 361. 9 Interview with Pa Akanji Adeleke in Oje Ibadan, Nigeria, May 21, 2003. 10 Aderinto, “Discrimination in an Urban Setting,” 370. 11 Oke Ado is one of Ijebu’s quarters in Ibadan and, indeed, the biggest during the colonial period. The Ibadan believed that praise singers who go to Oke Ado will return empty-handed because the Ijebu rarely patronize them. 12 “Oke Badan Festival,” Southern Nigeria Defender (hereafter cited as SND), March 9, 1946, 1. 13 See, among others, “Oke Ado Waits,” SND, May 1, 1950, 2; “One Stand Pipe for Oke Ado,” SND, March 28, 1950, 2; “Market for Oke Ado,” SND, March 28, 1950, 2; “Bad Condition of Oke Ado,” SND, July 18, 1946, 3. 14 The following materials and many others have elaborate yet brief information on Ibadan-Ijebu relations during the precolonial and colonial periods: Samuel Johnson, The History of the Yorubas: From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the British Protectorate (1921; reprint, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1961), 612–13, 616–18, 450–54; Toyin Falola, “Warfare and Trade Relations between the Ibadan and the Ijebu in the Nineteenth Century,” Warfare and Diplomacy in Precolonial Nigeria: Essays in Honor of Robert Smith, ed. Toyin Falola and Robin Law (Madison: African Studies Program, University of Wisconsin, 1992), 26–30; Falola, Political Economy, 15–18; Bolanle Awe, “Militarism and Economic Development in Nineteenth-Century Yoruba Country: The Ibadan Example,” Journal of African History 14, no. 1 (1973): 65–77; Obafemi Oladimomi Ayantuga, “Ijebu and Its Neigbours, 1851–1914” (PhD diss., University of London, 1965); Ayandele, Ijebu of Yorubaland; Babatunde Sofela, Egba-Ijebu Relations: A Study in Conflict Resolution in Nineteenth-Century Yorubaland (Ibadan: John Archers, 2000); Aronson, City Is Our Farm; Akin Mabogunje, “Stranger Communities: The Ijebu,” in The City of Ibadan, ed. P. C. Lloyd, A. L. Mabogunje, and B. Awe

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(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 85–95; Olufunke Adeboye, “Intra-Ethnic Segregation in Colonial Ibadan: The Case of Ijebu Settlers,” in Security, Crime, and Segregation in West African Cities since the Nineteenth Century, ed. Laurent Fourchard and Isaac Olawale Albert (Ibadan/Paris: IFRA/Karthala, 2003), 303–19; Aderinto, “Discrimination in an Urban Setting,” 356–86; A. B. O. Thompson, “Isale Ijebu as an Enduring Social System: A Historical and Sociological Study” (BA long essay, University of Ibadan, 1970). 15 Johnson, History of the Yorubas; Falola, “Warfare and Trade Relations,” 26–30; Awe, “Militarism and Economic Development,” 65–77; Sofela, Egba-Ijebu Relations, 25. Although his book focuses on Egba-Ijebu relations, Babatunde Sofela makes reference to the relations between the Ijebu and the Ibadan. 16 Johnson, History of the Yorubas, 612–13, 616–18, 450–54. 17 Although no scholar of Yoruba history can dispense with Johnson’s classic, his lack of professional historical training affects the ways Johnson interprets some of the events he recorded. For full critiques of his work, see Toyin Falola, ed., Pioneer, Patriot, and Patriarchy: Samuel Johnson and the Yoruba People (Madison: African Studies Program, University of Wisconsin, 1994). 18 Ayandele describes the Ijebu’s foreign policy as “splendid isolation” because they barred foreigners from their territories. Ayandele, Ijebu of Yorubaland, 45–67. 19 Awe, “Militarism and Economic Development,” 45; Falola, “Warfare and Trade Relations,” 26–30; Ayandele, Ijebu of Yorubaland, 15–20. 20 Falola, “Warfare and Trade Relations,” 27. 21 Sofela, Egba-Ijebu Relations, 27. 22 Falola, “From Hospitality to Hostility,” 51–68. 23 Ibid. 24 The book was completed in 1897 but was not published until 1921, two decades after Johnson’s demise. 25 Obaro Ikime, Through Changing Scenes: Nigerian History, Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow (Ibadan: Ibadan University Press, 1979), 1–20. Although this criticism was broached about three decades ago, Ikime continues to reiterate it. See also Obaro Ikime, “Thoughts on Isoko-Urhobo Relations” (keynote address delivered at the Sixth Annual Conference of the Urhobo Historical Society, October 22, 2005, Effurun, Petroleum Training Institute, Nigeria), 1–3. 26 Mabogunje, “Stranger Communities,” 85–95. 27 Toyin Falola, Politics and Economy in Ibadan, 1893–1945 (Lagos: Modelor, 1989), 274–75, 335. 28 Aronson, City Is Our Farm. 29 Ibid., 30–31. 30 Adeboye, “Intra-Ethnic Segregation,” 301–19; Aderinto, “Discrimination in an Urban Setting,” 356–86. 31 See the following SND newspaper stories published about Ijebu quarters of Oke Ado: “Oke Ado Waits,” May 1, 1950, 2; “One Stand Pipe for Oke Ado,” March 28, 1950, 2; “Market for Oke Ado,” March 28, 1950, 2; “Bad Condition of Oke Ado,” July 18, 1946, 3.

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The Ijebu were the main targets of abusive songs during the annual Oke ’Badan festival. Ijebu elites in Ibadan protested against the stereotypical songs and sayings the Ibadan dedicated to them during the festival. See “Oke ’Badan Festival,” SND, March 9, 1946, 2. 33 Ayandele, Ijebu of Yorubaland, 199. 34 Robert V. Daniels, Studying History: How and Why, 3rd ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1981), 72. 35 Falola, “From Hospitality to Hostility,” 54. 36 Ibid. 37 Interview with Madam Aderinto of Dele Solu Compound Oje in Ibadan, Nigeria, August 17, 2005. 38 Mabogunje, “Stranger Communities,” 85. 39 Ayandele, Ijebu of Yorubaland, x. 40 Robin Law, “Early European Sources Relating to the Kingdom of Ijebu (1500– 1700): A Critical Survey,” History in Africa 13 (1986): 245–60. 41 Ayandele, Ijebu of Yorubaland, 3. 42 Awe, “Militarism and Economic Development,” 68. 43 Thompson, “Isale Ijebu,” 34. 44 Cited in Falola, “Warfare and Trade Relations,” 27. 45 Ayandele, Ijebu of Yorubaland, 198. 46 Johnson, History of the Yorubas, 492. 47 Ayandele, Ijebu of Yorubaland, 199. 48 Ibid., 198. 49 Johnson, History of the Yorubas, 610. 50 Ibid., 74–75. 51 Awe, “Militarism and Economic Development,” 74. 52 Sofela, Egba-Ijebu Relations, 25. 53 The Egba are the citizens of Abeokuta. 54 Saburi O. Biobaku, The Egba and Their Neighbours, 1842–1872 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957), 17–19. 55 The Fulani jihadists posed a serious threat to the independence of Yoruba states. They were instrumental to the final collapse of the Old Oyo Empire and continued to push southward. The 1840 war halted their southward advance, though threat of renewed attack continued throughout the nineteenth century. See, among others, J. A. Atanda, “The Fulani Jihad and the Collapse of the Old Oyo Empire,” in Yoruba Historiography, ed. Toyin Falola (Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1991), 105–21. 56 See Sofela, Egba-Ijebu Relations, for a discussion of how the Egba and Ijebu resolved their differences. 57 Ayandele, Ijebu of Yorubaland, 10. 58 The origins and exploits of the Ekitiparapo confederacy is the theme of Akintoye’s book. See Akintoye, Revolution and Power Politics. 59 Ayandele, Ijebu of Yorubaland, 15–23.

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Bolanle Awe, “Ibadan: Its Early Beginning,” in The City of Ibadan, ed. P. C. Lloyd, A. L. Mabogunje, and B. Awe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 22.

PART IV: EMERGING FRONTIERS IN COLONIAL NIGERIAN HISTORY

CHAPTER TWELVE LAGOS AND THE INVENTION OF JUVENILE DELINQUENCY IN NIGERIA, 1920–1960 LAURENT FOURCHARD

It was the Second World War that made juvenile delinquency a “problem” in Africa. —John Iliffe, The African Poor: A History

John Iliffe does not consider “juvenile delinquency” as something new in the 1940s, but he suggests that it was becoming a central issue, an obsession of the “compassionate period,” after World War II. His argument establishes an important difference between the historical presence of young offenders in Africa and its late discovery by colonial officers. Our data on urban youth crime dates back to World War II when social welfare services set up in the British and French colonies and international institutions started to consider juvenile delinquency as one of the major issues of urbanization in Africa.1 Child destitution and the so-called phenomenon of “street children” have, since the 1950s, received continuing but disproportionate attention.2 The literature, mainly devoted to contemporary analysis, has been complemented for the past fifteen years by historical research.3 This chapter is based on Nigerian newspapers and administrative reports.4 Both sources represent the perspective of older people; they do not express the voices of the young. For these, further investigation in other sources is required. In focusing on the Lagos case, I would like to trace the historical roots of youth offenders and to demonstrate how, from the 1940s onward, some children and youth came to be considered as criminal. The late discovery of juvenile offenders and the criminalization of some practices of African youth constitute what I call the invention of juvenile delinquency. This process is quite similar to what occurred in Britain at the beginning of the nineteenth century when British reformers invented the notion of the “Delinquent Child.”5 The development of an administrative and judicial machinery legislated into existence juvenile

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delinquency, which was henceforth clearly identifiable as a social problem. Such a process was engineered in Lagos by the new Welfare Service set up during World War II. Lagos was not unique, however, and specific judicial machinery for the “treatment of juvenile offenders” was also put in place elsewhere in the British Empire as well as in the French, Belgian, and Portuguese imperial possessions in the 1940s and 1950s.6

Urbanization and Poverty in Colonial Lagos The original site of Lagos is an island located between the sea and the lagoon that gave Lagos its name in Portuguese. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Lagos became the main slave port along the Slave Coast but was still a small town when the British annexed it in 1861.7 During the second half of the nineteenth century, the population increased slowly, from 25,000 in 1866 to 38,387 in 1901 (see table 12.1).8 The progressive export substitution of slaves by palm oil and the consolidation of the position of Lagos on the West African coast attracted European merchants, slaves from Brazil and Cuba, slaves freed by the British on the coast, and refugees from the interior. However, the high death rate at the close of the nineteenth century (40 per 1,000 inhabitants) limited the rapid expansion of the city.9 All the inhabitants, Europeans included, were living in the same part of Lagos Island. Table 12.1. Population growth of selected Nigerian cities, 1866 to 1963 Towns

1866

1891

1911

1921

1931

1951– 1960– 53 63 Lagos 25,083 32,508 73,766 99,700 126,000 230,250 665,246 Ibadan 100,000 120,000 175,000 238,000 387,000 459,000 600,000 Kano 30,000 96,000 127,205 400,000 Sources: Mabogunje, Urbanization in Nigeria, 327–29, Eva Krapf-Askari, Yoruba Towns and Cities: An Enquiry into the Nature of Urban Social Phenomena (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), 35, and Alvan Millson, “The Yoruba Country, West Africa,” Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society 13, no. 10 (1891): 583.

From the 1900s onward, the progressive concentration of administrative, commercial, and industrial activities in Lagos combined with a permanent influx of migrants and improved health conditions to allow a dramatic increase in the population.10 By 1960, when Nigeria achieved its independence, Lagos had become the largest city not only in the new nation but in all of West Africa (665,000 inhabitants in 1963). Some

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scholars have suggested that the rate of immigration to Lagos decreased between the world wars as the pace of economic development slowed;11 yet, as more accurate studies have demonstrated, without migration the population of Lagos would have decreased after World War I due to the influenza epidemic of 1918 and the bubonic plague outbreaks between 1924 and 1928.12 The very high percentage of the population born outside Lagos (59% in 1931; 63% in 1950) indicates that almost since the 1920s, migrants have contributed significantly to the growth of the city (see fig. 12.1).13 Figure 12.1 : Population of immigrants and youth in Lagos: 1931, 1950, 1963

700000 600000 Population growth

500000 400000

Number of immigrants

300000 Number of youth under 15

200000 100000 0 1931

1950

1963

Sources: Mabogunje, Urbanization in Nigeria, 262; Baker, Urbanization and Political Change, 33, 40.

Major regional sources of immigrants were Abeokuta, Ijebu, and Oyo Provinces in Yorubaland and Igbo areas. The most important factor stimulating immigration to Lagos was the widening gap in employment opportunities between Lagos and the rest of the country.14 Largely due to the importance of the number of migrants, Lagos remained a predominantly male and very youthful city throughout the period.15 The age composition shows an increasing proportion in the under-thirty age group, which climbed from 62 percent in 1921 to 78 percent in 1972.

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Within this population the proportion of children under fifteen years of age rose from 27 percent in 1931 to 43 percent in 1963 (see fig. 12.1).16 A number of factors have been advanced to explain the development of delinquent behavior among the youth of Lagos. The most common explanation offered by the colonial administration centered on the breakdown of tribal life and family ties. A comprehensive report compiled in 1948 stressed that the “high incidence and constant increase of juvenile delinquency is reported from areas where the decline of the tribal system is fairly advanced and where this decline has its counterpart in the simultaneous growth of urban and industrial centres.”17 This, it was agreed, was the case in Nigeria, Kenya, and Northern Rhodesia, where juvenile delinquency appeared to be a specifically urban phenomenon. I have indicated elsewhere that the lack of native authority institutions, and of any indigenous and colonial police forces, were important reasons why crime was developing in two migrant settlements on the outskirts of Ibadan and Lagos before World War II.18 Moreover, as the value of urban land increased, precolonial patterns of land tenure, generally based on lineage and family, were transformed to a new colonial pattern based on rent.19 In Lagos and other Nigerian cities, the Yoruba family compound broke down into smaller residential units rented out to migrants.20 With renting, control over tenants and social control over the ward tended to diminish. To keep control over their communities, both indigenous dwellers and migrant settlers created political, religious, ethnic, or neighborhood associations.21 It is obvious, however, that most local unions were too “loosely organised and short of funds to aid more than a small minority of the poor.”22 Social workers also pointed to the lack of parental control, family disintegration, and the harsh discipline in local schools as factors that pushed so many children onto the streets. According to Peter Marris, “Much of the delinquency of children in Lagos is a reaction to the severity and lack of understanding of their guardians.”23 Poverty was, however, the root cause of delinquency. Employment was the main attraction for youth migrants from the country; but while trade or administrative and industrial opportunities gave rise to a rich African elite, poverty also remained a permanent fact of life in the port city. According to Iliffe, towns were the first to witness the transformation of the nature of poverty in Africa at the turn of the twentieth century, as older forms began to be supplemented by a poverty dominated by unemployment, proletarianization, prostitution, and delinquency.24 The poor in Lagos at that time were mainly escaped slaves from the hinterland, girls sent to Lagos for cheap child labor, elderly beggars, the handicapped, and friendless women.25 Although this poverty of age, sickness, and slavery

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was still the chief form of poverty in late-Victorian Lagos, the newer forms such as joblessness would become increasingly problematic in the twentieth century. In fact, with closer integration into the colonial economy, Lagos became more vulnerable to international crisis. According to Susan Martin, Nigeria was hit between 1914 and 1945 by a long depression, notably marked by a sharp decline in the terms of barter trade after 1914, a decline in prices in 1926–28, and shipping shortages and harmful government pricing policies during World War II.26 Within this long-term depression, however, the expansion in export volumes of cocoa in the 1920s ensured an unprecedented burst of prosperity for western Nigerian farmers.27 While there are no comprehensive statistics to give exact figures, fragmentary evidence suggests that unemployment was high during the world wars and the Great Depression. In 1915, the Nigerian Pioneer newspaper noticed that many migrants were “indigent persons . . . without means of support and without friends”; whereas, in 1927, the number of unemployed people (1,000) identified by the commissioner of police was considered negligible by the Resident of Lagos Colony.28 In effect, there was a relative scarcity of labor in 1920s Lagos.29 The fall of the price of cocoa in 1928 had serious consequences for many African traders in the city. The Nigerian National Democratic Party (NNDP) asserted that 27,000 African traders had lost their jobs in Lagos by 1929.30 Simultaneously, the stoppage of public works caused great hardship for casual laborers. A total of 20,104 railway workers also lost their jobs.31 In April 1935, the government set up an Unemployment Inquiry Commission, which was particularly concerned with the high number of clerical workers registered as unemployed and the failure of school graduates to find work.32 The governor was informed in 1938 that “in Lagos and most other major towns law and order conditions have rapidly deteriorated. Government interest will have to be directed at the growing number of unemployed workers, at large numbers of vagrant children who throng the market places and at political agitators who prey on the ignorance and misery of the unemployed.”33 During World War II, owing to the shortage of supplies, many employers in the country had to dismiss most of their staff. To limit the influx into Lagos of unemployed persons, a series of orders implemented in 1944 and 1945 closed worker registration to people from the provinces.34 Economic growth and industrialization in the 1950s did not succeed in eradicating poverty in the city because of the rapid immigration rate. By 1963, the first United Nations team of experts to consider the situation in Lagos summarized its key problems as the shortage of

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housing, the lack of housing finance, the large size of slum areas, and the insanitary condition of most of the houses.35 While persistent poverty could be observed beginning in the nineteenth century, it should be noted that the social geography of the twentiethcentury city tended to exacerbate differences between rich residential areas and poor overcrowded wards. After Lagos was made the colonial capital, it was decided that the city should combine a residential area reserved for Europeans and a commercial area in which Europeans lived, worked, traded, and interacted with Africans.36 The two main islands of Lagos each eventually developed a distinctive character. In Ikoyi, a European Reservation Area was laid out in 1928 to accommodate exclusively the increasing number of Europeans (from 301 in 1901 to 4,000 in 1931). Restrictions on residence based on race continued until 1947; after that, they were based on “standard of living.”37 On Lagos Island, the commercial core of the city, anyone was allowed to live and work. Overcrowding and the lack of housing gave rise to a rapidly growing slum. A few thousand inhabitants were resettled after the bubonic plague outbreaks in Yaba, a late-1920s development on the mainland.38 In 1951, the Central Lagos Slum Clearance Scheme scheduled the transfer of another 30,000 people to Surulere, six kilometers from the city center. Despite these schemes, Lagos Island remained overcrowded, with a unique mix of an educated elite, wealthy traders, and a large poor African population.39 It was also for decades the main crime spot in the city. Other African migrants settled on the mainland all along the railway at stations that gradually became small towns (Yaba, Surulere, Oshodi, Ikeja, and Agege). Except for a few wards (Ebute Metta, Yaba, and Surulere), most of the mainland growth was largely unplanned. It was in the framework of rapid urban expansion and persistent poverty, henceforth dominated by unemployment and lack of housing, that youth crime took place.

Youth and Criminal Activities in Colonial Lagos From a legal point of view, young people as a group were not defined until the 1940s. In the various successive ordinances, there was, rather, a generic category called “children” with fluctuating upper age limits: seventeen in the Alien Children Ordinance of 1878, fifteen in the Native Children (Custody and Reformation) Ordinance of 1928, sixteen in the same 1928 Ordinance amended in 1932.40 The term “young person” apparently first appeared with the Children and Young Person’s Ordinance (CYPO), promulgated in Nigeria in 1943, which clearly defined two categories: a child is under fourteen, and a young person is over fourteen

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and under seventeen.41 Later, the expression “juvenile delinquency” included both children and young people. Thus, after 1945, juvenile delinquency statistics appearing in the Nigerian Police Annual Reports were divided into two groups: junior (under fourteen years of age) and senior (under seventeen).42 In the present study, because I am dealing with “juvenile delinquency,” I consequently refer to all persons up to the age of eighteen. Youth offenders were becoming more organized and more visible in Lagos from the mid-1920s. There is no mention either in African newspapers like the Lagos Daily Times and the Nigerian Pioneer or in police reports of specific offenses involving youth before this time. The first indications appeared in official correspondence, police reports, and Nigerian newspapers in the second half of the 1920s.43 Between the 1920s and the 1960s, three important features shaped the youth crime milieu: the increase in the number of young offenders, the affirmation of the existence of male offender youth groups, and the emergence of an organized network of juvenile prostitution. These three points will be examined in turn. A superficial reading of the scarce crime statistics would suggest an extraordinary increase in the number of youth offenders in Nigeria from the 1920s to the 1960s even given the growth of both the urban and the total population of the country (see table 12.2). But statistics of juvenile offenses are like other criminal statistics: they represent both the activities of the judicial system and the activities of the offenders. The difference in convictions between the late 1920s and the mid1940s is to be explained both by the increase in the number of offenders and by the implementation of new judicial procedures to deal with youth offenders in 1945. Statistics available before 1945 are, therefore, more useful here. The Senior Resident in Lagos considered that the average number of juveniles convicted in the colony was only 30 a year between 1927 and 1930, whereas the number rose to 112 cases in 1934 and 158 cases in 1935.44 The very high proportion of petty offenses against property was one key structural feature of youth crime during the colonial period as a whole: thefts of less than £5 comprised half of the cases brought before the Juvenile Court of Lagos between 1945 and 1947 and in the 1960s.45

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Table 12.2. Juvenile offenders under age 17, 1927 to 1965 True cases Convicted Cases awaiting trial Convicted per year Offenses relative to Nigerian pop. (per 100,000) Offenses relative to urban pop. (per 100,000)

1927–30 N/A 120 N/A 30 1.5 21

1945–47 3,049 2,537 263 845 28.1

1963–65 6,009 3,690 1,270 1,230 22.3

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Sources: Annual Reports, Nigeria Police Force, 1945–47, Tekena Tamuno, The Police in Modern Nigeria, 1861–1965: Origins, Development, and Role (Ibadan: Ibadan University Press, 1970), 300; CPO, 1681, 1, Director of Prisons Southern Provinces to secretary Southern Provinces, January 9, 1931.

The second important feature of the period is the emergence of youth criminal groups. There is only limited evidence of offenses committed by youth gangs in early colonial Lagos, but this period needs further research. Cases reported by the Nigerian Pioneer in 1923 and 1924 involve young pickpockets operating in crowded places (post offices, railway stations, Tinubu Square)—but acting alone.46 Later in the 1920s, criminal activities reported both in Lagos and Ibadan are more often by youth groups known as Jaguda boys.47 The term Jaguda means pickpocket in Yoruba. The first recorded instance concerns a well-known Lagos pickpocket called Salami Jaguda, who was sentenced to nine months hard labor for stealing a huge sum of money from a rich merchant in 1924.48 Before the end of the 1920s in Lagos and the beginning of the 1930s in Ibadan, however, the term does not designate an organized group of youth offenders. The way that Lagos newspapers reported these cases actually shows the discovery of an apparently new phenomenon. In 1926, the attention of the Nigerian Pioneer was directed “to the frequency of assaults on girls by young men and boys. . . . The molestations which follow usually elicit retorts and a squabble follows.”49 The Lagos Daily Times mentioned “certain bands of young men who parade certain portions of the town armed with sticks or whips. This particular type of hooliganism shows no sign of decreasing and is particularly prevalent during Christmas week.”50 In 1929, several reports reached the Lagos Daily Times about repeated attacks on Carter Bridge between Iddo Station (the terminal station of the Kano–Lagos rail line) and Lagos Island: “These pickpockets . . . would follow [the strangers] to the middle of the bridge, and pretend to be fighting one with the other and eventually knock or push themselves against the strangers

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who would be confused, and in such confusion they rob the poor fellows of whatever cash they may be having on them.”51 Jaguda boys were originally practical “mutual assistance” associations of destitute street children who operated in small groups in order to frighten their victims.52 They are the historical antecedents of the presentday “Area boys” with whom they share some common practices.53 Per the description above, they provoked quarrels in the streets to relieve victims of their money during the ensuing confusion before making their escape. They developed collective strategies with shared responsibilities to minimize the risk of being arrested by the police. They generally extorted money from easy targets (strangers, farmers, women), and their main places of activity were streets, markets, and crowded public places such as motor parks and train and bus stations. During World War II, the expression “Boma boys” appeared in the Lagos press. The term was probably brought to the West Coast of Africa from America where a “bum” was a vagrant, a good-for-nothing.54 The term referred to young boys who acted as unlicensed guides for the thousands of African and European soldiers who stopped over in Lagos during the war. Originally, Boma boys guided them from the port to various places in Lagos such as canteens, bars, night clubs, and brothels.55 Because Boma boys shared the same public space and often the same practices as the Jaguda boys, they were often considered to be an identical menace during that period. The most comprehensive inquiry into these groups was conducted by Donald Faulkner, the first welfare officer of the colony, in 1941. According to him, there were two groups of boys: “The under twelve group was composed of children left stranded in Lagos, orphans, runaways from home and boys brought to Lagos by older people. They live by begging, petty theft and are in poor physical conditions.”56 The above-twelve group fell into three subgroups: inexperienced and destitute boys, delinquent adolescents, and Boma boys. The difference between the three groups is probably the level of organization. Boma boys are here considered to act as a collective group that could be involved in serious crime: At the first stage, he is a simple unsophisticated out-of-work, introduced to the trade by a friend, a casual guide without an arrangement with a particular house. He has not the experience to make the work very remunerative, so he still sleeps outside and leads rather a meagre existence. When he becomes more experienced and by his glib tongue and polite manner, [he] can get more customers, he lives in a house, dresses well and feeds well. He may earn upwards of £2 per month. He probably has a definite arrangement with special harlots or a particular house. He is gradually deteriorating morally and eventually becomes a sophisticated

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cynical youth, up to all the tricks of the trade, lazy and immoral, perhaps acting as a master to a group of younger Boma boys. He may now be working on a percentage basis as an important partner of an organised trade.57

In the 1950s, the terms “thugs” and “touts” seem to have partly replaced the former Jaguda and Boma boys in the press.58 Unemployed youth, motor park touts, and youth criminals were also further used as bodyguards and bullies by political parties to intimidate opponents in the 1950s and 1960s, especially in southwestern Nigerian cities.59 The third and last feature of the period is the development of a network of juvenile prostitution that became a subject of concern when it was discovered by Faulkner during the war. He found that young prostitutes around the age of twelve were coming mainly from Owerri and Calabar Provinces (belonging to the Igbo, Efik, Sobo, and Urhobo).60 We know little about the first province except that some girls had been kidnapped, pawned, or sold to patrons under the guise of marriage, or disposed of at Oguta Abaziem in Owerri in the 1920s.61 It is highly probable that such practices continued in the 1930s and 1940s. According to social workers, a dowry was paid to the parents of young girls who were sent to Lagos, not to get married but to be introduced to the life of a prostitute.62 Prostitution networks from Calabar Province were developing from the 1920s with the migration of women from the Upper Cross River Basin.63 By the 1920s, prostitution had become a substantially developed trade in the region, and most of the prostitutes migrated to other parts of Nigeria or to West African ports, mainly Calabar, Lagos, Port Harcourt, Accra, and SekondiTakoradi in the Gold Coast.64 Juvenile prostitutes coming from the same areas were soon involved in that trade, and by 1940, the juvenile prostitution of Efik girls was considered to be as much of a nuisance in Lagos as it was in Calabar.65 The number of soldiers stationed in Lagos during the war increased and led to diversified forms of prostitution as in many other African cities like Addis Ababa and Nairobi where troops were stationed.66 In 1946, the Seven Seas Hotel, the Traveller’s Inn, and the Crystal Garden Club were known in Lagos Island as brothels patronized by Europeans and managed by elderly women in charge of several young girls between twelve and fifteen years old.67 Boma boys looked out for drunken seamen, whom they conveyed to these places. Taxis opposite the Tinubu Police Station offered to take Europeans to girls, either in brothels or in private rooms, and if the client especially asked for young girls, the prostitute often provided a young relative and kept the money for herself.68

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The Emergence of the “Juvenile Delinquency Problem” The British colonial government had begun to take care of children and youth offenders before World War I. Colonial governments opened reformatories for children in South Africa in the 1880s, in Senegal in 1888, in Guinea in 1904, and in Kenya in 1909.69 However, the low numbers involved show both how few juvenile offenders appeared before the courts and how little concern for such questions was expressed by colonial administrations.70 As Florence Bernault notes, “Political and penal inertia, plus the deficiency of material and intellectual resources among colonizers, prevented colonial regimes from implementing any project of grand renfermement in Africa, with arguably, the exception of South Africa.”71 South Africa soon raised the issue of juvenile offenders. From the 1930s onward, the African elite, the Johannesburg NonEuropean Affairs Department (JNEAD), and the central government all saw “juvenile delinquency” as a social and moral crisis that had to be headed off.72 But public debate on this issue was probably more the exception than the rule in African colonies.73 Nigeria was typical: there were no government social welfare organizations, and social problems were either ignored or, to a very limited extent, dealt with by the Christian missions and a very few voluntary organizations. Major problems of destitution were dealt with by the people themselves through “family and tribal customs.”74 At the beginning of the 1930s, the Colonial Office set up a committee to consider what special arrangements were in force in the British Empire for the trial and punishment of young offenders.75 A draft bill proposed by an advisory committee recommended the introduction in the various colonies of provisions, such as special detention facilities, probation officers, and juvenile courts, in order to separate juveniles from adults and prevent them from becoming hardened criminals.76 Since the 1850s, British courts had been allowed to sentence any child convicted of an offense to a reformatory for between two and five years and to send children found begging or “without means of subsistence” to an industrial school for an indefinite period.77 Probation officers and juvenile courts were introduced later through the Probation of Young Offenders Act of 1907 and the Children’s Act of 1908 because reformers considered that juveniles were less responsible than adults for their actions and should not be subjected to the full weight of the law.78 A specially selected panel of magistrates to hear juvenile cases was appointed, and magistrates were asked to take primary account of the “welfare of the child.”

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Top officials in the colonial administration in Nigeria reacted vigorously against the introduction of such measures. Three main arguments were advanced. First, the measures were useless because of the very limited number of young offenders in the colony.79 Second, some procedures to protect young offenders were already on the books through existing legislation that had established specific institutions for children (Native Children Ordinance of 1928) and segregation in prisons for juveniles under fourteen years of age (Prison Ordinance of 1917).80 Third, the governor of Nigeria, Sir Donald Cameron (1931–35), considered that the provision of reformatories and the appointment of probation officers would require a considerable outlay of money.81 In fact, legislation pertaining to young offenders in Nigeria was inadequate in the 1930s. The Native Children Ordinance applied mainly to children who were orphans, deserted by their relatives, or had been sold as slaves and not to children or young persons who had committed offenses.82 There was only one alternative for convicted juvenile offenders: either they were sent to prison without being segregated from adults because there was no such provision, or they were given corporal punishment. As a comprehensive report on Nigerian prisons in 1944 stated, “A certain number [of youth] are admonished and sent away, a very large number are beaten and returned to the very environment that caused their offence, a very few are indeed sent to a training school.”83 By 1930, the only institution dealing with young offenders in Southern Nigeria was run by the Salvation Army, the private Christian missionary and charitable organization, which was making a considerable effort to enter tropical Africa between the wars.84 The Industrial Army Home in Yaba (a few miles from Lagos Island) was a reformatory built in 1926 to accommodate forty boys convicted in the colony of Lagos.85 The school was, however, considered inefficient by a 1944 government report: “Yaba school has no clear purpose or method, its staff is inadequate and unsuitable, its expense inexplicable.”86 Moved by the need to take into consideration some of the recommendations of the Colonial Office, the government consented to establish a new “approved school,” in Enugu, headquarters of the Eastern Provinces, in 1933.87 Administered and financed by the Prisons Department, the establishment was not very different from what was then in existence in some other colonial territories; industrial training (e.g., carpentry, blacksmithing, tailoring, shoemaking, gardening) was provided by five teachers, and a more formal approach was used in elementary English instruction.88 Donald Faulkner, a Home Prison Service official specializing in social welfare in the United Kingdom, was appointed as the first

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professional director of the school (1937–41).89 By 1940, the Lagos and Enugu schools were housing only around one hundred boys (forty in Lagos, sixty-four in Enugu) from Southern Nigeria. Nobody within the colonial administration in Nigeria considered juvenile offenses to be a problem in the 1930s. Indeed, the matter was largely ignored and the existing ordinances were considered to be comprehensive enough to deal with the few cases that arose. Although the issue of youth offenders was largely ignored by the local administration, it was covered frequently by African newspapers in Lagos, which soon protested against criminal activities as well as youth offenders. The Nigerian Pioneer, founded in 1914, and the Nigerian Daily Times (1926) were undoubtedly more conservative and less critical of the administration than the Lagos Daily News, inaugurated in 1925 by Herbert Macaulay, and the West African Pilot, founded in 1937 by Nnamdi Azikiwe.90 However, on the issue of youth criminal activities, all these newspapers represented the voice of an educated elite of journalists, lawyers, and civil servants raised against a group invariably described as “ruffians,” “young scoundrels,” “undesirable pests,” “hooligans”—in sum, a group generally considered a “menace” to society.91 But the issue did not catch the attention of the major nationalist leaders in Lagos, who were involved in increasing political competition from the 1920s onward.92 They did not write any of these articles, which did not generally appear on the front page. However, many victims did report their experiences to Lagos newspapers, which then affirmed them as representative of “peaceful tax payers and law abiding citizens.”93 Most of the newspapers —even the more conservative ones—were critical of the government’s handling of crime. They recommended increasing the number of policemen in specific hot spots and denounced the lack of police presence on the mainland to protect an emerging African working class against armed robbers.94 However, welfare policies implemented during and after World War II provoked more adverse reactions from different political parties, especially when it concerned juvenile prostitution and hawking by young girls, as we will see below. During the 1930s, repeated complaints against Jaguda boys did not apparently modify the administration’s perception of youth. Its position probably changed when the governor of the colony declared, in November 1940, that the “activities of the Boma Boys were becoming something very much worse than a mere nuisance.”95 This pronouncement was followed in December by the promulgation of the Unlicensed Guides (Prohibition) Ordinance that punished severely the harassment of European and African soldiers by Boma boys. This local ordinance should be seen as a reaction

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against a group that was considered unpatriotic in wartime. Interestingly, within two months, seven articles on Boma boys had appeared in the Nigerian Daily Times and the West African Pilot congratulating the government’s initiative. The ordinance had little effect;96 however, it did show, for the first time, that the colonial administration and the educated elite shared a common determination to fight back against young offenders. This interest was not totally new in the Colonial Office. A colonial Penal Administration Committee was appointed in 1937 to advise the secretary of state on penal matters in general and on “various problems affecting juvenile delinquents” in particular.97 By the end of the 1930s, riots in the British West Indies, where destitution was widespread, had given rise to a new strategy of development and welfare for the whole colonial empire.98 It was, however, the local situation in Lagos that forced the Colonial Office to readdress the issue of juvenile delinquency. Just after passage of the Unlicensed Guides Ordinance, the governor of Nigeria asked Donald Faulkner, then director of the Approved School at Enugu, to investigate vagrant boys in Lagos. After submitting Faulkner’s report, the governor asked the Colonial Office to appoint an officer responsible for juvenile welfare in Lagos.99 This request, combined with the willingness of the governor of Sierra Leone to build a reformatory school in Freetown, led the Colonial Penal Administration Committee to set up a Juvenile Delinquency Subcommittee tasked with considering “the question of juvenile delinquency in the Colonies and the Dependencies with a view to its prevention and proper treatment.”100 Alexander Patterson, commissioner of prisons for England and Wales and chairman of the committee, decided to appoint Faulkner as the first social welfare officer in the British Empire.101 The Juvenile Delinquency Subcommittee, renamed the Child and Youth Welfare Subcommittee after the war, was composed of top colonial advisers and welfare officers and had the task of advising the Colonial Office on the best way to deal with youth and children in the colonies. It was largely influenced by the way British children and youth had been dealt with by reformers earlier in the twentieth century. Between 1941 and 1943, Faulkner produced various reports based on his Lagos fieldwork.102 He initially considered poverty, the breakdown of the “traditional African family,” and the consequences of urbanization as the main causes of the rise of juvenile destitution and youth offenses, but the sociological data tended to show that lack of parental control was central. Among the 229 boys passing through the Green Triangle Hostel between February 1942 and August 1943, only 78 had parents living in Lagos. Faulkner came to the conclusion that “the lack of permanent and stable home is the main factor.”103

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Most of the activities identified as dangerous for children and youth took place in the street—that is, working, hawking, trading, and prostitution. Consequently, most of Faulkner’s recommendations were oriented toward one main objective: to remove children and youth from the criminal influence of the street. Prevention and repression constituted the two sides of his recommendation. In order to keep boys and girls off the street, Faulkner advocated the development of youth clubs and playing facilities (playing fields for football, swimming pools, and so on). At the same time, hostels could be used to keep children from becoming delinquent paupers, street traders, beggars, or school dropouts; to assist those in need of “care and protection” (e.g., those with disabilities, orphans, and juvenile prostitutes); and to provide a safe haven separated from adults for children awaiting trial or repatriation.104 He also proposed to ban female child hawking because girls “were criminally assaulted and seduced at a very tender age”—that is, “at 13 years of age or under.”105 Most of these responses could be seen as a transfer of British reform philosophy and practices to the colonies. Since the nineteenth century, city streets had been perceived as potentially criminal spaces, and youth behavior had become firmly associated with working-class family life. The proper place for women was viewed as the home rather than the street. Boys’ and girls’ clubs had a similar objective of providing discipline, regulation, guidance, and improvement.106 The colonial state wanted to intervene in African family life just as the British state had done in working-class family life in order to ensure that children were “properly” educated, disciplined, and given moral guidance. Yet, if the philosophy was quite similar, policy implementation differed, and a lack of finances never gave the colonial state the power to control African urban life.

The “Treatment of Juvenile Delinquency” The first problem with the existing approach was a legal one. The Children’s Ordinance and market regulations made no provision for the prosecution of youths between fourteen and eighteen or for controlling juvenile activities. In 1942, a resolution banning street trading for girls under fourteen was passed in the City Council of Lagos;107 however, without social service staff, it was not enforced. In 1943, Faulkner convinced the government to promulgate the Children and Young Person’s Ordinance (CYPO), a colonial adaptation of the 1933 Children and Young Persons Act in Britain. Again, without a welfare service, it was impossible to implement. Consequently, the creation of a specific welfare department was strongly advocated by Alexander Patterson, who visited Nigerian

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prisons in 1944: “Social welfare in Lagos will take the field against poverty, overcrowding and cruelty. It will help to operate the new Ordinance dealing with Juvenile and Young persons. It will plead for the abolition of child hawkers.”108 He concluded that the new social welfare service in Lagos was the appropriate means of preventing juvenile delinquency in Nigeria. Most of Faulkner’s and Patterson’s recommendations were implemented just after the war. Welfare services set up during or after World War II in British colonies strongly focused on juvenile delinquency probably because of the charge originally given to the Colonial Office Child and Youth Welfare Subcommittee. This initial focus gradually changed in the 1950s as welfare services implemented community development policies in many colonies.109 In Nigeria, juvenile delinquency remained the main task of the new Welfare Service through the end of the colonial period. Social workers and probation and police officers alike had clearly identified a recurrent “youth crime problem” and implemented new policies that dramatically changed the perception of youth. By 1945, a juvenile court was set up, soon to be followed by a Juvenile Court Police Force consisting of one inspector and twelve other ranks in charge of escorting, enquiries, court work, and repatriation.110 Mr. Chinn, chairman of the subcommittee within the Colonial Office, considered this last provision as unique in the British Empire.111 The Welfare Service mainly concentrated on Lagos: in 1950, eight European officers and thirty-three African assistants worked in the capital, whereas only three European officers operated in the three other regions combined.112 Lagos’s Welfare Service now had the means to implement the CYPO. One of the central issues for an effective implementation of the CYPO was the protection of young girls. The appointment of the first female welfare officer, Alison Izzett, in 1946 was another key step in the implementation of the law. After a three-month observation of girls passing through the girls’ hostel, she offered new evidence of the criminal effects of street trading. Young prostitutes fourteen and fifteen years old were working in brothels. Girls brought to Lagos with the promise of marriage were generally being used as prostitutes, and among the thirtyfive girls between seven and sixteen years of age admitted to the hostel, only twelve were still virgins.113 Her report convinced the commissioner of the colony to suppress child hawking.114 Section 25 of the CYPO became the central clause and reinforced the resolution proposed by Faulkner in 1942 for raising the age limit for female street trading to sixteen years:

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The Welfare Service failed to appreciate the historical roots of juvenile street hawking in Lagos. The sexual division of labor was a longestablished tradition in Yoruba cities: men were mainly farmers and craftsmen, while women were engaged in food processing and trading. Many of these activities, especially hawking cooked food, took place outside the marketplace, and female children as young as six years old were sent around the neighborhood for a small profit generally given to their parents.116 The law also forbade girls under sixteen to come alone to Lagos unaccompanied in order to limit the employment of juvenile girls by “immoral” guardians. However, being accommodated by a family member was often the only way for young girls from the country to attend secondary school in Lagos or to work and collect savings before returning home to look for a husband.117 While it is obvious that some children were sexually abused, the ordinance considered the entire system of hosting girls by guardians as a key feature facilitating child prostitution. Rather than fighting prostitution networks, which was more the task of the police than the Welfare Service, the CYPO gave the state the means to control girls’ movements. The Welfare Service found some support from educated elite women, especially the Lagos Women’s League, founded in 1923 by Charlotte Olajumoke Obasa, who wanted to improve education and employment for women in Lagos.118 Obasa was regarded as a member of the “collaborating elite,” Africans who enjoyed social acceptance in the white community.119 After a meeting with Faulkner in 1942, the league formed a Women’s Welfare Council, which lobbied the Lagos City Council to prohibit the employment of girls under fourteen as hawkers.120 The Welfare Service also benefited from the support of tribal unions since prostitution was supposedly spoiling the reputation of their cultural traditions in Lagos. As early as 1943, “local unions representing tribes involved in prostitution in Lagos” pressed the welfare officer to stop the business.121 The Urhobo Union agreed to find accommodation for Urhobo girls recruited into prostitution;122 in addition, the Calabar Native Authority agreed with the welfare officer’s suggestion that blacklists of so-called procurists and prostitutes be compiled and published.123 Within this framework, these unions were ready to restrict their girls’ freedom.

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The ordinance in force from June 1946 enabled the government to bring in more girls suspected as being in “moral danger” and to make the registration of girls entering or leaving Lagos compulsory. The Criminal Investigation Department (CID) was asked to assist the Welfare Office in arresting girls, and to pursue the organizers of child hawkers and touts while tribal union members kept trains arriving from the country under surveillance.124 Lagos market women, however, soon opposed the ordinance. A delegation of the Women’s Party, an exclusively women’s organization founded in 1944 by Mrs. Oyinkan Abayomi, officially protested against the detention of girls by the Welfare Service and especially the invasive medical examination of a girl’s virginity.125 Throughout the 1940s, the NNDP, which had supported the interests of market women since the 1920s, organized a number of meetings to protest the arrests of child hawkers.126 Most of the newspapers inveighed against abuse of freedom, indiscriminate arrests, violation of private life, and heavy penalties (offenders were fined £5) and pointed out that innocent hawkers were obliged to stay in a hostel with real delinquents and prostitutes.127 Despite the protests, the Welfare Office and the commissioner of the colony kept the ordinance in force until the end of the colonial period. The immediate effect was a sharp increase in the number of female hawkers forced to pass through the girls’ hostel (see table 3) and of female hawkers brought before the juvenile court (see table 4). Table 12.3. Children passing through hostels in Lagos Years 1943 1947 1948 1949 1956

Girls’ hostel 340 838 (369 child hawkers) 716 (363 child hawkers) 340 (40 child hawkers) N/A

Boys’ hostel 345 N/A 300 345 743

Sources: NAK, MSCW, 1283, Report on social welfare service in Nigeria for the year 1949; NAK, MSCW, 1226, Report by Mr Chinn, Social Welfare Adviser to the Secretary of State, February 1950; NAK, MSW, 1283, Report on social welfare services in Nigeria for the year 1949; NAI, Oyo Prof, 1352, Juvenile Delinquency and its treatment, 1948; CO, 554/2004, Annual Report on the Federal Prison Department, 1956–57.

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Table 12.4. Prosecution of hawking in Lagos Juvenile Court Years 1946 1947 1948 1949 1956

Cases 1,200 1,062 1,352 928 1,436

Convicted of hawking 668 742 N/A 303 N/A

Sources: NAI, Oyo Prof, 1352, Juvenile Delinquency and its treatment, 1948; NAK, MSCW, 1283, Report on social welfare service in Nigeria for the year 1949; CO, 554/2004, Annual Report on the Federal Prison Department, 1956–57.

The criminalization of young girls’ movements and activities had predictable effects. Both the 1933 British and the 1943 Nigerian ordinances encouraged greater intervention into the lives of young women and very young children on the ground of “moral danger.” The changing definition of the law had effectively doubled the number of juvenile offenders in Nigeria in the 1940s. Alan Milner, referring to Lagos in the early 1960s, also considers that “there was for many years a preponderance of female offenders, as the largest single group of offences involved illegal street trading by young girls—virtually three-quarters of all juvenile crime dealt with.”128 As John Muncie observed, “Welfarism is just as capable of drawing more young people into the net of juvenile justice as it is of affording them care and protection.”129 The CYPO also made considerable work for welfare officers. Moreover, the diversity of the functions of the girls’ hostel, particularly the examination and investigation of hundreds of street hawkers, weakened its main aim of rehabilitating “maladjusted adolescents,” as stated in a 1950 report.130 “Protection” lasted until the very end of the colonial period, and by 1958, the Social Welfare Department was dealing with more than one thousand children a year.131 Yet, in criminalizing their activities, the social welfare service was missing its main target—that is, the fight against organized prostitution and juvenile gangs. Reducing hawking did not affect delinquency, as far as Nigerian newspapers were concerned. Denunciation of Jaguda activities was still very strong after the war.132 Jaguda boys escaped the effects of the CYPO because most of them were males over fourteen years old. Moreover, market women, who witnessed the commission of thefts by Jaguda boys, did not dare to inform the police for fear of retaliation.133 By 1946, the women even had to pay protection money to Jaguda boys, a system of racketeering that is still organized today by Area Boys against traders in

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Lagos Island.134 In focusing on the wrong target (street traders rather than organized gangs), the Welfare Service had saddled itself with the impossible task of controlling an increasing number of young people. Youths placed in hostels were dealt with by welfare officers. Convicted juvenile offenders were either put on probation (33% of cases in the second half of the 1940s) or committed to an institution, generally an Approved School (15%).135 In 1956, the three Approved Schools (one for senior boys, one for junior boys, and one for girls) accommodated 238 boys and 24 girls, all convicted by the Lagos Juvenile Court. All the children attended outside schools and were trained as artisans before their release.136 But for all the others, the central solution was repatriation to the family and generally to the countryside. It represented the introduction in West African colonies of measures of control already in existence in eastern and southern Africa. Faulkner started issuing repatriation orders during the war, but the creation of the Welfare Service and the Juvenile Court Police Force represented a real change in the policy of repatriation.137 Although there is no statistical data, indirect sources suggest that hundreds of boys and girls were repatriated yearly from Lagos;138 the policy was undertaken “with a ruthlessness which suggested the English outdated settlement laws.”139 This control lasted until 1960.140 However, such a policy was probably not very effective in reducing the number of juvenile offenders for three reasons. First, a large number of boys returned to their home districts outside Lagos where there was no social welfare organization.141 Since little development had so far been undertaken in the neighboring countryside, there were few alternatives to migration to Lagos for young people. Second, repatriation orders were not effective on hardened criminals who returned “in disguise by changing their names, to the place where they have been refused residence.”142 Third, the policy proposed in Lagos was not followed by the other provinces. On his visit to Nigeria in 1949, Chinn pointed out that many young immigrants to Lagos became poverty-stricken upon arriving in the colony, because the welfare system was overstretched dealing with similar problems in other areas.143

Conclusion Juvenile crime and widespread juvenile street trading existed before the creation of the Welfare Service but were ignored or neglected. Juvenile delinquency was not even an issue for a judicial and penal system that provided almost nothing specific for youth. What was new in the 1940s was the idea that “juvenile delinquency” had become an urgent problem to

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be dealt with and that the root causes of the problem could be eliminated by controlling the work and movements of young people. In proposing specific legislation, generally based on the experience in Britain, social services and colonial officers intended to protect youth against the criminal influence of the street. However, by conflating real offenses with an urban way of life (mere work and play in the street), the Welfare Service included very different behaviors in the same “delinquent” category. Thus, after having almost totally neglected the phenomenon in the 1930s, the colonial administration overreacted to juvenile delinquency by including what would later be called the “informal sector” of the economy. The impact of such a policy toward youth should not be underestimated, for at least three reasons. First, it missed its main target by criminalizing poor children rather than dismantling juvenile gangs, even if Approved Schools prevented a minority of those dealt with by the Welfare Service from becoming hardened criminals. Second, colonial welfare policy influenced the first generation of African welfare, probation, and police officers as well as the first generation of political leaders. Postindependence welfare services kept intact juvenile hawking regulations, the remand home system, and repatriation orders, and new welfare services in southern cities such as Ibadan, Enugu, Aba, and Onitsha put similar institutions (e.g., juvenile court, remand home) and a similar policy into place during the 1960s.144 Third, such a policy has contributed to the vulgarization of the nebulous concept of “juvenile delinquency” even though changes in practices and legislation make it difficult to produce a consistent definition of what has actually constituted delinquency in Africa. International conferences organized in the 1950s and largely based on knowledge compiled by colonial officers, social welfare workers, and sociologists since the 1940s popularized “juvenile delinquency” as a specific problem to deal with in Africa. Notions of the “predelinquent child” and the maladjusted youth (jeunesse inadaptée), which included any youth likely to become delinquent—that is, street traders, touts, beggars, or those with physical or mental handicaps—arrived simultaneously (between the 1950s and the 1980s) and constituted another important element in the colonial heritage of criminalizing youth.145 Juvenile delinquency remains one of the idiomatic expressions of the Bibliothèque coloniale and, as far as the literature on youth and street children is concerned, it has not yet been decolonized.

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Notes © Cambridge University Press. Journal of African History 46 (2005): 115-37. 1 John Iliffe, The African Poor: A History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 185–87; S. Nédélec, “Etat et délinquance juvénile au Sénégal contemporain,” in Enfermement, prison et châtiments en Afrique: Du 19ème siècle à nos jours, ed. F. Bernault (Paris: Karthala, 1999), 413. 2 Daniel Poitou and René Collignon, Délinquance juvénile et marginalité des jeunes en milieu urbain d’Afrique noire: Eléments de bibliographie (1950–1984) (Paris: Karthala, 1985). 3 Andrew Burton, “Urchins, Loafers, and the Cult of the Cowboys: Urbanisation and Delinquency in Dar es Salaam, 1919–1961,” Journal of African History 42, no. 1 (2001): 199–216; Clive Glaser, Bo-Tsotsi: The Youth Gangs of Soweto, 1935–1976 (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2000); Simon Heap, “Jaguda Boys: Pickpocketing in Ibadan, 1930–1960,” Urban History 24, no. 3 (1997): 324–43. For a general overview of urban crime in colonial and postcolonial West Africa, see Laurent Fourchard and Isaac O. Albert, eds., Security, Crime, and Segregation in West African Cities since the 19th Century (Paris: Karthala, 2003). 4 The following newspapers have been consulted: Nigerian Pioneer (from 1920 to 1930), West African Pilot (from 1937 to 1960), and Nigerian Daily Times (from 1930 to 1960). Official correspondences and Social Welfare Service reports can be found in the Colonial Office (CO) files in the Public Record Office (PRO) in London and in the three federal archive centers in Nigeria: National Archives, Ibadan (NAI); National Archives, Enugu (NAE), and National Archives, Kaduna (NAK); and in the Calabar Provincial Office (CPO). 5 H. Hendrick, “Constructions and Reconstructions of British Childhood: An Interpretative Survey, 1800 to the Present,” in Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood, ed. A. James and A. Prout (New York : Falmer Press, 1990), 40–45. 6 See, for instance, Conference on the Treatment of Offenders (Juvenile Delinquents) (Kampala: Commission for Technical Co-operation in Africa South of the Sahara [CCTA], 1956), organized by CCTA. 7 Robin Law, “Trade and Politics behind the Slave Coast: The Lagoon Traffic and the Rise of Lagos, 1500–1800,” Journal of African History 24 (1983): 321–48. 8 The various censuses made by the British in Lagos were based on house-to-house estimations that gave only rough estimates of the population. 9 Akin Mabogunje, Urbanization in Nigeria (New York: Africana Publishing Corporation, 1968), 259. 10 In 1914, the Protectorate of Northern Nigeria was amalgamated with the Southern Protectorate to form Nigeria with Lagos as capital city. 11 Pauline H. Baker, Urbanization and Political Change: The Politics of Lagos, 1917–1967 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), 32; Margaret Peil, Lagos: The City Is the People (Boston : G. K. Hall, 1991), 19. 12 Ayodeji Olukoju, “Population Pressure, Housing, and Sanitation in West Africa’s Premier Port-City: Lagos, 1900–1939,” Journal of the Australian Association for Maritime History 2 (1993): 92–93.

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Ibid., 93; Mabogunje, Urbanization in Nigeria, 264. Mabogunje, Urbanisation in Nigeria, 261. 15 Ibid., 265. 16 Baker, Urbanization and Political Change, 40; Peil, Lagos, 22. 17 NAI, Oyo Prof, 1352, “Juvenile Delinquency and Its Treatment,” 1948. 18 L. Fourchard, “Urban Poverty, Urban Crime, and Crime Control: The Lagos and Ibadan Cases, 1929–1945,” in African Urban Spaces in Historical Perspective, ed. S. Salm and T. Falola (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2005). 19 Laurent Fourchard, “De la résidence lignagère à la rente immobilière, cours et compounds en AOF et au Nigeria,” Le Mouvement social 214 (2003): 47–63. 20 Mabogunje, Urbanization in Nigeria, 226; Peter Marris, Family and Social Change in an African City: A Study of Rehousing in Lagos (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1962), 20–25. 21 Marris, Family and Social Change, 8–40; Baker, Urbanization and Political Change, 111–14; Sandra T. Barnes, Patrons and Power: Creating a Political Community in Metropolitan Lagos (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), 79–96. 22 Illiffe, African Poor, 177. 23 Marris, Family and Social Change, 62. It should be noted that the author was writing shortly after Nigeria’s independence. 24 Iliffe, African Poor, 164. 25 Ibid., 164–67. 26 S. M. Martin, “The Long Depression: West African Export Producers and the World Economy, 1914–1945,” in The Economies of Africa and Asia in the InterWar Depression, ed. I. Brown (London: Routledge, 1989), 75–94. 27 Ibid., 78. 28 Nigerian Pioneer, quoted in Olukoju, “Population Pressure, Housing, and Sanitation,” 92; NAI, Comcol 1, 69, Report by the Commissioner of Police of Lagos, September 2, 1927; NAI, Comcol 1, 69, Letter of the Resident of the Colony to the Secretary of Southern Provinces, Lagos, September 5, 1927. 29 Ayodeji Olukoju, “The Travails of Migrant and Wage Labour in the Lagos Metropolitan Area in the Inter-Wars Years,” Labour History Review 61, no. 1 (1996), 59. 30 NAI, Comcol 1, 894, Memorandum on trade, depression, unemployment, and income tax collection prepared by the NNDP, n.d. 31 Olukoju, “Migrant and Wage Labour,” 59. 32 A. Hugues and R. Cohen, “An Emerging Nigerian Working Class: The Lagos Experience, 1897–1939,” in African Labour History, ed. P. C. W. Gutkind, R. Cohen, and J. Copans (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, 1978), 49. 33 Ibid., 36. 34 Department of Labor, Annual Report, 1945 and 1946, quoted in Mabogunje, Urbanisation in Nigeria, 261. 35 Otto Koenigsberger et al., “Metropolitan Lagos,” Habitat International 55 (1980): 55–83. 14

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36 Ayodeji Olukoju, “The Segregation of Europeans and Africans in Colonial Nigeria,” in Security, Crime, and Segregation, 261–83. 37 Ibid., 282. 38 Olukoju, “Population Pressure, Housing, and Sanitation,” 98–99. 39 The population density of Lagos Island was 25,000 persons per square mile in 1901, and 125,000 persons per square mile in 1963. Baker, Urbanisation and Political Change, 35. 40 CO, 859/73/11, Treatment of Juvenile Offenders in the Colonies, around 1930; NAI, Comcol 1, 2844, Faulkner, Hawking by Children in Lagos, September 1942. 41 NAI, Comcol 1, 2600, Patterson, Crime and Its Treatment in the Colony and Protectorate, March 1944; CO, 859/1352, Advisory Committee on the Treatment of Offenders in the Colonies: Draft Memorandum on the Care and Treatment of Children and Young Persons, 1961. 42 NAI, “Annual Reports, Nigeria Police Force,” 1945–1947. 43 While there is little evidence of juvenile offenses in the early colonial period, further work still needs to be done. 44 The Police Magistrates, Nigerian Daily Times, July 31, 1936. 45 NAI, Police Annual Report, 1945–1947. Alan Milner, The Nigerian Penal System (London: Sweet & Maxwell, 1972), 352. 46 “Pickpockets at the General Post Office, Lagos,” Nigerian Pioneer, November 3, 1923; “Pickpockets Again at the Central Post Office,” Nigerian Pioneer, December 7, 1923; “Pickpocket in Iddo Railway Station,” Nigerian Pioneer, November 7, 1924; “Pickpocket in Lagos,” Nigerian Pioneer, December 4, 1924. 47 Heap, “Jaguda Boys,” 324; Fourchard, “Urban Poverty, Urban Crime.” 48 “Pickpocket in Lagos,” Nigerian Pioneer, December 4, 1924. 49 “Assault on a Girl,” Nigerian Pioneer, January 29, 1926. 50 “Local Hooliganism,” Lagos Daily News, June 21, 1929. 51 “Pickpocketing Pestilence: Violent Practice on Carter Bridge,” Lagos Daily Times, May 2, 1929. 52 Fourchard, “Urban Poverty, Urban Crime.” 53 Abubakar Momoh, “The Political Dimension of Urban Youth Crisis: The Case of the Area Boys in Lagos,” in Security, Crime, and Segregation, 186–87. 54 “Boma Boys,” West African Pilot, November, 16, 1940. 55 NAI, Comcol 1, 2600, A Report on Social Welfare in the Colony and Protectorate by Alexander Patterson, March 1944. 56 NAI, Comcol 1, 2471, Juvenile Delinquency in Lagos by Donald Faulkner, 1941. 57 Ibid. 58 The terms “Jaguda Boys” and “Boma Boys” disappeared from newspapers both in Ibadan and Lagos. 59 Heap, “Jaguda Boys,” 341; Kemi Rotimi, The Police in a Federal State: The Nigerian Experience (Ibadan: College Press, 2001), 140; Remi Anifowose, Violence and Politics in Nigeria: The Tiv and Yoruba Experience (New York: Nok Publishers International, 1982), 230–34. 60 NAI, Comcol 1, 2844, Child Welfare, Prostitution and Child Marriage, n.d.

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61 F. Ekechi, “Pawnship in Igbo Society,” in Pawnship, Slavery, and Colonialism in Africa, ed. P. Lovejoy and T. Falola (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2003), 179. 62 NAI, Comcol 1, 2844, Child Welfare. 63 Benedict B. Naanen, “Itinerant Gold Mines: Prostitution in the Cross River Basin of Nigeria, 1930–1950,” African Studies Review 34 (1991): 59. 64 Ibid., 60. 65 NAI, Comcol 1, 2844, Calabar Council Office, Child Prostitution in Lagos, January 17, 1943. 66 Luise White, The Comforts of Home: Prostitution in Colonial Nairobi (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 147–84; Denise Laketch, The Commoditization of Female Sexuality: Prostitution and Socio-Economic Relations in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (New York: AMS Press, 1991), 21–42. 67 NAI, Comcol 1, 2844, A. Izzett, Child Prostitution in Lagos, May 15, 1946. 68 Ibid. 69 F. Bernault, “De l’Afrique ouverte à l’Afrique fermée: Comprendre l’histoire des réclusions continentales,” in Enfermement, 33; D. Killingray, “Punishment to Fit the Crime? Penal Policy and Practice in British Colonial Africa,” in Enfermement, 202. 70 Thioub, “Marginalité juvénile et enfermement,” 216–17. 71 Florence Bernault, ed., A History of Prison and Confinement in Africa (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2003), 26. 72 Glaser, Bo-Tsotsi, 21. 73 In Dar es Salaam, the “problem of urban youth” became a serious concern by the late 1930s. Burton, “Urchins, Loafers,” 200. In French West Africa, it was not considered an important issue before the 1950s. 74 NAK, Ministry of Social Welfare and Community (MSWC), 1226, Report by Mr. Chinn, Social Welfare Adviser to the Secretary of State, February 1950. 75 CO, 859/73/13, Juvenile Delinquency Subcommittee, Draft Report, n.d. [ca. 1942]. 76 CPO, 1681, 1, Governor General to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, February 26, 1931. 77 John Muncie, Youth and Crime: A Critical Introduction (London: Sage Publications, 1999), 61. 78 Ibid., 66. 79 CPO, 1681, 1, Senior Resident to the Secretary Southern Provinces, April 15, 1931. 80 CPO, 1681, 1, Secretary Southern Provinces to Chief Secretary to the Government, January 19, 1932. 81 CPO, 1681, 1, Governor General to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, July 3, 1931. 82 CPO, 1681, 1, Director of Prisons Southern Provinces to Secretary Southern Provinces, January 9, 1931. 83 NAI, Comcol 1, 2600, Patterson, Crime and Its Treatment, 1944. 84 Illife, African Poor, 196.

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CPO, 1681, 1, Director of Prisons, 1931; Senior Resident, 1931. NAI, Comcol 1, 2600, Patterson, Crime and Its Treatment, 1944. 87 In 1932, industrial schools and reformatories were amalgamated as Approved Schools in Britain. 88 NAE, Civil Secretary Office (CSO), 1395, Report on Industrial School of Enugu, October 29, 1938; Report on Industrial School of Enugu, April 6, 1939. 89 NAE, CSO, 1449, 1, Victor Mabb, Director of Prisons to the Chief Secretary to the Government, Lagos, July 21, 1941. 90 James S. Coleman, Nigeria: Background to Nationalism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), 185, 192, 221. 91 “Assault on a Girl,” Nigerian Pioneer, January 29, 1926; “Pickpocketing Pestilence,” Lagos Daily Times, May 2, 1929; “Boma Boys,” West African Pilot, November 16, 1940; “This Jaguda Menace,” West African Pilot, November 22, 1940; “The Boma Boy Menace,” Nigerian Daily Times, December 30, 1940; “Menace of Pickpockets,” Nigerian Daily Times, October 27, 1941; “Pick Pockets at Large,” Nigerian Daily Times, April 10, 1942; “The Jaguda Menace,” Nigerian Daily Times, April 2, 1942; “A Case for Action,” Nigerian Daily Times, June 12, 1943. 92 Fred I. A. Omu, Press and Politics in Nigeria, 1880–1937 (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1978), 227–40. 93 “Hooliganism in Lagos Streets,” Nigerian Daily Times, May 18, 1946. 94 Fourchard, “Urban Poverty, Urban Crime.” 95 “Boma Boys,” West African Pilot, November 16, 1940. 96 Faulkner observed in 1943 that “sailors are being pestered by Boma boys all around the town.” NAI, Comcol 1, 2600, Colony Welfare Officer, Children Welfare, General Question, May 18, 1943. 97 CO, 859/73/13, Juvenile Delinquency Subcommittee, Draft Report, n.d. [ca. 1942]. 98 Illife, African Poor, 200. 99 CO, 859/73/13, Colonial Penal Administration Committee, minutes of the 19th meeting, February 12, 1942. 100 CO, 859/73/13, Juvenile Delinquency Subcommittee. 101 NAI, Comcol 1, 2600, Patterson, Crime and Its Treatment, 1944. 102 NAI, Comcol 1, 2471, Juvenile Delinquency, 1941; Comcol 1, 2844, Hawking by Children in Lagos, by Donald Faulkner, September 1942; COMCOL 1, 2600, Donald Faulkner, Report on the Scheme for Dealing with Juvenile Delinquency in Lagos from February 1942 to August 1943, August 1943; COMCOL 1, 2600, Donald Faulkner, Report on Juvenile Welfare in the Colonies, July 15, 1943. 103 NAI, Comcol 1, 2600, Faulkner, Report on the Scheme, 1943. 104 Ibid. 105 NAI, Comcol 1, 2844, Faulkner to the President of Lagos Town Council, Hawking by Children in Lagos, September 1942. 106 Muncie, Youth and Crime, 60, 74. 107 “Free Education and Street Hawking in Lagos Debates,” Nigerian Daily Times, September 25, 1942. 86

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NAI, Comcol 1, 2600, A Report on Social Welfare on the Colony and Protectorate, by Alexander Patterson, March 1944. 109 Illife, African Poor, 202–4, 207. 110 NAI, Comcol 1, 2796, Commissioner of the Colony to the Superintendent of Police, July 3, 1946. 111 NAK, MSCW, 1226, Report by Mr. Chinn, 1950. 112 Ibid. 113 NAI, Comcol 1, 2844, Izzett, Child Prostitution, 1946. 114 NAI, Comcol 1, 2844, Acting Commissioner of the Colony to the Chief Secretary to the Government, May 21, 1946. 115 NAI, Comcol 1, 2844, Regulations to Prevent Children Trading in the Street, n.d. 116 Nathaniel A. Fadipe, The Sociology of the Yoruba (Ibadan: Ibadan University Press, 1970), 149–55; T. Falola, “Gender, Business, and Space Control: Yoruba Market Women and Power,” in African Market Women and Economic Power: The Role of Women in African Economic Development, ed. B. House-Midamba and F. K. Ekechi (Westport, CT: Greenwood: 1995), 26–27; B. A. Lawal, “Markets and Street Trading in Lagos,” in Nigerian Cities, ed. S. Salm and T. Falola (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2003), 243. 117 Marris, Family and Social Change, 62–63. 118 G. O. Olusanya, “Charlotte Olajumoke Obasa,” in Nigerian Women: A Historical Perspective, ed. B. Awe (Lagos: Sankore Books, 1992), 123–39. 119 Nina Emma Mba, Nigerian Women Mobilized: Women’s Political Activity in Southern Nigeria, 1900–1965 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 214. 120 Ibid., 218. 121 NAI, Comcol 1, 2844, Faulkner, Child Prostitution, 1943. 122 NAI, Comcol 1, 2844, Memorandum from the Colony Welfare Officer, August 7, 1943. 123 NAI, Comcol 1, 2844, Calabar Council Office to District Officer Calabar, January 17, 1944. 124 NAI, Comcol 1, 2844, Acting Commissioner of the Colony to the Chief Secretary to the Government, Lagos, May 21, 1946. 125 NAI, Comcol 1, 2786, Letter from A. Izzett on the Petition of the Women’s Party, October 23, 1946. 126 Mba, Nigerian Women Mobilized, 200. 127 “Social Welfare Service,” Nigerian Daily Times, February 26, 1948; West African Pilot, April 13, 1948, quoted in Mba, Nigerian Women Mobilized, 224. 128 Milner, Nigerian Penal System, 352. 129 Muncie, Youth and Crime, 257. 130 NAK, MSWC, 1226, Report by Mr. Chinn, 1950. 131 Marris, Family and Social Change, 64. 132 “Activities of Jaguda Boys,” Nigerian Daily Times, March 22, 1946; “Hooliganism in Lagos Streets,” Nigerian Daily Times, May 18, 1946; “Undesirables in Ikeja Area,” Nigerian Daily Times, June 4, 1946; “Incidence of Crime in

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Lagos,” Nigerian Daily Times, August 21, 1946; “Pickpocket Activities in Buses,” Nigerian Daily Times, September 3, 1946; “Police Protection on the Wane,” Nigerian Daily Times, July 16, 1947; “Curb This Menace Please,” West African Pilot, July 24, 1947; “Lagos and Hooligans,” Daily Comet, December 11, 1947. 133 Fourchard, “Urban Poverty, Urban Crime.” 134 Momoh, “Political Dimension,” 186. 135 NAK, MSCW, 1226, Report by Mr. Chinn, 1950. 136 CO, 554/2004, Annual Report on the Federal Prison Department, 1956–1957. 137 NAI, Comcol 1, 2796, Commissioner of the Colony to the Superintendent of Police, July 3, 1946. 138 NAE, PR/X2, Social Welfare Services in the Western Region, Nigeria, July 1952. 139 Helen Judd, “The Human Factor in Nigerian Progress. The Oliver Twists of the Towns,” West Africa, May 24, 1952. 140 NAK, MSCW, Joint Memorandum by the Ministry of Social Welfare and Ministry of Finance, Control of Beggars, April 8, 1959. 141 By 1952, there were only seven Young Farmers’ Clubs in the Western Province organized by the Welfare Office, and they were all based in Ikeja Division. NAI, Comcol 1, 248, Agriculture Officer to the Department of Agriculture, Western Region, April 7, 1952. 142 “Activities of Jaguda Boys,” Nigerian Daily Times, March 22, 1946. See also “Expulsion of Thieves,” Nigerian Daily Times, August 15, 1945. 143 NAK, MSWC, 1226, Report by Mr. Chinn, 1950. 144 NAE, X 245, Council of Social Service Report, Aba Zone, 1965; Progress Report on Onitsha Council of Social Service, 1965. Offenses against street trading regulations remained the most common cases dealt with by the Juvenile Court of Ibadan between 1960 and 1970 (39 %). Simple thefts accounted for only 28 percent of cases. O. Oloruntimehin, “Ibadan Juvenile Court Record Study (1960– 1969),” Behavioral Science Unit, University of Ibadan, 1971. 145 Achille Mbembe, Les jeunes et l’ordre politique en Afrique noire (Paris: L’harmattan 1985); Mamadou Dia Issa, L’exode rural ruine la campagne et fait affluer à la ville toute une population inadaptée (Dakar: ENAES, 1976); Seydou Diaw, Inadaptation sociale des jeunes au Sénégal, une problématique du développement économique (Marly Le Roy: INEP, 1978); Nessim Hazoref, Rapport sur la protection et la rééducation des jeunes inadaptés sociaux au Togo: Méthodes et programmes d’action (Lomé: Ministère de la fonction publique du travail et des Affaires sociales, 1971), 87. Latif Fassassi, Approche sur l’inadaptation sociale des jeunes au Bénin et proposition pour une action de prévention (Marly Le Roy: INEP, 1971); Sanogho Adama, Inadaptation sociale et traitement des délinquants au Mali (Paris: Université de Paris, 1976), 2.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN “THEIR DAYS ARE SPENT IN GAMBLING AND LOAFING, PIMPING FOR PROSTITUTES, AND PICKING POCKETS”: MALE JUVENILE DELINQUENTS IN LAGOS ISLAND, 1920S–1960S SIMON HEAP

Here at night come stealthy figures. Small and agile, they scale the walls quickly and, dropping lightly on the other side, disappear into the gloom. Some carry fowls under their arms, some yams, while others come swaggering, smoking cigarettes, with money chinking in their pockets. They are desperadoes of 12–14 years of age who make this graveyard their home, stealing food from the market places, cooking and eating communally in the evening, later sleeping out under the stars. Their days are spent in gambling and loafing, pimping for prostitutes, and picking pockets. Criminal—because that is the way to live, carelessly, irresponsibly, among good companions.1

This remarkable tableau of juvenile delinquents squatting in a Lagos Island cemetery in 1941 was evoked by the first social welfare officer in Nigeria, Donald Faulkner. Fifty years later, the center of Lagos was hit by another cyclical crescendo of juvenile crime perpetrated by so-called Area boys. In the 1990s, so much did they terrorize those living and working on Lagos Island that the country’s Nobel laureate, Wole Soyinka, wrote a play about them: These Area Boys are the very pestilence. They pester our clientele, intimidate them, extort money from them, and vandalise their cars. . . . Those bullies? Enforcers and extortionists? Thugs, yes, sheer thugs. They

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break your windscreen if you don’t pay up or slash your tyres. They rip the necklace off your neck in a traffic hold-up or snatch your watch. They’re robbers. Daylight robbers. No better than armed robbers.2

Also known as alaayes, agbero (touts at motor parks), gbana (cocaine or heroin users), omo onile (sons of the soil), or omo ojuina (sons of the eye of the fire), jobless youths subjected themselves to the temptations of the street, and as the leading national newspaper put it, “The streets of Lagos are workshops for criminal apprenticeships.”3 It was reported that they dealt in robbery, extortion, and blackmail. Teenage “under-bridge dwellers” living a vagrant existence were inducted into the underground world and taught all sorts of criminal activities. It was “a school for drug peddlers, pickpockets, extortionists, hooligans and armed robbers.”4 The ferocity with which Area boys carried out their criminal acts was blamed on the film escapades of Sylvester Stallone’s macho Rambo and Charles Bronson’s Deathwish character.5 Day or night, they simply approached their victims and calmly demanded money and goods from their prey in the form of “reparation,” “settlement,” or “egunje” (bribe). They filled in time between crimes by doing socially useful jobs: unofficial traffic wardens and road-mending gangs. But in their criminal mode, and with familiarity of the escape outlets in the area, hardly anyone dared challenge them.6 Area boys frequent Apongbon, Bombata, Idumagbo, Idumota, ItaFaji, Bristol Hotel, NnamdiAzikiwe Street (Victoria Street), and adjoining streets.7 Some parts of Lagos Island are no-go areas for citizens and police alike, including Ita Agarawu (“Ojuina”)—“an abode of drug barons who seemed to run their own governments.”8 Drug dealers employ Area boys as pushers (“strikers”) to retail the drugs or buy them for themselves: “Topmost in the menu of an area boy are drug[s]—alcohol, nicotine products, hemp, heroin, cocaine etc. Like a normal drug addict, an area boy could do anything to obtain money so as to satisfy the craving for his drug-habit. He could tell lies, steal, beg, fight or engage in any shameful act in order to satisfy that evil habit.”9 Colonel Olagunsoye Oyinlola, Lagos State military administrator in the mid-1990s, dipped into history for the genesis of the Area boys: The problem of deviant behaviour among Nigerian youths is not a new phenomenon, particularly in Lagos. Some of the earliest reported cases date back to the 1920s. Then, there were gangs of Eti-Ofe masquerades, Boma Boys, Cow Boys and lately “All Right Sir” boys. Today, the combination of economic, societal and drug addictions have compounded this problem and our dear Lagos has been saddled with the problem which is in fact constituting a nuisance to the public at large.10

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It is not often that one concurs with a military man in Nigeria, but as this chapter will seek to explain, his assessment of the situation is spot-on. Contemporary Area boys are a culmination of trends whose origins lie further back in colonial times. We will trace one of the historical roots of a major current problem facing Nigeria: a crime wave from pickpocketing and burglary to armed robbery and assassinations.11 Not everyone agrees with this historical trend: Wuyi Omitoogun of the University of Maiduguri and Timi Adewale of the University of Essex posit “the sudden rise in Area Boys in contemporary times” thesis.12 Laurent Fourchard’s several contributions to the subject, which do explore the history, concentrate on the labeling of juvenile delinquents and the vigilantism.13 During the twentieth century, some Lagosians obeyed neither their colonial masters nor their indigenous rulers. These deviants’ “rugged individualism” and rebellious attitudes toward society and authority made them a constant concern for rulers and citizens.14 Examining the various types of juvenile delinquents on Lagos Island, this chapter delves into the urban experience of male youths through explorations of life on the streets, vagrancy, criminality, and public reactions. Like all societies, Nigerian society is a work in progress; even its most stable structures are the expression of equilibrium between dynamic forces. For the historian, the most challenging task is to recapture that process, while at the same time discerning long-term shifts in social relations, economic organization, and the meanings infused into these relationships. Within a context of continuity in some of the principal facets of Nigerian society, the forces of change interacted in such a way as to produce two developments that engendered deviance. On the one hand, integrative forces penetrated local communities more deeply than previously had been the case and bound them more loosely together into a national society and economy. On the other hand, there was a simultaneous enhancement of the degree and the complexity of social differentiation within local communities. Interconnected demographic and economic developments brought an enhanced prosperity to the upper and middling ranks of society based on exploitation of the opportunities provided by expanding markets. They also brought about marked inequalities of wealth and living standards and a growth in poverty and deprivation. Sharper distinctions of attitudes, aspirations, and manners emerged to reinforce the polarizing effects of demographic and economic changes, giving the colonial period a significance in the development of male delinquent behavior in Lagos.15 Much has been written on the colonialists and the indigenous elite, but very little on how other Nigerians confronted and subverted colonialism

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for their own ends—whether to make their own livelihood or to reinforce their unauthorized position in society; for example, streetwise youngsters in urban areas made a living from petty theft and pickpocketing. Historians have not accorded much sympathetic attention to people with little capital, no formal authority, or no apparent claims to individual distinction. Most Nigerians are excluded from the national account: when they appear, they do so either as exceptional individuals or as faceless statistics or anonymous aggregates. Most Nigerians are thus silent and passive: deprived of identity, divorced from meaningful cultural contexts, and denied recognition of their contributions to the making of their own history. Too often the lower orders have been both taken for granted and lost from sight, largely excluded from most accounts of the period.16 This chapter’s sociology of urban life is another attempt to make up for at least some of this neglect, representing juvenile delinquents as members of a distinct and vigorous culture, and to understand their part in the making of their history. A great deal remains obscure, but enough is known to permit a description of their deviant ways, an assessment of their characteristic patterns of behavior, and an interpretation of their changing experience over time. Juvenile delinquents resisted powerful attempts to inculcate conformist modes of behavior through indigenous and colonial agencies of control and manipulation. Such resistance, especially in the form of theft, muggings, and opposition to authority, can be viewed as delinquency and crime.17 Much juvenile crime in Lagos can be attributed to the additional temptations afforded by city life, lack of parental control, and in some cases to children’s absconding from their rural homes. Accentuated by the era’s high mortality rate and low life expectancy, relatively large numbers of children grew up without parents. Rootless children running away to a large urban area and thus having to fend for themselves easily drifted into hooliganism and petty theft. Many Lagos juvenile offenders came from the hinterland area, not the city itself, having left home in search of money and excitement; the wave of juvenile crime of the mid-1930s was caused to a large extent by “the influx into Lagos from the provinces of boys and girls seeking employment as motor boys and as domestic servants.”18 The negative effects of the economic depression, with low prices for agricultural exports like cocoa in particular, added to this outmigration of rural youth to urban areas. Social Welfare Officer Simeon Bankole-Wright, a colleague of Faulkner’s, listed the factors responsible for juvenile delinquency in the capital:

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Chapter Thirteen Broken homes, imprisonment or death of the breadwinner, unemployment, bad housing that makes the home a mere den or resting place to be escaped as much as possible, the effects of drink and vice on home life, bad company and the influence of the gangs, low mentality, illiteracy, defects in the existing educational system, the quest for new experience, movement and change, wanderlust, culture shock, the failure of a community to provide suitable outlets for the instinctive life of its young ones, and certain types of physical degeneracy that are well recognized or feeblemindedness, chronic epilepsy, congenital deaf-mutism and habitual pauperism and other unknown causes.19

Images of structured gangs of delinquents with clearly defined agendas to plunder and pillage from respectable citizens were detailed by dramatic newspaper stories.20 Such lurid depictions of vicious hooliganism aroused a nightmare of lawlessness among propertied citizens and government authorities alike. In many ways, the discourse on hooliganism fueled the reporting of such incidents. That said, these were not “heroic criminals” or “social bandits”; they were antisocial elements perpetrating crime against local citizens.21 Juvenile delinquents arranged themselves into informally structured groups based on age, street, and neighborhood. Just as boys drifted into group comradeship, so they touted, pickpocketed, and stole in a relatively spontaneous way, not necessarily with deliberate purpose, but rather because, for those wishing to take the opportunities offered by mainstream city life, it satisfied their basic material and physical needs in an exciting and lucrative way.22 For those single youths living on the streets, joining others in similar predicaments offered group protection and solace against the destitution of their situations. Most histories of Lagos have concentrated on its political and economic predominance. It was the capital city of Nigeria until 1991 and retains a central place in the life of the country and is home for by far the largest concentration of Nigerians (15 million in Greater Lagos at last count).23 Studies of the social aspects of urbanization in Lagos that have been undertaken by social scientists have, for the most part, been concerned with contemporary or recent developments without specific historical background, and thus create the impression that the phenomena being studied are of recent origin. It is against this background that the present study seeks to shed light on juvenile delinquency in twentiethcentury Lagos. Criminologists and social scientists have examined this problem in Nigeria, but there is a need for a historical analysis of the roots and responses in the past.24 Extensive records enable the historian to represent the lives of juvenile delinquents on Lagos Island. Newspaper reports, commentary of outside

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observers, as well as the views of local citizens affected by delinquent activity within the city itself offer the chance to understand both the actions and constraints of the male delinquent fraternity.25 The number of juvenile delinquents, and how much delinquency occurred, is a difficult matter to judge. But if the unreported petty criminal acts, the undetected pickpocketing, the dismissed prosecutions, and the instant physical retributions on captured delinquents—administered by the police and angry mobs of citizens in the city’s streets—are all taken into account, then the actual level of delinquency would be even higher. Before examining cycles of male delinquency, it is important to describe the physical and social environment of Lagos Island.

Lagos Island In Lagos, the inner city is dominated by native-born inhabitants who own land in the heart of the city, an area that has been their family home for generations. As Remi Olajumoke recalled, “A little boy could tell almost subconsciously, the names of all the families in his neighborhood. That was Lagos in those days: small but warm.”26 Its population formed a stable and closely knit community, with about two-thirds of residents having one or more brothers, sisters, or parents living no more than ten to fifteen minutes’ walk away.27 Lagos Island was not an impersonal, anonymous metropolis; there were social interactions, heated verbal arguments, and physical altercations in streets and courtyards. Owing to the strength of kinship and neighborly solidarity, the members of the extended family and neighbors had certain reserve powers of control and discipline over children. These powers extended to inflicting physical pain or reporting serious breaches of the peace to parents. Without actual evidence from precolonial times, one observer even stated: “The rules and regulations of every African Community leave no ground for idle women, prostitutes or vagabonds, and create no possibility for the existence of waifs and strays.”28 Two developments altered the sociology of Lagos Island. First, British colonial rule introduced the notion of English liberty and personal freedom. It was reported by 1914 that “at present, homes are being broken up and paternal ties are being loosened by the deteriorating tendencies which seem to possess our youths, due, in some measure, to the influences of European civilization.”29 The increasing wealth of Lagos, as well as its unequal distribution among its population, was driving such negative consequences. Second, immigration and the falling death rate led to rapid population increases.30 From 1861, when Lagos was formally ceded to the

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British, the process of urbanization gathered pace with complete settlement of the island by the turn of the century.31 Lagos comprised four distinct subcommunities: the Old Town of Isale-Eko, larger than the other districts put together; Olowogbowo, or Saro Town; the Brazilian quarter; and the European section.32 By the Europeans’ expropriation of Ikoyi for the colonial administrative class, the people of Lagos Island were compelled to live in “the circumscribed area of Lagos town like herrings in a barrel.”33 Lagos Island is a very small piece of land, with an extreme west–east length of five kilometers and north–south breadth of about two kilometers. Owing to the enormous population pressure, however, many people resorted to erecting buildings even in areas ordinarily uninhabitable.34 In the fifty years after 1911, while the surface area of Lagos Island remained the same its population trebled, therefore achieving an incredibly high density of Lagosians: from 25,000 per square mile in 1901 to double that by 1921, reaching 58,189 by 1931, 87,492 in 1950, and approximately 125,000 by 1963.35 In the latter year, the density of north Lagos Island was higher than the density of Manhattan Island in New York City, though most of the former’s residential buildings had only one or two stories.36 The reason for such high population densities was that Lagos Island rapidly developed into the commercial capital of Nigeria, concomitant with its leading political and administrative functions. All the leading expatriate mercantile firms and many indigenous intermediary businesses made the southern waterfront road known as the Marina, and Broad Street one hundred meters behind it, into the main arteries of the modern Central Business District.37 Economic functions such as the break-of-bulk of imported goods, the collection point for exportable goods transported from the interior, as well as banks and government offices near at hand made Lagos Island the bustling center of the emerging colonial economy. At first, the commercial center consisted of numerous factories. These were large compounds enclosing in their interior a large space where most of the trading went on and where traders from the interior could rest after their long journey. These factories have now been replaced by multistory buildings where trade and banking are conducted.38 Whether in the crowded native markets of Jankara or Ebute Ero, the protruding annexes to houses along the narrow streets, or the makeshift stalls around Tinubu bus stop, tens of thousands of Lagosians labor from dawn to dusk, welding motor parts; repairing motor vehicles; and selling clothes, electronics, and foodstuffs. They live in overcrowded houses or shanties with poor ventilation and at times without water or electricity. Many of them do not have houses to live in; they live in the places where they do

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Figure 13:1. Lagos Island

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their business.39 Yet the Nigerian government of the 1970s saw those in the informal sector as a “horde of shoeshine boys, petty traders, pimps and prostitutes, whose function is largely parasitic, and whose employment is casual and intermittent with a fair leavening of illegal activities.”40

Figure 13.2. Postcard scene of the Marina

Earlier colonial government actions had unwittingly hastened the weakening of society: for example, slum clearance in central Lagos scattered kin groups.41 This ran counter to the notion previously espoused that physical decline went hand in hand with moral degeneration, the assumption being that physical rehabilitation would engender moral improvement. The newly built part of the town bordering the Marina was tidy, convenient, and hygienic, whereas the oldest part of the Island, IsaleEko, was anything but that—the narrow winding streets and alleys, “the tumble of houses” huddled together, pits serving as refuse dumps filled with putrefying rubbish, wells giving water hardly better than sewage effluent.42 The slum area around Idumagbo Lagoon consisted of flimsy shacks built of bamboo, mud, and sheets of corrugated iron, and the area was subject to flooding during the rainy season. The redevelopment of this area thus entailed not only the clearing of slum dwellings but also reclamation of swamps, an activity preserved in the name “Reclamation Road.”43 The Lagos Executive Development Board (LEDB), formed in

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January 1929, commenced its slum clearing and town planning by removing insanitary dwellings in the area surrounding the Idumagbo and Isale-gangan Lagoons and bringing up the level of the fringe areas by sand filling.44 Idumagbo Avenue was straightened through to Victoria Street, the market constructed, and the area laid out to better standards—“an oasis of planned layout in a wilderness of confused housing,” according to one commentator.45 Later on, in the 1950s, with independence approaching, slum clearance in central Lagos was directed toward meeting the aspirations of Nigerians who wanted a federal capital they could be proud of. The LEDB set in motion the enforced evacuation of the first batch of displaced persons to the Surulere rehousing estate—with the attendant loss of homes, disruption of family life, and destruction of the symbiotic economic relationship between central Lagos it and the commercial district around the Marina.46 Lagos is, in sum, a community of basic contradictions: its modernity is built on a strong base of tradition; its prosperity rests on pillars of poverty; its cosmopolitanism cloaks a society of provincial groupings. Most contradictory of all, the oldest and most solidified segment of the urban community is, in essence, an “urban village” that still retains the traditional characteristics of ethnic homogeneity, communal land tenure, close kinship ties, and primary group relationships.47 In this segment of the Lagosian population, the extended family remains an important social unit, and “the clan tradition still survives as a rooted objection on the part of the African to setting up a new home away from his relatives”; not only that, but this “parochial habit is a great obstacle to progress.”48 As Oberu Aribiah has noted in this regard: “Because it is home to the indigenous population those who have made it in the economic and social scale do not generally rush out of the slums but improve their property and still remain on the family land. In this connection, Central Lagos is unlike the typical slum from where social climbers train to escape and failures are entrapped.”49 One advantage of this kind of stability in the population is the fostering of a sense of community that has proved an effective check on extreme social and psychological deviance that is characteristic of most other slums.50 The mechanisms of familial and social cohesion contributed to social stability and well-being during the rapid growth of Lagos. There were signs, however, that these mechanisms were weakening, if not collapsing, throughout the twentieth century, resulting in a social environment conducive to anomie and its correlates of sporadic violence and delinquency, especially among male youths.

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Alikali Boys During precolonial times, hooliganism was associated with the death of a leading chief and the Oro festival. Authorized looting of market stalls, combined with assaults on unfortunate passers-by, turned the ordered world upside-down. Unemployed youths led the opportunities for “legalized crime.”51 However, during the colonial era, juvenile delinquency became such a problem in Lagos in the 1920s that it could no longer be ignored as “bands of young men collect[ed] in or parade[d] the streets insulting women and sometimes, armed with whips and sticks, assaulting and beating peaceful citizens.”52 The problem of these “pugnacious and illbehaved” Alikali boys, as they were nicknamed, became prevalent at Easter and Christmastime when citizens cowered “in trepidation of what might happen if they . . . incur[red] the unjust displeasure of these members of the local Klu Klux Klan.”53 Behind the Marina, Brazilian immigrants settled in the east around Campos Square, with Sierra Leoneans, or “Saro,” in the west at Olowogbowo.54 There was great rivalry between these two groups from the beginning, and in terms of their young people this was symbolically marked every Christmas and Easter when boys from Campos and Olowogbowo carried on masquerades—the carreta—and cavorted around the town dressed in brightly colored clothes, some riding on horseback.55 Members of “the notorious ‘Campos Square boys,’ the ‘Lafiaji Boys,’ the ‘Shomolu Boys’ and the ‘Mushin Boys’” carried horsewhips, and wherever groups met they engaged in merciless, ferocious whipping of each other. These groups of juveniles “had taken their identities from the localities in which they lived and which they concentrated their acts of thuggery during festivals like the ‘Egungun,’ ‘Eyo,’ ‘Igunns,’ and other masquerades’ outings. They had readily served as the whip wielding vanguards of such masquerades who taunted opposing masquerades and spectators, so as to foment trouble and undertake a free-for-all looting of shops and houses.”56 Youths divided Lagos Island into two districts: those living north and northeast of Tinubu Square were eligible for the “Olowogobowo Alikali Society,” with the remainder of the island under the “Lafiaji Alikali Society.” It seems as though the societies interpreted Boxing Day to mean the day when youths were exempted from criminal responsibility for assaults. “Each society recruited fighting squads, and generally on December 26 of each year met each other in inter-district group fighting which, in actuality, was something bordering on internecine warfare. . . . The equipment included paper headgear, mask for the face, boxing ring, ‘hippo-rod’ or the cat[-o’nine-tails] fitted with a

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number of nails and sharp-edged blades, daggers and any amount of charms calculated to render the combatant invisible.”57 On Easter Sunday 1937, outraged Lagos residents stood in amazement at “long processions of drink-sodden rowdies parading the streets singing sacred hymns whose words have been parodied into the most vulgar expressions in the native language.”58 Delinquency reappeared in 1942, as “irresponsible [men] armed with all sorts of dangerous weapons . . . use[d] the cloak of Xmas Eve to perpetuate acts of lawlessness and violence.”59 One newspaper broadened out the delinquency associated with Christmastime into a condemnation of all Lagos Islanders, not just youths, for slowing down Nigeria’s efforts at nation building: “it is usually the season of excesses, hooliganism, squandermania and other evidence of thoughtlessness, socially speaking, . . . delay[ing] our social progress as members of the human race.”60 The number of cases coming before the two Lagos police magistrate courts showed divergent trends of delinquency. At Ebute Metta on the mainland, cases remained relatively steady at around on hundred annually. But at Sant Anna Court on Lagos Island the number of cases trebled in the period 1931–37. So much did the problem affect normal court business that charges against juveniles were brought before their own separate court after November 1931.61 Yet Alikali boys, and all subsequent manifestations of juvenile delinquency, felt the soft touch of colonial law. With few options available, courts inflicted sentences of birching, hoping that it would lead to a decline in their outrageous criminal activity and have “a salutary effect on the behaviour of their comrades.”62 But the birch was a relatively innocuous punishment in the West African context, being less severe than that applied at home: offenders “would probably prefer the police-officer whose strokes are limited by the law!” exclaimed one observer.63 The Daily Times saw whipping as an all too easy option, and wanted violent revenge on those “obnoxious bands of terrorists,” urging instead: “Passing of sentences of corporal punishment in addition to other penalties cannot fail to have the desired effect. As their greatest pleasure consisted in inflicting pains or doing even grievous bodily harm to others they should upon conviction be given a taste of the treatment which they meted out to their innocent victims.”64 The colonial government proved unwilling to further criminalize firsttime offenders with jail time, however; prison was very much the last resort. First, the penal system and existing buildings were unsuited to the detention of juveniles. Second, there was no qualified staff available for the special training of juveniles. Third, and most importantly, the

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authorities were concerned not to put impressionable youths in jail with their older, more hardened, counterparts. The legal system required an alternative: a reformatory. By building the Boys’ Industrial Home at Yaba in 1923, the paternalistic colonial state sought to rectify some of the forces unleashed by colonialism itself. Given the fact of rising juvenile delinquency in the interwar years, the Boys’ Industrial Home contributed to stemming an even greater tide of it on Lagos Island.65 A few notes of caution should be sounded, however, on the relative success of the home. It was a corrective, not a preventive, institution, dealing with the juvenile criminal class and leaving no provision for those who had not yet fallen afoul of the law. It was also just a sponge in a sea of juvenile delinquency as the home coped with only a few eligible juvenile criminals each year: “Nigeria needs an institution ten times its size to deal with homeless youthful delinquents.”66

Jaguda Boys Traced to their beginnings in the late 1930s, Jaguda boys roamed the main business and traffic arteries of Lagos Island looking for pockets to pick or using menacing behavior in public to get their way. They deliberately bumped into people in crowded places and then picked their pockets. Some even went so far as to restrain a target while others went through the victim’s pockets. Sometimes two or more of them would engage in a seeming scuffle; an innocent man with money in his pocket unaware of the ploy and approaching as a go-between would find to his horror, after being turned upon, that he had been relieved of all his valuables.67 But they were not easy to identify: some dressed as casual laborers; others as gentlemen about town. Jaguda boys operated from the porch of Tom Jones Memorial Hall on Victoria Street or the mosque opposite, from empty meat stalls at Ereko Market along Idumagbo Avenue every evening, at Ebute Ero’s daily foodstuffs market, at Idumagbo Marina on market days, and at Iddo Railway Station. Outside the Tax Office on Reclamation Road and at Jankara Market in the evening, “these heartless brutes congregate, ready to attack innocent people who might come their way.”68 Even the absence of the cover of darkness proved to be no barrier: “Sango” and his gang stole Beatrice Iyalode’s £13 of gold trinkets in broad daylight at Idumagbo Avenue in early September 1940 in front of dozens of witnesses.69 Jaguda boys along Agarawu and Ereko Streets demanded “‘gifts’ on the basis of ‘give me’ or ‘I’ll take it.’”70 Idling away time at the island’s banks while observing those customers handling money provided another occupation

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for pickpockets. They watched those withdrawing money, saw where the money had been stowed, and then followed behind to pick their pockets.71 With increasing numbers of Lagosians forced to live away from the builtup commercial center of Lagos Island, commuter traffic yielded further pickpocketing opportunities at bus stops and on buses themselves. As soon as the bus moved they jumped on, spotted their prey, did the deed, and then, with the bus still moving, jumped off.72 One Jaguda boy even plied his trade in the Supreme Court Building itself until he was caught in the process of stealing sixpence. With two previous convictions, he returned to court, in the dock this time, to receive three months’ hard labor.73 Older youths recruited young boys, enticing them with the lion’s share of their good food. Closer familiarity developed, resulting eventually in the initiation of the boys by a magical juju incision on their bodies, which, it was believed, would instill into them the fear of evil should they let the gang down: “[The] majority are quite young and innocently brought in contact, infested by the microbe of their perversity. Need measures to protect public from annoyance and victimisation and to safeguard the morals of innocent young people from being polluted by the baneful influence of irreclaimable scapegraces.”74 The situation prompted this tongue-in-cheek observation of the informal institutional mechanisms for learning criminality that were established: The degree of Ph.D (Pedagogy) secured in the University of Antanarivo may be funny enough, but what shall we say about that of MA (Housebreaking) conferred by the Professor of Theft in the University of Lagos, Nigeria? I am not being funny; the assault which I have opened on the abodes of crime in Lagos is no laughing matter. Our society is passing through difficult times and unless something is done and done quickly our capital city may soon be worse than the underworld of Chicago. And believe it or not, there are lecturers in, and professors of, house-breaking and pick-pocketing all over Lagos.75

One such “professor” was Ayo Bankole, who was brought to Lagos by a master pickpocket, and thereafter taught the trade.76 Another was Michael Akademi, who came to Lagos from Auchi in 1927 as a boy but was still living on the streets in early 1941, with more than a decade of delinquency behind him, officially. Table 13.1 lists his court appearances and punishments.

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Table 13.1. Michael Akademi, a juvenile delinquent in Lagos, 1927– 1941 Date of court case November 14, 1929 February 6, 1930 June 27, 1930 July 5, 1930 October 21, 1930 October 1, 1931 August 8, 1933 April 19, 1937 March 29, 1939

Charge faced Stealing Stealing ship’s clock Quarreling in public Stealing 2 cigarette tins Quarreling in public Stealing Loud, unnecessary noise Stealing Causing breach of peace

Sentence 12 birch strokes 3 months jail 3 days jail 3 months jail 3 days jail 7 days jail 4 weeks jail 2 weeks jail 2 weeks jail

Source: NAI, CSO 26/37457, Proceedings of the first meeting of the Committee appointed by the President of the Lagos Town Council under the Unlicensed Guides (Prohibition) Ordinance, January 29, 1942.

Jaguda boys committed violent robberies and indecent assaults on young women. Gangs of a dozen jaguda paid daily visits to shops: half waited outside and half went inside to snatch goods at busy times of the day when the traders had their hands and eyes preoccupied dealing with genuine customers. “The pestilence is disheartening and beyond our control,” reported Adegbola Ajibade, the exasperated secretary of the Ereko District Traders.77 The Daily Service put Jaguda boys into a national context as being a threat to the colonial government in terms of law and order across the whole of Nigeria: “The extraordinary proceedings reported to be taking place every evening at the Ereko meat stalls are definitely a disgrace to the capital of Nigeria and a challenge to constituted authority . . . to relieve the poor helpless people of so grave a menace to their limbs and property in the very heart of Lagos.”78 In response to such crimes, the police tried hard to get control of the situation: for example, half of the ten reported cases of stealing from Ereko Market in 1941 resulted in arrests. Putting specially selected constables on the beat of the most affected areas of the island, one local police chief perceived the jaguda threat in terms of anticitizenry, societal crime that demanded the full assistance of the law-abiding majority of Lagosians to eradicate.79 The police rounded up Jaguda boys, but many that were hauled before the courts on various offenses had no parents or guardians. This lack of roots negated the belief of the colonialists and Native Authority that the simple solution to juvenile delinquency in the capital involved the repatriation of offenders back to their home areas.80

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Furthermore, banishment schemes operating in other towns and cities in western Nigeria meant merely a swapping of Jaguda personnel among themselves without really dealing with the recurring phenomenon in any meaningful way. In 1936, and in subsequent waves of repatriation, Lagos received pickpockets expelled from Ibadan, one hundred miles to the north. The tactic of banishment proved a parochial strategy, merely shifting the base from which Jaguda boys operated.81

Boma Boys At about the same time as Jaguda boys, another set of juvenile delinquents began adding to the negative image of Lagos Island: touts or Boma boys. Using 1940 as a not untypical year for Boma boy activity, a litany of muggings and assaults illustrates their hooliganism. Lasisi Baderu mugged a young girl along Davies Street/Marina by tripping her and then ran off; the girl’s father caught Baderu and handed him over to the police. But Baderu struggled, knocked down one policeman, and bit his hand while tearing another’s shorts. Records show that twenty-nine Boma boys congregated opposite the French Company’s premises on the Marina and rained stones on the police. Backed up with reinforcements, the police brought Baderu and seven others to court, where they were convicted of being rogues and vagabonds with no visible means of support.82 Yet within a few months, at least one of them, Salawu Alabi, was back in trouble again after stealing a watch, spectacles, and a onepound note from a European sailor at the Royal Hotel.83 Boma boys became “a constant source of menace to sailors,” or “John Bulls” as Bomas called them: “Without any kind of shame or decency like vultures they batten on our visitors in the hope of getting something off them. Their methods are usually direct solicitations but at times they simply follow and follow and follow until even the most patient man is gravely tempted to take the law into his own hands.”84 One October afternoon in 1940, a European sailor requested Police Constable Lawrence Ukueashu to stop a “sturdy young man” called Thompson from bothering him. Thompson then assaulted Ukueashu at the junction of Williams and Broad Streets. Having two previous convictions for assault and having spent two months in jail, Thompson stoically told the magistrate: “I have gone to prison before and I do not mind going again now.”85 Within a week, Boma boy Ladipo Ajose assaulted a policeman while being arrested for boarding a ship without a permit; Ajose had three previous convictions for assault.86 The next month, thirty Boma boys standing opposite the Cathedral Church of Christ looking at a warship in port refused to disperse

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when the police ordered them to. Six of them were jailed for one month as an example to the others.87 It is claimed Boma boys were repatriated Nigerian stowaways from Freetown, in Sierra Leone, where “bom” meant to beg.88 “When stowaways from Nigeria, who had mixed with the disreputable ‘Boma Boys’ in Freetown, returned to Lagos,” they settled along the Marina, where they came into contact with schoolboys sent home for nonpayment of their fees.89 Boma boys treated them to glamorous stories that fired their imaginations; ambition to see “life” abroad was usually all that was required for entrapment. The proposition was that any schoolboy who could find some money would be introduced to someone on board a ship who would take them to Europe or America as a stowaway. With Elder Dempster recruiting seamen in mid-1941, Boma boys seized the opportunity to dupe schoolboys out of money on the promise of jobs onboard.90 Youngsters who parted with their school fees only to discover they had been deceived became afraid to go home and face punishment, and thus they too began to loiter about, gradually degenerating into Boma boys themselves. A distraught father told of the “social menace” afflicting his twelve-year-old son who played truant, took to the Marina, and found “favours with sailors.”91 When no ships were in harbor, Boma boys took to gambling on the sandy patch on the Marina in front of the Kingsway Store. When ships docked, they sprang into action—“cheeky ragamuffins who force their loathsome services on seamen and voyaging tourists at the marina.”92 Boma boys filled a necessary economic function: proprietors of hotels and bars wanted hard-drinking, free-spending customers, and sailors needed guides. According to a contemporary account in the African Mirror, Boma boys would guide many unwary sailors to brothels, “sordid and disreputable places, and when the victims are drunk they ‘bomb’ them by relieving them of what money they have in their pockets.”93 These cases became commonplace when World War II transformed Lagos into a key air and sea stopover base for the Allies.94 With Lagos being the only part of Nigeria visited by most, the “scums and dregs of society” left bitter memories for visitors and hosts alike.95 Fighting for an Allied victory, Nigerians felt personally and communally humiliated and deeply wounded in their sense of national and racial pride by the reality behind such characterizations as this: “The average sailor must leave Lagos with the impression that Nigeria is full of a lot of ‘Niggers’, whose life is spent in prostitution, touting for brothels and molesting strangers.”96 Colonial authorities questioned youths who slept outdoors under Carter Bridge, in marketplaces, along the Marina, or in the shelter of

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public buildings, and from the data gained they were able to chart the evolution of juvenile vagrancy and Boma boy delinquency. There was a division by age. Those under twelve years old were orphans, truants, runaways, stranded children, and those brought to Lagos by adults for the express purpose of being trained as thieves. Often in poor physical condition, they lived by begging and petty theft. One young vagrant found sleeping rough on the Marina was ten-year-old Saibu Yesufu, “grimy with dirt” and with an ulcer on one leg. With his father dead, a motor driver called Sadiku had kidnapped him from Lokoja without his mother’s knowledge and brought him to Lagos as a servant in 1938. Sadiku then left Lagos; Yesufu knew no one else in the city. With no schooling, he wandered, begged, and carried loads of goods.97 Such boys were ready recruits to the more hardened types of juvenile delinquents. The Green Triangle Hostel at Yaba, which opened in May 1942 to house twenty-three destitute street children, was a voluntary private attempt at reducing the numbers of youth on the streets of Lagos. One of the first boys to be picked up was “BJ,” who, with his mother dead, had suffered beatings from his father.98 Yet, over twenty years later, small boys were still found outside major hotels and places of entertainment offering their services as attendants.99 Juveniles over twelve years of age fell into three categories. First, there were those boys who continued a vagrant existence: destitute on the streets, living hand-to-mouth, doing casual work, with no place of abode.100 Often uneducated, they were unable to extricate themselves from their difficult position. Some returned home; some of necessity became thieves. Fourteen-year-old James Obasike fit the bill: originally from Benin City, he came to Lagos with his brother, but when the latter left James became a casual carrier, sleeping at Ebute Metta wharf.101 Second, there were vagrant boys living off criminal activity. After several convictions for petty theft and pickpocketing, these delinquents gave up hope and accepted themselves as social outcasts. For example, Yesufu Tijani, a fifteen-year-old Muslim youth, arrived in Lagos, and in six years he had drifted from hooliganism and vagrancy to the unlawful possession of stolen goods as he fell in with Boma boys. Third, there were Boma boys who acted as pimps for brothels and who had their own distinct delinquent life cycle, beginning as casual guides without an arrangement with a particular house. Without the experience to make the work very remunerative, they still slept outside and led a meager existence. Justin (alias Ladipo) Phillip, aged sixteen, originally from Abeokuta, was reportedly “a simple, unsophisticated fellow, living a part vagrant life and part respectable. He has not yet deteriorated [to] the brazen manner of the

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Boma.”102 Felix Bolaji, a sixteen-year-old Lagosian schooled up to Standard 4 and with a good command of English, displayed the characteristics of the next stage of Boma boy development: “When he becomes more experienced and by his glib tongue and polite manner can get more customers he lives in a house, dresses well and feeds well. He may earn up to two pounds a month. He probably has a definite arrangement with special harlots or particular houses.”103 A caveat to this straight path to a delinquent life must be stated. Many Boma boys were not initially inclined to commit crimes; guiding sailors was a convenient means of livelihood, particularly for those who had reached a high standard of elementary education. They were ashamed of the work but regarded it as the only means of supporting themselves.104 The limited opportunities to escape from poverty and homelessness took their toll on older Boma boys, however, forcing them to take charge of groups of younger boys and pimp for prostitutes. Bomas worked on a percentage basis as a partner in an organized sex trade ring. Jack Morris (alias R. Ayo), an eighteen- to twenty-year-old Lagosian living at 7 Porto Novo Market Street with a prostitute, fits this final Boma boy role: after leaving home, he made no real attempt to get work, but lived “a “Gentleman’s life . . . a sophisticated cynical young fellow . . immoral.”105 The nature of Boma boy juvenile delinquency can be seen in “the sorry spectacle” of Sant Anna Court in July 1943 following a police raid the previous night.106 Of the seventy-three boys arrested, twenty-five were under fifteen years of age. Of known cases, the magistrate dealt with ten of loitering around hotels and street corners, two of disorderly behavior in public, a dozen of guiding Europeans to brothels, and one of stealing money. Five cases were acquitted and twenty birched.107 With the police waging “a war with increasing intensity” against Boma boys, the colonial government established youth clubs and a remand home, juvenile court, probation services, and an Approved School that provided a model for the rest of tropical Africa.108 The African Advertiser newspaper disagreed with these moves: because Boma boys had passed the reformatory stage, there was need for a “law to drive it underground, then the rascally attractiveness of the cult shall be lost to the external world.”109 The Lagos Town Council also said that the time was ripe for drastic action against the Boma boys.110 Under the title “Clearing the Scum,” a Nigerian Daily Times editorial saw a pressing need to have legal guides for visiting seamen and tourists.111 So the Unlicensed Guides (Prohibition) Ordinance of February 1941 aimed “to control [the] reprehensible activities of Boma Boys” by demanding that those wishing to guide visitors around Lagos needed to carry a license and wear an

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armlet.112 Yet, given the time and effort involved in bringing them to court, Boma boys continued their activities: “We have not seen the slightest sign that the ‘Boma Boys’ menace has, in any way, slackened. Rather, it would appear that the ‘Boys’ have been going from strength to strength as anyone would confirm who happens to move about in the night. When the bill was first passed, the ‘Specials’ launched a ‘blitzkrieg’ against these undesirables, but their defences were impregnable and they have beaten off the invaders.”113 As immigrants flocked to Lagos in search of jobs during the war, the population swelled, but then peacetime demobilization added to the heavy stream of job seekers, creating an unprecedented level of unemployment in the city. With basic foodstuffs in short supply and increasingly priced beyond meager incomes, more and more desperate youths resorted to crime.114

Cowboys Acculturation was responsible for the next wave of juvenile delinquency as youth took their lead from Hollywood films: “American gangsterism and mannerism has been imported to this country mainly through the medium of cinemas.”115 There were many cinemas on Lagos Island, with the Capitol, Casino, Corona, Regal, Rex, Rialto, and Royal being among the largest. “Dressed fantastically in cowboy garbs” of distinctive neck scarves and “William Boyd” black hats, gangs of Cowboys sprang up across Lagos [see Figure 2].116 Although in existence for a number of years, the late 1940s and early 1950s saw a sharp rise in their membership and delinquency: “Cowboys clad themselves in cowboy’s dresses, armed themselves with horse whips, cudgels and sticks, and some dangerous weapons during Xmas and New Year festivities, and parade the township with their banners and flags singing native songs and when any one comes on their way he will be whipped, beaten and cudgelled.”117

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Figure 13.3. Cowboy drawing

Source: O. Balogun, “Christmas at Aba in the early 1950s,” Nigeria Magazine 101 (July–Sept. 1969).

A band of Cowboys attacked a boy aged fifteen at Lafiagi so ferociously that his leg had to be amputated. The guilty Cowboys received terms of imprisonment at Sant Anna Court.118 In another case, four Cowboys stole £46 from passengers of a car after beating the driver unconscious.119 The “Ago-Egba Cow Boys” spent their Sunday evenings disturbing girls, while a gang of four Cowboys fought a procession of Egungun masqueraders, flogging Albert Chiejuma to unconsciousness and tearing his clothes.120 Perversely, at the southern end of Victoria Island on the other side of the city, a group of Cowboys in full dress, brandishing weapons, posed for a national newspaper on Bar Beach in 1949.121 Around this time, the thousand-strong Association of Nigeria Cowboys, which was made up of twenty clubs, declared, “We are no more ruffians.”122 Yet, the police intervened later on against the so-called Nigerian National Body Guard, which was composed of such gangs as the “Deserts,” “Forest Rangers,” “Holy Cowboys,” and “Tornadoes.”123 American influences affected the youth culture of Lagos Island in another disturbing way. There was an increasing tendency to consume

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alcohol among youth: “The number of boys in their teens found in night clubs is alarming. Every night children join groups of hooligans in flashy American ties and ‘sixteen bottom’ trousers, roaming from one public house to another and organising most of the free fights for which some Lagos public houses are already notorious. It is degenerating for children to make public houses their playgrounds.”124 The Daily Times laced its call for parental restraint in nationalist tones: “Drunken and morally degenerate boys cannot help in building the new and better Nigeria about which we hear so much.”125 There was an urgent need to get more policewomen assigned to the Juvenile Center and to learn the home addresses of the accused and immediately contact parents. The authorities hoped parents would lessen the pressure for formal prosecution of juveniles, and thus ease jail overcrowding; for example, those detained in Lagos Central Police Station in the early 1960s were “crowded like sardines.”126 Yet overcrowding was not confined to those inside the station: sixty-one people slept outside, along Broad Street from the UTC (United Trading Company) store to Martins Street.127

Conclusion In focusing on the various types of male juvenile delinquents on Lagos Island during colonial times, this chapter has examined the urban experience of male youths who participated in criminal activities. Through explorations of street life, vagrancy, criminality, and public reactions, we have viewed juvenile delinquents as members of a distinct and vigorous culture who had a part in the making of their own history. A great deal of this slice of urban life remains obscure, standing in shadow rather than light, but enough is known to permit a description of their deviant ways, an assessment of their characteristic patterns of behavior, and an interpretation of their changing experience over time. Cycles of male delinquents, with different labels and modes of operation, can be traced through the colonial period to their contemporary designation as “Area boys.” Contrary to Iliffe’s view that juvenile delinquency arose when the colonial government employed welfare officers in the mid-1940s, I contend that juvenile delinquents had already been firmly established in the lower rungs of the Lagos social order well before then.128 Labeling theory usefully brings out the interaction between juveniles and “the agents of social control,” such as the police, courts, and citizenry.129 Some youths graduated from small-scale pocket picking to much more significant larcenies like mugging. The precise form their crimes took was

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shaped by such factors as the opportunities for property theft offered by the local economy, the vigilance with which the authorities were willing or able to enforce property law, and the absence of community traditions that condemned this type of illegal activity.130 Lagos had had many youth who were well integrated into the local social and economic fabric, but as rural youth immigrated, that fabric frayed for locals and newcomers alike—and some male youth found themselves excluded, without parental control, and subject to the laws of the street. Anxious to remove the negative image citizens and visitors had of Lagos, but not able to control and reform these thieving juvenile citizens of the capital of Nigeria, colonial and indigenous administrations sought simple short-term solutions like banishment. Whether aimed at prevention (picking vulnerable youngsters off the streets) or cure (by institutional rehabilitation), a wide spectrum of responses to juvenile delinquency were tried: from ignoring the problem to tackling it; from citizen’s arrests, beatings, and fines to the birch, repatriation, and jail. Lagos Island in the 1920 to 1960s was exciting, a space for expression for Lagosian youth—an age for rebelliousness and experimentation, and making themselves an at-risk population, subject to juvenile friendships and rivalries, as well as adult authority. The place proved an invigorating, fertile ground for the planting, growth, and restocking of a deviant urban youth culture. Using environmental circumstances to explain juvenile delinquency has a great deal of merit because the moral and physical aspects of Lagos Island’s urban environment—with its bright shops and wealthy, successful citizens passing through their neighborhoods— inevitably impacted the city’s impressionable youth: “Lagos at the present time is especially full of temptations for boys who are destitute.”131 Young boys drifted into the orbits of other boys in similar predicaments of poverty. Group comradeship formed; protection was gained; and they survived. Lucrative thieving, pickpocketing, mugging, and touting opportunities were seized in the rapidly developing urban economy of colonial Lagos. The island became the home for many types of juvenile delinquents; all the enablers were there: the frustrations, the hopes, glimpses of what life could be, the weapons.132 Dedicated to the pursuit of gain, but beset by overcrowding, unemployment, and a night life riddled with prostitution, Lagos was enmeshed in a battle of individualism against the traditional values of communal African society.133 Both social disorganization and anomie offer explanations of delinquency that address the issue of large numbers of juveniles committing offenses, often in group contexts and in accordance with their positions in the community and in society. Like other sections of the urban

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poor, juvenile delinquents were not marginal to urban society, but rather were well integrated as their comradeship and gang loyalty illustrate. Alienated from and less attached to society and its representatives, juvenile delinquents perpetrated societal crimes against the citizenry that only the full assistance of the law-abiding majority could eradicate.134 It is no coincidence that marriage—and by implication, respectability— generally ended a juvenile’s delinquency.135 The offenses of juvenile delinquents were a blend of mischievous acquisitiveness dictated by the need to survive, opportunities presented on the city streets, and premeditated lawlessness based on threatened and actual violence. Streetwise male youths thus enacted the role of a deviant group in the process of urbanization, terrorizing citizens on the streets of Lagos.

Notes A version of this chapter has been previously published as: Simon Heap, “‘Their Days Are Spent in Gambling and Loafing, Pimping for Prostitutes, and Picking Pockets’: Male Juvenile Delinquents on Lagos Island, 1920s–60s,” Journal of Family History 35, no. 1 (2010): 48–70. Kind permission granted by SAGE Journal for reuse in this publication. 1 Donald Faulkner, Social Welfare and Juvenile Delinquency in Lagos, Nigeria (London: Howard League for Penal Reform, 1950), 1, quoted in John Iliffe, The African Poor: A History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 188. In his book Honour in African History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), Professor Iliffe says, “The history of urban youth has also been neglected . . . outside South Africa” (368). 2 Wole Soyinka, The Beatification of Area Boy: A Lagosian Kaleidoscope (London: Methuen, 1995), 85, 102. 3 “The Scourge Called ‘Area Boys,’” Guardian [Lagos], April 10, 1993, 7; “Sweep Touts off the Roads,” National Concord, January 21, 1997, 21; “The Extortion Albatross,” Daily Champion, January 24, 1997, 9; “The Area Boys Phenomenon,” Guardian on Sunday, August 1, 1993, B6; Jinmi Adisa, “Urban Violence in Lagos,” in Urban Violence in Africa, ed. Eghosa E. Osaghae et al. (Ibadan: IFRA [Institut Français de Recherche en Afrique], 1994), 160–61; Bernard E. Owumi, “New Trends and Attitudes toward Crime: The Phenomenon of Area Boys in Nigeria,” in Urban Management and Urban Violence in Africa, vol. 2, ed. Isaac O. Albert (Ibadan: IFRA, 1994), 217–22; Tunde Agbola, The Architecture of Fear: Urban Design and Construction Response to Urban Violence in Lagos, Nigeria (Ibadan: IFRA, 1997). 4 “In the Den of Hoodlums,” Post Express, January 5, 1997, 12, 21. 5 “Area Boys or SAP [structural adjustment program] Victims?” Weekly Sunray [Port Harcourt], May 16, 1993, 17.

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“Adeniji-Adele Exonerates ‘Area Boys,’” Evening Times [Lagos], April 29, 1993, 1; “‘Area Boys’ Go for Star’s Jugular,” Guardian, May 12, 2007. 7 “Police Arrest 200 ‘Area Boys,’” Guardian, January 8, 1993, 4; “Traders March on ‘Area Boys,’” Daily Times, April 7, 1993, 1, 4. 8 “LG [local government] Boss Seeks National Guard’s Help on ‘Area Boys,’” Daily Times, April 28, 1993, 40. 9 “The Scourge Called ‘Area Boys,’” Guardian, April 10, 1993, 7; Adisa, “Urban Violence in Lagos,” 161. See also Axel Klein, “Trapped in the Traffick: Growing Problems of Drug Consumption in Lagos,” Journal of Modern African Studies 32, no. 4 (1994): 657–77. 10 “‘Area Girls’ Cry for Help—We’re Dying,” Lagos Life, December 30, 1993– January 5, 1994, 6–7. “‘Boy’ was probably the English translation of the Yoruba word, ͕m͕, used to refer to many different relationships of subordination. It is sometimes impossible to tell exactly what type of relationship the word implies.” Kristin Mann, “The Rise of Taiwo Olowo: Law, Accumulation, and Mobility in Colonial Lagos,” in Law in Colonial Africa, ed. Richard Roberts and Kristin Mann (Oxford: James Currey, 1991), 103. “Boy” is used throughout the English- and French-speaking worlds (and probably elsewhere) to refer to servants, and in some cases, to black males of any age. 11 “Curbing the Menace of Area Boys,” Third Eye Daily [Ibadan], July 12, 1995, 9; “Nigeria’s Image Today,” West Africa, December 16–22, 1996, 1963–64; “Crime, Prostitution Reign Supreme,” Post Express [Lagos], January 4, 1997, 1–2; “The Reign of Pickpockets,” Sunday Champion [Lagos], January 12, 1997, M1–2. 12 Wuyi Omitoogun, “The Area Boys of Lagos,” in Urban Management and Urban Violence, 2:201–8; Wuyi Omitoogun, “Organised Street Violence: The Area Boys of Lagos,” in Cities under Siege: Urban Violence in South, Central, and West Africa, ed. Antoinette Loww and Simon Bekker (Durban: Indicator Press, 1996), 31–39; Timi Adewale, “The ‘Area Boys’ Phenomenon in Nigeria” (PhD diss., University of Essex, 2001). 13 Laurent Fourchard, “Urban Poverty, Urban Crime, and Crime Control: The Lagos and Ibadan Cases, 1929–45,” in African Urban Spaces in Historical Perspective, ed. Toyin Falola and Steven Salm (Rochester, NY: Rochester University Press, 2005), 291–319; Laurent Fourchard, “Lagos and the Invention of Juvenile Delinquency in Nigeria, 1920–60,” Journal of African History 47, no. 1 (2006): 115–37; Laurent Fourchard, “Les territoires de la criminalité à Lagos et à Ibadan depuis les années 1930,” Revue Tiers Monde 185 (2006): 95–111. 14 Stephen L. Humphries, Hooligans or Rebels? An Oral History of Working-Class Childhood and Youth, 1889–1939 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1981), 181; Simon Heap, “Pickpocketing in Ibadan, 1930–1960,” Urban History 25, no. 3 (1997): 324–43. See also Andrew Burton, “Urchins, Loafers, and the Cult of the Cowboy: Urbanisation and Delinquency in Dar es Salaam,” Journal of African History 42, no. 2 (2001): 199–216; Andrew Burton, African Underclass: Urbanisation, Crime, and Colonial Order in Dar es Salaam (Oxford: James Currey, 2005), 175–79, 198–200.

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15 This is not to suggest that deviancy is no older than the colonial era, although articles built around this premise include Tekena N. Tamuno, “Crime and Society in Pre-colonial Nigeria,” and Omafume F. Onoge, “Social Conflicts and Crime Control in Colonial Nigeria,” both in Policing Nigeria: Past, Present, and Future, ed. Tekena Tamuno et al. (Lagos: Malthouse Press, 1993), 124–50, 151–86. 16 Nigeria since Independence: The First Twenty-five Years, 10 vols. (Ibadan: Heinemann Educational Publishers, 1989), esp. vol. 1: The Society, ed. Yusuf Bala Usman. 17 Marshall B. Clinard and Daniel J. Abbott, Crime in Developing Countries: A Comparative Perspective (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1973), 84–89; Josef Gugler and William G. Flanagan, Urbanization and Social Change in West Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 34–35. 18 National Archives, Ibadan (hereafter cited as NAI), Annual Report of the Police Magistrate, Lagos (1936), 2. In Mr B Goes to Lagos (Port Harcourt: Saros International Publishers, 1989), Ken Saro-Wiwa tells of Basi traveling to Lagos in a Dick Whittington–type tale of hope. Though without money, he finds someone even worse off than himself having lived under a bridge for the previous three months. 19 NAI, Commissioner of the Colony’s Office, Lagos (hereafter cited as COMCOL) 1/2947, Minute by Simeon J. Bankole-Wright, Social Welfare Officer, Lagos, May 15, 1944. 20 Alan Mayne, The Imagined Slum: Newspaper Representation in Three Cities, 1870–1914 (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1993), 1–13. 21 Eric J. Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movement in the 19th and 20th Centuries (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1959), 3, 13; Banditry and Social Protest in Africa, ed. Donald Crummey (London: James Currey, 1986). See also Toyin Falola, “Theft in Colonial Southwestern Nigeria,” Africa [Instituto Italiano per l’Africa] 50, no. 1 (1995): 1– 24. 22 Humphries, Hooligans or Rebels?, 151, 176–78. 23 Pauline H. Baker, Urbanization and Political Change: The Politics of Lagos, 1917–1967 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974); Agboola A. Onikoyi, The History of Lagos (Lagos: Toklast, 1975); Augustus A. B. Aderibigbe, ed., Lagos: The Development of an African City (Lagos: Longman, 1975); Takiu Folami, A History of Lagos, Nigeria: The Shaping of an African City (Smithtown, NY: Exposition Press, 1982); Olanrewaju J. Fapohunda, The Informal Sector of Lagos (Ibadan: University of Ibadan Press, 1985); Sandra T. Barnes, Patrons and Power: Creating a Political Community in Metropolitan Lagos (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1986); Ade Adefuye, Babatunde Agiri, and Jide Osuntokun, eds., History of the People of Lagos State (Lagos: Lantern Books, 1987); Kristin Mann, Marrying Well: Marriage, Status, and Social Change among the Educated Elite in Colonial Lagos (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); Remi Olajumoke, The Spring of a Monarch: The Epic Struggle of King Adeyinka Oyekan II of Lagos (Lagos: Lawebod Nigeria, 1990); Margaret Peil,

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Lagos: The City Is the People (London: Belhaven, 1991); Abiola D. AlegbedeFernandez, Lagos: A Legacy of Honour (Ibadan: Spectrum Books, 1992); Rina Okonkwo, Protest Movements in Lagos, 1908–1930 (Lampeter, UK: Edwin Mellen Press, 1995); A. Sommerlad, Lagos Island: A Short History (Lagos: British High Commission, 1998); Olubayo Okelola, History of Administration of Lagos State (Lagos: Lichfield Nigeria Limited, 2001); Toyin Falola and Steven J. Salm, Nigerian Cities (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2004); Liora Bigon, “Tracking Ethno-Cultural Differences: The Lagos Steam Tramway, 1902–1933,” Journal of Historical Geography 33, no. 3 (2007): 596–618; Kristin Mann, Slavery and the Birth of an African City: Lagos, 1760–1900 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007). 24 Alison Izzett, “The Fears and Anxieties of Delinquent Yoruba Children,” Odu 1 (1955): 26–34; Alison Izzett, “The Yoruba Young Delinquent in Lagos, Nigeria” (BLitt thesis, University of Oxford, 1955); Peter C. W. Gutkind, “The Energy of Despair: Social Organization of the Unemployed in Two African Cities: Lagos and Nairobi, Parts I and II,” Civilisations 17 (1967): 186–214, 380–405; Patrick O. Ohadike, “Urbanization: Growth, Transitions, and Problems of a Premier West African City (Lagos, Nigeria),” Urban Affairs Quarterly 3, no. 4 (1968): 69–90; Olatunji Oloruntimehin, “The Role of Family Structure in the Development of Delinquent Behaviour among Juveniles in Lagos,” Nigerian Journal of Economic and Social Studies 12 (1970): 185–203; Anne Bamaisaye, “The Spatial Distribution of Juvenile Delinquency and Adult Crime in the City of Ibadan,” International Journal of Criminology and Peneology 2 (1974): 65–83; Obbi Ebbe, “Crime and Delinquency in Metropolitan Lagos: A Study of Crime and Delinquency Area Theory,” Social Forces 67, no. 3 (1989): 751–65; Jadesola A. Akande, “The Disposition of Juvenile Cases in an African Country,” International Review of Criminal Policy 39–40 (1990): 159–61; Muhammed T. Ladan, “Administration of Juvenile Justice in Nigeria: Institutional Treatment of Juvenile Offenders,” in Law, Justice, and the Nigerian Society: Essays in Honour of Hon. Justice Mohammed Bello, ed. Ignatius A. Ayua (Lagos: Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, 1995), 49–59; Selina S. Ekpo, Juvenile Delinquency in Nigeria (Uyo: Abbnny Educational Publishers, 1996); Murray Last, “Towards a Political History of Youth in Muslim Northern Nigeria, 1750–2000,” in Vanguards or Vandals: Youth Politics and Conflict in Africa, ed. Jon Abbink and Ineke van Kessell (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 37–54; Benjamin O. Olley, “Social and Health Behaviours in Youth on the Streets of Ibadan, Nigeria,” Child Abuse and Neglect 30 (2006): 271–82. 25 For histories of female juvenile delinquents in Lagos, so-called Area girls, see the following: M. Ekpo, Moruf L. Adelekan, Victor Inem, Ahamefula Agomoh, and A. Doherty, “Lagos ‘Area Boys and Girls’ in Rehabilitation: Their Substance Use and Psychosocial Profiles,” East African Medical Journal 72, no. 5 (1995): 311–16; Abosede George, “Gender and Juvenile Justice: Girl Hawkers in Lagos, Nigeria, 1926–1955” (PhD diss., Stanford University, 2006); Abosede George, “Feminist Activism and Class Politics: The Example of the Lagos Girl Hawker Project,” Women’s Studies Quarterly 35, nos. 3–4 (2007): 128–43.

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Olajumoke, Spring of a Monarch, 67. Akin Mabogunje, Urbanization in Nigeria (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1968), 308. 28 Nathaniel A. Fadipe, The Sociology of the Yoruba (Ibadan: University of Ibadan Press, 1970), 311; “Lagosians on Dits,” Lagos Weekly Record, March 22, 1913, 2, in Iliffe, African Poor, 3. 29 Christopher A. Sapara Williams, in “Southern Nigeria Legislative Council,” Southern Nigeria Government Gazette, June 14, 1911, 1093. 30 Mabogunje, Urbanization in Nigeria, 262, 267. 31 Akin Mabogunje, “Lagos: Nigeria’s Melting Pot,” Nigeria Magazine 69 (1961): 135; David A. Oyeleye, ed., Spatial Expansion and Concomitant Problems in the Lagos Metropolitan Area (Lagos: University of Lagos, 1981), 7; Liora Bigon, “Sanitation and Street Layout in Early Colonial Lagos: British and Indigenous Conceptions, 1851–1890,” Planning Perspectives 20, no. 3 (2005): 247–69. 32 Peil, Lagos, 24. 33 “Overcrowding in Lagos and the Spread of Pulmonary Tuberculosis,” Nigerian Pioneer, August 29, 1919, 1. 34 Ayodeji Olukoju, “Population Pressure, Housing, and Sanitation in Metropolitan Lagos, c. 1900–1939,” in Urban Transitions in Africa: Aspects of Urbanisation and Change in Lagos, ed. Kunle Lawal (Lagos: Pumark, 1994), 38. 35 Percy A. Talbot, The Peoples of Southern Nigeria, vol. 4 (London: Oxford University Press, 1926), 176–77; William R. Bascom, “Urbanization among the Yoruba,” American Journal of Sociology 60 (1955): 447–48; Mabogunje, Urbanization in Nigeria, 257; Ohadike, “Urbanization,” 72. 36 Peil, Lagos, 20. 37 Mabogunje, Urbanization in Nigeria, 280; Ayodeji Olukoju, “The Cost of Living in Lagos, 1914–1945,” in Africa’s Urban Past, ed. David M. Anderson and Richard Rathbone (Oxford: James Currey), 2000, 126–43. 38 Mabogunje, “Lagos,” 136. 39 Fapohunda, Informal Sector of Lagos, 5. 40 Federal Republic of Nigeria, Third National Development Plan, 1975–80, vol. 1 (Lagos: Federal Ministry of Economic Development, 1975), 385. 41 Baker, Urbanization and Political Change, 45. 42 Neville S. Miller, “The Beginnings of Modern Lagos,” Nigeria Magazine 69 (1961): 115; Sylvia Leith-Ross, Stepping Stones: Memoirs of Colonial Nigeria, 1907–1960 (London: Peter Owen, 1983), 83. 43 Mabogunje, “Lagos,” 153. 44 Miller, “Beginnings of Modern Lagos,” 118. 45 Mabogunje, Urbanization in Nigeria, 302. 46 Oberu Aribiah, “Social Aspects of Urban Housing in Lagos,” Lagos Notes and Records 3, no. 2 (1972): 40–49; Oberu Aribiah, “The Politics of Rehousing,” Lagos Notes and Records 5 (1974): 5; Kunle Akinsemoyin and Alan VaughanRichards, Building Lagos (Lagos: F and A Services, 1976). 47 Babatunde A. Williams and Annmarie H. Walsh, Urban Government for 27

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Metropolitan Lagos (New York: Praeger, 1968), 12. 48 NAI, Nigeria Annual Report (1931), 18. 49 Aribiah, “Social Aspects of Urban Housing,” 43. 50 Peter Marris, Family and Social Change in an African City: A Study of Rehousing in Lagos (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1961), 2, 11; Olukoju, “Population Pressure, Housing, and Sanitation,” 46. 51 “Hooliganism at Christmas, by J. O. O.,” Nigeria Police Magazine 2, no. 2 (1939): 63–64. 52 NAI, Annual Report of the Police Magistrate, Lagos (1927), 2. 53 “Hooliganism at Christmas,” 64; “Juvenile Offenders,” Nigerian Daily Times, June 22, 1929, 4. 54 Lisa Lindsay, “‘To Return to the Bosom of Their Fatherland’: Brazilian Immigrants in Nineteenth-Century Lagos,” Slavery and Abolition 15, no. 1 (1994): 22–50. 55 Mabogunje, “Lagos,” 136, 153; Antony B. Laotan, “Brazilian Influence on Lagos,” Nigeria Magazine 69 (1961): 165. In “The Cowboys: A Nigerian Acculturation Institution (ca. 1950),” History in Africa 28 (2001): 83–93, Paul E. H. Hair misreads “Alikali Boys” as early Cowboys with a history going back to the 1920s. 56 “Area Boys or SAP Victims?” 17. 57 “Hooliganism at Christmas,” 63. 58 “Rowdy Holiday Makers,” Nigerian Daily Telegraph, March 30, 1937, 4. 59 “Seasonal Hooligans,” West African Pilot, December 20, 1942, 2. 60 “The Coming Festive Season,” West African Pilot, November 27, 1940, 4. 61 NAI, Annual Report of the Police Magistrate, Lagos (1931–37); NAI, Annual Report of the Police Magistrate, Ebute Metta (1932–37). 62 NAI, Annual Report of the Police Magistrate, Lagos (1927), 2. 63 G. T. Roberts, “Juvenile Delinquency in West Africa,” West African Review 16 (1945): 39. 64 “Juvenile Offenders,” 4. 65 NAI, Chief Secretary’s Office, Lagos (hereafter cited as CSO), 1/32/72, Sir H. C. Clifford, Governor, Nigeria, to J. H. Thomas, Secretary of State for the Colonies, Britain, February 27, 1924. 66 “Lagos Police Courts,” West African Review 8 (1937): 6. 67 “Omo Jaguda l’Eko [Pickpockets in Lagos],” Yoruba News, September 20–27, 1938, 2–3; “Pickpockets in Lagos,” West African Pilot, August 13, 1940, 4; NAI, COMCOL, 1/2403, G. B. Williams, Commissioner of the Colony, to G. A. V. de Boissiere, Superintendent of Police, December 23, 1940; “Inside Stuff by ‘Zik’: Social Problems in Lagos (1),” West African Pilot, July 4, 1941, 2; Heap, “Pickpocketing in Ibadan,” 338–39. 68 “Robbers Increase in Number, by Big Man,” Daily Service, May 30, 1950, 4. 69 “Pickpockets’ Exploit at Idumagbo,” Nigerian Daily Times, September 7, 1940, 4; “The Underworld of Lagos,” Nigerian Daily Times, September 9, 1940, 4. Sango got his nickname from the Yoruba “god of thunder.”

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“Jaguda Boys,” African Advertiser, June 22, 1942, 2. “Hooliganism and Worse,” Nigerian Daily Times, November 6, 1940, 4. 72 “Pickpockets at Bus Stops,” by E. A. Jacobs, Lagos, letter to the editor, Daily Times, August 14, 1952, 2. J. N. Zarpas and Company started the first bus service in Lagos in 1929. 73 “Pocket Picking in Supreme Court,” Nigerian Daily Times, September 13, 1940, 7. 74 “Rogues and Vagabonds,” Nigerian Daily Times, June 21, 1940, 4. 75 “Professors and Undergraduates of Theft,” Daily Times, September 26, 1952, 5, 8. 76 NAI, Ikeja Divisional Office (hereafter cited as IKEDIV), 6/196, F. W. Carpenter, Acting District Officer, Ikeja, to C. T. Bailey, Acting Director of Prisons, May 3, 1937. 77 NAI, COMCOL, 1/2403, A. Ajibade, Secretary, Ereko District Traders, Lagos, to A. F. F. P. Newns, Commissioner of the Colony, and M. K. N. Collens, Commissioner of Police, August 21, 1942. 78 “Lawlessness at Ereko Market,” Daily Service, August 26, 1941, 4. 79 NAI, COMCOL, 1/2403, De Boissiere to Newns, September 16, 1941. 80 NAI, Ordinance no. 43 of 1933 to Prescribe the Powers and Duties of Native Authorities, clause 12 (1). 81 Heap, “Pickpocketing in Ibadan,” 339. 82 “‘Boma’ Boys and the Police,” Nigerian Daily Times, May 30, 1940, 10; “War against ‘Boma Boys,’” Nigerian Daily Times, May 31, 1940, 7. 83 “‘Boma Boy’ Who Robbed Seaman Receives 9 Months and 12 Months’ Police Supervision,” West African Pilot, October 28, 1940, 7. 84 “Hooliganism and Worse,” 4; “European Special Constables Arrest a Boma Boy and He Is Sentenced to Imprisonment for a Month,” West African Pilot, August 10, 1940, 7. 85 “‘Boma Boy’ Dealt Police Constable Nasty Blows,” African Mirror, July 13, 1940, 4; “Boma Boy Who Beat Police Officer Sentenced by Magistrate,” African Mirror, July 16, 1940, 4; “‘Boma Boy’ Sent to Prison,” Nigerian Daily Times, July 17, 1940, 6. 86 “Another ‘Boma Boy’ Gaoled,” Nigerian Daily Times, July 23, 1940, 3. 87 “Six ‘Boma Boys’ Sentenced by Magistrate,” Nigerian Daily Times, November 23, 1940, 1, 6; “Six Boma Boys Are Arraigned for Idling and Are Fined 40s or One Month,” West African Pilot, November 26, 1940, 3. 88 “Boma Boys,” West African Pilot, November 16, 1940, 4. One observer claims the term has its roots in “the demobilised soldiers who had been exposed to cannabis in India, known as ‘Burma boys’, who came back from their service at the end of the Second World War jobless, resorted to extortion activities and later trained other younger ones for this purpose.” Seth Akintoye, “Doctors Record High HIV Infection among ‘Area Boys,’” Guardian on Sunday, April 25, 1999. 89 “Major A. Jones Exhaustively Discusses ‘Boma Boy’ Problem,” West African Pilot, August 13, 1940, 1, 4. 71

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90 “Deadly Facts, by ‘Wizard,’” African Mirror, June 20, 1940, 5; “Inside Stuff by ‘Zik’,” 2. 91 A Father, “Sailors and ‘Boma Boys,’” West African Pilot, August 21, 1940, 5. 92 “The Underworld of Lagos,” Nigerian Daily Times, September 9, 1940, 4. 93 “The ‘Boma Boy’ Problem,” African Mirror, August 14, 1940, 2. In the imperial capital’s dockland, “seamen were prey to a seamy trade known generally as ‘crimping’—the enticing of sailors into cheap lodging houses, getting them drunk and involved in prostitution.” Gavin Weightman, London River: The Thames Story (London: Trafalgar Square, 1990), 32. 9494 Gabriel O. Olusanya, The Second World War and Politics in Nigeria, 1939– 1953 (Lagos: Evans, 1973), 48; Iliffe, Honour in African History, 303. 95 “Guides for Visiting Sailors,” by D. D. Ola, letter to the editor, Nigerian Daily Times, November 20, 1940, 2. 96 “Guides for Visiting Sailors,” by Olatunji Otusanya, letter to the editor, Daily Service, November 25, 1940, 9. According to a report a decade later, the situation had not improved, as “unscrupulous men take the visitors to secluded places, rough-handle them and later rob them.” “Unlicensed Guides,” Daily Times, October 12, 1951, 5. 97 NAI, COMCOL, 1/2471, Faulkner, Assistant Superintendent of Prisons, and H. J. Savory, Education Officer, “Juvenile Delinquency in Lagos,” July 2, 1941, appendix A. 98 NAI, COMCOL, 1/2471, Williams to C. C. Woolley, Chief Secretary to the Government, July 23, 1941; “Reader Discusses Juvenile Delinquents in Lagos Town,” West African Pilot, August 6, 1942, 1, 3; Faulkner, Social Welfare and Juvenile Delinquency, 1, 4. 99 “Delinquent Boys,” by F. A. Butcher, Lagos, letter to the editor, Daily Times, January 28, 1963, 12. 100 Major A. Jones, “Boma Boys Problem,” West African Pilot, January 13, 1941, 2. 101 NAI, COMCOL, 1/2471, Faulkner and Savory, “Juvenile Delinquency in Lagos,” appendix B. 102 Ibid., appendix C. 103 Ibid., appendix D. 104 Ibid., appendix E. 105 Jones, “Boma Boys Problem,” 2; NAI, COMCOL, 1/2471, Faulkner and Savory, “Juvenile Delinquency in Lagos,” 4. 106 NAI, COMCOL, 1/2471, Faulkner and Savory, “Juvenile Delinquency in Lagos,” appendix F. 107 NAI, COMCOL, 1/2471, Minute by Bankole-Wright, July 12, 1943. 108 “Police Superintendent and ‘Boma Boys,’” Nigerian Daily Times, June 17, 1940, 5; Iliffe, African Poor, 187; “The ‘Boma Boy’ Problem,” African Mirror, August 15, 1940, 2. 109 “Boma Boys and the Law,” African Advertiser, August 16, 1940, 2. 110 NAI, CSO, 26/37457, Lagos Town Council Resolution, August 9, 1940.

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“Clearing the Scum,” Nigerian Daily Times, November 21, 1940, 4. NAI, Ordinance no. 30 of 1941 to Prohibit Unlicensed Persons Acting as Guides and to Control the Activities of Certain Other Persons. 113 “Unlicensed Guides Bill,” West African Pilot, September 22, 1941, 2. 114 Olusanya, Second World War and Politics, 52, 63; Peil, Lagos, 34. 115 “Our Children in Night Clubs,” by Ero, Lagos, letter to the editor, Daily Times, April 1, 1952, 2. See also Phyllis M. Martin, Leisure and Society in Colonial Brazzaville (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 88. 116 NAI, COMCOL, 1/248/S.170, Minute by E. D. W. Morgan, Commissioner of the Colony’s Office, November 24, 1950; “Police Quiz the Guard,” Daily Times, January 7, 1963, 1. 117 NAI, COMCOL, 1/2403, Inspector-General of Police versus O. David, K. Oneman, A. Jonathan, A. Labayiwa, Lagos Magistrate’s Court, June 1, 1953. 118 Ibid. 119 “4 ‘Cowboys’ and a Car,” Daily Times, January 7, 1963, 16. 120 “Ago-Egba ‘Cow Boys’ Disturbances,” by “Affected,” letter to the editor, Daily Times, January 21, 1949, 5; NAI, COMCOL, 1/2403, Inspector-General of Police versus O. David et al., June 1, 1953. 121 “A Day at the Victoria [Bar] Beach,” Daily Times, April 28, 1949, 7. 122 NAI, COMCOL, 1/248/S.170, G. Osaji, General-Secretary, Association of Nigeria Cowboys, to Morgan, November 23, 1950. 123 “Police Quiz the Guard,” 1. 124 “Children at Night Clubs,” Daily Times, March 25, 1952, 5. 125 Ibid. 126 “This Is the Height of Callousness,” Daily Times, December 4, 1963, 5. 127 Tai Solarin, “The Tramps of Lagos,” Daily Times, December 14, 1963, 4. 128 Iliffe, African Poor, 185. 129 Donald J. Shoemaker, Theories of Delinquency (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 192. 130 Humphries, Hooligans or Rebels?, 156. 131 NAI, Ibadan Divisional Office, 1/1/1665, Bankole-Wright to G. J. Gorman, Divisional Officer, Ibadan, September 24, 1942. 132 Albert et al., eds., Urban Management and Urban Violence. 133 “Environmental Conditions Also Affect Juvenile Delinquents,” West African Pilot, July 31, 1943, 2. See also Michael Crowder, West Africa under Colonial Rule (London: Hutchinson, 1968), 341; Alan Mayne, “A Just War: The Language of Slum Representation in Twentieth-century Australia,” Journal of Urban History 22, no. 1 (1995): 91–93. 134 Shoemaker, Theories of Delinquency, 135–36, 158, 257–58. 135 Iliffe, Honour in African History, 305. 112

CHAPTER FOURTEEN CRIME, MURDER, AND THE RELIGIOUS BODY IN LATE-COLONIAL LAGOS PAUL OSIFODUNRIN

On January 3, 1953, a popular Muslim cleric named Alfa Bisiriyu Apalara and some of his followers arrived at the junction of Jebba and Tapa Streets in Oko-Baba, Ebute-Metta, the chosen venue for his very popular crusade scheduled for 8:00 p.m. With time, people began to gather. It was estimated that there were about a thousand people in the audience that night. Apalara’s sermon began in earnest, and as usual, the denigration of the Yoruba religious cults commenced. A lot of penetrating questions were put to Apalara on the credibility of ifa and some other ageold practices of traditional worshippers in Yorubaland. In particular, someone asked if ifa could cure barrenness—a notion Apalara found repulsive. Needless to say, people were engrossed in the audacious and persuasive discussion that the cleric’s sermon elicited. Suddenly, the serene atmosphere of the crusade was broken as the dreaded but familiar bellow of the Oro, a corporate ancestral cult of the Yoruba renowned for executing criminals in the precolonial period, filled the air. Expectedly, the gathering was thrown into confusion as people ran for safety upon hearing “Oro baba o” (meaning “Oro is supreme”). In the stampede that followed, Apalara was abducted. That was the last time he was seen in public; he was killed under unknown circumstances, and his body was never recovered.1

Murder in Sub-Saharan Africa Murder in sub-Saharan Africa has been the subject of an appreciable number of scholarly works. One such effort is Paul Bohannan’s edited volume, the objective of which was to understand if Africans kill themselves in the same way and for the same reasons as Americans and

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Europeans, using seven African communities as case studies. In 1960, their findings were published as a collection of essays on African homicide and suicide.2 Although all but one of the communities studied was located in Central or East Africa, the work is significant and instructive here in that it outlines the nature of African homicide during the colonial period through the examination of more than five hundred murder cases that were reported in the selected communities.3 Three classes of homicide emerged from the case studies. The first two—accidental and institutionalized homicide—were traditionally considered nonculpable homicides. Accidental homicide was most often the result of communal hunting among the Tiv and of wife-capturing among the Luo.4 Institutionalized homicide was associated with the killing of an adulterous wife or a thief.5 The execution of criminals was understandably a common practice in precolonial Africa. It was practiced in Dahomey, Ashanti, and even among the Yoruba. A recent study has shown that one reason why Lagos became the preferred destination of thieves fleeing from the hinterland in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was that they were treated less harshly in the colony than in the interior, where they risked execution if caught.6 Ruth Watson has also shown in her study of murder and politics in Ibadan how an attempt to continue the traditional practice of killing thieves by some Ibadan chiefs incurred the wrath of the new colonial administration in 1902.7 Indeed, many of those who killed accidentally or deliberately because such killings were sanctioned by their communities were arrested and prosecuted by the British colonial administration. They typically got away with light sentences; however, as their offenses were commuted to manslaughter because in most cases premeditated violence could not be proved. The killing of alleged witches by some local institutions, acting extrajudicially in the selected communities, also constituted an institutionalized homicide. This should not be surprising even as late as the twenty-first century, as witch killing and witchcraft accusations are on the increase in many African countries. Two explanations can be adduced for this development: general economic downturn and undying sociocultural beliefs. A recent survey conducted by Edward Miguel in Tanzania shows a strong relationship between poverty and witch-killing in that country. According to her, more witches are hunted down in periods of extreme weather when either inadequate rainfall or flooding due to heavy rains results in bad harvests that invariably cause income shocks and economic misfortune.8 The third category of homicide identified in the study by Bohannan and his collaborators is essentially culpable and the penalty was

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death by hanging. It was often the result of domestic quarrels or disputes over land. This was the most prevalent form of homicide, and it was found to have occurred predominantly in domestic institutions—that is, within family and kinship settings where the victims were children, spouses, fathers in some cases, brothers, mothers, and kinsmen.9 Although the premise for the above categorization of African homicide was limited and not truly representative of the homicide situation in the continent even in 1960, Bohannan and his colleagues surely made a significant contribution to what was until then a neglected theme. Interestingly, the family, as the study contends, remains among the most fertile ground for culpable homicide in Africa.10 Recent studies of homicide in colonial Africa, however, have explored other forms of culpable homicide. While Bohannan believes that ritual killing in the context of human sacrifice for societal ends—what Ivor Wilks calls “mortuary slaying”11—was rare in colonial Africa, we now know that ritualistic killing in the context of “medicine murder” was common, and constituted one of the areas in which the British colonial administration exercised its power of life and death over colonial subjects in the 1940s and 1950s. Two studies in British colonial Africa lend credence to this view: Colin Murray and Peter Sanders’s examination of medicine murder in Basutoland (modern Lesotho), and a study of chieftaincy disputes and ritual murder in Elmina, Ghana, by Roger Gocking.12 Their studies reveal clearly that the offense of medicine murder and its treatment formed one of the areas in which the colonial government was at its wits’ end in its quest to restore public order. Unlike in precolonial Africa when status mattered in justice delivery, the offenders—notwithstanding the fact that they were highly placed chiefs in their societies—were hanged as British justice demanded. The complex nature of the offense and the different interpretations it generated both in Basutoland and Elmina suggest the existence of a deeprooted rivalry and resentment between the colonized and the colonizers. In Basutoland, for instance, the two chiefs, Bereng and Masupha, interpreted their arrest and eventual conviction as an attempt to ridicule and undermine the chieftaincy institution, which was then in opposition to the proposed agenda of incorporating Basutoland into South Africa. A wider interpretation of the chiefs’ ordeal actually argues that the British police were the perpetrators of the murder, while viewing the chiefs as scapegoats.13 Although the British colonial administration in Basutoland demonstrated its determination to put a stop to the dastardly act of medicine murder, which was in fact occurring, some in the society found this line of action

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very difficult to comprehend, even when investigations showed that the murders were committed for the purpose of making medicine during the “war of the medicine horns” that ensued between certain chiefs after one was defeated in a succession dispute.14 A one-man inquiry by G. I. Jones into the affair in Basutoland blamed the intensification of the rise in medicine murder on the rise in chieftaincy disputes occasioned partly by the British policy of placing an undeserving chief over his peers. This was in addition to other succession disputes like the one between Chiefs Seeiso and Bereng, and the conflict over the regency between Mantsebo and Bereng, which actually deepened the battle of the medicine horns as each of the opposing chiefs intensified their efforts to make stronger potions by using the vital body organs of their victims. It was even said that some of the victims were skinned alive to make the medicine more potent. Lastly, Jones identified the series of reforms beginning in 1938 that eventually introduced indirect rule into Basutoland as a major cause of the explosion of medicine murders as the measure led to widespread feelings of insecurity and possible loss of status among the chiefs.15 From the above, one can deduce that increased interference in local politics by the British was a major factor in the spread of medicine murder as people contested for space in the only domain where they could still wield some power with minimal interventions. Chieftaincy disputes were thus a major factor that instigated murder in Africa. The medicine murder in Elmina, Ghana, further buttresses this view. Unlike the earlier study by Richard Rathbone that focused essentially on mortuary slaying during the passing of Nana Sir Ofori Atta, the so-called Bridge House murder in Elmina happened in connection with a succession dispute. The victim, a young girl of ten, was murdered so that her body parts could be used to make medicine to help Kweku Ewusie, the regent of Edina State, to win a court case that was critical for his political standing in Elmina.16 The “leopard” killings of southern Annang in Nigeria, between 1943 and 1948, relate more to private homicides, and the motives were usually to settle scores.17 Victims included wives, children, relatives of previous victims, and adult males. It has been described as an extraordinary outbreak of violent deaths among the Annang and Ibibio who are today found in Akwa Ibom State in southern Nigeria.18 It was not immediately known whether the killings were carried out by real leopards or by humans, but the deaths that were recorded numbered about two hundred. Each of the bodies found was mutilated in a manner that initially suggested they were killed by genuine leopards, which were then numerous in the area. This initial suspicion soon gave way to the notion that the killings could be the work of some local cult engaged in

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murderous activities that had perfected the art of simulating the claw marks and ravages of a wild beast. Subsequent events lent support to the theory that the killings emanated from a combination of sources. In his analysis of the killings, Geoffrey Nwaka, after a detailed analysis of the events surrounding the deaths, concluded that three types of killings were going on simultaneously to varying degrees in the crime area. In the first place were customary executions that were being carried out secretly by the Ekpe Owo, with the encouragement of other secret societies like the Efe Ekenyong and the Idiong. Other killings were, however, private murders disguised as leopard killings, and there were at least a few genuine leopard killings. In comparing the three types of killings, Nwaka was of the opinion that the second—that is, private murders—were in the majority.19 Police investigations and laboratory evidence obtained from the Metropolitan Police in Hendon led to the arrest, conviction, and eventual execution of seventy-seven culprits. Many others were acquitted and discharged for want of evidence, even as permanent police posts were established in the crime area. A feature common to all the murder cases discussed above is that they are motive driven. This means that cases of serial or motiveless killings appear to be rare, if they exist at all, in Africa. While this conclusion is significant and should be gladdening enough, it is nevertheless terrifying to note that the postcolonial period in Africa has witnessed extremely brutal forms of murder, even as some of the old forms continue unabated. Genocide, which Bohannan claims Africans do not practice, has in fact occurred in some African countries such as Rwanda.20 Civil wars have occurred in which many people that had nothing to do with the conflicts have been murdered. More painful is the fact that children and women have been affected the worst during such crises.21 Leigh Bienen’s study of criminal homicide in southwestern Nigeria between 1966 and 1972, however, has shown that murder during periods of political instability may not necessarily be due to crises related to the disorder. Although the largest single category of motives for homicide was connected with political disputes and the breakdown of civil order occasioned by the tax riots or the Agbekoya riots of 1968–69, personal and domestic motives accounted for 31 percent of the 114 cases examined.22 In other words, public disorder often provides a cover for committing private murders. Smith’s recent study of the Otokoto murder in Owerri, the capital city of Imo State in southeastern Nigeria, draws attention to the continuing menace of ritual murder and its adaptation to the making of “fast wealth.”23 In September 1996, riots broke out in Owerri after the headless body of an eleven-year-old boy was unearthed on the premises of Otokoto

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Hotel, which was owned by Chief Vincent Duru. Three days earlier, a member of the hotel staff who later died in police custody, Innocent Ekeanyanwu, had been arrested and shown on a local television station holding a freshly severed head of a child. In the aftermath of the discovery, an angry mob set on fire the hotel buildings and all the vehicles on its premises. This was the beginning of what was to become a widespread rampage and a popular uprising against what official sources later described as “the intertwined social problems of child kidnapping, ritual murder, and the attainment of illegitimate fast wealth.”24 The mob went around the city identifying and destroying the property of those whom they thought had made fast wealth through these interconnected evils, especially young millionaires. A traditional ruler that was caught in the web had his palace burned down because he had honored the alleged ritual murderers with chieftaincy titles. Even the church where one of the suspects worshipped was not spared, because it was rumored that human skulls and a pot of pepper soup containing human meat were discovered there. In his analysis of this crisis, Smith situates the incident in the context of the prevailing sociopolitical and economic situation in the city of Owerri, and indeed the country at large. In his opinion, the murder of the child victim and the subsequent verbal and physical outbursts represent interconnected expressions of Nigerians’ constructions and understandings of the changing nature of inequality in the maintenance of political power, a demonstration of public discontent over inequality, and a recognition of the role that common people play in bringing about changes in the structure of inequality.25 He notes, and rightly so, that the popular reactions to the kidnapping and beheading of a young child must be interpreted in the larger context of the wielding of violence by totalitarian leaders to retain power and amass fantastic riches. He also argues that stories of ritual murder and fast wealth reveal ambivalence toward entanglements of class and kinship, military rule, and patron-clientism as well as individual desires and social obligations. In the meantime, there are indications that the rate of medicine murder is higher in Nigeria now than before as people struggle against the biting effects of poverty and deprivation. The advent of democracy has not helped matters as there are rumors that Nigerian politicians are neck-deep into medicine murder and political assassinations to win elections. This opinion was freely expressed in public discourses during the 2011 general elections. National Youth Service Corps members were actually told to be cautious and vigilant as they were likely to be targeted for ritualistic purposes. The occult has therefore become central to understanding contemporary issues of power, wealth, and violence in Nigeria. Yet,

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beyond the sensations that ritual murders create and elicit, homicides from domestic quarrels remain high, suggesting that more murders are committed by people with whom victims share one form of relationship or another. Murders motivated by religion are equally widespread as shown by Toyin Falola in his study of violence in Nigeria.26 What, then, can we make of these killings in the wake of the overbearing influence of colonialism and the advent of self-rule? First, they suggest a penchant for private justice among Africans. Second, they are evidence that a lot of contradictions existed and still exist in African societies. Third, inequalities and poverty obviously provide fertile ground for the offense of murder. In this chapter, I examine a different kind of murder from those enumerated above. It took place not within a family setting, although the victim and his assailants belong to the same ethnic group. Nor was it a medicine murder, as the ultimate goal was not to use the victim’s body parts for “medicine”; neither did it result from a clash between Christianity and Islam, such as Falola has studied extensively in the case of Nigeria. Rather, it was the result of a clash between indigenous religion and Islam. It is strange enough that the former religion was said to have been more receptive to Islam than to Christianity. At the time of the incident, it was considered a purely religious affair. With the benefit of hindsight, however, the motive for the offense can be seen as more economic than religious, and it touches the very heart of traditional institutions in Lagos. This study relies chiefly on colonial reports and newspapers from the National Archives, Ibadan, and oral accounts from those who witnessed the events.

The Setting Ebute Metta, a neighborhood of three wharfs, is one of the oldest communities in the city of Lagos. Although Lagos Island became more popular due to its strategic location between the sea and the lagoon that made it the first port of call for early visitors to the city by sea, Ebute Metta was actually an older settlement. Some historians have in fact postulated the existence of pre–Lagos Island settlements even before the Awori established dominance in the Lagos area.27 Ebute Metta is, however, an Awori settlement although the Egba United Board of Management claimed ownership of it by right of conquest during their face-off with Governor Glover in Lagos over customs duties in the 1860s.28 Ebute Metta is located on the mainland in proximity to the Lagos lagoon and the islands of Lagos, Oto, and Ido. As noted by Babatunde Agiri and Sandra Barnes, Ido and Oto were founded by migrants from

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Ebute Metta who escaped the settlement’s vulnerability to sporadic attacks by belligerents during the Ajakaiye War in the interior of Yorubaland.29 In the latter half of the nineteenth century, Egba refugees from Abeokuta were also settled in the area by the Lagos government after the Ifole (home invasion) in which many Christian converts and missionaries were targeted. Islam and Christianity had no doubt made inroads into Lagos by the nineteenth century. Yet, the displacement of the age-long religions of the people was not immediate and total. Indigenous religion, as Michael Echeruo notes, was very real and inescapable in the city.30 Despite the fact that Islam had penetrated the Lagos area for a very long time, adherents of the traditional religions were still many. Even in the ruling circle where Islam had gained a strong influence, the religious traditions that were intimately associated with the customs of the people still survived undiminished. Although the incidence of deep and furious conflict between Islam and the indigenous religions was rare in the nineteenth century, this did not mean that such crises did not occur. They were probably not reported because of the general consensus that traditional religion was inferior and would soon fade away given the disruptive activities of the two foreign religions. As suggested by Echeruo, the lack of information on the conflict between traditional and foreign religion could be explained on the premise that the press was more interested in the conflict between Christianity and Islam.31 Meanwhile, unlike Christianity, which condemned indigenous religion in an unequivocal manner, Islam seems to have been more tolerant, and as such more attractive to the people. Islam was embraced much earlier in the Lagos area than Christianity. The return of liberated slaves some of whom were Muslims from around the second decade of the nineteenth century increased the numerical strength of the Muslim community in Lagos.32 A few of them had been Muslims before captivity, while others became Muslims in Cuba and Brazil. Their experience and skills especially in architecture helped to raise the status of Islam.33 This is in addition to the royal recognition granted the religion by traditional rulers such as King Kosoko (1845–51) and Oshodi Tapa, one of Kosoko’s chiefs. The exit of Kosoko in 1851 temporarily retarded the fortunes of Islam, but the cession of Lagos to the British in 1861 revived them, as the populace rapidly grew to despise Christianity as the religion of the colonialists.34 Indeed, the unofficial census of 1866 put the population of Lagos at about 25,000. By 1868, it was about 27,000—out of which 14,797 were pagans, 8,422 were Muslims, and 3,790 were Christians.35 By 1891, the census figures recorded 10,269 Christians, 21,103 Muslims, and 54,230

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pagans. In other words, more than 85 percent of Lagos’s population was non-Christian in the latter part of the nineteenth century; indeed, there were twice as many Muslims as there were Christians. Islam had reached Lagos by peaceful means through the preaching of traders and itinerant mendicant preachers. Some accepted it because they felt it was superior to the religion of their ancestors. Others became Muslims because Islam contains some elements that uphold aspects of their customs, such as its acceptance of polygamy.36 Even Christians such as Rev. Mojola Agbebi recognized the popularity and wider acceptance of Islam than Christianity in nineteenth-century Lagos.37 By the twentieth century, Islam had gained a lot of converts in and around Lagos. A number of private and district mosques were built, while temporary arrangements were made in places where immediate permanent structures could not be constructed. In 1913, a central mosque was also completed on Lagos Island. This soon became the norm as other Muslim communities in the environs of Lagos endeavored to establish central mosques in their own localities. On the mainland, for instance, several central mosques were established, including those in Mushin and around Ebute Metta. As the Muslim communities in Lagos expanded, however, competition arose within their ranks that often degenerated into controversy that affected the fortunes of the religion in a negative way. For instance, the Lagos Island Muslim community crisis that started in 1915 and lasted until 1947 caused great disaffection.38 Details of this division need not delay us here, but suffice it to say that the Muslim community dissipated energy on the practical and sociological aspects of their religion rather than bringing more people into the fold. It was particularly evident in the Lagos neighborhood that Apalara lived in that the zeal with which the religion had grown in the early years had waned considerably. While many held on to their indigenous religions, many more practiced a syncretistic faith that was based on the contentious idea that the acceptance of Islam or Christianity should not preclude the observance of indigenous religious rites—that is, igbagbo oni k’ama s’oro ile.39 This was the background to the launch of a weekly “crusade” in Lagos by Apalara in 1950. A part of his mission was to precipitate a revival and a return to the undiluted worship of Allah. His main goal, however, was to draw the attention of the teeming adherents of indigenous religions to the Islamic faith. The choice to center his crusade in Ebute Metta and Mushin was primarily strategic. The two areas were renowned strongholds of various cults. In the 1950s, these neighborhoods had a large concentration of members belonging to such traditional cults as the Oro, Opa, Igunnuko, Egungun, and a host of others. In Ebute Metta, most of these cults and

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their groves were located in Oko-Baba, a notorious subneighborhood flanking the Lagos lagoon front.40

“Alfa ti o gba gbere” (a No-Nonsense Cleric): The Life, Travails, and Murder of the Crusading Cleric Young Bisiriyu Apalara was born into a family of very humble means in 1918. Although the day and month of his birth are unknown, his parents were from Itoko in Abeokuta.41 His attendance and completion of Koranic schooling before starting elementary education suggests that his parents were probably Muslims. Because financial difficulties hindered him from attending college, his parents charted an alternative career path for him by bringing him to Lagos to learn carpentry. Little is known about when he got to Lagos, his apprenticeship, and his early career. Available evidence suggests that Apalara was negatively influenced by the untoward environment in which he lived in Mushin.42 This is to be expected given the widespread juvenile delinquency and the notoriety of young hoodlums that were constant features of urban life in Lagos especially from the 1920s through to the 1950s and beyond.43 To the present day, Mushin remains a volatile suburb in Lagos because of the large contingent of street urchins in the area. Indeed, there is a thin line between cultism and hooliganism as many hooligans are cultists and vice versa. Apalara was thus caught in this web of Lagos street life, although details of his exploits are sketchy. It is believed that he was associated with some of the traditional religious cults that later confronted him.44 The transformation of Apalara’s character came as a surprise to many. It was said to be born out of genuine repentance for his ungodly actions and a determination to draw closer to God. Long hours of prayers and fasting for forgiveness of sin soon followed. In the meantime, Apalara divorced his two wives despite several entreaties to him to reconsider his decision. This was his way of removing any obstacles that could lure him back into his past. A major turning point was the revelation he claimed to receive on the day he finished a ninety-day fasting session: three strange men appeared to him in a vision and told him that God had heard all his prayers and that he should make requests for specific things from God. Apalara requested forgiveness of and deliverance from committing sin, protection from his enemies, and success while crusading, all of which were seemingly granted.45 Apalara launched his crusade in 1950. This soul-winning mission lasted only for three eventful years. During this period, he organized daily and weekly crusades on invitation or by choice throughout the length and

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breadth of Lagos, concentrating more in Mushin, Ebute Metta, and the latter’s environs. A preaching session was usually preceded by the selection of a spot on the chosen location, usually a street or the intersection of two to three streets. This strategy helped to draw attention to the crusade. A table with a Koran and a gas lamp placed on it completed the creation of an artificial demarcation between the preacher and his audience, which usually included, besides his followers, mostly women who had heard of his incisive teachings.46 He called on people to change their evil ways and accept Allah as the only one worthy of worship. He frowned upon the numerous deities that people worshipped, claiming that the custodians of such deities defrauded the people. Lukewarm Muslims were also condemned and charged to turn over a new leaf. Apalara started his crusade as a lone cleric. Later he was joined by Abdul Gafaru Mustafa. By mid-1951, his following had grown considerably, an indication that his crusades were yielding positive results. Distinguishable by their white caps for male adherents and white veils for females, most of his followers were converts who found his sermons daring and interesting, and who were willing to make a public show of their newfound faith. An articulate speaker, Apalara attracted the attention of many Lagosians. He was young, of heavy build, and addressed issues boldly even at great personal risk. As time progressed, his reputation as a fearless, no-nonsense Muslim cleric spread throughout the city. Unlike most other clerics, who were insincere in their denunciations of ungodliness and lukewarmness, Apalara openly denounced unrighteous acts and complacency. This popular perception of his activities and attitude soon became encapsulated in a dictum: “Alfa ti o gba gbere, Awoyejo lo n gbe” (meaning “the no-nonsense Muslim cleric lives in Awoyejo”). Awoyejo is the name of an actual street in Mushin where Apalara lived until his death. Two major incidents attest to the daring nature of Apalara and his crusades. His encounter and confrontation in Mushin with two popular masqueraders—Layewu and Ado—aptly illustrate this. In the first encounter, Apalara was having an open-air crusade in Odi-Olowo, Mushin, with a large crowd in attendance when Layewu and his supporters attempted to pass through the gathering. Naturally, Apalara objected to this, and for a tense moment, a bloody confrontation seemed imminent. Apalara had asked his audience to close all gaps in the sitting arrangement so as to prevent access to the masquerade. Layewu was urged by his drummer and supporters to force his way through. The words of the drum could indeed have provoked a conflict as it asked the masquerade when it would kill the person (Apalara) that it had vowed to kill, suggesting that a decision had been taken to eliminate the cleric, and thus that the ensuing

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confrontation was deliberate. The response of Layewu’s entourage is instructive in this regard. According to them, “Enikeni ti ara orun ba pa a pa gbe! Oro baba o! Enikeni ti Layewu ba pa a pa gbe o, oro baba o! O ku lasan (The masquerade cannot be questioned for killing anyone ; Oro is supreme. Whosoever Layewu the masquerade kills, dies in vain. Oro is supreme). This connotes that anyone killed by a masquerader, in this case Layewu, dies in vain because traditionally a masquerader has no human face or personality that can be arrested and prosecuted for his actions.”47 The mounting tension was defused, however, when Layewu suddenly retreated and went his way through another street. The second encounter and confrontation was similar to the first. Ado was considered to be a more dangerous masquerader than Layewu because people believed that he had more magical powers. Other masquerades actually feared Ado’s masquerade. On May 21, 1952, his masquerade tried to pass through the venue of an ongoing crusade outside a mosque on Ojo Street in Mushin. Apalara cautioned the masquerade against making such a move. When it was clear that the masquerade would not retreat, the encounter degenerated into a brawl between Apalara and Ado.48 The cleric gained the upper hand, and although Ado ran away, the masquerader had risked being unmasked, with all the consequences that would attend such an event. It was this last encounter that actually popularized Apalara as a no-nonsense cleric. In the meantime, Apalara continued his crusading mission. Two events prove that his mission was a success despite hostility from some quarters. First, a society called the Conquest of Muslim Youth Association was formed in May 1952 as an umbrella body for Apalara’s followers. Basically, the main objective of this society was to promote the teaching of the Koran. Second, and in recognition of his zeal for God and the propagation of Islam, he was turbaned in the same year as the foremost preacher (olori oni waasi) of mainland Muslims by the Lagos mainland Muslim community. Excited but not carried away by the public and popular recognition of his crusade, Apalara continued to propagate his faith. Several attempts were made on his life, but to no avail until 1953.49 As noted earlier, Apalara was highly critical of those who indulged in traditional religion. In the process, he condemned the worship of other gods and especially the belief that a god made of perishable material and located in a particular place could end the trauma of a barren woman. In short, Apalara’s preaching technique was to identify and condemn what seemed to him to be observable flaws in the traditional religions in order to justify and explain the sacrosanct nature of Islam. Because of this combative approach, his teachings attracted a lot of resentment from those

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who considered themselves offended. He became the target of several attacks, and on one occasion was beaten to a stupor in his own house. Threats on his life were common, and informants working for those who wanted him dead kept him under close watch. Two of these informants invited Apalara to Oko-Baba, a renowned stronghold of cultists, for a crusade on January 3, 1953. Available evidence suggests that Apalara received numerous hints as to what would happen if he honored the Oko-Baba invitation. Many advised by word of mouth and through anonymous letters that he should cancel the proposed crusade, but Apalara was unwavering in his decision to go on with the planned crusade despite the risks involved. Surajudeen Odetoki has noted that the cleric knew that he would be killed, and that it was this hunch of his death in the course of propagating his faith that emboldened him. Besides, the three strangers that had appeared to him in his vision had told him that such would be his inevitable end. Yet, Apalara took the threat to his life seriously. Specifically, he requested and paid for police protection; as a result, one police constable from the Ebute Metta Police Station was assigned to him for protection. The request for a police presence was indeed unusual. It is not clear whether Apalara actually believed that any threat to his life could be forestalled by the mere presence of a law enforcement agent, given the fact that desertion of duty posts and dereliction of duty by policemen was not uncommon in the colonial period. Not surprisingly, Police Constable Albert Babatunde, who was assigned to protect Apalara, took off running when the cleric was attacked.50 At the time of the murder, it was believed that the crime had none of the motives that could normally be attributed to murder in an urban society. In fact, an official report inappropriately concluded that the murder was “notable mainly for its exposure of [religious] fanaticism and for its value as a subject for reflection.”51 Popular opinion in Lagos in 1953 also held that Apalara was murdered because he had vigorously and unrepentantly attacked and exposed the vainness of traditional rites and the secrets of some of the renowned cults, such as the Oro, Agemo, and Opa, and had thus attracted to himself the bitter enmity of certain persons who felt that his preaching jeopardized their interests. The Daily Times of January 14, 1953, in also reporting the incident as a religious issue, emphasized the fact that Apalara, a Muslim preacher based in Mushin, was kidnapped and killed by aggrieved members of the Agemo Secret Society while preaching against their practices at the junction of Jebba and Tapa Streets.

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In the same vein, one of the very first reactions of the people to the death of Apalara came, understandably so, from his immediate constituency, the Muslim community. The Moslem Welfare Association of Nigeria called a mass meeting of the faithful at the Ansar-Ud-Deen School, Lagos, to discuss alleged interference with Muslim worshippers.52 A delegation of the Muslim community of Lagos and Ebute Metta led by Chief Imam Ahmed Tijani Ibrahim of the Jamat Muslim sect also visited the oba of Lagos, Adeniji-Adele II, in connection with the alleged murder. The visit was embarked upon to register their displeasure at the unfortunate incident, which they viewed with dismay. They condemned the murderous attack on a preacher of their faith. They subsequently appealed to the oba to facilitate, on their behalf, a meeting with the relevant authorities, to discuss the crime. Specifically, they considered such a meeting important to forestall a recurrence of violence against their members or the adherents of any other religion in Lagos and the colony districts. A meeting was thereafter scheduled for January 24, 1953.53 At the meeting, which turned out to be an interview, the spokesman of the delegation, Olori Arowasi, in response to a question put by Mr. E. A. Carr, stated that they knew nothing about the whole incident, beyond the reports in the daily newspapers. When asked whether all the things written in the newspapers concerning the incident were right, the imams replied that they could not confirm or refute the reports in the press since no other reports were made available to them. The administrator further asked whether the congregation at the prayer meeting saw the preacher when he was being taken away, to which the imams retorted that they could not make any statement about that since they were not there and, again, relied solely on the reports in the press. When asked whether they made any attempts to find out the truth, they answered that they could not get at the truth since nobody came forward with a report. Lastly, when queried as to what they did when they heard of the incident, the spokesman said they went to report the matter to Oba Adele.54 Frustrated that the interview session was yielding no result, Mr. Carr told the delegation that if they wanted quick justice, they should find witnesses to testify before the police. Although the delegation would not confirm his view, they were told that Carr was of the opinion that members of Apalara’s congregation surely would have seen the preacher being taken away. The administrator reiterated the need for the imams to encourage the people to cooperate with the police by coming forward with useful information that might facilitate the arrest and prosecution of the culprits.55 Apalara was murdered by persons who had connections with some dreaded cults in Lagos. He was also killed in a manner that clearly

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indicated that the cults, not necessarily in unison, were behind his abduction and execution and the disposition of his body. As it is said, “Akii ri ajeku Oro” (“Oro kills without a trace, or the remains of whatever Oro eats [literally, “kills”] cannot be seen”). This common parlance fits perfectly the Apalara case. His body was never found. Contrary to popular belief, however, the body was not burned to ashes;56 rather, the corpse of the slain preacher was deposited into the lagoon, according to an anonymous informant who told one of the investigators that it was dismembered and dropped one piece after the other into the lagoon, from a paddled canoe.57 Yet, as will be shown here, religion as motive for the murder of Apalara was at best an alibi. Beneath the mask of religion lay the real reason, which was largely selfish and economic in all its ramifications. Although the murderers appeared to be defending their faith, their real intention was to protect their individual interests, which their membership in the cults had promoted. Nonetheless, the incident typifies the height of religious intolerance among the adherents of Yoruba traditional religion and Islam.

Police Investigations Police investigations into the abduction of Apalara did not commence immediately. Curiously, the police constable that was present at the crusade, and who had actually fled the scene of the incident, did not make any report. Yet, the police did admit that on the night of the incident, they received a report that law and order had broken down in Oko-Baba. In response, Subinspector P. Addo and Sergeant Major R. Engurube led fifteen police constables to the scene after the dust had settled.58 Undoubtedly, the calm atmosphere that they saw was an uneasy one for an obvious reason: the Oro scare had driven people indoors. If the police had been more vigilant, they would have noticed that the calmness was unusual and that behind the closed doors, people were discussing the incident in hushed tones. It was not until a day after Apalara’s disappearance that the police swung into full action. By then, it was too late. Even at that, an investigation only commenced subsequent to the report made by one Adebayo Sule, at the Denton Charge Office, to the effect that one Bisiriyu Apalara, a Muslim preacher who went to the OkoBaba area to preach a day before, was missing. Entry of this report was made at the station and referred to “I” Branch for investigation.59 Accordingly, several arrests were made with the assistance of the complainant. To start with, Police Constable J. Ugwu made five initial arrests at No. 8 Tapa Street, while Subinspector Ekere interrogated the

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suspects. This investigation continued until January 5, when Subinspector Addo and Police Constable Ugwu arrested and detained Joseph Ogundipe, the owner of the building at No. 8 Tapa Street, into which Apalara had been carried, and Kehinde Jaiyeola of 51 Simpson Street, Ebute Metta. Investigation into the alleged murder, however, intensified when Sergeant Major Aboderin of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) joined the team of investigators. Earlier police visits to, and a thorough scrutiny of, No. 8 Tapa Street had only discovered bloodstains at the entrance, about fifteen yards from the site where Apalara had been preaching. A more painstaking inspection of the surroundings of No. 8 Tapa Street was conducted by the duo of Aboderin and Ugwu on January 6.Their careful inspection yielded a positive result that was to have ripple effects. A dry track of blood starting from No 8 Tapa Street to the waterside was discovered. Immediately, photographers from the CID were called in, to get pictures of the traces of blood. In addition, some gravel on the track and pieces of cement blocks with bloodstains were collected and forwarded to the pathologist for examination. Also, a search warrant was executed at No. 8 Tapa Street. This time around, the police discovered a drawer wet with bloodstains. This, too, was sent to the pathology lab. Again, all the occupants of No 8 Tapa Street, including four women, were arrested and detained. Next, the conclave of the Opa cult at Oko-Baba was visited by the investigators, and eleven members were arrested there. Other cult members living at Agoro Court, Ebute Metta, were also brought in for interrogation at the station.60 Briefing newsmen on the issue, Mr. R. T. Pallet, senior superintendent of police for Ebute Metta, told the Daily Times that their preliminary investigation suggested strongly that Alfa Apalara had been murdered although his body was yet to be found. Meanwhile, the police and the detectives in charge of the Apalara murder case were not oblivious of the widespread fear, rampant speculations, and threats to personal security that the incident generated in Lagos. Indeed, such fears and suspicions, as well as the issuance of threats to judges, witnesses, and accused persons who had been discharged, are common in murder cases—and the Apalara case was no exception. However, police investigations were initially constrained by the fact that members of a notable cult were allegedly involved in the murder. However, Mr. A. O. Abayomi, a local magistrate, and the Crown counsel both received, via ordinary and registered mail, several anonymous letters threatening death if they committed, or did not commit, the accused persons for trial. Also, after his acquittal, Lawani Oluwo, a suspect, instituted court proceedings against one Alfa Liasu Giwa and another man who, he alleged, wrote threatening letters to him. Specifically, he said they

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threatened to kill him if he failed, first, to pay a sum of £500 to be shared by four chief imams in Lagos and, second, to pay £10 for the purchase of rams to appease the gods on his behalf.61 Among the leads that were pursued in the Apalara case was the theory that the missing cleric was killed and his corpse thrown into the lagoon. In deciding to follow up on this, the investigators contacted another government establishment, the Harbor Department, on January 7, 1953, with a view to sending a diver to search for the body in the lagoon. The search was conducted the next day at the Jebba Street, Ebute Metta, terminus stretching from the point where the track of blood ended to a distance of about one hundred yards into the lagoon.62 The search continued on the fourteenth, when the assistant superintendent of police, Mr. M. A. Ibekwe, head of the investigation, and Mr. Loud, the Harbor Department’s senior diver, joined other investigators and divers at Apapa for the lagoon search—yet without making any discovery. With the benefit of hindsight, however, the hint that prompted the lagoon search was not particularly false. However, whereas the search team was looking for an entire corpse, the body had been dismembered and thrown into the lagoon in pieces. Another tip from Yesufu Aka, member of the Opa cult, led to the arrest of four other persons on January 14. Meanwhile, an additional clue surfaced when a letter pertaining to the Apalara incident, sent anonymously to the police from a self-professed member of the Awo cult, denounced the murder as wicked, while listing the names and locations of the following people as culpable: Bakare Aburo and Mudasiru Sule of Ejigbo village; Y. S. Ladega and L. A. Oluwo from Mushin; and Rafiu Sule, Yinusa Balogun, and one other person from Ewu village. Others implicated were Adamson Bakare and Murano Bakare from Oshodi Railway Station. The anonymous writer made other useful claims, such as that the Bakares and one Yesufu Owoseni were notorious burglars. He also alleged that Owoseni was a seller of smuggled cloth that was displayed by one of his wives in a shop located in a newly completed building at Oshodi station.63 To convince the police of the authenticity of his claims, the anonymous tipster listed the names of other members of the Opa cult in Ikeja District, including Lamidi Ekerin, a staff person of Ikeja Native Authority; Moses Banjoko, a Native Authority sergeant in Ikeja; and Imam Momodu, a former Royal Air Force sergeant and son of the Imam Onigunnu of Mafoloku village. He also reminded the police of the role played by some of the aforementioned people in an earlier incident that could have resulted in murder but for the timely intervention of law enforcement agents at Ikeja who acted on a tip by an informant at Oshodi village.

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The short but telling story of this aborted murder is summarized here. At midnight, a cluster of Awo-Opa members who had been summoned to Ikeja from different parts of Lagos mandated that the ex-wife of Murano Bakare, a member of the Awo-Opa, return to his house. The anonymous author claimed that their original intention was to abduct and kill both the woman and her new husband in Oshodi village—and in such a manner as was replicated in the incident involving Apalara. Finally, he urged the police to search for the corpse of Apalara inside the room of Koshegbe at Oko-Baba, where he claimed it was already buried and cemented.64 The letter was forwarded to the police and other top government officials, for whatever it was worth. There are, however, no indications that the police acted on it. Yet, the letter is instructive in several ways. First, it buttresses the point made earlier that murder cases often attract false claims. In this case, some of the information provided in the letter appears to be incorrect. For instance, the body of Apalara was never found. Again, out of all the names listed, only two—Kosegbe and Oluwa—took an active part in the murder of Apalara. The names of the other people listed by the anonymous writer never came up during the investigations. It is, of course, possible that they were invited for questioning and discharged owing to lack of evidence. At another level, the letter shows that the conspiracy against Apalara was widespread and that the membership of Awo-Opa included people of status, especially government officials. It should be noted that Sergeant Aboderin was himself a member of the Awo-Opa. Still, the most important hint suggesting that the letter had even an iota of truth to it was the allegation that some members of the Opa cult were involved in such nefarious activities as burglary and sale of smuggled goods. Elsewhere in Ijebu-Ode and Ijebu-Remo, their members had been fingered as burglars too.65 Besides, those who killed Apalara were also likely engaged in smuggling. An indication to this effect was given to Aboderin by another anonymous informant. Apalara had mimicked the fearful sound associated with the Oro to prove to his congregation that it was ordinary. Unbeknownst to him, the use of the Oro signal had been abused. The dread the sound elicits regularly drove people indoors, created a situation that was taken advantage of by those in the smuggling business, such as Apalara’s assailants; the empty streets provided cover, enabling them to move their smuggled goods from the lagoon into their depot without the prying eyes of law enforcement agents and the public. Therefore, trivializing the Oro sound, as Apalara did, would embolden the people to remain indifferent to it the next time they heard it, with dire consequences for their business. Hence, the murderers acted in defense of

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their economic interests.66 Be that as it may, and despite the influence of Awo-Opa, the police made several arrests. By February 11, 1953, twenty men were arraigned and committed for trial for the murder of Apalara by the magistrate, Mr. Abayomi, at the Yaba Magistrate Court. They were Joseph Ogunbayode Ogundipe, Kehinde Jaiyeola, Lasisi Oluwa, Nosiru Ajose, Yinusa Kosegbe, Lamidi Akinwunmi, Buraimoh Alli, Lawani Omopupa Oluwo, Salami Adedokun, Isiaka Ajana, Karimu Ayinde, Raji Lawani, Ojo Elegunado, Ashirikoko Adetunji, Akanbi Omoba, Abudu Kadiri, Sufianu Yesuful, Ashimi Musediku, Mustafa Oteka, and Raimi Oteka.67

The Trial In committing the defendants to trial, Mr. Abayomi noted that the prosecution had established a prima facie case against the accused persons considering both the circumstantial and material evidence available, although the latter was still being compiled. The accused persons were determined to be of sound mind at the time of the incident. There were also no cases of insanity in the families of any of the accused.68 The trial lasted from September 10 to October 14, 1953. Charles Madarikan was the lead prosecutor, while G. B. A. Coker and other lawyers stood in for the defense. Revelations as to how Apalara was actually killed soon emerged from two prosecution witnesses—Odetoki, one of Apalara’s followers; and Yesufu Aka, a member of the Awo-Opa. According to Odetoki’s testimony, once abducted Apalara was struck down with an ax by Raimi Oteka just outside Ogundipe’s veranda. Later, his body was dragged onto the veranda and from there to the door of the parlor. Odetoki narrated how, at the risk of his own life, he tried in vain to pull the body of Apalara away. He then ran to the Ebute Metta Police Station to report the incident but was chased away. Some of his colleagues who went to the same station were also sent away. The deposition of Aka reinforced that of Odetoki. In addition, he explained that the first attempt to hit Apalara landed on Mustafa Oteka, Raimi’s brother. This explains the stitches on Mustafa’s head, carried out at General Hospital. The second attempt hit the victim, although in the intervening moment Apalara had somehow managed to injure his assailant.69 The court was further told that the body of Apalara was lashed to a canoe and taken to an unknown destination on the lagoon. From the above, it was not difficult for Madarikan to conclude that Apalara was murdered by the accused persons, who felt compelled to preserve cult secrets. Apalara, he noted, had become unpopular in certain quarters and was killed for preaching and freely denouncing the secrets of

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these cults, which were otherwise jealously guarded by members, some of whom now stood accused for the killing of the cleric. The defense counsel argued otherwise. Coker asserted that before a verdict of guilt could be returned in any murder trial, three essential conditions must be established: (1), it must be proved that death actually took place; (2) the deceased must be identified as the person allegedly murdered; and (3) it must be proved that death was due to unlawful violence or criminal negligence or both. None of these conditions, he said, had been established in the trial. He pointed to two celebrated trials, one of which took place in England. Three men had been hung for an alleged murder, only for the person believed to have been killed to reappear after many years of absence. As a result, he was of the opinion that strong circumstantial evidence must be established and sufficient evidence based on moral certainty must also be established before conviction in the case. Besides, he noted that there was no evidence in the case because the absence of the body made it impossible to prove that death had been caused by the actions of the accused persons. He concluded that with all the accusations and counteraccusations that had been made, the benefit of the doubt should be given to the defendants.70 Delivering judgment on the case in a crowded courtroom in Tinubu Square, Justice Henri de Commarmond upheld the verdict of the jury that found eleven—not seven, as earlier suggested by another study—out of the twenty defendants guilty.71 Those found guilty were Ogundipe, Oluwa, Ajose, Kosegbe, Akinwunmi, Ajana, Ayinde, Omoba, Musediku, M. Oteka, and R. Oteka. Subsequently, all were sentenced to death by hanging. Meanwhile, the condemned convicts exercised their rights to appeal. They petitioned the governor, as seen in their individual letters dated March 9, 1954. A general trend discernible in all the petitions was an insistence on their innocence. All of them claimed that those who testified against them were their enemies, and that the evidence they gave in court was thus false and motivated by revenge. Even Raimi Oteka claimed that Daniel Aro was his enemy. He also mentioned another witness, Gbadamosi Olaifa, with whom he said he had quarreled over a plot of land. In addition, all of them pleaded for mercy as they had dependents to care for.72 Mustafa Oteka and Musediku also maintained their innocence. In their separate petitions, they both fingered Yesufu Aka as their enemy. Indeed, both claimed that Aka became their enemy because of the role that they played in his expulsion from Oko-Baba, an action that divided the town into two camps. It was the pro-Aka camp that eventually conspired to give false evidence against them in spite of the fact that they were in their place of work at Mamu, about twenty-five miles from Ibadan, when the incident

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occurred. They also claimed to have been pressured by Ibekwe, the police officer who headed the investigation, to stand as Crown witnesses, and that upon refusal, they were tortured into making involuntary confessions.73 The petitions failed, however, and the men were executed on May 26, 1954. Contrary to the procedure governing the treatment of capital cases that stipulates that the next of kin of a condemned convict be allowed to see the condemned man before his execution, no next of kin was informed until after their execution, the time and place of which was kept a close secret for security reasons. Even after the execution, the issue of whether to inform the relatives became a matter for the exchange of correspondence among the district officer of Lagos Colony, the administrator of colony, and the administrative secretary.74 Certainly, the Apalara murder divided Lagos public opinion. One group, obviously in the majority, felt that the killing of Apalara could not be justified. They generally were satisfied with the outcome of the judicial proceedings, believing justice had been served in the execution of those responsible. The Muslim community, for instance, could not have wished for anything more. Yet, there were others who felt that Apalara had dishonored tradition, and thus had to be punished. This group preferred that the defendants be unconditionally released because they were viewed as not culpable since they were merely defending tradition. The differing positions jostled for prominence in the minds of the judges. Indeed representatives of both positions, acting under anonymity, thought they could reinforce their positions by issuing threat letters. It is important to note that the cults did not act in unison and to keep in mind a distinction between the action of a cult itself and that of some of its members. It is reasonable to assume that those who killed Apalara did not act on the initiative of the cults; rather, their action constituted an abuse of a much respected traditional institution. This is exemplified by the fact that they were not actually engaged in defending the institution but were primarily interested in protecting their personal business interests. Moreover, the fact that fellow cultists gave evidence against the accused persons is sufficient to show that the latter’s action was detested even by their own, many of whom demonstrated their readiness to condemn the act by providing useful information to the police and in court during the trial. Indeed, it was the evidence of Aro and Aka that substantiated and consolidated other material evidence against the defendants. The various petitions written by the condemned men also indicate that it would be wrong to assume that the Apalara murder was symptomatic of the concerted reaction of adherents of traditional religion against one of the two foreign religions that had for so long denigrated it.

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The Apalara murder points to the fact that the Nigeria Police Force during the colonial period was made up of diverse elements. While the attitude of Albert Babatunde puts the force in a bad light, the same cannot be said of Ibekwe, Aboderin, Ugwu, and others who investigated and eventually brought murder charges against the accused persons. Indeed, the link that Aboderin had with the cults was crucial, first in unraveling the details of the crime and second, though much later, in demystifying the disappearance of the body of Apalara. Although the police officers’ membership in the cults did not constitute an illegality, at least not until 1965, the revelation at the trial that they had connections to a cult while at the same time playing the role of law enforcer attracted public condemnation.75 Finally, the Apalara case raises a number of questions about how rudimentary or modern was the practice of crime detection in colonial Nigeria. In Britain, the application of scientific knowledge in the detection of crime had been well developed in the early twentieth century. Nigeria, as one of its dependencies, benefited from this, and by the 1930s, the use of microphotography and fingerprint impressions to obtain evidence was becoming widely accepted in the detection and prosecution of crime. A fingerprint school was opened in Lagos in 1959. At the time of Apalara’s murder, the scientific knowledge of blood in the detection of crime was also becoming popular. Although the system could not aid the investigation greatly, it did however confirm that the bloodstain found on the veranda of No. 8 Tapa Street was human blood.

Conclusion This study has examined the cult murder of Alfa Bisiriyu Apalara in mid-twentieth-century Lagos. I have attempted to show that it is in the context of an economic more than a religious motive that the killing of Apalara can be best understood. The cleric’s twin objective of condemning lukewarm Muslims and discrediting traditional religion angered many. In the first place, other Muslims became resentful, and thus many probably thought nothing of his downfall. At another level, custodians of the indigenous religions hated him because he was a disturber of the peace. Ultimately, the two forces combined to silence the lone cleric. But while on the surface the culprits seemed to have been defending tradition, beneath this posture was the real reason for committing the crime—the protection of their economic interests. Although detailed study of smuggling on the waterways of Lagos is yet to be carried out, traditional rites seem to have been adapted for this clandestine business. More important, this study has drawn attention to the need to differentiate

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between the actions of a cult in and of itself, and those of its members, as individuals or a small group. While it is true that the culprits belonged to different cults, and even held meetings in Oko-Baba a day before the incident, Apalara’s murderers did not act on behalf of the cults. This explains why the oath of secrecy and the bond of unity that usually bind cult members broke down under police investigation. Surprisingly, many of his assailants bore Muslim names but were traditionalists to the core who probably operated according to the popular maxim that conversion to or acceptance of Islam, or Christianity, does not preclude participation in indigenous religious rites. In local parlance, this is rendered as “Igbagbo oni kama s’oro ile.” Finally, the murder of Alfa Apalara, though it occurred almost six decades ago, yet has many social implications today. A mosque and a school have been named after him, and the religious society formed by his followers still exists, though under another name. And public memory is rekindled through such sayings as “E ma pami bi e ti se pa Apalara” (Do not kill me as you killed Apalara).

Notes 1

Headlines, no. 4 (July 1973): 7. Paul Bohannan, ed., African Homicide and Suicide (New York: Princeton University Press, 1960). 3 Clifford believes that the number of cases considered by Bohannan and other contributors are upward of seven hundred. This probably includes the figure for both homicide and suicide. Here, the number of homicide cases considered by each contributor was simply added up to get the figure quoted. See Bohannan, African Homicide and Suicide, 31, 71, 95, 133, 156, 186–92, 227. See also William Clifford, An Introduction to African Criminology (Nairobi: Oxford University Press, 1974), 119–22. 4 See Bohannan, African Homicide and Suicide, 31–34. 5 Ibid., 230–31. 6 Paul Osifodunrin, “Violent Crimes in Lagos, 1861–2000: Nature, Responses, and Impact” (PhD diss., University of Lagos, 2008). 7 Ruth Watson, “Murder and the Political Body in Early Colonial Ibadan,” Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 70, no. 1 (2000): 25–48. 8 Edward Miguel, “Poverty and Witch Killing,” Review of Economic Studies 72 (2005): 1153–72. 9 Bohannan, African Homicide and Suicide, 252–60. 10 See Osifodunrin, “Violent Crimes in Lagos.” See also Clifford, Introduction to African Criminology, 121–22. 11 See I. Wilks, “Space, Time, and “Human Sacrifice,” in Forests of Gold: Essays on the Akan Kingdom of Asante, ed. I. Wilks (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1993), 217. 2

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12 Colin Murray and Peter Sanders, “Medicine Murder in Basutoland: Colonial Rule and Moral Crisis,” Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 70, no. 1 (2000): 49–78. 13 Murray and Sanders, “Medicine Murder,” 66–70. 14 Ibid., 63. 15 Ibid., 50–51. 16 Gocking, “Chieftaincy Dispute,” 197. 17 Geoffrey I. Nwaka, “The Leopard Killings of Southern Annang, Nigeria, 1943– 48,” Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 56, no. 4 (1986): 417– 40; and David Pratten, The Man-Leopard Murders: History and Society in Colonial Nigeria (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007). 18 Nwaka, “Leopard Killings of Southern Annang,” 436. 19 Ibid., 436–37. 20 See, for example, Gérard Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide (London: C. Hurst and Co. Publishers, 1999). 21 For details on civil wars in Africa see, among others, Paul Collier and Nicholas Sambanis, eds., Africa: Understanding Civil War (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2005). 22 Leigh Bienen, “Criminal Homicide in Western Nigeria, 1966–1972,” Journal of African Law 10, no. 1 (1970): 69–70. 23 Otokoto was the name of the hotel where the heinous crime was committed. See Jordan Smith, “Ritual Killing and Fast Wealth: Inequality and the Popular Imagination in Southeastern Nigeria,” American Ethnologist 28, no.4 (2001): 803– 26. 24 Ibid., 804. 25 Ibid. 26 Toyin Falola, Violence in Nigeria: The Crisis of Religious Politics and Secular Ideologies (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 1998). 27 Babatunde Agiri and Sandra Barnes, “Lagos before 1603,” in History of the Peoples of Lagos State, ed. Ade Adefuye, Babatunde Agiri, and Jide Osuntokun (Ikeja, Nigeria: Literamed Publications, 1987), 28. 28 H. B. Harunah, “Lagos-Abeokuta Relations in 19th-Century Yorubaland,” in History of the Peoples of Lagos, 195. 29 Agiri and Barnes, “Lagos before 1603,” in History of the Peoples of Lagos, 21. 30 Michael J. C. Echeruo, Victorian Lagos: Aspects of Nineteenth-Century Lagos Life (London: Macmillan, 1977), 80–94. 31 Ibid., 80–81. 32 T. G. O. Gbadamosi and J. F. Ade Ajayi, “Islam and Christianity in Nigeria,” in Groundwork of Nigerian History, ed. Obaro Ikime (Ibadan: Heinemann Educational Books, 1980), 348–66. 33 Several other factors explain the rapid expansion of Islam: the strategic plan to target whole families rather than individuals for conversion; the support showed the religion by many traditional rulers and their chiefs; and the roles of a Muslim cleric as man of God, preacher, teacher, scholar, adviser, and medicine man.

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34 Jide Osuntokun, “ Introduction of Christianity and Islam into Lagos State,” in History of the Peoples of Lagos, 130. 35 Ibid., 82. 36 Echeruo, Victorian Lagos, 83. 37 Ibid., 84. 38 For details see H. O. Danmole, “The Crisis of the Lagos Muslim Community,” in History of the Peoples of Lagos, 278–92. 39 Surajudeen Odetoki, Apalara Eniti Won Pa Nitori Esin Islam (Lagos: Zumratu Mubaligudeen Islamiyat of Nigeria, 2002). 40 Interview, Otun Baale, Oko-Baba, May 26, 2011. Oko-Baba in Ebute Metta is still home to a lot of traditional cults. In addition, it is home to the largest timber chain in West Africa. For a pictorial illustration of this sawmill, see the cover page of Bill Freund, The African City: A History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 41 Odetoki, Apalara, 5. 42 For more information on Mushin during the colonial period, see Sandra Barnes’s seminal work, Patrons and Power: Creating a Political Community in Metropolitan Lagos (London: Manchester University Press, 1986). 43 See, for instance, Laurent Fourchard, “Lagos and the Invention of Juvenile Delinquency in Nigeria, 1920–1960,” Journal of African History 47 (2006): 115– 37. See also Simon Heap, “‘Their Days Are Spent in Gambling and Loafing, Pimping for Prostitutes, and Picking Pockets’: Male Juvenile Delinquents on Lagos Island, 1920s–1960s,” Journal of Family History 35, no. 48 (2010): 48–70. A new version of this journal article is included in the current volume as Chapter 13. 44 Interview, Baale, Oko-Baba, May 28, 2011. 45 Odetoki, Apalara, 8. 46 National Archives, Ibadan (hereafter cited as NAI), Commissioner of the Colony’s Office, Lagos (hereafter cited as COMCOL) 1, FN 3742, “Alfa Bisiriyu Apalara, Muslim Preacher—Murder of,” 75. 47 Odetoki, Apalara, 16–18. 48 Ibid., 33–34. 49 NAI, COMCOL 1, FN 3742, 75; Odetoki, Apalara, 23. 50 NAI, COMCOL 1, FN 3742, 76–77. See also Tekena Tamuno, The Police in Modern Nigeria, 1861–1965 (Ibadan: University of Ibadan Press, 1970), 210–12. 51 NAI, COMCOL 1, Annual Report of Nigeria, 1953, 6. 52 NAI, COMCOL 1, FN 3742, “Alfa Bisiriyu Apalara,” 5. 53 Ibid., 1–3. 54 Ibid., 10. 55 Ibid., 11. 56 See Tamuno, Police in Modern Nigeria, 210. 57 Headlines, no. 4 (July 1973): 7. 58 NAI, COMCOL 1, FN 3742, “Alfa Bisiriyu Apalara,” 6–7. 59 Ibid. 60 Ibid. 61 Ibid., 103–4.

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Ibid., 6–7. Ibid., 12. 64 Ibid. 65 See Tamuno, Police in Modern Nigeria, 208. 66 Headlines, no. 4 (July 1973): 7. 67 NAI, COMCOL 1, FN 3742, “Alfa Bisiriyu Apalara,” 75. 68 Ibid., 16–33. 69 Ibid., 76–77. 70 Ibid., 11. 71 For the alternative figure see Tamuno, Police in Modern Nigeria, 208–11. 72 Ibid., 8. 73 Ibid., 80–101. 74 NAI, FN 601 vol. 10, “Capital Sentences: Notification of Execution,” 128–30. 75 See Tamuno, Police in Modern Nigeria, 212. 63

PART V: CONTEMPORARY NIGERIA

CHAPTER FIFTEEN MEDIA GLOBALIZATION, AFRICAN POPULAR CULTURE, AND HISTORY FROM BELOW: NIGERIAN VIDEO FILMS PAUL UGOR AND GIOVANNA SANTANERA

The transformation of everyday subjectivities through electronic media and the work of the imagination is not only a cultural fact. It is deeply connected to politics, [especially] through the new ways in which individual attachments, interests, and aspirations increasingly crosscut those of the nation-state.1

This chapter essentially explores and demonstrates how Nollywood, West Africa’s bourgeoning video film industry, has become a veritable cultural platform for constructing alternative social histories and identities, especially among marginal social groups and individuals outside the spheres of state and/or corporate power and influence. In pushing forth this argument, we do not mean to suggest that Nollywood narratives are true and exact reflections of contemporary Nigerian society. Rather, we want to signpost how the video industry and its films constitute rough social maps of existing mentalities, values, and events, especially from the perspective of common people. But this concern of ours, we must acknowledge, is only part of a broader discussion that has been going on among cultural scientists in the last two decades or so—a vibrant debate that links global cultural production to new dimensions of politics and power, especially at the micro autochthonous level. And at the very core of this intellectualization of global creativity is the now clichéd term, globalization. In his now highly referenced critique of the cultural dimensions of globalization, Arjun Appadurai eloquently illustrates how economic globalization has inadvertently led to a fundamental dislocation of the global field of cultural production wherein intensified transnational interconnectivity in all realms of human life, instead of creating uniformity, has rather led to “disjunctures” with concomitant variations in cultural practices, texts,

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discourses, ideologies, and disparate political, economic, and social spaces. Grounded in a worldwide anthropology of mass media mediations and new international migrations, Appadurai thus argues for a recognition of “a general rupture in the tenor of intersocietal relations in the past few decades,” pointing powerfully to new social transcripts of an emerging global modernity that is ceaselessly shifting away from what was once thought to be a homogenous universe, to an alternative global civilization marked by difference.2 The joint effect of new intensities in international connectivity, especially owing to the growth of mass media mediations and the rapidity of transnational mass migration, Appadurai argues, has been the radicalization of “the work of the imagination as a constitutive feature of modern subjectivity.”3 The mass circulation of people of different ethnicities all over the world and the wholesale transmission of new texts, images, and imageries, combined with the widespread flow of new cultural resources in the form of new media technologies such as computers, digital audio and video recorders, cell phones, iPods, and the Internet have unwittingly led to the indigenization of global media. Different cultural entities now mobilize, appropriate, and adopt/adapt global media resources for local ends and aspirations, thus creating a powerful hinge between culture, politics, and poetics.4 In other words, global postmodern encounters via the field of mass media mediation have not only led to cultural transformation;5 these changes have also activated “new media cultures.”6 But “as we explore the new dimensions of cultural production that have been foregrounded by the various new media,” Marshall notes, “it becomes clear that different political and cultural struggles accompany these shifts.”7 Media globalization has not only led to innovative cultural practices/approaches, new genres and forms, social and fictional texts, and real and imagined spaces, but also to fresh “cultural imaginings,” resulting in the emergence of alternative histories and narratives with huge implications for emerging dynamics of resistance, subjectivity, and agency. This is what Appadurai hints at when he argues that “because of the sheer multiplicity of the forms in which they appear (cinema, television, computers, and telephones) and because of the rapid way in which they move through daily life routines, electronic media provide resources for self-imagining as an everyday social project.”8 What has emerged, then, are new social vocabularies and sites for (re)constructing the self and the community, often outside the control of traditional culture mediators and censors like the nation-state or multinational media corporations. What are the ramifications of this radicalization of global cultural production for reading the media landscape in Africa? How might

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this theory of rupture in the global cultural economy yield new insights for apprehending emerging African popular art forms? The last couple of years have witnessed a flurry of literature, mostly from media scholars and African cultural anthropologists, both from within and outside Africa, reflecting on the ramifications of emerging mass media technologies for African society, culture, and politics. At the very hub of this emerging discourse is the supposed link between mass media technologies, new media cultures in Africa, and their implications for democratic governance and economic development.9 But the point needs to be made, and quite forcefully too, that this new discourse of media, politics, and development in Africa is itself not a marker of an unprecedented relationship between African cultural producers and global media technology. Karin Barber, for example, has shown how African cultural workers and their various art forms have been influenced and shaped by interactions with global media since the mid-nineteenth century.10 According to Barber, “Media in much of Africa are not experienced as a recent and external force, but as a constitutive element in the formation of African popular culture from the early twentieth century onwards.”11 The prolonged interactions between global media and indigenous entertainment forms in Africa over several decades have led to the following: the reinvention of existing local entertainment genres; new ways of learning and retaining local cultural forms; the merging of disparate performance and entertainment traditions; the opening up of new social spaces in which new classes of performers can emerge; the bringing of novel texts and performances to new audiences both within and outside the continent; and even expansive publicity, unparalleled glamour, and new genre conventions for most types of popular entertainment across the continent.12 What is really at stake now, therefore, is not just the newness of the interactions but how new technologies, particularly small media technologies like digital devices, high-performance computers, cuttingedge software, satellite communication, and other forms of new media and communication outlets, are poised to alter the social, economic, and political landscape in Africa, creating and activating new and alternative platforms for the venting of new concerns, narration of different struggles and histories, and the possible ascension of other forms of antihegemonic narratives and texts, especially from outside of the domains of state or corporate power. It is this slant of the debate that we bring to bear on our analysis of Nollywood as an alternative cultural site for articulating new social maps of the political and economic experiences of common people and everyday life in Nigeria. Our position does not ignore the fact that media

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globalization has its own negative consequences; neither is it grounded in the uncritical assumption and celebration of African popular culture as necessarily good, faultless, and proactive. But we want to point to the ways in which popular African media now offer and facilitate a different lens to the real life conditions in the continent, especially from the perspective of ordinary people and in relation to their experiences. For as Jonathan Haynes has convincingly argued in relation to Nollywood, the West African video movement may not have declared an outright political agenda from the outset as an emerging popular art form—that is, like its forerunner, postcolonial African cinema—but that does not mean Nollywood is apolitical.13 Nollywood has not only its own production aesthetics, but also its own unique rhetoric of social critique and engagement. Our interest, therefore, is to show how Nollywood epitomizes how the democratization of global media technology has inadvertently led to the democratization of narratives, and how this cultural fact has in turn created a situation where African popular media are “deeply implicated in the ‘struggle for access to knowledge’”;14 moreover, we also intend to illustrate how the struggle for and the dispersal of different social and cultural knowledge(s), in many ways, amount to moments of empowerment, particularly for those at the lowest rungs of African society.

Nollywood: The Genealogy of a Popular African Visual Art As the nexus of a new screen media practice in sub-Saharan Africa, Nollywood’s history can be traced to a concatenation of factors—political, economic, social, and cultural—many of which have already been outlined in a number of scholarly works on this radical video film movement.15 In this segment of our chapter, then, we will only summarize the very broad contours of that complex history, mainly by way of setting a proper context for our analysis of the historic potential of Nollywood as a site of African popular culture. Suffice it to say, the economic convulsions of the early 1980s generally are at the root of the video film genre. Video film art emerged at that time, as Folake Ogunleye notes, “not only as the voice of the people, but also as an answer to the drudgery of a socio-economic existence characterized by high unemployment and contracting opportunities.”16 Prior to the 1970s, Nigeria was mostly an agriculturally based economy with approximately 70 percent of its revenue earnings accruing from agricultural exports like cocoa, rubber, groundnuts (peanuts), cotton, and palm oil. But the sudden discovery of crude oil in the Niger Delta region in 1956 by Shell, the Anglo-Dutch oil firm, and subsequent

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commercial oil production in 1958 radically altered the economy and politics of the soon-to-be independent African state. From a modest initial output of about 5,100 barrels per day in 1958, the country was producing and exporting at least 2 million barrels per day by the early 1970s, leading to earnings from crude oil exports of about ө170 million in 1970 alone. The oil boom of the 1970s, triggered by intense world demand for crude oil products, complemented by the Arab oil embargo of 1973—all coalesced into an “economic miracle” for Nigeria. By 1980, Nigeria was making between ө12.86 billion to ө25 billion.17 This dramatic wealth from crude oil triggered gradual but mounting indifference toward other sources of national wealth, including the agricultural sector, which had long been the mainstay of the Nigerian economy. But the abruptly gained wealth soon began to fade just as it appeared. Following the global recession of the early 1980s and the glut in the global oil market, Nigeria’s earnings from crude oil exports plummeted to about US$10 billion by 1983 and under US$7 billion by 1986.18 With a bloated national budget no longer supported by commensurate earnings from crude oil exports, and a once vibrant and viable agricultural sector in ruins, the Nigerian state had to go cap in hand to international financial institutions like the World Bank and the IMF for support. Loans were obtained, but they came with very tough conditions that triggered unprecedented suffering among the Nigerian citizenry. Heedless and relentless privatization, massive rationalization of the workforce in the public sector, colossal cutbacks in public expenditures, and the unmeasured devaluation of the Nigerian currency all led to mass unemployment, egregious poverty, and unthinkable suffering. These inauspicious conditions had serious negative implications for cultural producers. Unable to afford the needed foreign exchange to pay for the purchase or rental of production equipment, the hiring of foreign technical crews, or even the financing of postproduction abroad, indigenous film producers and directors, for example, abandoned feature film production, leaving behind a huge audience base that had been inherited from the Yoruba traveling theaters that were hugely popular between the 1940s and the late 1980s. It was this harsh economic atmosphere associated with the structural adjustment era of the 1980s, combined with broad-based cultural yearnings, that led some young and creative minds in urban centers like Lagos and Accra to gravitate toward the video technology as an alternative format for film production. The video film genre thus emerged as a spontaneous response by the youthful, creative, and desperate urban class to insufferable socioeconomic conditions.19 And as Ogunleye aptly puts it, the fact that the video genre emerged from “the ashes of shattered and battered economies is a

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testament to the reality that our collective heads may be bloodied, but remain unbowed.”20 We have already hinted at the role of the popular Yoruba traveling theaters to the emergence of the video film genre, and this is indeed an important cultural force in the history of the video arts in Nigeria. A number of scholars have already anatomized how the popular Yoruba traveling theaters underwent a series of mutations from stage performances, through television serials and feature films, to video dramas—changes that were all connected directly or otherwise to both economic and political forces.21 Television broadcasting began quite modestly in the whole of sub-Saharan Africa with the establishment in 1959 of the Western Nigeria Television Service. The southeastern and northern regions in Nigeria followed suit three years later in 1962. But political bickering between the different regions and states and the abrupt but kind chance of stupendous petro-wealth in the 1970s catalyzed the struggle for power and resources at the center. The mass media were crucial in this political chess game between the regions and states on the one hand, and the federal government, on the other. Desperate to give voice to their individual political interests and also intent on creating symbols of development and modernity for their various geopolitical zones, the ruling military or civilian elite established television and radio stations across most states of Nigeria by the 1980s. But the explosion of TV stations came with its own problems, as Barber describes: This proliferation and reduplication of stations quickly exhausted available resources of funding and trained personnel. Even during the height of the oil boom in the 1970s, television stations were run on a shoestring by civil servants not trained in media production. The outcome, anatomized by Louise Bourgault (1995) and Olayinka Esan (1994), was an inflexible, incompetent management; technicians who were overworked and undervalued; equipment which broke and was not replaced; and programming which reflected the interests of the political elite, not those of the general public, giving extended sycophantic coverage to the speeches of the military or civilian leaders and little else in the way of “news.”22

To revivify the television medium not only to speak to the interests of common people but also to promote the Yoruba culture, most TV stations in the western region instinctively invited the popular theater troupes into their stations.23 This move was significant in many ways: it revitalized television as a relevant cultural medium in the social imagination of ordinary people; offered extended publicity and (by extension) patronage to the theater troupes; reinvented the vast repertoire and performance

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modes of the Yoruba popular theater genre; reconstituted the audience base for the traveling theaters (to encompass the urban elite), and even redefined the tenor of public engagement with the theater groups. But the newfound romance between the television stations and the theater companies was short-lived. Huge budget cutbacks during the structural adjustment period of the 1980s translated to dwindling funding for television stations, which in turn affected their abilities to fund the theater troupes. Already addicted to the TV camera and screen, and the huge publicity and patronage that came with them, the troupes started exploring new production options; a new indigenous cultural movement was a foot. With the release of Ola Balogun’s first Yoruba-language boxoffice hit, Ajani Ogun (1975), and the subsequent production of another Yoruba-language film with Hubert Ogunde entitled Aiye (1979), an era of Yoruba-language film production began.24 The successes recorded by some of the “indigenous theatre leaders as producers, directors, and writers was a moral boost for their colleagues, and in the twinkling of an eye, traveling theaters were, in droves, abandoning their itineraries for film locations.”25 The troupes simply adapted their stage or TV performances for the film camera. But again, the efflorescence of indigenous film production did not last beyond the mid-1990s. As we have already indicated above, the general inclement economic conditions of the 1980s, exasperated by a cruel entertainment tax on indigenous films and the absence of buoyant local distributors to buy theatrical rights of local features, all combined to make indigenous film production almost impossible. In order to reduce soaring production costs and make modest profits, the theater/film producers turned to reversal film stock for conventional feature production. “And when they emptied the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) of its reversal film stock and chemicals, they settled for videotapes! And not even of broadcast standard.”26 And the mobilization of video technology for film production by the theater practitioners had serious business implications because it “provided the opportunity to earn profits from the marketing of stage performances by initially bypassing television stations as a means of delivering such performances to a potential audience.”27 The activities of the Yoruba theater troupes in the 1980s was complemented and accentuated by a younger and more educated group of independent TV producers that had become active in producing Englishlanguage soap operas for both state and (later) private TV stations. Some of these producers started their careers as theater hands and then later made inroads into television and then video (e.g., Tunde Kelani), while others began from television and then ended up in the video industry (e.g.,

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Zeb Ejiro and Amaka Igwe). These independent producers were responsible for some of the most popular indigenous soaps on Nigerian TV screens, such as Checkmate and Ripples. But when the securing of reliable corporate sponsorship for their drama series became an onerous challenge, these young independent producers segued effortlessly toward the video genre.28 The current serialization format in which most Nollywood videos are released in parts, sustained primarily by anticipation and suspense, and hinged strongly on the melodramatic form, is all traceable to the influence of the TV producers of the late 1980s and their soaps. Finally, we must also mention another aspect of the Nigerian video culture that is often not recounted in conventional narratives about Nollywood’s history. This has very much to do with technological innovations and cultural shifts in Nigeria (and of course other developing countries). Femi Shaka has called our attention to the importance of media technology and how its appeal to Africans has often led to new media practices in the continent. Shaka argues that Nigeria’s video culture is also traceable to “the fascination with modern technology and the creative adaptation of such technology to solving pressing domestic problems, often in manners the original producers of such technological equipment never envisaged.”29 Before the emergence of video technology in the 1970s, the photographic camera was the main cultural tool for capturing both individual and collective social memories. Young men and women; parents and grandparents; families; and local religious, social, and ethnic groups relied heavily on the still camera to capture memorable moments for posterity. The emergence of video technology started a new cultural trend. When it was introduced to the Nigerian populace in the context of the petro-wealth of the 1970s, the video camera replaced the still camera in documenting significant social moments;30 hence video recording became fashionable for “private and domestic ceremonies like weddings, child naming ceremonies, birthday parties, chieftaincy installation ceremonies, burial ceremonies and communal festivals.”31 In most cases, the same semiliterate urban youth who functioned as photographers with the still camera were the ones who were transformed into video cameramen. And it must also be remembered that the video camera emerged alongside the VCR, which allowed Nigerians to watch bootlegged Hollywood films from the comfort of their homes rather than in the insecure theaters in urban centers. Shaka thus points out that although the video culture is a product of the harsh economic conditions of the SAP years, “one can argue with some justification that the knowledge that there were a great numbers [sic] of VCRs in the country by the 1970s[,] which were being used to watch foreign films packaged in video

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cassettes and locally produced social documentaries, had encouraged the videographers to look in the direction of experimenting with the video camera as a medium for audiovisual expression.”32 This argument seems plausible if we remember that the Nollywood industry today is often traced to Kenneth Nnebue’s film Living in Bondage, which he produced and released in 1992.33 As a businessman primarily concerned with finding a large market for his imported empty VHS cassettes, Nnebue would not have invested in the Yoruba drama groups nor dared to produce even his own films without knowledge of the existence and affordability of a convenient technology that could help his films reach a mass audience. The emergence of a portable, fashionable, efficient, and yet cheap video technology, both for the producers and the audience, was therefore crucial to the experimental shift from film to video production in Nigeria. In this segment of our chapter we have painted in broad brushstrokes the vast and complicated web of economic, political, social, and cultural forces that gave rise to the now hugely popular video film phenomenon in West Africa, in hopes of highlighting the main contours and trends that led to the video boom that crystallized into the most vibrant popular art form in Africa today. In the next segment, we will discuss the concept of African popular culture as applied to Nigerian video films in order to highlight the new discursive space opened up by Nollywood.

Popular Video Films as Popular Histories Over the years, the discursive value of Nollywood has often been denied, and Nollywood has occasionally been accused of commercialism, materialism, and bastardization of African culture. When compared to African cinema and other sectors of Nigerian cultural production—for example, literary drama, music, and the press—Nollywood video films appear to be lacking in social and political relevance and aesthetic value. On the one hand, a segment of the local intellectual elite has drawn on the idea of “cultural authenticity” to dismiss the movies as misrepresentations of Nigeria. They view the plots about frauds, secret cults, and treacheries as negative images of the country and irresponsible escapism from relevant issues such as joblessness, poverty, and disease.34 On the other hand, Western media have promoted an exotic image of Nollywood, downplaying the content of the movies in favor of their “weird” production methods. As Alessandro Jedlowski points out, Western documentaries have frequently depicted Nollywood as “a sort of ‘Wild West’ of filmmaking.”35 Therefore, albeit for different reasons, both

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perspectives have avoided looking at the video films as important selfrepresentations of Nigeria worthy of serious investigation, considering them instead as “historical fakes” or “irrelevant curiosities” that cannot be taken seriously. Among scholars, the reappraisal of Nollywood narratives has occurred by way of the notion of popular art as conceived by Karin Barber. According to Barber: “Popular arts can be taken to mean the large class of new unofficial art forms which is syncretic, concerned with social change, and associated with the masses. The centers of activity in this field are the cities, in their pivotal position between the rural hinterland on the one hand and the metropolitan countries on the other.”36 This has been the main theoretical framework through which the Nollywood phenomenon has been analyzed since Jonathan Haynes and Onookome Okome’s pioneer essay “Evolving Popular Media: Nigerian Video Films.”37 Such a framework allows us to grasp the topicality of Nollywood narratives, considering each as a sort of “social diary” of contemporary Nigerian life.38 Operating in the overcrowded, urban informal sector, the filmmakers ensure ample sales by creating plots that are inspired by the rumors that circulate among the urban lower middle classes that they themselves belong to. In so doing, they dramatize the anxieties, fears, values, and hopes of postcolonial Nigerian society by using the existing language(s) of ordinary people. The classic plots about characters that get rich quickly through pacts with occult forces and then fall into ruin mirror the people’s own desire for both individual upward social mobility and their fear of a collapse. Such sentiments dominate the video films: the ruling class in power because of evil spirits, husbands willing to sacrifice their wives merely for personal aggrandizement, families torn apart by rivalries—all are reflections of the growing anxiety of a society where the harshness of an inconsistent and uncontrollable environment has shattered every form of solidarity. The local audience is deeply involved in these stories, which they perceive as familiar and more topical and locally relevant than foreign movies. This is at the very core of African popular culture, that is “the work of local culture producers speaking to local audiences about pressing concerns, experiences and struggles that they share.”39 The discursive space that Nollywood opens is a novel one. Through the democratization of small media technology such as digital video, new expressive domains have been opened up for those who are excluded from the mainstream media. Typically, these are young people, who are representative of the bulk of the masses associated with Nollywood, as 47 percent of Nigeria’s total population is made up of people between the

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ages of fourteen and forty.40 In this sense, Nollywood particularly narrativizes the fears and hopes of young people struggling for advancement in postcolonial society. It constitutes a social space where they can have access to a voice and articulate alternative points of view about reality, negotiating new forms of power and identities.41 Several authors have emphasized the freedom of expression of this public sphere since the videos are not funded by government subsidies and are practically immune to censorship due to their small, mobile format that can be circulated almost everywhere (often through the effective infrastructure of piracy).42 Although straight-to-video distribution and shooting on location guarantee a high degree of visibility, Nollywood movies recall Karin Barber’s idea of Africa’s hidden histories since they are glimpses into Nigerian youths’ everyday lives, which are constantly disregarded by the elites. Like the diaries, letters, reading circles, and local newspapers analyzed by Barber, Nollywood represents “a zone of activity which has been systematically overlooked in favor of more salient and more official styles of reading and writing by academic and political elites. If brought into view, it could reveal the underside, or the obverse, of the betterknown face of social and political history in Africa.”43 Indeed, Nollywood videos are generally excluded from those systems of distribution (cinema theaters and film festivals) that legitimize cultural trends and mediators and that reach elite national and international audiences. So long as they circulate inside Nigeria and beyond through unaccredited trade networks, it is unlikely that they will emerge as credible accounts of contemporary Nigeria, taken up by mainstream historiography. The videos that so loudly express youths’ new voices will not be considered fully authoritative. By contrast, African art films circulating within the official global economy will continue to be internationally regarded as representative of Africa at the level of aesthetics, themes, lifestyles, and opinions even though they are usually sponsored by foreign money and often discredited by African audiences.44 However, a recent “new wave in Nigerian cinema” is challenging these expectations. As Jedlowski emphasizes, initiatives to formalize the Nollywood market have emerged in the past few years.45 Filmmakers such as Tunde Kelani, Jeta Amata, Kunle Afolayan, and Stephanie Okereke have reoriented their distribution strategies, bringing Nollywood videos to cinema theaters (in Nigeria and abroad) and to international film festivals.46 On the one hand, this implies fewer, but better quality movies with longer production times and medium-size budgets (often raised from bank loans and corporations). On the other hand, it means new target

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audiences. Indeed, some filmmakers have begun to look at the Africans in diaspora and film-festival audiences as the most profitable ones. According to Jedlowski, these changes represent an attempt to solve the overproduction crisis that has recently affected the video industry. Nevertheless, although certainly driven by economics, the new trend might have noneconomic nuances as well. It could represent a successful response to the sense of lack that frequently characterizes popular artists struggling for recognition.47 In order to appeal to local viewers and international audiences alike, scriptwriters and directors are experimenting with new “cultural editings,” which can make their movies comprehensible to different kinds of publics.48 It is a difficult task and very likely to result in a progressive detachment of their stories from the concerns and languages of ordinary Nigerians. Indeed, artists who travel from one festival to another are isolated from the people-on-the-street experiences that have traditionally represented the Nollywood focus.49 Nevertheless, in the event of success, chunks of popular culture would invade the prestigious cinema medium (somewhat like the Yoruba traveling theater invading the television medium in the past), giving full visibility and authority to the Nigerian histories told by Nollywood artists.

Film Analysis: Blood Money and The Master In what ways, exactly, does Nollywood dramatize the anxieties, hopes, and concerns of ordinary people? To better grasp Nollywood’s topicality, we will analyze two movies. Recalling Brian Larkin, we will look at them as “sites of symbolic intensity where people’s experiences of political and economic life are brought into being and made vividly legible.”50 In so doing, we do not uncritically concede realism to Nollywood, denying its distortions and exaggerations. On the contrary, we will consider its “aesthetics of outrage” an attempt to expose and capture the fluctuating and confusing dynamics of contemporary postcolonial Nigeria.51 The selected movies focus on different themes, namely secret cults and 419 scams. However, they can be seen as parts of a broader debate in Nollywood about cultural, economic, and social changes in post–structural adjustment Nigeria. In other words, these films constitute historical maps of contemporaneous experiences and events. Because the themes in these films have been treated differently by several other filmmakers, we are provided a palimpsest of cultural takes on recent histories. Thus, the selected movies must not be seen as definitive statements on the topics, but rather as variations on a theme that give rise to new, previously

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unexplored points of view. They have been selected precisely because of their original contributions to this much broader discussion.

Blood Money I and II (1997) Blood Money centers on the theme of money cults, which are familiar to many Nigerians.52 Mike (Zack Orji) is a bank manager who falls into the temptation to pursue effortless enrichment, even though he was enjoying a decent standard of living. After losing money in a confidence game, he joins the secret cult of the Vultures in order to obtain instant wealth. He magically transforms a child into a money machine and obtains a constant cash flow from him through continuous human sacrifices. Little by little, he murders all the members of his family, but in the end he goes mad, harassed by his relatives’ ghosts. Meanwhile, Chief Collins (Kanayo O. Kanayo), another member of the cult, earns millions of dollars thanks to the international trade in human bodies that he conducts under the protection of the “Great Vulture” spirit. Finally, he is arrested by the police who find a body in his villa. Watching Blood Money, we are reminded of what Jean and John Comaroff have described as “occult economies,” meaning “the conjuring of wealth by resorting to inherently mysterious techniques [that] often involve the destruction of others and their capacity to create value.”53 According to the Comaroffs, “As the connections between means and ends become more opaque, more distended, more mysterious, the occult becomes an ever more appropriate, semantically saturated metaphor for our times.”54 Indeed, several authors have interpreted the Nollywood stress on occult economies as a popular attempt to visualize the obscure paths to wealth in post-SAP Nigeria, where money appears to come from secret networks and consumption, rather than production.55 In this sense, the murders and human sacrifices in Blood Money do not represent mere horror fantasy, but dramatizations of the predatory capitalism of the country (indeed the world), where the selfish aggrandizement of a few leads to the exploitation of others.56 Let us explain this point through the particular analysis of Chief Collins’s occult business. He commissions the killing of young Nigerians in order to sell their organs to rich Western businessmen. In a particularly touching scene, laughing, he promises the American Mr. Farouk (Wassim A. Agha) that he will do anything for him so long as he pays. Chief Collins’s business (and attitude) express a popular understanding of what Jean-François Bayart refers to as the “African history of extraversion.”57 According to Bayart, African poverty is not an indication

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of the marginalization and passiveness of the continent, but rather a consequence of Africa’s deep integration into the world economy through unequal relationships. This dynamic of extraversion impoverishes the majority of the population, but offers the African elite the chance to accumulate tremendous wealth and power. Chief Collins’s international trade in human bodies aptly dramatizes this situation. Beyond the symbolic interpretation, the movie could also be fruitfully read as a historical account of the ritual killings that have occurred in Nigerian cities. In 1996, just one year before the movie was released, a popular riot against alleged ritualists took place in Owerri when the police found a freshly decapitated human head and the rest of the body at the Otokoto Hotel. To the local people this was proof of the veracity of their belief in occult economies.58

The Master I and II (2005) The Master is the story of Dennis (Nkem Owoh), a young man who lives in Lagos.59 At the beginning of the movie he sells garments at the market, but he is unable to pay for his daily upkeep. Fed up with his condition of privation, he borrows money from his brother to invest in the importation of goods from Côte d’Ivoire but is swindled and loses everything. His life, therefore, reaches a turning point; the swindled becomes the swindler who gets rich through smart scams organized to the detriment of fellow countrymen and foreign entrepreneurs. The movie ends with his arrest for so-called 419 activity at the Lagos airport, where he is about to flee to London with his loot. This is a very playful comedy that offers an account of the internationally known advance fee fraud, popularly called “419” (after the Nigerian criminal code enacted to prosecute such cases) for which Nigeria is notorious, perpetrated mostly by ambitious youth tucked away in the nooks and crannies of Nigerian cities. Such activities started at the end of the 1980s, when jobless youth began executing well-staged scams. In order to fool their victims and steal their money, they pretended to be bank managers, oil company executives, government officials, and so on. At the beginning of the 2000s, as a consequence of the diffusion of the Internet and mobile phones, such scams reached a new peak. The movie seems to present these swindlers in a somewhat sympathetic light. In the opening scene, Dennis calculates his low income (barely ө400 [US$2.50]), conveying the frustration of a generation for whom hard work and good education do not ensure a decent standard of living. According to the movie, those who are imitated or duped by the 419ers are the ones really

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responsible for this tough situation, and not the 419ers themselves.60 For instance, as a scam is being carried out at the expense of Mr. Evans (Sunny Harps), a Western entrepreneur, Dennis—pretending to be Murtala Muhammed, an adviser to the president of Nigeria (!)—describes oil-rich Nigeria as a country of abandoned refineries, rigged competitive bidding, and inflated contracts that will make the president and his entourage wealthy. What we witness is not so much a condemnation of a kleptomaniac national and international elite, but a historical overview of what Andrew Apter refers to as the post–oil boom “crisis of representation.”61 According to Apter, the collapse of the oil economy and the ensuing “regime of fraud and deception gave rise to a national culture of ‘419,’ in which illusion became the very basis for survival.”62 This state of “arbitrary truth” resulted in a “crisis of credibility” penetrating into every aspect of Nigerian life.63 The care with which Dennis chooses the costumes and rehearses the parts to make his character believable is emblematic of a personal identity that has become itself a “floating signifier,” pending a meaning.64 Once unmasked, the vagueness of how he presents himself is revealing: a businessman who does business. Only by grasping the “simulacral” quality of postcolonial life as depicted in the movie does one understand how the initial anxiety and frustration are resolved comedically instead of through bitter political criticism.65 The postcolonial subject is once again Homo ludens par excellence, who plays with the symbols of power, undergoing perpetual mitosis.66 As we hear in the movie's soundtrack, “419 is just a game.”67 What the film captures, then, is a palpable postcolonial Nigerian history in which chronic want has triggered criminality among a youth generation desperately seeking avenues for survival and finding meaning and hope in the midst of seriously inauspicious circumstances.

Nollywood Traveling Stories In this final section we will consider the transnational dimensions of Nollywood, to highlight the impact of its stories on a global level. To this end, we will focus on Nollywood video consumption and production abroad, well beyond Nigerian borders.68 Like other forms of popular art, Nollywood video films have proven from the outset to have a high degree of mobility, reaching even remote corners of the country. Informal networks have often played a role in this wide circulation. Larkin has shown this with regard to Kano, the center of the northern sector of the video industry (sometimes called “Kanywood”).69

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According to Larkin, the producer sells a master copy of the movie and several hundred copies of the jacket to one of the distributors in the city. The jackets will constitute the only difference between pirated and original movies. The distributor has the video dubbed and sells the copies to dealers in other Northern Nigerian cities, who supply smaller urban and rural dealers, who in turn supply itinerant peddlers. Therefore, the video that the consumer will finally watch somewhere in the Hausaphone area is likely to be a copy of a copy of a copy. As such, it will be cheap enough for the local audience to afford. This example shows both the centrality of the infrastructure of piracy and the interpenetration of formality and informality, legality and illegality, in the Nollywood distribution system. Ramon Lobato succinctly sums up these ambiguities in this way: “Nigerian video circulation has more in common with YouTube than Hollywood.”70 In this regard, Moradewun Adejunmobi has described Nollywood as a “minor transnational practice,” where unaccredited networks of distribution represent a precondition for circulation more than a pathology.71 In her view, Nollywood’s transnationalism is “minor” as it draws on informal but well-structured commercial circuits that only accidentally intersect with the “official” global economy. In the process, it establishes periphery– periphery relationships that are detached from the dominant centers of global cultural production. In a classic example, Lagos producers and marketers travel to Singapore to buy blank video cassettes and sometimes to turn Nigerian productions into video compact discs, whereas Hausa producers and marketers travel to Dubai to buy the materials they need.72 Such connections constitute a parallel world economy that has its own alternative centers of power and escapes regulation by the institutions associated with dominant countries. These factors make minor transnationalism the privileged place for the circulation of autonomous discourses and styles of expression, which have the potential to become alternative global master cultures and undermine “official” forms of globalization.73 As numerous studies show, Nollywood has become hegemonic in the imaginary landscapes of people spread all around Africa and in the African diaspora. For example, in Kenya and in Barbados, following the diffusion of Nigerian video films, it has become “cool” to dress according to the Nigerian fashion on the screen, whereas in South Africa, Nigerian English has taken on a prestige similar to American English in other parts of the world.74 Moreover, Nollywood is now playing a role similar to Hollywood’s in conditioning filmmakers from different African countries, who draw inspiration from its stories and aesthetics in order to win over

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the local audience.75 As Adejunmobi has emphasized, those video films that are not conformed to the Nollywood iconography are likely to be seen by African viewers as “accented,” in Hamid Naficy’s sense of the term.76 Recently, new official forms of transnationalism have emerged. Since 2003, transnationalism “from the top” has taken over part of the industry distribution system. That is when the South African Multichoice-DStv Corporation inaugurated a new satellite channel called Africa Magic, which screens English-language Nollywood movies all around the continent.77 Furthermore, in recent years, Nigerians abroad (mainly based in the United States and in the United Kingdom) have been trying new distribution strategies (e.g., theatrical screenings) in their attempt to formalize the market.78 These new official forms could condition the Nollywood narrative agenda, unlike transnationalism “from below.”79 Africa Magic, in particular, might influence themes and styles of the video film industry by recruiting (and paying) only those filmmakers who produce movies in accordance with its standards.80 The transnational success of Nollywood has encouraged diasporic Nigerians to get involved in the industry not only as consumers, but also as producers. Several studies show that the production of Nollywood-style movies has occurred in Europe and North America, both with and without the involvement of the Lagos-based section of the industry. According to Haynes, such movies shot overseas constitute a distinct Nigerian video genre since they bear significant similarities: a story about hardship set almost entirely within the Nigerian community, little interest in the foreign culture, and the preservation of a peculiar Nollywood style devoid of contaminations with the host country’s film tradition. According to him, they represent an ongoing conversation between Nigerians at home and abroad.81 The particular case of the production of Nollywood-style videos in Turin, Italy, highlights the significance of such cinematographic practice in the lives of Nigerian migrants.82 On the one hand, Nigerians in Turin consider making movies as a way to earn a living in a host country that offers them few opportunities. The Nollywood dream of fast wealth looms large in their lives. On the other hand, they see in the cheap but effective Nollywood production methods a way to fulfill their “desire for selfdocumentation.”83 Indeed, Nigerian expatriates’ voices are frequently ignored by both the host and the home country. Citizens of host countries tend to depict Nigerians as either tormentors or victims, limiting their presence in the mass media to cases of criminality and exploitation.84 In Nigeria, migrants’ stories of hardship and sacrifice are frequently viewed as lies, since Europe is widely perceived as the promised land. Migrants

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complain about the pressing requests for money from their relatives in Nigeria, who are often insensitive to their tough living conditions abroad. To some Nigerians in Turin, Nollywood’s cheap and easy-to-learn methods of production carve out a new discursive space where they can document their experiences and fill the gap of information between home and abroad. Indeed, it is fairly common to meet people who are working on scripts that they guardedly store away on their memory sticks. For example, one such project, Abroad Is Not How You Think, is, in its creator’s words, “the title of a movie we wanted to shoot here in Turin. But we didn’t, because of the lack of money. We just wrote a draft. . . . The title of the movie sums up its message. . . . Everybody wants to go to Europe, but then so many are frustrated here! We wanted to shoot this movie to show the reality of things and then send it to the Nigerian authorities.”85 Another script, The Devotion to the Family, is about “an immigrant who has lived in Italy for years and is resigned to his situation by now: he only lives to meet the needs of his family [in Nigeria].”86 The fact that the original script is written in Italian whereas its moral message addresses the Nigerian audience at home highlights the double perspective peculiar to this kind of work. While many Nigerians in Turin dream about making a movie, only a few have actually done so. This is the case of Vincent Omoigui and his wife, Rose Okoh, who have shot a number of videos about the migratory experience.87 A level of cooperation with the Italian director Simone Sandretti has led to the pursuit of cross-cultural languages and aesthetics;88 nevertheless, the quest for self-representation remains central in Omoigui’s vision. Significantly, he defines his works as “docufiction.” Examining the production of Nollywood movies in Turin has allowed us to grasp the importance of the new discursive spaces opened up by Nollywood in the migrants’ everyday imagination. Satisfying the desire for self-documentation, the process of scriptwriting and filmmaking helps the migrants to steady their lives astride two continents and to negotiate new forms of identity. The dream of becoming a Nollywood filmmaker reveals the desire to communicate with the homeland, reconnecting across the gap opened up by migration. At the same time, it expresses the quest for selfrepresentation in a host country dominated by negative stereotypes.

Conclusion In this essay, we have preoccupied ourselves with illustrating how Nollywood, West Africa’s booming video film industry, is now a poignant conveyor belt for transmitting contemporary social history in Nigeria in

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particular (and indeed the whole of sub-Saharan Africa), especially from the perspective of ordinary people.89 In this regard, we have tried to hinge the cultural practice of video film production in West Africa to the broader cultural phenomenon of media globalization, particularly the democratization of small media technology, and explore how the almost universal liberalization of media resources has in turn led to the democratization of narratives, providing discursive tools and opportunities for people in the lower echelon of African society to purvey new narratives grounded in their own everyday experiences. We have also recounted the genesis of video filmmaking, showing how this iconoclastic art form emerged out of the vestiges of inauspicious socioeconomic and political circumstances. We have further linked the video culture—located in the everyday concerns, struggles, dreams, and hopes of ordinary people—to the genre of African popular culture. In that fertile cultural domain, Africa’s own “intermediate classes” actively draw on their own lives in stapling together newfangled narratives intended not only to entertain, but also to teach, educate, update, forewarn, and direct—and even to philosophize on the meaning and implications of events around them. Using two classic narratives from the Nollywood repertoire to illustrate our argument, we have thus pointed to the unique ways in which the bourgeoning African video industry has catalyzed new modes of social engagement through which ordinary and otherwise disempowered people have found innovative ways of making their quotidian experiences count for something. By telling their own stories, through their own chosen means, and for their own local audiences (and whosoever else cares to listen), ordinary Africans have found new ways and means of offering their informal, yet authentic version of social history, one far removed from the official version of history often purveyed by African states and their corporate allies. By this singular act, video filmmakers are not only telling their stories, but offering alternative histories and knowledge about contemporary African life.

Notes 1

Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 10. 2 Ibid., 2. 3 Ibid., 3. 4 Pamela Wilson and Michelle Stewart, eds., Global Indigenous Media: Cultures, Poetics, and Politics (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008).

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5

Stald Gitte and Thomas Tufte, eds., Global Encounters: Media and Cultural Transformation (Luton, UK: University of Luton Press, 2002). 6 David Marshall, New Media Cultures (London: Arnold, 2004). 7 Ibid., 11. 8 Appadurai, Modernity at Large, 4. 9 Cosmas Nwokeafor and Kehbuma Langmia, eds., Media and Technology in Emerging African Democracies (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2010); Francis Nyamnjoh, Africa’s Media: Democracy and the Politics of Belonging (London/Pretoria: Zed Press/UNISA Press, 2005); Herman Wasserman, ed., Popular Media, Democracy, and Development in Africa (London: Routledge, 2011); Kimani Njogu and John Middleton, eds., Media and Identity in Africa (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009); Kristin Orgeret and Helge Ronning, eds., The Power of Communication: Changes and Challenges in African Media (Oslo: Unipub, 2009); Mahjoob Zweri and Emma C. Murphy, eds., The New Arab Media: Technology, Image and Perception (Reading, UK: Ithaca Press, 2011). 10 Karin Barber, “Orality, the Media, and New Popular Cultures in Africa,” in Media and Identity in Africa, 3–18. 11 Ibid., 4. 12 Ibid., 4–9. 13 Jonathan Haynes, “Political Critique in Nigerian Video Films,” African Affairs 105, no. 421 (2006): 511–33. 14 Wasserman, Popular Media, Democracy and Development, 5. 15 See Karin Barber, The Generation of Plays: Yoruba Popular Life in Theatre (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000); Jonathan Haynes, ed., Nigerian Video Films (Athens: Ohio Center for International Studies, 2000); John McCall, “Nollywood Confidential: The Unlikely Rise of Nigerian Video Film,” Transition 95 (2004): 98–109; Mahir Saul and Ralph Austen, eds., Viewing African Cinema in the Twenty-first Century: Art Films and the Nollywood Revolution (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2010); Pierre Barrot, “Audacity, Scandal, and Censorship,” in Nollywood: The Video Phenomenon in Nigeria, ed. Pierre Barrot (Oxford: James Currey, 2008), 43–52; Foluke Ogunleye, ed., African Video Film Today (Manzini, Swaziland: Academic Publishers, 2003). See also Onookome Okome, ed., Nollywood: West African Cinema, Special Issue of Postcolonial Text 3, no. 2 (2007) http://postcolonial.org/index.php/pct/issue/view/15/showToc. 16 Foluke Ogunleye, ‘‘Introduction,’’ in African Video Film Today, ix. 17 Teresa Turner, “Oil Workers and Oil Burts in Nigeria,” Africa Today 30, no. 4 (1986): 36–37. To get a sense of the value of Nigeria’s currency in global financial markets at the time, see this history of Nigeria’s currency in relation to the US dollar: http://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-498412.0.html. 18 Turner, “Oil Workers and Oil Burts,” 36–37. 19 This is not to suggest that things have improved dramatically; video film production still goes on amid almost impossible social and economic conditions. Access to capital is still a major problem, and the basic infrastructure for highquality film production is simply nonexistent.

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Ogunleye, ‘‘Introduction,’’ ix. See Barber, Generation of Plays, 240–64. 22 Ibid., 241. 23 Ibid. 24 Ajani-Ogun, dir. Ola Balogun (Afrocult Foundation, 1975); Aiye, dir. Ola Balogun (Ogunde Films and Afrocult Foundation, 1979). 25 Adesanya, ‘‘From Film to Video,’’ 38–39. 26 Ibid., 39–40. 27 Moradewun Adejunmobi, “Video Film Technology and Serial Narratives in West Africa,” in African Video Film Today, 53. 28 Ibid., 54. 29 Femi Shaka, “Rethinking the Nigerian Video Film Industry,” in African Video Film Today, 41. 30 See Karin Barber, ‘‘Popular Reactions to the Petro-Naira,’’ in Readings in African Popular Culture, ed. Karin Barber (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), 91–98. 31 Shaka, “Rethinking Nigerian Video Film,” 42. 32 Ibid., 44. 33 Living in Bondage I, dir. Vic Mordi (NEK Video Links, 1992). 34 For an analysis of the criticism of Nollywood, see Onookome Okome, “Nollywood and Its Critics,” in Viewing African Cinema, 26–41. Brian Larkin has remarked that recently the Nigerian government has begun to recognize Nollywood as a key force for counteracting Nigeria’s negative international reputation for corruption and violence. See Brian Larkin, Signal and Noise: Media, Infrastructure, and Urban Culture in Nigeria (Durham, DC: Duke University Press, 2008), 176. 35 Alessandro Jedlowski, “Beyond the Video Boom: New Tendencies in the Nigerian Video Industry” (paper presented at ASAUK writing workshop, Birmingham, UK, April 16, 2010). 36 Karin Barber, “Popular Arts in Africa,” African Studies Review 30, no. 3 (1987): 23. 37 Paul Ugor, “Introduction,” in book manuscript on Youth Culture in Nollywood Movies (currently under review by publishers); Jonathan Haynes and Onookome Okome, “Evolving Popular Media: Nigerian Video Films,” Research in African Literature 29, no. 3 (1998). 38 Onookome Okome, “Writing the Anxious City: Images of Lagos in Nigerian Home Video Films,” Black Renaissance/Renaissance Noire 5, no. 2 (2003): 75. 39 Karin Barber, “Introduction,” in Readings in African Popular Culture, 2. 40 Ugor, “Introduction.” 41 Paul Ugor, “Small Media, Popular Culture, and New Youth Spaces in Nigeria,” Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies 31, no. 4 (2009): 401. 42 See Brian Larkin, “Degraded Images, Distorted Sounds: Nigerian Video and the Infrastructure of Piracy,” Public Culture 16, no. 2 (2004): 289–314; Brian Larkin, “Hausa Dramas and the Rise of Video Culture in Nigeria,” in Nigerian Video Films, 219; Barrot, “Audacity, Scandal, and Censorship,” 46. We must, however, 21

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observe that this is no longer completely true. In 2010, the Nigerian government allocated a US$200 million fund for loans designed for filmmakers. Apparently nobody has been able to access it as yet as the government requires very strict guarantees. Kunle Afolayan, personal communication, August 2, 2011. 43 Karin Barber, “Introduction: Hidden Innovators in Africa,” in Africa’s Hidden Histories: Everyday Literacy and Making the Self, ed. Karin Barber (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), 3. 44 Moradewun Adejunmobi, “Nigerian Video Film as Minor Transnational Practice,” in Nollywood: West African Cinema, 12. 45 Alessandro Jedlowski, “From Nollywood to Nollyworld: Processes of Transnationalization in the Nigerian Video Industry,” in Nollywood beyond Nigeria: Transnational Dimensions of an African Video Film Industry, ed. Matthias Krings and Onookome Okome (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, forthcoming). 46 These distribution strategies are not completely new to the industry. Attempts at formalization and professionalization have underpinned the entire Nollywood history. In the 1990s, directors Amaka Igwe and Zeb Ejiro were already screening their movies (respectively Violated [Crystal Gold, 1996], and Domitilla [DAAR Communication, 1997]) in Lagos theaters to the elite audience of Victoria Island and Ikoyi. For more on this see Haynes and Okome, “Evolving Popular Media,” 117. For a broad explanation of Nigerian cinema’s new wave, see Jedlowski, “Beyond the Video Boom” and “From Nollywood to Nollyworld.” 47 For an in-depth analysis of the sense of lack felt by popular artists, see Barber, Generation of Plays. As with Nollywood, the Yoruba popular theater aimed at higher degrees of formalization and professionalization to fulfill economic and noneconomic goals. The theater’s stress on writing (the company used registers of members, letters of application, salary receipts, written synopses, advertisement posters, and so on) clearly illustrates this dual orientation. On the one hand, writing helped run the company, meeting an economic goal. On the other hand, it reconnected the company to the prestigious modern world, allowing the actors to compare themselves to teachers and preachers. In so doing, they enhanced their status and gave authority and strength to the moral messages spread by their plays. The television medium played an analogous dual role. 48 We use the expression “cultural editing” in Barber’s sense. In particular, see her Generation of Plays, chap. 10. In a recent interview, the director Kunle Afolayan explained that he seeks stories with “universal appeal” that people can relate to regardless of their social, cultural, or geographic origins. Furthermore, he continues using the DVD distribution system after cinema screenings even though it is highly subject to piracy. Cheap, pirated DVDs sold in Nigerian streets ensure accessibility of the movies to the popular public. Kunle Afolayan, personal communication, August 2, 2011. 49 An example of top-down influence on movie contents is Kunle Afolayan’s Phone Swap (Golden Effects Pictures, March 2012). The plot was suggested by a telephone company that was supposed to fund the production. It finally withdrew,

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but the idea for the plot remained. Kunle Afolayan, personal communication, August 2, 2011. 50 Larkin, Signal and Noise, 170. 51 Ibid., 184. 52 Blood Money, dir. Chico Ejiro (OJ Productions, 1997). 53 Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff, “Occult Economies and the Violence of Abstraction: Notes from the South African Postcolony,” American Ethnologist 26, no. 2 (1999): 297. 54 Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff, “Millennial Capitalism: First Thoughts on a Second Coming,” in Millennial Capitalism and the Culture of Neoliberalism, ed. Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001), 27. 55 See, for example, Larkin, Signal and Noise, 180; John C. McCall, “Madness, Money, and Movies: Watching a Nigerian Popular Video with the Guidance of a Native Doctor,” Africa Today 49, no. 3 (2002): 81; Okome, “Writing the Anxious City”; Tobias Wendl, “Wicked Villagers and the Mysteries of Reproduction: An Exploration of Horror from Ghana and Nigeria,” in Nollywood: West African Cinema, 1–21. 56 For an analogous reflection upon Ghana video films, see Birgit Meyer, “Delivered from the Powers of Darkness: Confessions of Satanic Riches in Christian Ghana,” Africa: Journal of International African Institute 65, no. 2 (1995): 236–55; and “The Power of Money: Politics, Occult Forces, and Pentecostalism in Ghana,” African Studies Review 41, no. 3 (1998): 15–37. 57 Jean-François Bayart, “Africa in the World: A History of Extraversion,” African Affairs 99 (2000): 217–67. 58 For an account of the Otokoto disturbances see Iheanyi M. Enwerem, “MoneyMagic and Ritual Killing in Contemporary Nigeria,” in Money Struggles and City Life: Devaluation in Ibadan and Other Urban Centers in Southern Nigeria, 1986– 1996, ed. Jane I. Guyer, LaRay Denzer, and Adigun Agbaje (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2002), 189–205. 59 The Master, dir. Andy Amenechi, KAS-VID International Ltd, 2005. 60 For an overview of 419 activity and its analysis as a popular interpretation of corruption, see Daniel Jordan Smith, A Culture of Corruption: Everyday Deception and Popular Discontent in Nigeria (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007). Through the following analysis we do not wish to depict the 419 activity as a form of bottom-up resistance to institutional powers. Andrew Apter has clearly shown the relationships between 419ers and government entourage. Rather, we would like to consider the representation of the 419 phenomenon as it emerges from a Nollywood movie. See Apter, The Pan-African Nation: Oil and Spectacle of Culture in Nigeria (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 245. 61 Apter, Pan-African Nation, 224. 62 Ibid., 250. 63 Ibid., 224, 231. 64 Ibid., 254.

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65 Achille Mbembe, “Provisional Notes on the Postcolony,” Africa 62, no. 1 (1992): 8. 66 Ibid., 5. 67 For an overview of the imbrication of comedy and the political in African screen media, see Lindiwe Dovey, ed., special issue, Journal of African Cultural Studies 22, no. 1 (2010). 68 For an extensive analysis of Nollywood transnationalism, see Krings and Okome, Nollywood beyond Nigeria. 69 Larkin, “Degraded Images, Distorted Sounds,” 295. 70 Ramon Lobato, “Creative Industries and Informal Economies: Lessons from Nollywood,” International Journal of Cultural Studies 13, no. 4 (2010): 345. 71 Adejunmobi, “Nigerian Video Film.” 72 See Larkin, “Degraded Images, Distorted Sounds,” and Jonathan Haynes, “Africans Abroad: A Theme in Film and Video,” Africa e Mediterraneo: Cultura e Società 45 (2003): 12. 73 Cf. the concept of “parallel modernities,” in Brian Larkin, “Indian Films and Nigerian Lovers: Media and the Creation of Parallel Modernities,” Africa 67, no. 3 (1997): 406–40. 74 Ogova Ondego, “Kenya and Nollywood: A State of Dependence,” in Nollywood: The Video Phenomenon in Nigeria, 116; Jane Bryce, “African Movies in Barbados: Proximate Experiences of Fear and Desire” (paper presented at the “Nollywood in Africa, Africa in Nollywood” conference, Pan-African University, Lagos, July 21–23, 2011); Heike Becker, “Nollywood in Urban Southern Africa: Nigerian Video Films and Their Audiences in Cape Town and Windhoek,” in Nollywood beyond Nigeria. 75 See, for example, Birgit Meyer, “Ghanaian Popular Video Movies between State Policies and Nollywood: Discourses and Tensions,” in Viewing African Cinema, 42–62; Joyce B. Ashuntantang, “Constructing Identity and Authenticity: The Evolving Cameroon Video Film in English,” in Film in African Literature Today 28, ed. Ernest N. Emenyonu (Oxford: James Currey, 2010), 133–45; Matthias Krings, “Nollywood Goes East: The Localization of Nigerian Video Films in Tanzania,” in Viewing African Cinema, 84–85. 76 Adejunmobi, “Nigerian Video Film,” 10; Hamid Naficy, An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001). 77 In 2010, the same corporation launched Africa Magic Yoruba and Africa Magic Hausa to broadcast Yoruba-language movies to the Yoruba-speaking viewers and Hausa-language movies to the Hausa-speaking public. See Moradewun Adejunmobi, “Nollywood, Globalization, and Regional Media Corporations in Africa,” Popular Communication 9, no. 2 (2011): 67–78. 78 Jedlowski, “From Nollywood to Nollyworld.” 79 See Michael P. Smith and Luis E. Guarnizo, eds., Transnationalism from Below (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1998). 80 Adejunmobi, “Nollywood, Globalization,” 76. 81 Haynes, “Africans Abroad” and “The Nollywood Diaspora: A Nigerian Video Genre,” in Nollywood beyond Nigeria. For a compelling analysis of the production

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of Nigerian video films overseas, see also Claudia Hoffmann, “Where Nollywood Meets Hollywood: Nigerian Video Film Production in Los Angeles” (paper presented at the “Nollywood in Africa, Africa in Nollywood” conference, PanAfrican University, Lagos, July 21–23, 2011); Alessandro Jedlowski, “On the Periphery of Nollywood: Nigerian Video Filmmaking in Italy and the Emergence of Intercultural Aesthetics,” in Postcolonial Italy: Colonial Past in Contemporary Culture, ed. Cristina Lombardi-Diop and Caterina Romeo (London: Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming); Sophie Samyn, “Nollywood in the Diaspora: An Exploratory Study on Transnational Aesthetics” (MA thesis: University of Gent, 2010). 82 The following analysis draws on ethnographic research conducted in Turin in 2008–9 by Giovanna Santanera. For a history of Nigerian migration to Turin, see the work of Pietro Cingolani: “Koming from Naija to Turin: Esperienze nigeriane di immigrazione e di fede,” in Più di un Sud: Studi antropologici sull’immigrazione a Torino, ed. Paola Sacchi and Pier Paolo Viazzo (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2003), 120–54; “Migranti nigeriani e associazionismo: Il caso di Torino,” Africa e Orienti 3 (2005): 68–91; “L’imprevedibile familiarità della città: Luoghi e percorsi significativi dei migranti nigeriani a Torino,” in Reti migranti, ed. Francesca Decimo and Giuseppe Sciortino (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2006), 59–87; “Famiglie nigeriane in migrazione: Memorie, desideri e trasformazioni,” in VV. AA., Narrare l'incontro con le culture dell'immigrazione: Memorie familiari, pratiche alimentari ed espressioni artistiche (Turin: L’Harmattan, 2006), 21–56. 83 Karin Barber’s idea of tin-trunk texts as a way to self-document one’s own experience inspired our use of this expression. See Barber, “Introduction: Hidden Innovators in Africa,” 1. 84 Regarding the way immigrants are represented in Italian newspapers, see, for example, Luigi Gariglio, Andrea Pogliano, and Riccardo Zanini, eds., Facce da straniero: 30 anni di fotografia e giornalismo sull’immigrazione in Italia (Milan: Mondadori, 2010). 85 Daniel, personal communication, February 13, 2009. (To protect migrants’ identities, we do not give surnames). 86 Original title: L’amore per la famiglia. Osmund, personal communication, April 11, 2009. 87 Efe-Obomwan, dir. Vincent Omoigui (GVK, 2006); Uwado, dir. Vincent Omoigui and Simone Sandretti (GVK, 2008); Akpegi Boyz, dir. Vincent Omoigui and Simone Sandretti (GVK, 2009); Blinded Devil, dir. Vincent Omoigui and Simone Sandretti (GVK, incomplete). For an in-depth analysis of Omoigui’s movies, see Jedlowski, “On the Periphery of Nollywood.” 88 Jedlowski, “On the Periphery of Nollywood.” 89 Our analysis has focused especially on the English-language productions of the Nollywood film industry. However, it is our belief that it could be profitably extended to certain local-language productions, as Adamu’s work on Hausa movies clearly shows. Cf., for example, Abdalla Uba Adamu, “Islam, Hausa Culture, and Censorship in Northern Nigerian Video Film,” in Viewing African Cinema, 42–62.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN MAINSTREAMING THE CONTEMPORARY CONTEXT OF HISTORICAL SCHOLARSHIP IN NIGERIA OLUKOYA OGEN

The advance of any discipline calls for deviation, even a sharp breakaway, from the ways of the founding fathers and especially from traditionalists.1

Since the early 1980s, the historical profession in Nigeria appears to have been plagued by a crisis of relevance and identity. There is even a growing anti-historical bias in contemporary Nigerian “culture.” Indeed, apart from the fact that history has been suffering from low enrollment in our universities, the subject has even been expunged from the Nigerian junior secondary school curricula. Thus, the most pressing challenge faced by Nigerian historians today is how to make this very important discipline relevant to the needs of the Nigerian society. The central issues include how to open the door to a new professional role for historians, and how to make the government and the society at large recognize, appreciate, and harness the utilitarian values of historians for nation building and national development. This chapter attempts to articulate, contextualize, and locate the centrality of contemporary history as a tool for arresting the poor attention given to historical education. I will argue that since dynamism and change are signs of health in any intellectual discipline, the opportunities for contemporary history to jump-start a historical renaissance in Nigeria are greater than ever before. The chapter concludes that the historical profession will become sterile unless it can contribute to our understanding of current issues, and that the contemporary approach has the propensity to make history richer, more exciting, more valuable, and more relevant to national as well as global concerns and problems.

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Nigerian historians did identify with the contemporary needs of the Nigerian society prior to independence and shortly afterwards. For instance, by countering the myth of the Hamitic hypothesis after World War II, the discipline began as an “intellectual bulwark against European colonialism and racism”;2 furthermore, by showing that Africans had welldeveloped and sophisticated institutions of government before the arrival of Europeans, historians gave “intellectual muscle to the clamour for independence.”3 The profession also contributed immensely to the nationbuilding efforts of the early postindependence era. In a way, these efforts were responsible for the trailblazing role of Nigerian historians in the country’s intellectual tradition and the momentous societal recognition accorded the discipline and its practitioners from the 1950s to the 1970s. However, starting from the 1980s, Nigerian historians began harboring serious doubts about the legitimacy of contemporary history, the thinking being that historians have only a limited role to play in contemporary affairs.4 Consequently, they tended to attribute less importance to issues of current national importance. The field of contemporary history has since been left open to political scientists, economists, journalists, and the like. Nigerian society has thus been encouraged in the delusion that history and historians have little or nothing to offer either the government or the society.

Conceptual Clarifications Contemporary history could be taken to mean more or less recent or current history. In any case, the term is so dynamic and elastic that it is conceptualized in different ways by different scholars. Nevertheless, in its widest application the exact range of period that it covers is conditioned by choice, convention, and other temporal considerations.5 The concept itself is very relative because what is regarded as contemporary or recent today, becomes remote tomorrow; or put differently, what passes for contemporary history is daily ceasing to be contemporary.6 Bernard Krikler and Walter Laquer acknowledge the fact that contemporary history is essentially concerned with events that form the direct basis for decisions on problems of public importance at the present time or in the immediate future, as distinct from those that provide only a general historical background or have no relevance to modern problems at all.7 David Trask sees contemporary history as that form of historical analysis usually associated with current public policy. To him, historical information and historical thought constitute inherent and indispensable aspects of policy making because a policymaker is also a history maker.8 Other scholars have

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defined contemporary history as the type of history that elucidates contemporary problems—that is, a “problem oriented study of history.”9 It may also be considered “functional history,” since it enables historians to fulfill their social functions to the society;10 or a history that is informed by “present mindedness,” because it is basically concerned with modern ideas and intentions.11 In fact, E. H. Carr buttressed the point made by B. Croce that “all history is contemporary history” because “however remote in time events thus recounted may seem to be, history in reality refers to present needs and present situations wherein those events vibrate.”12 Nevertheless, and for the purpose of this chapter, I have chosen to refer to the contemporary history of Nigeria as the history of Nigeria since independence.13 Essentially, such a history must deal with the country’s social dynamics since 1960. This position is informed by two interrelated factors. In the first instance, in contemporary historical reconstruction it is fashionable to look for a watershed or a milestone after which subsequent events are regarded as contemporary. In the Nigerian case, the attainment of independence in October 1960 was a watershed.14 Second, the fifty-year rule by which official documents are allowed to be acquired by the Nigerian National Archives (which term was reduced to thirty years in 1991, though this change has not yet been properly implemented) implies that, for now, post-1960 historical reconstruction will largely take place outside the purview of archival sources. Such a history cannot but be methodologically and fundamentally contemporary. In the light of the above conceptual clarifications, it appears plausible to assert that the contemporary historian is the midwife of history, the vanguard of future historians because he or she works on or close to the frontier at which history is in a state of continuous creation—that is, the present.15

The Historical Roots of Contemporary History The acclaimed father of contemporary history was indisputably none other than the Greek historian Thucydides (ca. 460–ca. 399 BC).16 Contemporary history was Thucydides’ answer to those who challenged the conventional historical methodology of Herodotus and the validity of his enterprise. Thucydides decided to write the history of the war between Athens and Sparta that broke out in 431 BC (the Peloponnesian War), when he was probably in his late twenties.17 By so doing, he turned his back on the past and wrote the history of an event that had just started and whose significance lay in the future. The war lasted for twenty-seven years, and Thucydides produced a historical masterpiece of the events as

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they unfolded before his eyes. This development proved to be critical for the future of historical writing. In spite of the fact that Thucydides focused on a current event, he has been credited with more sophistication and originality in his work than any Greek or Roman historian of ancient times. Indeed, no Greek again undertook so difficult a task, and no other Greek historian approached Thucydides in intellectual rigor and historical insight.18 His methodology revolved around an insistence on precise chronology, personal observation, eyewitness account, the total elimination of “romance” and sensationalism, and a firm commitment to rational analysis. Whenever Thucydides did make brief excursions into earlier times, his motive was to provide historical background information and nothing more.19 In the words of M. I. Finley, Thucydides believed, and rightly so, that “only contemporary history could be really known and grasped; if one worked hard enough and with sufficient intelligence and honesty, one could know and write the history of one’s own age.”20 Thucydides equipped himself with the best education available and acquired early experience in military and political affairs; his technical language and accuracy were unparalleled among lay writers in the whole of antiquity. He believed that his preoccupation with an event of his own age placed him at a vantage point that enabled him to keep in touch with all the parties in the conflict. Xenophon (ca. 431–ca. 350 BC) and Polybius (198–117 BC) were other early Greek historians that took after Thucydides, but they could not match his expertise. Unlike Thucydides, they were unable to appreciate the real problems of historiography.21 The canons of the contemporary approach as laid down by Thucydides were to suffer a major setback during the period of medieval historiography with its emphasis on “divine determinism.”22 Even the humanist historiography of the Renaissance era and the historiography of the Age of Enlightenment, which finally laid to rest the theological basis of historical writing, could not approach the almost impeccable Thucydidean tenets of contemporary history.23 In the nineteenth century, one would have expected scholars like Leopold Ranke (through whose principal efforts history began to be efficiently studied as an intellectual discipline) to accord primacy to the study of contemporary events.24 On the contrary, he kicked against what he termed the attempt to “moralize” history; to him, the task of the historian was simply to study the past and show how the past had been. Three generations of European historians were to follow this tradition.25 However, early in the twentieth century the liberal Whig historians of Great Britain opened a new chapter in the study of contemporary history. Initially, the Whig tradition of historical writing was highly criticized

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because it studied the past with reference to the present. In fact, H. Butterfield came down hard on Whig historians in 1931 and even denounced the very essence of contemporary history: “The study of the past with one eye, so to speak, upon the present is the source of all sins and sophistries in history. . . It is the essence of what we mean by the word ‘unhistorical.’”26 Surprisingly, in 1943, Butterfield reversed his earlier stance. During World War II, Winston Churchill extolled the virtues of history and constantly referred to the relevance and lessons of history as a way of mobilizing the support of the British populace to achieve contemporary British military objectives. Butterfield was so impressed with this new role of history that he enthusiastically wrote of the “marriage between the present and the past.”27 During this period, the same trend was discernible in Italy through the efforts of Croce, who embarked on an intellectual campaign for the study of contemporary history, and in Germany through F. Meinecke, who concerned himself with the contemporary history of Germany and the vicissitudes of its political and military affairs between 1907 and 1945.28 Today, historical scholarship in Europe and the United States concentrates more attention on contemporary history. In Britain, for instance, there is an Institute for the Study of Contemporary History, and several universities offer specialist courses in contemporary history.29 But in Nigeria, apart from those few distinguished historians like J. F. Ade Ajayi, Obaro Ikime, G. N. Uzoigwe, Ayodeji Olukoju, and Akinjide Osuntokun who have been strong advocates for the study of contemporary history, precolonial and colonial historiographies still occupy the dominant position in terms of historical tradition, pedagogy, and methodology.30 It cannot be said strongly enough that the study of contemporary history has become more compelling than ever before, given the stupendous advances in information and telecommunication technology of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The resulting changes in the external circumstances of life have been so far-reaching and fundamental that we seem separated from the past rather linked to it.31

Methodological Issues in Contemporary History Mainstream historians tend to treat contemporary history derogatorily. It has been referred to as mere “propaganda or desultory comment on current affairs.”32 The crux of this argument is that sufficient perspective and adequate objectivity are not available to permit sound historical evaluation of recent events, and reliable evidence is lacking so soon after

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the fact to warrant defensible historical conclusions. Thus, contemporary history is dismissed as a trivial exercise in current events reportage; by this view, there cannot be any such a thing as recent history, only journalism.33 The extreme conclusion that could be drawn from this dismissal of contemporary history is that any work that deals with contemporary human experience must be replete with theoretical inaccuracies, shallow historical analysis, bias, rhetorical sophistries, and unnecessary sensationalism. One consequence of this approach is that the past is studied largely for purely antiquarian reasons and not to enable us to understand and proffer solutions to current problems. However, it is very apparent that the problem of objectivity is a universal phenomenon. It applies not only to contemporary history but to all kinds of history and in fact all intellectual endeavors. As Uzoigwe brilliantly argued, no human being and no discipline can be totally objective, and any historian who lives in the present and claims to be above the battle of contemporary issues either is displaying abysmal ignorance of the true end of historical knowledge or is an outright fraud.34 He went further to ask two pertinent questions: “If historians cannot display their expertise on contemporary issues, how can they demonstrate their relevance to contemporary society? Are the other scholars and disciplines that discuss contemporary issues endowed with superhuman attributes or is the method of historical research inferior to that of other disciplines?”35 Indeed, the historian because of his or her training and methodology is in a better position than others to analyze contemporary events. As D. C. Watt cautions: “The absence of the professional historian does not prevent contemporary history being written or becoming via one of the various channels of public communication that are part of the received pool of what is generally taken to be historical knowledge. It simply prevents it being written according to the accepted canons of historical probity.”36 Unarguably, the contemporary historian faces a myriad of technical and nontechnical problems.37 He has to cope with a vast amount of data at his or her disposal. This problem becomes compounded with the considerable attention from journalism, which often results in an overabundance of documentation. There is also the fundamental problem of perspective and objectivity mentioned above. The problems of getting reliable evidence as well as the occasional undue influence of the government are equally central to contemporary historical reconstruction. So also is the difficulty that arises from handling sensitive issues that are capable of inflaming domestic or international tensions. Finally, there is always the danger that the historian will approach a subject with his or her

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mind preconditioned by personal idiosyncrasies because of either direct or indirect involvement in the current issues themselves. Experience has, however, shown that these difficulties are not insurmountable. Marc Bloch, for instance, rejects the claim that recent events are inappropriate for objective historical research. He argues that what is required is for the researcher to follow the Thucydidean tenets of contemporary historical research. To him, no period is free from biased judgments.38 It is also important for the researcher to search diligently, analyze as impartially as humanly possible, and employ a selective approach because of the large mass of documentation available. Witnesses should be contacted to cross-check the authenticity of the documents at hand. The researcher must behave like a thoroughbred anthropologist— neutral, detached, impassionate; his professional ethics in control of his personal interests.39 He must be primarily interested in observing and gaining an in-depth understanding of his subject rather than issuing condemnations. His initial evaluation and judgment can only be hypothetical and tentative, subject to further clarifications and reexamination. Furthermore, the issues to be examined may also be grouped into specialized or topical fields such as business, labor, maritime, or intellectual history instead of the conventional geographic and chronological groupings. For some sensitive issues, a thematic approach rather than specific case studies will be more appropriate. The methodology of group research rather than individual studies equally enhances objectivity. In fact, the Institute of Contemporary British History adopted a multidisciplinary as well as interdisciplinary approach as its basic methodology.40 The prosopographical and other modern historical research methodologies also share this approach. A contemporary historian must also possess certain personal attributes, some of which are identified by Uzoigwe: a high sense of responsibility, controlled imagination, prudence, and the capacity to make sound judgments. He or she must be intellectually sound and be a person of considerable erudition not only in history but also in other branches of knowledge.41

The Relevance of Contemporary History The discipline of history in Nigeria today is facing a crisis of relevance because of the tendency to reserve the “past” for history and the “present” for other branches of learning like political science, economics, sociology, and journalism.42 It is incontrovertible that people have been showing their preference for the kind of history that is discussed in terms of socioeconomic and political categories that they encounter in their

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everyday lives. Thus, the importance of contemporary history cannot be overemphasized. If preoccupation with precolonial and colonial history has not enabled Nigerian historians to develop in the way they may have wanted, it has at least provided us with the historical background and conceptual tools to move forward and start dealing with the problems of underdevelopment in their contemporary socioeconomic and political contexts. Only then can the historical profession make its relevance felt in Nigeria. The Nigerian historian must stop seeing himself or herself as a detached individual standing outside society and outside history.43 One good example will suffice here. Scholars have found that because African economic historians are wary of dealing with contemporary economic issues, there has been very little communication between economic historians and development economists. Essentially, economic historians work on the period before 1960 while development economists or policymakers concentrate on the postindependence period. Many economists see history as irrelevant and antithetical to their effectiveness. For their part, historians are afraid of compromising their much cherished objectivity and thereby abstain from the historicist game of development theories and prescriptions.44 A change of attitude and methodology by economic historians could assist “in reducing the incredible naivety that informs much development policies advanced by the development experts.”45 Such an approach will endear historians to the government of the day, which will likely seek their expertise in policy making. Moreover, governments, corporations, and public institutions must rely on the most relevant and current information available to them when taking decisions. This means they will not be able to do without the input of the contemporary historian, who brings a contemporary dimension to the study of the remote past, thus providing an additional valid framework and perspective. A preoccupation with contemporary history will ensure the development of new approaches— new questions will be asked and new insights will be gained. Herbert Heis explains the desirability and indispensability of contemporary history thus: “The historian of the recent past should not be regarded as a low man on the totem pole. His service to the life of the nation, all nations, is too important.”46 Ernest R. May summarizes the rationale for contemporary history by arguing that historians “must somehow be better able to study those events most likely to influence people in public life—that is, events of the relatively recent past. Even though many of these events seem as much experience as history, they are susceptible of being better understood if carefully reconstructed—above all if reconstructed by historians of varying approaches.”47

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Indeed, Professor David Trask, formerly of the US State Department, called for a full-blown program of historical study, designed to train specialists in the opportunities and challenges of recent history. Otherwise, the arena will be left to nonspecialists whose contributions are not always sufficient.48 Harry Elmers Barnes, in A History of Historical Writing, opines that historical works or even biographies that refuse to deal seriously with contemporary historical events or figures weaken, perhaps fatally, their utility for those of us who are living in the present.49 Coming nearer to home, J. F. Ajayi, who has been described as “indisputably the brightest star in Nigeria’s historical firmament,” and A. E. Afigbo are the only two historians that have received the nation’s highest academic honor, the Nigerian National Merit Award.50 Both have also underscored the importance of contemporary history. There is no doubt that such monumental “preferments” were in recognition of their sterling contributions to the contemporary development of Nigeria and the relevance of their works and their discipline to the daily needs and aspirations of Nigerians. Ajayi posits that a focus on contemporary issues will ensure that history becomes a functional discipline and that historians will be able to fulfill their social functions to the society: “Our depth of historical understanding should be such that it provides us with better insight into the workings of the contemporary society. . . . Our involvement in the concerns of the present should make us ask more rigorous questions from the past and our answers should ensure that historical education fulfils its basic social function today.”51 Professor Afigbo in his widely cited study, History as Statecraft, argues that historians should consciously seek to ease the work of statesmen in building, developing, and sustaining the state by “choosing themes for historical study with a keen eye to contemporary problems so that through the ensuing analysis, solutions or at least statesmanlike approaches to such problems could be propounded.”52 It is, however, regrettable that these significant recommendations have not been implemented in Nigeria. Nigerian historians still prefer to hold on tenaciously to their eternal quest for precolonial and colonial history. But what seems unique about history in the eye of the Nigerian public at the present time is the fact that it is believed to be an irrelevant discipline that people no longer want to study. To reverse this dangerous trend, Nigerian historians must begin to welcome the study of contemporary events. In a recent work, Siyan Oyeweso aptly captures the desirability of embracing a contemporaneous orientation by Nigerian historians when he argues that the changing character of historical evidence and the development of new techniques, concepts, and theories in related disciplines

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imply that even those historians who are skeptical about the methodology of the social sciences and the contemporary focus of social science research have to acquaint themselves with the basic fundamentals of studying recent history.53 Indeed, even within the historical profession there have emerged persons or groups who are fully or partially engaged in social science–oriented research.54 Thus, in spite of the contemporary focus of social science research, a significant part of historical study and training now overlaps the scope of the social sciences. The time is thus ripe for Nigerian historians to review the scope and methodology of their research in line with the peculiar challenges of today. Furthermore, the need to reposition the historical profession in Nigeria is reinforced by the fact that such repositioning has not only been done in Western universities, but is an ongoing process.55 In this regard a scrutiny of the history syllabus as well as the syllabi of other disciplines in the humanities in Europe and North America would reveal a refreshing departure from that of three decades ago. For instance, in the Department of History at Cleveland State University, courses in African Religious Influence in America, Contemporary Afro-American Relations, and African Arts have been added alongside the conventional Afro-American History to expose students to new research that is significant for presentday life.56 In the UK, the humanities and the natural sciences have been organically fused to create such disciplines as Medical Humanities, Humanities Computing, Gender Studies, Media Studies, Ethnicity Studies, and so on.57 It is not surprising that in 2009 the Association of American Colleges and Universities at the end of its annual convention issued a communiqué urging those who work in the humanities, especially history, to deemphasize the ivory-tower view of liberal education and emphasize more its practical and economic value.58

Conclusion This chapter argues that there is a need to reexamine the nature and meaning of historical education in Nigeria. A discipline that is widely perceived as irrelevant and one that cannot readily find a market for its products needs to critically review its overall philosophy and possibly fine-tune or overhaul its methodology. Current opportunities for contemporary history to arrest this drift are unequalled. The public’s appetite for understanding contemporary events and the benefit to be derived from learning from them can enable Nigerian society to begin appreciating and recognizing the inherent, fundamental value of historical knowledge. As rightly suggested by Olukoju, there is a need for a

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deliberate popularization of history.59 This entails germane contributions by professional historians to contemporary discourse in both print and electronic media. Historians should also utilize their historical insight to advise and make projections as well as proffer solutions concerning current social problems. I suggest that historians not pay lip service to the usefulness of contemporary history; rather, if in a position to do so, they should approve BA/MA or MPhil/PhD research topics that address recent historical phenomena. Should historians still insist that any historical work that is not based on archival materials is substandard? Are history teachers willing to review the courses they teach to incorporate contemporary history? To my mind, objectivity pertains to the sincerity and technical expertise of the researcher, not the period he or she is studying. There are journalists who are renowned for their high level of objectivity and balanced reporting, just as there are historians who practice sophistry by relying on archival sources to substantiate their spurious claims. The only difference between history, which the public sees as irrelevant, and those disciplines perceived as relevant is simply the contrast between an old newspaper and a new one. In Nigerian parlance, whenever one is holding a newspaper, the first question a reader would ask is, is that today’s newspaper? If the answer is no, he or she becomes disinterested. If the response is yes, he or she begs to read. To the Nigerian public, history is yesterday’s newspaper while today’s newspaper is represented by journalism, economics, political science, and so on. Interestingly, the departments of history in the relatively new Nigerian universities and in a few of the older ones that have changed their nomenclature from just History to History and International Studies or History and Diplomatic/Strategic Studies (in order to emphasize their openness to contemporary issues) have witnessed a massive boom in student enrollment. Given the ease with which they were able to change their nomenclature, institutions such as Lagos State University, University of Lagos, University of Benin, Adekunle Ajasin University, and Olabisi Onabanjo University are strategically placed to take the lead in the study of contemporary history in Nigeria.60 Unlike the older universities, they are not seriously bogged down by age-old stifling historical traditions. In spite of the much touted and perhaps overblown problems of objectivity, identity, and perspective, the study of contemporary history can be not only fascinating but intellectually challenging as well. It is also very rewarding, especially if one considers the gigantic strides being recorded in the area of public history in the developed world.61 Finally, perhaps I might add that this chapter will have succeeded in achieving its central objective only if it elicits reactions, even condemnations, from other

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historians with a view to provoking a debate on the future of the historical profession in Nigeria and the modalities that should be put in place for a resurgence of the discipline.

Notes 1 Marian D. Irish and Elke Frank, Introduction to Comparative Politics (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1978), 2. 2 See, for example, Ayodeji Olukoju, “Challenges before the 20th-Century Nigerian Historian,” in Issues in Historiography, O. O. Olubomehin (Ago Iwoye, NIgeria: Department of History and Diplomatic Studies, Olabisi Onabanjo University, 2001), 126; and Ayodeji Olukoju, “Rethinking Historical Scholarship in Africa,” in Rethinking the Humanities in Africa, ed. Sola Akinrinade et al. (IleIfe, Nigeria: Faculty of Arts, Obafemi Awolowo University, 2007), 452. 3 Olukoju, “Challenges before the Nigerian Historian.” 4 Obaro Ikime, “In Search of Nigerians: Changing Patterns of Inter-Group Relations in an Evolving Nation State,” Presidential Inaugural Address, 30th Congress of the Historical Society of Nigeria, Nsukka, May 1985, 1; David Trask, “A Reflection on Historians and Policy Makers,” The History Teacher 11, no. 2 (1978): 221. 5 See G. N. Uzoigwe, “History and Democracy in Nigeria,” Presidential Inaugural Lecture, 34th Congress of the Historical Society of Nigeria, Benin City, 1989, 3. 6 D. C. Watt, “Twentieth-Century History,” in New Movements in the Study and in Teaching of History, ed. M. Ballard (London: Temple Smith, 1970), 67. 7 Bernard Krikler and Walter Laquer, eds., A Reader’s Guide to Contemporary History (London: Weinfeld and Nicolson, 1972), 1–3. 8 Trask, “Reflection on Historians and Policymakers,” 221. 9 Adiele E. Afigbo, History as Statecraft (Okigwe, Nigeria: Whytem, 1999), 24. 10 J. F. Ade Ajayi, “Historical Education in Nigeria,” Presidential Address, 19th Congress of the Historical Society of Nigeria, Ile-Ife, 1972, 10. 11 Jacques Barzun and Henry Graff, The Modern Researcher (New York: Harbinger, 1962), 51. 12 B. Croce, History as the Story of Liberty, 19, cited in E. H. Carr, What Is History? (New York: Penguin, 1961), 21; Carr, What Is History?, 20–21. 13 Uzoigwe, “History and Democracy in Nigeria,” 2. 14 J. N. Obiegbu, “Historiography and the Training of Historians,” in Issues in Historiography, 10. 15 Watt, “Twentieth-Century History,” 68, 76. 16 For an assessment of the place of Thucydides in the history of historical writing, see M. I. Finley, The Greek Historians: The Essence of Herodotus, Thucydides, Zenophon, Polybius (New York: Viking Press, 1959), 7–14. 17 Ibid., 218–379. 18 Obiegbu, “Historiography,” 3. 19 For Thucydides’ methodology, see Finley, Greek Historians, 13. 20 Ibid., 9.

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Ibid., 89, 217–18. Ibid., 14 –15, 381–82. 23 Harry Elmer Barnes, A History of Historical Writing (New York: Dover, 1963), 21–32. 24 Obiegbu, “Historiography,” 4. 25 Carr, What Is History?, 8–9. 26 Ibid., 41. 27 Ibid., 42. 28 Ibid., 40–41, 100. 29 A good book on the growth and development of contemporary history in Britain is A. Gorst et al., eds., Contemporary British History, 1931–1961 (London: Pinter, 1991). 30 Olukoju, “Challenges before the Nigerian Historian,” 126–29. 31 Felix Gilbert and S. R. Graubard, eds., “Introduction,” in Historical Studies Today (New York: Norton, 1972), 20. 32 Uzoigwe, “History and Democracy in Nigeria.” 33 Watt, “Twentieth-Century History,” 65. 34 Uzoigwe, “History and Democracy in Nigeria,” 4, 6. 35 Ibid., 3. 36 Watt, “Twentieth-Century History,” 65. 37 For details, see the following: G. Barraclough, An Introduction to Contemporary History (London: Watts, 1964), 6–19; Marc Bloch, The Historian’s Craft (New York: Knopf, 1953), 37. 38 Bloch, Historian’s Craft, 37. 39 Uzoigwe, “History and Democracy in Nigeria,” 5–6. 40 Gorst et al., Contemporary British History, 55. 41 Uzoigwe, “History and Democracy in Nigeria,” 5–6. 42 Olukoya Ogen, “The Comparative Context of Historical Writing,” AAU: African Studies Review 5 (2006): 123–54. 43 Carr, What Is History?, 139. 44 The two works in question are A. G. Hopkins, “African Entrepreneurship: An Essay on the Relevance of History to Development Economics,” Geneve Afrique 26 (1988): 21–23; and Tiyamba Zeleza, Modern Economic History of Africa, vol. 1 (Dakar: CODESRIA, 1993), 1. 45 Zeleza, Modern Economic History of Africa, 2. 46 The quotation is from Trask, “Reflection on Historians and Policymakers,” 221. 47 Ibid. 48 Ibid. 49 Barnes, History of Historical Writing, xi, 86. 50 Afigbo, History as Statecraft, 1. 51 Ajayi, “Historical Education in Nigeria,” 10. 52 Afigbo, History as Statecraft, 13–14. 53 Siyan Oyeweso, “History and the Social Sciences: Towards a Common Ground,” International Journal of Interdisciplinary Social Sciences 5, no. 8 (2010): 101–12. 22

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Ibid. Khor Martin, Globalization and the South: Some Critical Issues (Ibadan: Spectrum Books, 2000), 24. 56 Regennia Williams, “Documenting and Teaching the History of the Migration of Yoruba Religious Arts to the United States: A Case Study of the Evidence of Things Seen and Heard in Cleveland, Ohio, and Ile-Ife, Nigeria” (Paper presented at the Department of History and International Studies, Osun State University, Osogbo, June 24, 2010), 2. 57 Adesegun Fatusi, “Medicine and Humanities,” in Rethinking the Humanities in Africa, 452. 58 Patricia Cohen, “In Tough Times, the Humanities Must Justify Their Worth,” New York Times, February 25, 2009, 2. 59 Olukoju, “Challenges before the Nigerian Historian,” 110–32, 138. 60 D. S. Landes and Charles Tilly, eds., History as Social Science ((Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1971), 32–34. 61 Trask, “Reflection on Historians and Policymakers,” 221–22. 55

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN HUMAN TRAFFICKING IN NIGERIA: GLOBALIZATION AND TRANSNATIONAL IMMORALITY, 1985–2010 RICHARD A. ABORISADE AND ADEYINKA A. ADERINTO

Human trafficking, described as a form of modern slavery and a threat to human security, has been rated as the fastest-growing form of criminal activity in the world and the third most profitable international criminal business after drug and arms trafficking.1 The 1949 United Nations Convention against Trafficking in Persons described it as a major threat to the dignity and worth of the humans and a danger to the welfare of individuals, families, and communities.2 The International Organization for Migration (IOM) reported in 2007 that the number of women annually transported mainly for purposes of sexual exploitation is a staggering 700,000 to 2 million worldwide.3 Trafficking of humans for exploitative purposes is not a new phenomenon, but one deeply rooted in the history of humanity. The history of Africa, particularly during struggles for power and dominance between African communities, has been tragically marked by incidences of war and conflict.4 The conquerors in such wars typically seized both the defeated warriors and civilians of the conquered community as captives and took them to their own land as slaves. Such slaves were then used for domestic, economic, and religious purposes (including as human sacrifices) by the victorious chiefs and warriors. During era of the Atlantic slave trade, captive slaves were also traded to the Europeans, who then took them to work on their farms and help to develop their agricultural plantations, especially in their South and North American colonies. In fact, some African wars and conflicts were masterminded and sponsored by Europeans as a means to churning out ever more slaves for the trade.5 From the foregoing, trafficking in humans

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can be said to have taken different forms including slavery and slaverylike practices. However, the current use of the term and its reference to the present illicit and illegal movement of humans emerged in the twentieth century.6 Human trafficking has been a subject of major concern to different disciplines within the academy, with each field conceptualizing, studying, and explaining the phenomenon from its particular ideological perspectives. For instance, the medical sciences look at the inherent health problems that emanate from the process of trafficking;7 whereas, the gross abuses of fundamental human rights and the emasculation of the women affected are the main concerns of lawyers and women’s rights activists.8 Within the social sciences, demographers have been primarily concerned with the implications of the illegality and nonregistration of the migrants to the countries of origin and destination, while economists similarly view trafficking as a factor that depletes the human resources of origin countries but that has revenue implications to origin and destination countries alike. For their part, sociologists prefer to harmonize the views of other disciplines, channeling efforts toward a holistic view of the problem and its ramifications for entire societies. The first globally recognized definition of trafficking—as offered in 2000 in the United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress, and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, which supplements the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime—described it as “the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation.” The definition adds that such “exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labor or services.”9 Conceptually, the above definition emphasizes the use of force, threat, deception, or fraud to exercise control over another person for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation, according to the UN, could be for forced labor or prostitution. Forced or compulsory labor is defined by the International Labor Organization (ILO) as work or service that is extracted from any person under the menace of a penalty and for which said person has not offered himself or herself voluntarily. The UN protocol’s definition does not countenance the concept of voluntary trafficking at all, but stoutly condemns trafficking whether it takes place with the consent of the person trafficked or not. The present study focuses on trafficking

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oriented to sex work. Nigeria has been labeled by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) as a leading country of origin, transit, and destination for human trafficking especially in regard to the trafficking of the underaged.10 This is a consequence of the country’s having acquired the unenviable reputation as the African country with the highest levels of human trafficking both internally and across its borders. In our examination of human trafficking, we pay particular attention to the sexual exploitation of women outside Nigeria since the 1980s. The unprecedented upsurge in cases of trafficking since that decade is examined against the backdrop of Nigeria’s social and economic downturn. We will discuss the efforts of both the state and civil society in stemming the tide of the “trade in flesh,” as human trafficking is colloquially labeled. This chapter will present the involvement of the wives of head of governments, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), intergovernmental bodies, religious bodies, and other institutions of civil society in responding to the recent resurgence of the problem. It is hoped that this investigation will alert mainstream trafficking and rehabilitation researchers to the need for a further analysis of the effectiveness and sustainability of the intervention programs organized by the government as well as NGOs to help the victims of human trafficking. First, we will present a historical perspective on trends in human trafficking in the Nigerian context, especially how those trafficked for the purpose of sexual exploitation came to be more prevalent. As Saheed Aderinto demonstrates in chapter 4 in this volume, sexual exploitation of Nigerian women dates back to the colonial era. The situation reached alarming rate from the 1980s due to a host of economic and social problems. Thereafter, we offer an exposition of broader trends such as globalization and migration that many believe are directly responsible for the resurgence of human trafficking across the world, and in Nigeria in particular. Finally, we will critically evaluate certain socioeconomic factors that fueled the growth and transformation of trafficking and discuss the attempts of the Nigerian government and nongovernmental and intergovernmental bodies to quell the trade and respond to its victims.

The Resurgence of Human Trafficking in Nigeria in the 1980s There seems to be a consensus in the literature on human trafficking in Nigeria since the 1980s in regard to the cause of its reemergence: it was a fallout of the economic depression that trailed the introduction of the structural adjustment program (SAP) by General Babangida’s administration

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in 1986.11 The effects of this economic policy and its attendant features include the devaluation of the local currency (Naira), downsizing of the government workforce, embargo on the importation of some consumer goods, and other austere policies and conditions prescribed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The results of the economic downturn that ensued were the collapse of services, unemployment, retrenchment, inflation, hunger, and desolation.12 The means toward achieving social goals became strained. Salaries could no longer ensure food security, while those that were unemployed became restless. The response of the Nigerian people to the strong negative impact of the SAP also took unanticipated dimensions. The incidence of antisocial activities like advance fee fraud (also known as “419”), embezzlement, corruption, and armed robbery soared. There was also a mass exodus of people from the country. Unprecedented emigration of highly skilled Nigerians such as lecturers, medical personnel, and other professionals to North America and Europe took firm root. Many unskilled and semiskilled Nigerians also left the country. Iain Guest traced the origin of human trafficking in Italy to the 1980s, the period that coincided with an agricultural boom in that country.13 Nigerian women began traveling to the central Italian region of Campania to pick tomatoes. According to her, when the tomato farms became saturated and could no longer accommodate laborers, Nigerian immigrant women moved to other cities, including Rome, Naples, and Florence, where they practiced prostitution. The success of the pioneers of sex work in Italy motivated the development of the trade as more people at home yearned to be part of the European “success story.” The successful prostitutes became barons and madams and began to recruit younger women and girls for the infamous trade. Although there are no reliable official statistics on the magnitude of human trafficking both internally and out from Nigeria, the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) and the Women Trafficking and Child Labor Eradication Foundation (WOTCLEF) reported that between March 1999 and April 2000, about 1,126 women trafficked out of the country were deported back to Nigeria by various countries. Further statistics released by WOTCLEF put the figure of trafficked Nigerian women deported as of December 2001 at about 5,000.14 Most of the deportees were reported to be practicing their trade in Italy, which is believed to be the main country of destination for Nigerian victims of sex trafficking. The prevalence of Nigerians practicing sex work in Italy was so high in 2002 that every black woman was assumed by many Italians to be a Nigerian and thus a prostitute.15 In addition, according to a report by the United States Agency for International

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Development (USAID), more than 300,000 Nigerian women had been illegally trafficked out of the country by the end of 2003.16 Conceptually, trafficking is synonymous with prostitution in Nigeria because a greater percentage of trafficked victims are directly and indirectly recruited for the commercial sex industry than for any other reason. This has posed a daunting challenge to successive administrations, all of which have failed to control the growth of commercial sex work and related activities in Nigeria despite the existence of legal instruments put in place to fight it. The recent growth of sex trafficking in Nigeria has been simply tragic, as the country now serves as a major source of “raw material” for the world sex industry. A large number of Nigerian women and young girls are reported to be practicing sex work in several countries of Africa; the Middle East; Europe, especially Italy, Spain, The Netherlands, Belgium, and recently, Norway; and South America, particularly Venezuela.17

Child Trafficking and the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Minors in Nigeria The conceptualization of a “child” varies from culture to culture, and place to place. For instance, in Nigeria the voting age is set at eighteen, while the age of maturity is twenty-one. Ages for criminal liability, compulsory education, and work (including hazardous work) apprenticeship are pegged at eighteen, fifteen, and sixteen, respectively. Age of marriage varies from place to place and is determined by the prevailing culture and religion.18 For the purpose of this study, however, the domestic legislation of the age of a child that ranges from seven to twenty-one will be adopted since whoever is younger than the age of maturity is deemed not to be responsible to consent to a sexual relationship, especially on a commercial basis. The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) clearly lays out the role of the state in the protection of children in Article 34, where it notes that the state will undertake to protect children from all forms of sexual exploitation and abuse. Articles 35 and 36 state that all appropriate national, bilateral, and multinational measures will be taken by the state to prevent the abduction, sale, and traffic in children; coercion to engage in unlawful sexual activity; and all forms of exploitation such as prostitution or pornographic performances. It also states that all children must receive the opportunity to discover their identity and realize their self-worth in a safe and supportive environment.19 Child prostitution is one of the major challenges facing African children. The rise of this phenomenon in Africa is fueled by the prevailing

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erroneous belief that sex with a virgin will cure HIV/AIDS or other sexually transmitted diseases.20 Though child prostitution is more rampant in Tanzania, Kenya, and South Africa, Nigeria also has an appreciable dose of this problem. A UNICEF study showed that four thousand children were trafficked from Cross River State alone, mainly for prostitution, to other states and the West African subregion.21 Abawuru also reported that thousands of young “virgins” between the ages of nine and sixteen are routinely brought from Benue State to Lagos to be offered for sex by a syndicate.22 A group of sixty-four persons, mostly children, were also rescued by the police in Amukoko District, Lagos City. They were reportedly taken from Mokwa, in Niger State, to Lagos for domestic labor and prostitution.23 Domestically, it was reported by the League of Democratic Women that about 40 percent of brothel-based commercial sex workers in Nigeria are below the age of twenty-one.24 Most of these children are taken from parents by deception with the promise of training them and providing them with lucrative jobs that would enable them to support their parents—only to be introduced to forced prostitution. Incidentally, these new entrants into the trade are at high risk of contracting sexually transmitted infections, especially in their first year due to their inadequate exposure and awareness of the diseases; and even if they are aware, they do not have the assertiveness to insist on safe sex from their “clients,” who could resort to force, rape, and brutality to have their way. Across Nigeria’s borders, there are several cases and reports of child trafficking for sexual exploitations into other West African countries as well as across Africa and Europe. In 2001, a former police officer and fifty other Nigerians were arrested in Conakry by Guinean authorities. According to the Nigerian ambassador to Guinea, of the fifty-one detainees, thirty-three were young girls between the ages of eighteen and twenty, while seventeen others were men suspected of being behind the trafficking of the young women.25

The Response of the Federal Government In one of his visits to Europe in the year 2001, Olusegun Obasanjo, then president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, was startled when he was confronted with the high number of Nigerian nationals that had taken to sex work in Europe, particularly in Italy. He directed that a “search party” be constituted and that any trafficked Nigerian girls found be brought back home.26 In the following year, at a summit on the scourge of human trafficking, Obasanjo promised to take steps to stem the traffic of Nigerian women. “We want to start a rehabilitation program; we want to

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bring all our children back. We can’t allow this type of thing to continue,” he said. In July 2003, he signed into law the Trafficking in Persons (Prohibition) Law Enforcement and Administration Act. Section 50 of this law defines trafficking as including “all acts and attempted acts involved in the recruitment, transportation within or across Nigerian borders, purchase, sale, transfer, receipt or harboring of a person involving the use of deception, coercion or debt bondage for the purpose of placing or holding the person whether for or not in involuntary servitude (domestic, sexual, or reproductive) in force or bonded labor, or in slavery-like conditions.”27 The above definition is largely drawn from the definition in Article 3 of the UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress, and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children. However, the Nigerian definition is unique in the sense that it also envisages additional acts attempted in the conduct of human trafficking and captures the situation of human trafficking within Nigeria’s borders. It also contains far-reaching provisions on trafficking and established the National Agency for the Prohibition of Traffic in Persons and Other Related Matters (NAPTIP), with the mandate to enforce the law, investigate and prosecute persons suspected to be engaged in traffic in persons, and bring back victims of trafficking with the aim of rehabilitating and reintegrating them back into society. The agency is directly under the office of the president of the Federation. In order to actualize its goals to bring an end to sex work, NAPTIP established rehabilitation centers in Lagos and Benin with headquarters and a shelter located in the Federal Capital Territory. These centers are basically involved in the process of reintegrating the sex workers into society, in effect separating them from the sex business. The centers, among other responsibilities, are responsible to train women in various job and educational skills, counseling and equipping them in the ways and means that will assist their resettlement into a socially acceptable life.

National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons and Other Related Matters (NAPTIP) Lagos Zonal Office/Shelter After the passage and signing into law of the Trafficking in Persons (Prohibition) Act in 2003, a rehabilitation center was established in July 2004. Located at Awolowo Road, Ikoyi, Lagos, the NAPTIP shelter is run in collaboration with the International Organization for Migration (IOM)

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and has spaces for 120 clients for rehabilitation. It has six units that deal with the following: administration, investigation, legal services and prosecution, rehabilitation and counseling, public enlightenment and planning, and research and statistics. The center has staff strength of fortyseven with the zonal director as the overall administrative head of the center. The investigation department has the highest number of staff with twenty members. The center is funded by the federal government with support from IOM. The Lagos State zonal office complex shares the same building with the shelter where those undergoing rehabilitation are accommodated. Since its inception, the center has handled more than five hundred clients.

Benin Zonal Office/Shelter The Benin shelter of NAPTIP was established on August 8, 2003, about a month after the passage of the Trafficking in Persons (Prohibition) Act and before the establishment of the Lagos and Abuja offices. This underlines the importance of Edo State to the problem of trafficking in the country. The center was set up with the major aims to arrest, investigate, and prosecute human traffickers while it rehabilitates, counsels, provides medical attention to, and reintegrates victims of trafficking. Unlike the Lagos office, the Benin zonal office does not share the same building with the shelter; rather, the shelter is located at a serene environment in the heart of the Government Reservation Area (GRA) using a building that was donated to the organization by UNICEF. The Benin shelter shares the same departmental structure as the Lagos zonal office; however, there are only fourteen staff members in the center including the zonal director.

Response of the State Governments, Wives of Heads of Government, and Civil Societies Prior to the enactment of the antitrafficking law by the federal government, there have been and much agitation in the press and several reports by human/women’s rights organizations on the spate of trafficking of Nigerian girls to Europe, particularly Italy. The increasing rate of sex trafficking, especially of girls of Edo stock, had become an embarrassment to the nation and to the wife of the then president, Mrs. Stella Obasanjo, who called a meeting of governors’ wives and in particular decried the growth of the illicit trade in Edo State, referring to it as “Nigeria’s capital of sex work.”28 Against this unsavory scenario created by the negative popularity received by Edo State, Mrs. Eki Igbinedion, wife of the then

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governor, made the eradication of sex work a priority project. To achieve this lofty aim, she set up an NGO, which she called the Idia Renaissance. The primary objective of the Idia Renaissance was to champion the campaign for the reawakening of the consciousness of the average Edo woman to combating modern social vices.29 Also, the wife of the erstwhile vice president, Mrs. Titi Abubakar, decided to make the problem of trafficking her primary focus of concern as she submitted a proposal for the passage of the antitrafficking bill and established her own NGO, the Women Trafficking and Child Labor Eradication Foundation (WOTCLEF). Before this time, civil organizations, especially faith-based charities, had been involved in subtle ways in the social rehabilitation of sex workers. However, upon the establishment of governmental and intragovernmental agencies that concentrate on the checking of the crime and reintegration of the victims, the faith-based organizations entered into a working relationship with government agencies particularly in the area of rehabilitation and capacity building. Also, international nongovernmental organizations like the IOM and UNICEF entered into partnership with both the governmental and nongovernmental agencies to help provide capacity building, logistic, material, and financial support to the efforts to eradicate trafficking and rehabilitate the victims. Furthermore, the governments of Italy, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Spain entered into agreements with the Nigerian government to provide international cooperation to prevent, suppress, and punish trafficking in persons. Despite these efforts to check the illegal traffic, Nigeria was still categorized in the second tier of the Trafficking in Persons Country List for 2003 compiled by the US government and Transparency International.30 This tiered list contains states that do not meet minimum standards for combating human trafficking but are recognized as making efforts to do so. The incapacity of Nigeria’s immigration authorities to check movements across its porous borders makes matters worse. According to a senior official of the Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS), criminal rings have also devised sophisticated methods of continuing what apparently is a very lucrative trade for them.31 However, the rehabilitation initiative continues to receive support from international, local, and other charity organizations with the hope that its effectiveness will have a positive impact on the society and reduce the effect of the scourge.

Entries and Referrals into Social Rehabilitation Referrals of the victims of sex trafficking and sex workers for social reorientation are dominated by the law enforcement agencies. Also, the

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efforts of the nongovernmental agencies, religious bodies, relatives of victims, and victims themselves in intercepting the practice of the sex trade and trafficking are remarkable. Ordinarily, sex workers rarely seek treatment on their own volition. It takes time to convince them into accepting social rehabilitation as often they do not see anything wrong with their participation in the trade.32 They believe it is a personal choice that is beneficial to them and the people around them. Besides, they believe there would be no commensurate alternative vocation that will sustain them if they cease engaging in sex work. Sex workers undergoing rehabilitation are brought to the centers through different avenues. The result of the investigation of the various means through which the clients come to the centers shows that while few individuals voluntarily surrendered and sought resocialization and care, others are coerced or sent by various agencies and individuals. Information obtained from the antitrafficking units of both the NIS and the Nigeria Police Force (NPF), through which a majority of the clients got to the centers, reveals that there are several categories of interception of trafficking. First are those intercepted within the country as they are being trafficked either to other states or out of the country. Upon interception, the victims are usually taken to the national headquarters of NAPTIP, from where they are assigned to a zonal office for rehabilitation; the traffickers, if apprehended, are taken into custody and prosecuted. A second type of interception concerns those that are arrested along Nigeria’s borders or as they transit neighboring countries en route to the country of destination. Most of these interceptions are done along the bush path routes that the traffickers employ in their attempt to smuggle their victims out of the country without the notice of law enforcement officers. Also some interceptions of victims destined for Nigeria from other neighboring African countries are equally effected within this area. Upon interception, the Nigerian victims are handed over to NAPTIP, while nationals of other countries are handed over to their local law enforcement agencies. Next, there are those who are intercepted at the point of entry into the country of destination. These interceptions are done by the police or immigration officers of the destination countries. One NIS official identified Italy and Spain as countries with the greatest number of interceptions made at their airports and seaports. According to him, several Nigerians are being constantly lost within this area as they attempt sea crossings to Europe. The official stated that upon interception, bilateral agreements between Nigeria and those countries go into effect, and determinations are made regarding the return of victims to Nigeria; the

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traffickers are handed over for prosecution as well unless they (the traffickers) have also committed crimes that contravene the law of the destination country. The official stated that, in such situations, the prosecution of the traffickers in Nigeria has to wait until they have served their time in the host country. The final category of interceptions are those that have reached the country of destination, either the destination of their choice or the choice of the traffickers. In some instances, the country of destination of the victims may be different from the destination promised by the trafficker. However, the fact that the victim had little choice will make her engage in prostitution in the new country of destination. Also the initial trafficker may have sold the victim to another trafficker in some third country who now determines the new destination of the victim. This category of sex workers are referred to as “abandoned cargoes” in local parlance of the host countries.33

Approaches to the Social Rehabilitation of Sex Workers in Nigeria This study identifies three forms that the process of rehabilitation of sex workers takes—namely, governmental social welfare, nongovernmental social welfare, and faith-based charitable activity. An examination of the modus operandi of the NAPTIP centers will inform our understanding of how sex workers under their care are managed.

The Governmental Social Welfare Approach This rehabilitation approach is what has been adopted by both the government-owned centers: NAPTIP Lagos and Benin. This approach shares aims with the other approaches, but it has distinct characteristics. First, NAPTIP is established as a government agency to effect the rehabilitation of trafficked persons in accordance with government policy. Second, the center operates as a total institution—that is, clients are housed under lock and key, with full accommodations provided and with their movements strictly restricted. The main focus of the social welfare approach is skill training and preparation for employment. Counseling, prayer, and medical and psychological therapy are included. Games and recreational therapies are offered within the shelter. In the NAPTIP approach, rehabilitation starts upon arrival of the clients with a process of social exclusion. The clients are confined to the accommodations provided by the center, with minimum freedom. They are completely shielded from the public while the process of rehabilitation lasts.

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The two NAPTIP shelters possess appreciable security, with the Benin center having high walls with spiral barbed-wire firmly wound on top. Two heavily armed mobile policemen and one civilian security guard are available for any exigency. From what we could learn, clients are taken outside only on two occasions, to a nearby church on Sundays and to court as needed to bear witness. The five-story building that houses the Lagos shelter, though not surrounded by a fence, is situated in close proximity to several security outfits, which goes a long way toward guaranteeing the security of the occupants. The building is also shared by the IOM and is adjacent to a headquarters of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). The center’s clients are not allowed to go out for any reason, not even to church; rather, a pastor comes to the center to minister to them. After the clients move in, they undergo medical tests to determine their state of health, and during their intake, possible health effects of their trafficking experience are uncovered so that the staff will be aware of conditions that may not manifest immediately but that may have grave consequences later. Another main aspect of the social welfare program is counseling, the process of which helps the victims of trafficking to become aware of the dire effects of sex work. They are informed of the negative impacts that trafficking has on them as individuals and on society at large. Information regarding their recruitment, the circumstances of their trafficking experience, and the identity of the traffickers are then extracted from the clients. One caregiver spoke further about the process: “It is at this point that we normally encounter problems with them. The majority of them will not want to say anything about their journey or those behind their trafficking. The influence of the oath they had taken is usually so strong on them that getting information that will make them expose the traffickers is almost impossible. However, we don’t force them because doing so will obstruct the process and success of rehabilitation.”34 After the initial stage of counseling in which the clients are educated about the ills of what they have done, the next stage is to ask the ones responding to counseling to decide on an alternative vocation. When a decision about an alternative vocation has been reached, the NAPTIP, because it lacks a well-structured training facility and program, will then refer the clients to other rehabilitation centers that have such capacities to take over the care and support program. During this process, the parents and relatives of the clients are contacted and informed that their wards are in the country (for the externally trafficked) and in their custody. The counselors will then work on preparing the minds of the parents to deal with the return of their daughters. However, the caregivers informed us

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that those clients who successfully complete the vocational training are given grants that range from ө500,000 to ө700,000 to assist them in setting up a business in order to put their acquired skill to use. Follow up on these rehabilitation graduates is done periodically to determine how well they are doing with their “newfound life.” One important aspect of this approach is the social relationships that are formed between the sex workers (clients) and the caregivers (patrons). Typically, the relationship that exists between them is like that in an orthodox hospital setting. The clients, who are regarded as survivors, have very little control over what is being done to them. They are encouraged to believe, however, that their treatment is in their best interest and is in accordance with proper diagnoses by the medical, psychological, and counseling experts. There is a highly formalized structure to the social network of the rehab centers, although the relationships among the clients were found to be somewhat formal. The rehabilitation costs the clients and their family nothing, as it is a social service fully funded by the federal government.

The Nongovernmental Social Welfare Approach Another important approach to rehabilitation is the nongovernmental social welfare approach. The Idia Renaissance, which is privately run by the wife of the former governor of Edo State, Mrs. Eki Igbinedion, and the Edo State Skill Acquisition Center both fall under this category. What is mainly involved in the nongovernmental social welfare approach is skill training and an employment program. Unlike the NAPTIP shelters, both the Skill Acquisition Center and the Idia Renaissance are nonresidential rehabilitation centers. Hence, there is no need to restrict the movement and freedom of their clientele. Clients are expected to come from home to receive voluntary counseling, vocational training, and psychological therapy. The operational modes of the two centers are very identical as they were both founded by Mrs. Igbinedion with support from UNICEF and other NGOs. The rehabilitation of the sex workers here starts with counseling and “talent discoveries.” The two centers render these services free for victims of sex trafficking. Idia Renaissance and Edo State Skill Acquisition Center have facilities for training in vocations like sewing, hairdressing, catering, beads making, and a host of others. They work hand in hand under the directorship of the ex-governor’s wife. They also offer games and recreational therapies. One important difference between these centers and the governmental social welfare centers, whose staff is made up solely of professional social

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workers, is that the crew of the care and training staff includes members who are themselves former sex workers and earlier beneficiaries of the program. The centers also involve the medical and spiritual aspects of rehabilitation in their bid to resocialize the sex workers.

The Faith-Based Approach The third approach in the rehabilitation of sex workers is the spiritual, or faith-based, approach. This technique is the primary instrument used by religious organizations, even though such organizations sometimes include other rehabilitation techniques in their services. As its name suggests, the approach involves prayer and other religious practices in the rehabilitation process. Fasting, confession, Bible study, and evangelism are all aspects of the approach. The major aim of the faith-based approach is to facilitate a “spiritual rebirth” for the (former) sex workers through scriptural teaching. The clients are kept under surveillance, and prayers are offered for them for about two weeks to prepare them for a four- to six-month period of compulsory discipleship. During this process, the clients are also engaged in biblical counseling sessions. In this approach, the clients are given full accommodations; unlike the governmental social welfare approach, however, they are not totally restricted in their movements or confined. Almost every activity hinges on prayer, which is believed to bring about the most effective healing. When this rehabilitation process commences, the clients will be totally removed from their previous system of social contacts. The new social network and authority structure of the rehab center is quite challenging to the clients, and usually causes them some level of discomfort. The following comment is from a caregiver with a faith-based center: “It is at that point that some of them decide to opt out. We do not force them to stay if they cannot cope. We run the organization for only those that are willing to accept; this is Christianity, no force is involved. You can only hear when you are ready to listen.”35 Hence, biblical teaching is the major instrument for rehabilitation in the spiritual approach. Clients are sent to vocational centers within their locale for whatever skill training they decide to learn. A good number of the owners and staff of the vocational centers involved in the training and re socialization of sex workers are former sex workers and beneficiaries of the faith-based centers. This fact helps to lower the costs of this rehabilitation approach, because the training centers decline to charge fees, owing to their belief that since “the gift of prayer and healing from God is

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free,” as a key informant put it, “the services rendered through them should equally be free.”36 Within the spiritual rehabilitation system, the clientele (client-patron) relationship between the sex workers and caregivers is a positive one. The clients are sometimes allowed to express their wishes with respect to how they feel about issues concerning their rehabilitation. This approach is not fixated on the idea that power must always flow from the top. For instance, as part of the rehabilitation exercise, the clients are invited to participate, one after the other, in leading morning devotions and prayers. Times of house fellowship and group prayers are also organized by the clients. Among the former sex workers themselves, there tends to emerge a network of meaningful, positive relationships. Clients are allowed a significant degree of freedom of interaction, expression, and movement under the rehabilitation policy of the religious centers. In spiritual therapy, there are no lockups or even high walls. There is no strict exit permit. It is expected that the level of resocialization and adjustment will depend on the receptivity of the client and her personal willingness to participate in the process.

Comparing Rehabilitation Approaches In summary, there are areas of similarities as well as differences in the approaches studied. While there is uniformity of aims, objectives, and purposes, there is a divergence in the ways and means of achieving these objectives. Generally speaking, former sex workers are effectively integrated into the “care staff” system of the faith-based and nongovernmental social welfare centers, but not the governmental social welfare system. Besides examining the various rehabilitation options and opportunities available to (former) sex workers, it would also be important to determine the perceived effectiveness of these centers in order to know which among them is most suitable in managing its clientele, and why.

Conclusion This chapter has a twofold purpose. One goal is to examine and describe the transformation of human trafficking in Nigeria since the 1980s. Another is to explore the response of governments at the state and federal levels as well as civil society and intergovernmental bodies to subdue the impact of human trafficking on Nigerian society. It is evident that the family subsystem is a very important site where much of the recruitment, trafficking, initiation into sex work, and

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exploitation of the prostitution of others occurs, particularly with respect to who negotiates with the traffickers and facilitates the trafficking. The resurgence and growth in the practice of human trafficking especially for sex work is motivated not just by poverty but by greed and ignorance. Attempts at rehabilitating sex workers have proved to be most successful in the spiritual/faith-based centers, which are nongovernmental, voluntarily run agencies. The efforts of the nongovernmental social welfare centers, which also are privately run, are remarkable as well, while the social welfare centers owned and managed by the federal government have had the least effective social rehabilitation programs. This much appears to have been admitted by the government rehabilitation agencies as they refer most of their clients to the nongovernmental and faith-based centers for further rehabilitation after their discharge from the government’s pseudo rehabilitation facilities. The rehabilitation environment is a generally unfriendly one, especially in the government-run centers, where clients lack the freedom even to make suggestions concerning their own welfare. This obstacle is made worse by inadequate diet and nutritional care. Moreover, clients’ ability to adjust to the rehabilitation process is often disturbed by such external factors as stigmatization and nonacceptance by family, friends, and society in general. The government must take the responsibility to inform the public about the ills and dangers associated with trafficking or being trafficked. Although subtle efforts have been observable in some regions as the rate of trafficking has escalated, unless public awareness spreads nationwide, it will be difficult to forestall the traffickers from moving into areas where people are ignorant of the dangers. It was evident in our study that residential location is a strong determinative factor in who ends up involved in trafficking: those residing in nonurban areas tended to fall prey to deception, whereas those that grew up in cities became involved, more often than not, voluntarily. Thus, a well-designed, broad campaign to enlighten the public to the dangers of trafficking could reduce the number of victims that might be trafficked out of ignorance and deception. Social rehabilitation programs, to be successful, should be designed to suit and accommodate individual and group differences among sex workers, in terms of social background, medical condition, and other important factors. Specifically, those with severe medical problems as a result of their trafficking experience should be placed under intensive care.

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Notes 1

R. Wyngaard, “Combating Human Trafficking: A Call for the Regulation of the Recruitment Industry” (paper presented at “The Dark Side of Global and Regional Migration,” University of Illinois Joint Area Centers Annual Symposium: Criminal Trafficking and Slavery, February 23–25, 2006). 2 Sheila Jeffreys, “Trafficking in Women versus Prostitution: A False Distinction” (paper presented at the Townsville International Women’s Conference, Queensland, Australia, July 3–7, 2002). 3 Helene Hayes, “Global Trafficking in Women: A Haunting Cry of Our Time,” Contact: A Publication of the World Council of Churches, no. 184 (May 2007): 6– 8, http://www.docstoc.com/docs/89031586/HUMAN-TRAFFICKING. 4 M. Aluko, “Cultural Wars and National Identity: The Saga of the Yoruba and the Bini-Edo” (paper presented at the Department of African Studies, Burtonsville University, Maryland, May 12–17, 2004). 5 Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (London: BogleL’Ouverture Publications, 1973). 6 M. Shivdas, “Trafficking in Women: Causes, Consequences, and Implications” (paper presented at the Commonwealth Law Conference, Queen Elizabeth II Conference Center, London, September 11–15, 2005). 7 Holly Burkhalter, “Health Consequences of Sex Trafficking,” testimony presented to the US House of Representatives, International Relations Committee, Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Human Rights, Washington DC, June 24, 2004. 8 B. Olagbegi-Olateru, “Human Trafficking in Nigeria: Root Causes and Recommendations,” Policy Paper Poverty Series No. 14.2 (E) (Paris, 2006), http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0014/001478/147844e.pdf. 9 Ibid., 13–16. 10 G. Skogseth, “Trafficking in Women,” report of fact-finding trip to Nigeria (Abuja, Lagos, and Benin City), March 12–26, 2006, http://www.landinfo.no/asset/491/1/491_1.pdf. 11 N. Ofido, “The Rising Wave of Sex Trade,” Sunday Times (Lagos), February 6, 2000; E. Aghatise, “Trafficking for Prostitution in Italy: Concept Paper” (paper presented at Expert Group Meeting on “Trafficking in Women and Girls,” organized by the Division for the Advancement of Women, UN Division of Economic and Social Affairs, New York, November 18–22, 2002); O. Adesina, “Between Culture and Poverty: The Queen Mother Phenomenon and the Edo International Sex Trade,” Jenda: A Journal of Culture and African Women Studies 1, no. 8 (2006): 218–41. 12 On how the SAP affected women directly, see Gloria Emeagwali, ed., Women Pay the Price: Structural Adjustment in Africa and the Caribbean (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1995). 13 Iain Guest, “Italy: Forced Prostitution and Women from Nigeria,” http://www.peace.ca/traffickinginwomenandgirls.htm.

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O. Agbu, “Corruption and Human Trafficking: The Nigeria Case,” West African Review 14, no. 3 (2003): 210–52. 15 Aghatise, “Trafficking for Prostitution in Italy,” 17; Allison Loconto, “The Trafficking of Nigerian Women into Italy,” TED Case Studies, no. 656, January 2002. 16 K. Adeyemi, “Human Trafficking in Nigeria: An Emerging Social Problem,” Punch, July 23, 2004. 17 Bjorg Norli, “Foreign Prostitution in Oslo—Knowledge and Experiences Gained by the Pro-Centre” (Oslo: Pro Centre, 2006); Olagbegi-Olateru, “Human Trafficking in Nigeria,” 11. 18 World Organization against Torture and Centre for Law Enforcement Education, Overview of Street Children in Nigeria, report submitted to the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC), January 28, 2005. 19 United Nations Children’s Fund, Children’s and Women’s Rights in Nigeria: A Wake-up Call—Situation Assessment and Analysis 2001 (Abuja: National Planning Commission and UNICEF Nigeria). 20 Kathleen Fitzgibbon, “Modern-Day Slavery: The Scope of Trafficking in Persons in Africa,” African Security Review 12, no. 1 (2003): 81–89. 21 United Nations Children’s Fund, Children Threatened: UNICEF Report on Children, July 2004. 22 L. Abawuru, “Sex Trafficking: Virgins for Sale in Lagos,” Daily Champion, August 25, 2005. 23 Jemini Pandya, International Organization on Migration Press Briefing Notes, March 2005. 24 League of Democratic Women, “Report on One-Day New Tactics Symposium Held in Kaduna, Nigeria,” December 16, 2004. 25 Agbu, “Corruption and Human Trafficking,” 219. 26 S. Ayorinde, “Girls for Lira: The Scandal of Modern Slavery,” Independent News Update 7, no 16 ( 2001): 17. 27 Victoria Nwogu, “Trafficking of Persons to Europe: The Perspective of Nigeria as a Sending Country” (paper presented at the ASI and OIKOS Conference on Trafficking and Migration: A Human Rights Approach, at the British Council, Lisbon, March 4–5, 2005). 28 Adesina, “Between Culture and Poverty,” 223. 29 A. Ahiante, “Edo: Redeeming a Battered Image,” This Day, October 7, 2000. 30 Agbu, “Corruption and Human Trafficking,” 219. 31 C. Onyejekwe, “Influences of Global Human Trafficking Issues on Nigeria: A Gender Perspective,” Journal of International Women’s Studies 7, no. 2 (2005): 17. 32 Uche Igwe, “Drug Use among the Commercial Sex Workers in Aba Township, Abia State” (MA thesis, University of Nigeria, 2004). 33 Ifeanyi Onyeonoru, “Push Factors in Girl Trafficking for International Commercial Sex Work and the Gender Implications: A Study of Benin, Edo State,” African Journal of Peace and Conflict Studies 1, no. 1 (2003): 118–39. 34 In-depth interview, female caregiver with NAPTIP, Lagos, September 18, 2006.

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Key informant interview, female caregiver with Wholistic Ministries, Lagos, September 22, 2006. 36 Ibid.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN FROM DENIAL TO ACCEPTANCE: HIV/AIDS IN NIGERIA SINCE THE 1980S AKEEM AYOFE AKINWALE

HIV remains a deadly disease, and attempts to find a permanent cure for it have not been successful. It is generally understood that HIV infection gravitates to AIDS.1 The modes of HIV transmission include unprotected sexual intercourse with an infected person, transfusion involving contaminated blood, sharing of unsterilized needles, and motherto-child.2 These modes interface with poverty, ignorance, and disempowerment.3 Because of this, holistic and integrated measures are needed for the control of HIV/AIDS. This chapter traces the history of HIV/AIDS in Nigeria, contextualizing it within the broader attempt to curtail the pandemic by the government, research institutions, and nongovernmental groups (NGOs), among others.4 Data used for this chapter are based on mixed methods including indepth interviews, observation, and relevant documents on HIV/AIDS in Nigeria. Scientific observation was conducted during meetings of NGOs and HIV patients in major cities of southwestern Nigeria, while additional information about HIV/AIDS was obtained through in-depth interviews with men and women. Emphasis is placed specifically on attempts to control the pandemic over a two-decade period in Nigeria.5 The advent of HIV has created a milestone in the history of Nigeria, a country of thirtysix states and 774 local government areas, which are structured into six geopolitical zones—North Central, North East, North West, South East, South West, and South-South—based on geographical location and ethnic makeup.6 The proportions of cases of HIV/AIDS that have been reported in the six geopolitical zones differ. Although HIV prevalence varies across the geopolitical zones, the reasons for this variation have not been adequately studied. Key issues in the federal government’s attempt to control the spread of HIV/AIDS in Nigeria have been subsumed under

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policies regulated by the National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA), with financial support from international organizations. The history of HIV in Nigeria began in the mid-1980s. While sociological and medical studies on HIV/AIDS are thus not new in Nigeria, it is necessary to examine the issues from historical and analytical perspectives in order to widen the frontiers of knowledge of the pandemic. This chapter specifically contributes to the discourse on HIV/AIDS by exploring the dynamics of initial denial and subsequent recognition of the epidemic as a threat to public health. It then examines the history of the involvement of various institutions and government at the local and federal levels in ameliorating the incidence of this major medical and development crisis.

Statistics and the Prevalence of HIV/HIDS in Nigeria, 1985–2011 Sub-Saharan Africa accommodates the highest number of people living with HIV in the world, and Nigeria has contributed significantly to the prevalence of the epidemic due to the nation’s relatively high rate of population growth and denial of the problem. The first-known Nigerian HIV patient was identified in 1985, and from this one case HIV prevalence snowballed into a period of rapid expansion that created a pandemic in the 2000s.7 In the 1990s, in the wake of the era of denial, apathy, and lack of political will, the number of HIV patients in Nigeria increased. Over time, reactions to the pandemic have transformed from denial to acceptance. The denial and negative reactions to issues associated with HIV that characterized the early phase of the crisis were widespread in the 1980s; the majority of Nigerians denied the existence of the virus.8 At that time, the disease was attributed to immorality, unfaithfulness, and reckless sexual behaviors. Subsequently, the issue was neglected by almost all segments of Nigerian society. In fact, it has been noted that the successive military governments that ruled Nigeria between 1985 and 1998 did not have any clear-cut policy to combat the scourge.9 The policies on HIV/AIDS now in place in Nigeria were formulated during democratic dispensations between 1999 and 2011. The Nigerian case of denial of HIV was based on a belief in physical fitness as evidence of the nonexistence of HIV. Denial prompted the use of the phrase “HIV no dey show for face” in the sensitization awareness campaigns since the 1990s. In their attitudes toward the reality of HIV, many Nigerians have passed through different stages, ranging from continuing to engage in unprotected sexual intercourse and denial of the

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existence of HIV, to contemplation of the possibility of HIV and behavioral change in terms of reducing the number of sexual partners and using condoms, to becoming aware of one’s HIV status. After a stage of denial, a large number of Nigerians have passed through a stage of contemplation and guilt based on participation in risky sexual behavior, which might prompt them to undergo an HIV test, especially if they were to experience persistent symptoms of opportunistic infection, such as coughing, colds, catarrh, and STDs. Women are often encouraged to undergo an HIV test as a result of pregnancy; some Nigerians take such tests as a condition of employment.10 Learning one’s HIV status is usually followed by a retest and confirmatory test of HIV diagnosis; only then is disclosure of HIV status considered, because doing so may reinforce emotional turmoil, thereby exposing HIV-positive patients to selfstigmatization, isolation, anxiety, or depression. Research on disclosure of HIV-positive status indicates that the level of disclosure to relatives was higher than disclosure to friends, while disclosure to sexual partners varied greatly but was generally lower with casual partners than it was with steady partners.11 Disclosure of HIVpositive status has been affected by sociodemographic factors such as level of education, gender, level of income, and employment status. Research from Nigeria reveals that more educated respondents disclosed more often than did their less educated counterparts.12 Such research suggests that economic and social disadvantages make disclosure more difficult. The treatment of HIV-positive status usually follows the stage of disclosure, and the treatment is equally affected by such factors as religious affiliation and socioeconomic background. The HIV-positive persons who are religious typically attempt to use their faith to manage their HIV status. Essentially, the management of HIV status can follow one of several trajectories, ranging from spiritual treatment such as prayer to the use of traditional medicines or food supplements, to antiretroviral therapy, though the latter is out of reach of the majority of the HIV-positive population in Nigeria. NACA’s estimate shows that HIV prevalence rose from 1.8 percent in 1991 to 3.8 percent in 1994 and 4.5 percent in 1996 before it jumped to 5.4 percent in 1999 and 5.8 percent in 2001. Following its steady rise for the decade of the 1990s, HIV prevalence in Nigeria declined from 5.0 percent in 2003 to 4.4 percent in 2005, then rose slightly to 4.6 percent in 2008. The 2008 HIV prevalence resulted from a sentinel survey carried out in the thirty-six states of Nigeria and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). It was reported that Benue State in the North Central zone of Nigeria had the highest HIV prevalence, while Ekiti State in the South West zone had the

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lowest HIV prevalence (10.6% versus 1.0%). HIV prevalence for each of Nigeria’s geopolitical zones is as follows: South-South (7.0%), North Central (5.4%), North East (4.0%), South East (3.7%), North West (2.4%), and South West (2.0%).13 The reasons for variations in HIV prevalence across Nigeria have not been adequately documented. Available evidence shows that HIV prevalence consistently declined from 2001 to 2008 in five states across Nigeria’s geopolitical zones: Plateau, Gombe, Bauchi, Zamfara, and Ekiti. However, HIV prevalence remained high in ten states: Nassarawa, Benue, Akwa Ibom, Cross River, Rivers, Bayelsa, Adamawa, Kaduna, and Niger.14 HIV prevalence is generally higher in urban areas compared to rural areas in all the country’s geopolitical zones. Nigeria experienced a national HIV prevalence rate of 4.6 percent in 2008; the following figures were also recorded: the number of people with HIV reached 2.98 million; 56,681 children were born with HIV; AIDSdriven deaths reached 2.99 million (1.38 million males and 1.61 million females); the total number of AIDS orphans reached 2,175,760; the sum of 192,000 Nigerians (86,178 males and 105,822 females) died of AIDS in 2008, while 336,379 persons (149,095 males and 187,284 females) were newly diagnosed with HIV infection.15 Projections from current estimates of HIV prevalence in Nigeria indicate that by the end of 2010 the number of HIV cases would be 3.11 million persons and a total of 910,850 persons (including 807,166 adults and 103,684 children) would require antiretroviral therapy. In the same year, the estimated number of AIDSrelated deaths was 181,774 persons (including 81,728 males and 100,046 females), while 2.2 million children would become AIDS orphans. Also, 243,730 pregnant women were expected to become HIV positive in 2010. Previous estimates by the Federal Ministry of Health (FMOH) indicated that 2.98 million persons would have HIV/AIDS in Nigeria in 2009, with a total AIDS death toll of 192,000 persons. HIV/AIDS have resulted in an estimated 25 million deaths worldwide.16 Nigeria is among the countries most heavily affected by HIV/AIDS. However, there is a scarcity of accurate data on the total number of HIV-related deaths in the country.

Control of HIV/AIDS in Nigeria since the 1990s: Initiatives by the Federal Government of Nigeria It has been estimated that the Nigerian government contributes only 5 percent of the funding for programs to control HIV/AIDS in Nigeria. The bulk of such funds are provided by foreign agencies, including the US Presidential Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and the World Bank.17 In 2002,

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the World Bank granted Nigeria US$90.3 million in support of programs for the control of HIV/AIDS for six years (2002–2007). Similarly, Nigeria had received US$95 million from the Global Fund by 2008, while the American government gave US$448 million in 2008.18 In compliance with the dictates of donors, the Nigerian government formulated a policy for the provision of free antiretroviral (ART) therapy in 2005. The number of HIV patients on ART increased from 50,581 in 2005 to 302,973 in 2009. However, 857,455 persons (754,375 adult and 103,080 children) required ART in 2008. In spite of enormous funding of programs for the control of HIV/AIDS in Nigeria, the crisis has not abated. The government has been promoting public sensitivity to the dangers of HIV/AIDS through a series of informative and educational programs via billboards, pamphlets, seminars, lectures, music, advertisements, and films.19 The first federal policy on HIV/AIDS was drafted by the Ministry of Health in 1997. It was subsequently reviewed and expanded to ensure active participation in the control of the epidemic by various sectors including civil society organizations, the Network of People living with AIDS in Nigeria (NEPWAN), faith-based organizations, state offices, NGOs, development partners, and the private sector. The government largely concentrates on HIV/AIDS prevention programs rather than provide needed support for local initiatives in the global search for a cure. Attempts to control HIV/AIDS in Nigeria have also resulted in the establishment of the HIV Emergency Action Plan (HEAP) in 2001 and the National Strategic Framework (NSF) in 2005. The NSF proposed to substantially reduce HIV prevalence by 2009 through provision of adequate care and support for vulnerable groups. The life span of the NSF (2005–9) was reviewed and extended (2010–15), with a new focus on behavioral change toward a reduction in HIV prevalence. Prior to the establishment of HEAP, the Nigerian government formulated policies and actively participated in international conferences on HIV/AIDS. It hosted the International Conference on AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Infections in Africa (ICASA) in December 2005. Also, Nigeria hosted the fourth forum of the African AIDS Vaccine Program (AAVP) in November 2007.The Presidential Council on AIDS (PCA) and the National Action Committee on AIDS (NACA) were established in 2001 to coordinate the activities of different sectors involved in the control of the epidemic at the federal level, while the State Action Committee on AIDS (SACA) and the Local Government Action Committee on AIDS (LACA) were mandated to coordinate such activities at the state and local government levels. An act of parliament promulgated

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in 2007 turned NACA into the National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA).20

Control of HIV/AIDS in Nigeria since the 1990s: Research Universities and Public-Private Partnership HIV/AIDS policies were also established in the private and public sectors of the Nigerian economy including the banking, educational, and telecommunication industries. Attempts to control the spread of HIV/AIDS were intensified and extended to the workplace through the Public-Private Partnership Forum (PPPF) and the Nigerian Business Coalition against HIV/AIDS (NIBUCHA). With support of the PPPF and NIBUCHA, programs for the prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS have been undertaken by several multinational companies including MTN Group, Coca-Cola, Julius Berger, Nigerian Breweries, Cadbury, Guinness, and Chevron. In furtherance of public-private partnerships, ECOBANK supported NACA with contributions toward the establishment of youthfriendly reproductive health centers in seven universities across the geopolitical zones of Nigeria: Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) and Ladoke Akintola University of Technology (LAUTECH) in the SouthWest; University of Abuja and University of Jos in the North-Central; University of Uyo and University of Port Harcourt in the South-South; and University of Nigeria in the South-East. With directives from the National Universities Commission (NUC), efforts were made to integrate HIV/AIDS education into the curriculum of the Nigerian educational system, especially at the university level. In addition, some Nigerian universities have collaborated with foreign institutions of higher learning in areas of information dissemination. For instance, the University of Ibadan and Northwestern University in the United States established a program called the Research Alliance to Combat HIV/AIDS (REACH). REACH is domiciled at the University of Ibadan and funded by Northwestern. Similar to the REACH initiative, the University of Nigeria and the University of the Free State in South Africa formed an alliance in 2009 for HIV/AIDS prevention programs in public schools through the use of stage and video drama.21 The drama project led to the production of a DVD entitled Azikhulume, a local language, which literally means “Let’s talk.”22 Attempts to control HIV/AIDS in Nigeria have extended beyond the activities of the public and private sectors since 2002 when civil society organizations (CSOs) were recognized through the establishment of the Civil Society Consultative Group on HIV/AIDS

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in Nigeria (CISCGHAN). The CSOs are encouraged to promote policies on the prevention of HIV/AIDS. An evaluation of two decade of attempts to control HIV/AIDS in Nigeria indicates persistence of the epidemic with several problems including stigmatization of people living with HIV/AIDS (PWHA) and inadequate care and support systems. A study on attitudes toward PWHA in Abuja showed that stigmatization and discrimination were major challenges in attempts to control the continued spread of the epidemic in the country.23 As shown in the study, the family and workplace are key sites of discrimination against PWHA. It was reported that people in several key positions contribute to the widespread stigma of HIV/AIDS; they include volunteers, caregivers, coworkers, doctors, midwives, and other professionals, including those who are expected to provide services for people with HIV/AIDS. Another study in Abuja implies that Nigeria is rife with stigmatization and discrimination against PWHA, despite intensification of programs aimed at promoting care and support systems and prevention since the 1990s. As expected, the Abuja study called for a change of attitudes to reduce the extent of stigmatization and discrimination. It was speculated that the family of a person living with HIV/AIDS would be decimated if the prevailing attitudes toward the disease in contemporary Nigerian society remain unchanged. The speculation is based on the relatively high number of PWHA and the likelihood of increase in the number of children who would become orphans and marginalized as a result of HIV/AIDS. The study’s findings suggest that the affected PWHA and their children could be assisted through provision of social welfare services such as access to education, food, and health care. The task of ensuring changes of attitudes toward PWHA were directed to leaders and agencies of the United Nations.

Control of HIV/AIDS in Nigeria since the 1990s: The Role of Community Agency and Attitudes of the High-Risk Population As a result of inadequate access to antiretroviral therapy in Nigeria, a large number of HIV-positive persons rely on traditional sources of support, indicating the need for recognition of community agency in decision making about the control of HIV/AIDS. A study in Ajegunle District of Lagos State in 2011 shows that a large number of HIV-positive persons expressed strong feelings of powerlessness over sociocultural and political conditions affecting them.24 Fortunately, traditional practices

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provide an impetus for the management of barriers to HIV treatment. Many HIV-positive people can overcome stigma and other barriers to accessing HIV treatment through the use of social capital, which entails social interactions and relationships based on mutual trust and shared values. Social capital also connotes a process of ensuring cooperation among individuals and groups in a society. Such cooperation requires the use of resources embedded in social relationships in terms of trust, obligation, solidarity, information sharing, and service.25 For instance, trusted acquaintances and significant others can provide support for HIVpositive persons through encouragement, gifts, and companionship. Given the continued relevance of the traditional ethos of communalism, various dimensions of community agency can be found in different parts of Nigeria—even at the modern workplace, where informal social networks enhance social interaction among employees and between employees and employers. Community agency has potential for the control of HIV/AIDS, especially through reduction in HIV stigma. In their bid to lessen the incidence and impact of stigmatization, many HIV-positive persons in southeastern Nigeria perceived marriage and child bearing as an opportunity to lead normal lives. The Igbo social structure contributes to the encouragement and support of HIV-positive persons in the society through cultural practices including obligations to the sick and to blood relations, affinity to blood relations, and strong marital bonds.26 Regrettably, the role of community agency in the control of HIV/AIDS in Nigeria has been undermined by the risky sexual behaviors of certain individuals such as commercial bus drivers and sex workers. Following their study of various groups of people at motor parks in Lagos State, scholars reaffirm a link between risky sexual behavior and vulnerability to HIV/AIDS within this population.27 The study focused on 395 intracity commercial bus drivers, conductors, and motor park attendants. The men were found to have numerous networks of sexual relationships. As clearly reported in the study, the network of their sexual contacts was diverse, ranging from their wives and regular partners to commercial sex workers, young female hawkers, schoolgirls, and market women within and outside the motor parks. More than two-thirds (74.3%) of the men had multiple sexual partners, and many of them reported their experience of sexually transmitted diseases including HIV. Almost all the respondents (96.4%) knew themselves to be at high risk of contracting STDs, while 87.6 percent believed that it was impossible for them to become HIV-positive.28 Many of the participants in the study attributed their previous STDs to excessive exposure to the sun, to having sex in the sun, and to their partners remaining in the bath for too long. Their responses reflect

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extremely poor knowledge of the risk factors in the spread of HIV/AIDS. The study then concluded that intracity commercial bus operators and men at motor parks are a high-risk group for acquiring HIV infections. Their sexual networking with a variety of women within and outside the parks suggests that risky sexual behavior contributes to the spread of HIV in Nigeria. Other scholars arrived at similar conclusions in another study of risky sexual behavior and HIV in Ibadan, Nigeria.29 The study in Ibadan comprised 258 truck drivers and 467 itinerant female hawkers. The drivers reported their multiple sexual partners, each claiming on average six regular partners. Of the drivers, 44 percent mentioned their experience of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs); only 15 percent used condoms regularly. A key lesson from the studies on risky sexual behavior and the spread of HIV pertains to an understanding of the influence of gender inequality on the spread of HIV/AIDS in Nigeria. While men engage in more risky sexual behavior, women are more vulnerable to HIV since men usually dominate in virtually all facets of the society.30

Impacts of HIV/AIDS in Nigeria Nigeria has the third-largest number of people with HIV/AIDS in the world, after South Africa and India. The magnitude of HIV/AIDS cases in Nigeria can be attributed in part to high population growth and to lapses in attempts to control the spread of the epidemic. Nigeria’s population grew from 140 million in 2006 to more than 152.6 million in 2009, as the country maintained its position as the most populous in Africa and became the eighth most populous country in the world.31 The fact that Nigeria’s population is largely young makes the dangers of HIV/AIDS a huge burden. About half of Nigeria’s population (45%) is below fifteen years of age, while only 3 percent were above sixty-five and over half were in the labor force category.32 The HIV prevalence in Nigeria has lowered Nigerians’ life expectancy, which was estimated at 47.7 years in 2009. It has also caused the country’s per capita income and level of socioeconomic development to decline. Nigeria’s per capita income and Human Development Index were estimated at US$1,969 and 0.51, respectively, in 2009.33 HIV/AIDS have also contributed to low economic productivity and a high rate of poverty in Nigeria, considering the loss of work hours and amount of resources expended for the treatment of the epidemic.34 An investigation of the impact of HIV on agricultural productivity in Benue State of Nigeria showed that HIV-positive persons had smaller farm size with lower productivity compared to farmers without HIV. The outcome of the investigation showed a significant

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reduction in the farm size and income of HIV-positive farmers in spite of substantial support from their families.35 The majority of the respondents were between the ages of fifteen and forty-nine, representing both the productive age of active farmers and the most sexually active age range. Closely related to the crisis of HIV/AIDS in Nigeria is the growing number of orphan and vulnerable children (OVC). The number of OVC in Nigeria has reached an alarming proportion, estimated at 2.12 million children in 2008 and 2.18 million children in 2009, respectively.36 The impacts of an unchecked HIV epidemic include an increasing number of AIDS orphans, increasing funeral costs, loss of time and resources in caring for the sick, reduced economic productivity, and stigmatization of HIV-positive people.37 These trends indicate that Nigeria’s potential for socioeconomic development could be decimated. The experiences of HIVpositive people in southeastern Nigeria show the possibility of relapse in the context of neglect of protective practices associated with ART and traditional medicines.38 Although millions of HIV-positive persons can now enjoy relatively good health, stigma continues to be associated with HIV/AIDS in Nigeria. Stigma has long been a major barrier to HIV prevention and treatment.39 Different types of stigma that stand in the way of effective HIV treatment include the following: self, familial, community, institutional, and organizational. Self-stigma refers to a situation whereby HIV-positive persons who feel that everyone is aware of their HIV status thereby exhibit emotional turmoil, fear, depression, anxiety, or other emotional problems. Familial stigma deals with perceived negative reactions from people who are related or well known to HIV-positive persons. In situations beyond the family, HIV-positive persons may experience discrimination from members of their community or in institutional or organizational settings. There is another form of stigma called enacted stigma, which affects persons whose HIV status is disclosed by others, often without their consent.40 Any form of stigmatization can cause an HIV patient to experience stress, isolate himself or herself, lose appetite, or not feed well. A plethora of research on the connection between stigma and disclosure of HIV-positive status shows that fear of stigma can discourage disclosure.41 Research has drawn attention to negative consequences of disclosure of HIV-positive status, such as disrupted relationships with family members and communities, isolation, criticism, ostracism, abuse, violence, divorce, separation from partners, and rejection by friends.42 Apart from stigma, HIV has also contributed to violations of human rights, especially in the context of an emerging mandatory HIV testing regime in various parts of society. Although religious organizations have

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contributed to arresting the spread of HIV/AIDS through sensitization, they have equally promoted HIV stigma through their policies on mandatory HIV test for couples intending to be married. Churches insist on HIV tests as a precondition for marriage. Thus, a number of potential marriages have been terminated as a result of HIV-positive status of one or both individuals. Several cases of HIV-oriented termination of potential marriages have been recorded in Nigerian churches. This practice may have legal ramifications, as a violation of a fundamental human right of HIV-positive persons.43 A right to marriage is often undermined by the revelation of HIV-positive status. The faith-based policy on mandatory HIV testing could put Nigerian society at a disadvantage, although the policy is based on the assumption that mandatory premarital HIV testing will help to reduce the spread of the virus. This assumption, however, lacks empirical evidence and it detracts from the human rights implications of mandatory HIV testing. Mandatory HIV testing may not lessen the spread of the virus, especially if stigmatization and discrimination persist. Following their recognition of the fact that the church policy ignores customary marriages, which are often conducted between families without any formalities, opponents of mandatory HIV testing argued that mandatory premarital HIV testing would result in an escalation of public health problems in Nigeria.44 They also argued that the policy would lead to a worsening of the incidence of violence against women in Nigerian society. The crisis of HIV/AIDS has also affected the research environment in Nigeria. A sizable number of Nigerian researchers have devoted attention to issues around HIV/AIDS for more than two decades.45 Research on HIV/AIDS increased from one article in 1987 to more than one hundred in 2006. Over 85 percent of the research has been published.

Conclusion This chapter revisits issues of HIV/AIDS in Nigeria from historical and analytical perspectives. It includes an analysis of the context of denial and acceptance of the epidemic and reviews the crises in attempts to mitigate its impact. Nigeria had gone through various stages in its efforts to control the continued spread of HIV/AIDS and its threat to public health. Initially, policies were geared toward reducing HIV prevalence in Nigeria. Personal knowledge of HIV status remains largely unknown in Nigeria due to the fact that it is not compulsory for an individual to ascertain their HIV status. This situation reinforces a tendency toward denial of the authenticity of HIV/AIDS. The question of voluntarism and confidentiality

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should be reconsidered given the grave threat of HIV/AIDS to public health. All Nigerians should be encouraged to ascertain their HIV status and disclose it appropriately for adequate care and support. The actual incidence of HIV/AIDS in Nigeria is yet to be documented. Available statistics are estimates based mostly on records of pregnant women who attended prenatal clinics. A dramatic shift in policy direction is called for, if comprehensive documentation of cases of HIV/AIDS is to take place in Nigeria. This would be just the start of a new approach to reversing the continued spread of HIV/AIDS in the country. Such a change is urgently needed not only to identify the cases of HIV/AIDS that are yet unknown but also to get control over the epidemic before it devastates another generation of Nigerians.

Notes 1

For more information on the progression from HIV to AIDS, see J. Rhatigan, S. Jain, J. S. Mukherejee, and M. E. Porter, Applying the Care Delivery Value Chain: HIV/AIDS Care in Resource-Poor Settings, Harvard Business School Working Paper no. 93 (Harvard University, 2009). 2 V. Mishra, P. Agrawal, S. Alva, Y. Gu, and S. Wang, Changes in HIV-Related Knowledge and Behaviour in Sub-Saharan Africa (Washington, DC: USAID, 2009). 3 K. Hallman, Socio-economic Disadvantage and Unsafe Sexual Behaviour among Young Men and Women (New York: Population Council Inc., 2004). 4 P. M. Sharp, G. M. Shaw, and B. H. Hahn, “Simian Immunodeficiency Virus: Infection of Chimpanzees,” Journal of Virology 79, no. 7 (2005): 3891–3902. 5 Femi Soyinka, D. Ogundare, K. Olowookere, O. Akinsola, A. Alade, and O. A. Moronkola, “NELA: A Community Response to HIV/AIDS in Nigeria,” Convergence 37, no. 4 (2004): 47–57. 6 Toyin Falola and Ann Genova, Historical Dictionary of Nigeria (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2009), 1–20. 7 See, among others, Akeem Ayofe Akinwale and Mike Olanipekun Aremo, “Social Factors in HIV and AIDS Transmission in Nigeria,” African Journal for the Psychological Study of Social Issues 13, no. 2 (2010), 244–65. 8 E. Durojaiye and V. Balogun, “Human Rights Implications of Mandatory Premarital HIV Testing in Nigeria,” International Journal of Law, Policy, and the Family 24, no. 2 (2010): 245–65. 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid. 11 C. M. Obermeyer, P. Baijal, and E. Pegurri, “Facilitating HIV Disclosure across Diverse Settings: A Review,” American Journal of Public Health 101, no. 6 (2011): 1011–23. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid.

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Ibid. FMHO Technical Report on the 2008 National HIV/Syphilis Sero-Prevalence Sentinel Survey among Pregnant Women Attending Antenatal Clinics in Nigeria (Abuja: FMHO, 2009). 16 P. Rodney, Y. Ndjakani, F. K. Ceesay, and N. O. Wilson, “Addressing the Impact of HIV/AIDS on Women and Children in Sub-Saharan Africa: PEPFAR, the U.S. Strategy,” Africa Today 57, no. 1 (2010): 64–76. 17 Ibid. 18 National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA) and the United Nations General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS), “Country Progress Report: Nigeria” (Abuja: NACA, 2010), 1–50. 19 “Education about HIV/AIDS has included the use of billboards, commercials, public lectures and seminars, and pamphlets. For example, music and television celebrities, such as Femi Kuti and Fati Muhammed, have appeared on billboards in Nigeria reminding people that you cannot determine who is HIV positive by their looks.” Falola and Genova, Historical Dictionary of Nigeria, 153. 20 NACA and UNGASS, “Country Progress Report: Nigeria,” 1–40. 21 Matilda de Beer and Ndubuisi Nnanna, “Africanisation: Using Drama in HIV/AIDS Education,” International Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities Review 2, no. 1 (2011): 93–99. 22 Ibid. 23 S. A. Adeusi, O. A. Adekeye, and Lanre Amodu, “Factors Influencing Attitudes Towards Stigmatization and Discrimination among People Living with HIV/AIDS,” International Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities Review 2, no. 1 (2011): 30–38. 24 C. Iyiani, T. Binns, and P. Shannon, “Talking Past Each Other: Towards HIV/AIDS Prevention in Nigeria,” International Social Work 54, no. 2 (2011): 258–71. 25 The concept of social capital evolved from the ideas of such scholars as Howard Becker, Pierre Bourdieu, James Coleman, and Robert Putnam. For details see L. B. Trimble and J. A. Kmec, “The Role of Social Networks in Getting a Job,” Sociology Compass 5, no. 2 (2011): 165–78; Mario Luis Small, Unanticipated Gains: Origins of Network Inequality in Everyday Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009). 26 C. O. Muoghalu and S. A. Jegede, “The Role of Cultural Practices and the Family in the Care for People Living with HIV/AIDS among the Igbo of Anambra State, Nigeria,” Social Work in Healthcare 49 (2010): 981–1006. 27 E. E. Ekanem, B. M. Afolabi, A. O. Nuga, and S. B. Adebajo, “Sexual Behaviour, HIV-Related Knowledge, and Condom Use by Intra-City Commercial Bus Drivers and Motor Park Attendants in Lagos, Nigeria,” African Journal of Reproductive Health 9, no. 1 (2005): 78–87. 28 Ibid. 29 I. O. Orubuloye, P. Caldwell, and J. C. Caldwell, “The Role of High-Risk Occupations in the Spread of AIDS: Truck Drivers and Itinerant Market Women in Nigeria,” International Family Planning Perspectives 19, no. 2 (1993): 43–48, 71. 15

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30 Women living with HIV are often blamed and ostracized, even when they contract HIV from their husbands. See Rodney et al., “Addressing the Impact of HIV/AIDS,” 64–76. 31 Population Reference Bureau, “Fact Sheet” (Washington, DC: PRB, 2007). 32 A positive HIV status is perceived as a death warrant in Nigeria. As such, the majority of the population have developed apathy toward voluntary counseling and confidential testing. 33 “Country Fact Sheet: Nigeria,” Human Development Report 2009 (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2010). 34 Akeem Ayofe Akinwale, “Language Barrier as the Bane of Development in Africa,” Journal of Black and African Arts and Civilization 4, no. 1 (2010): 95– 110. 35 G. A. Abu, I. D. Ekpebu, and S. A. Okpachu, “The Impact of HIV/AIDS on Agricultural Productivity in Ukum Local Government Area of Benue State, Nigeria,” Journal of Human Ecology 31, no. 3 (2010): 157–63. 36 NACA and UNGASS, “Country Progress Report: Nigeria,” 1–31. 37 Kingsley Oturu, “Stigma in Access to HIV Treatment in African Settings: The Importance of Social Connections,” Grounded Theory Review 10, no. 2 (2011): 63–90. 38 D. J. Smith and B. C. Mbakwem, “Antiretroviral Therapy and Reproductive Life Projects: Mitigating the Stigma of AIDS in Nigeria,” Social Science and Medicine 71 (2010): 345–52. 39 Ibid. 40 Obermeyer, Baijal, and Pegurri, “Facilitating HIV Disclosure,” 1011–23. 41 Ibid. 42 Ibid. 43 Durojaiye and Balogun, “Human Rights Implications,” 245–65. 44 Ibid. 45 Nigerian researchers have developed interest in the study of HIV/AIDS in collaboration with their colleagues within and outside Africa. For more information on Nigerian research related to HIV/AIDS, see, among others, Olalekan A. Uthman, “HIV/AIDS in Nigeria: A Bibliometric Analysis,” BMC Infectious Diseases 8, no. 19 (2008): 1–7.

CONTRIBUTORS

Richard Abayomi Aborisade, PhD, is a University Lecturer at the Department of Sociological Studies, Tai Solarin University of Education (TASUED), Nigeria. He holds degrees from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria (BSc, MSc, and PhD Sociology) and Coventry University, UK (MBA, Information Technology). His main research interests include crime and social deviant behaviors, gender and sexualities, and culture. His research has been published in the African Sociological Review and the Journal of the Social Sciences, among other local and international journals. Adeyinka A. Aderinto, PhD, was educated at the University of Ibadan where he obtained his B.sc, M.sc and PhD degrees in Sociology. Professor Aderinto’s main areas of teaching and research are deviance, social problems, and childhood studies. He has published extensively in these areas in national and international journals. He has also served as external examiners to Nigerian and foreign universities, including the University of Ilorin, Obafemi Awolowo University, Lagos State University, University of Uyo, and University of Ghana, Legon, among others. Saheed Aderinto, PhD, is Assistant Professor of History at Western Carolina University, Cullowhee NC. He is the co-author of Nigeria, Nationalism, and Writing History (University of Rochester Press, 2010). His works have appeared in leading Africanist and specialist journals, including the Canadian Journal of African Studies (46, no.1, 2012); Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History (13, no. 3, 2012); History in Africa: A Journal of Methods (39, 2012); and Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies (33 no. 3, 2012). Aderinto’s areas of specialization include nationalism and historiography; gender and sexuality; children and childhood; and popular culture. Abimbola O. Adesoji, PhD, is a Senior Lecturer and Acting Head of the Department of History, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife, Nigeria. He was a Georg Forster Postdoctoral Research Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation at the Institut fur Ethnologie, Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universitat, Frankfurt Main, Germany. His research interests are

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traditional and contemporary Yoruba history and socio-political history of Nigeria. His recent publications include, “Between Maitatsine and Boko Haram: Islamic Fundamentalism and the Response of the Nigerian State” Africa Today 57(4) (2011):99-119 and “When (not) to be a Proprietor: Nigerian Newspaper Ownership in a Changing Polity” (co-authored) African Study Monographs 32(4) (2011):177-203. Akeem Ayofe Akinwale, PhD, is a Senior Lecturer and Acting Head of the Department of Social Sciences, Landmark University, Kwara State, Nigeria. He taught for six years at the University of Ibadan also in Nigeria. He has attended several conferences and workshops within Africa, Europe, and North America. He is a peer reviewer and member of the editorial board of the Interdisciplinary Journal of Human Rights Law (IJHRL) based in the United States. He has also served as peer reviewer for several journals within Africa. His areas of research and interest include industrial sociology and development studies. Akinwale is a Laureate of the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) and a Fellow of Africa Regional Sexuality Resource Centre (ARSRC). Isaac Olawale Albert, PhD, is the current Director of the Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan. He has published 25 books and over 90 articles in journals and books on African history, and peace and conflict studies. He initiated the Peace and Conflict Studies Programme of the Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan in 2000. He was the UNDP (Accra, Ghana) consultant for the establishment of the MA in Peace and Development Studies of the University of Cape Coast, Ghana in 2006. In 2007, he served as the Country Director of the Nigeria Office of the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (IDASA-Nigeria). He was a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Inequality and Human Security (CRISE), Oxford University, UK and the 2006 winner of the Africa Peace Education Award of the California State University, Sacramento (USA). Laurence Alo teaches history at Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago Iwoye, Nigeria. Tokunbo Aderemi Ayoola, PhD, received his doctorate in African history from the University of Manchester, UK. He specializes in 19th and 20th century history of Africa, focusing on economic, political, social, and cultural history of Nigeria and West Africa. His scholarly writings have

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Contributors

appeared in international journals and in edited volumes. He has taught at Bexley College, UK, Tulane University, and Ohio State University. Laurent Fourchard, PhD, is a Senior Researcher for the National Foundation of Political Science at the University of Bordeaux, France. His research focuses on youth, on vigiliantism and on the shaping of the colonial and postcolonial state and cities in Africa. He has edited several books and has authored papers in these areas for Journal of African History, Africa, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Politique africaine and Afrique et Histoire. He has carried out historical and ethnographic fieldworks in Burkina Faso, Nigeria, and South Africa in the past 15 years. He taught African and European History at Paris 7 University, and was Director of the French Institute for Research in Africa (Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan) between 2000 and 2003. Fourchard was on sabbatical leave at the Historical Studies Department, University of Cape Town (2008–2009). He is also co-editor of the journal Politique africaine. He holds a PhD in African History from University of Paris 7. Simon Heap, PhD, is Senior Program Officer at the London office of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). He had previously worked in the NGO sector for the past fifteen years and has been the voluntary editor of the ASAUK (African Studies Association of the UK – www.asauk.net) newsletter since 2004. He has just completed his fellowship as the first Britain-Nigeria Educational Trust Commonwealth Fellow at the University of Ibadan. With a doctorate in History from the University of Ibadan funded by the Leverhulme Trust, Simon has published articles on the import, transport, regulation, and manufacture of alcohol in Nigeria, as well as two ground-breaking articles on juvenile delinquency in Nigeria: ‘“Jaguda boys”: Pickpocketing in Ibadan, 193060” Urban History, 24(3), 1997, 324-43, and the one first published in the Journal of Family History in 2010, which is reproduced here. Olukoya Ogen, PhD, is Associate Professor of History at Osun State University, Nigeria. His areas of specialization include social and political history of Nigeria. He has published in reputable journals. He was a visiting fellow at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. Olatunji Ojo, PhD, teaches African history at Brock University, Canada. Prior to joining Brock he taught at the University of Ibadan (Nigeria),

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Ohio University, Athens, and Syracuse University, Syracuse. His research interests, which include slavery, ethnicity and identity formation, religion and gender, center on the history of social and economic change. His recent publications include, “Èmú (Àmúyá): The Yoruba Institution of Panyarring or Seizure for Debt,” African Economic History 35 (2007): 3162; “The Organization of the Atlantic Slave Trade in Yorubaland, 1777 to 1856,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 48.1 (2008): 77100 and “Beyond Diversity: Women, Scarification, and Yoruba Identity,” History in Africa 35 (2008). Paul Osifodunrin, PhD, joined the Department of History and Strategic Studies, University of Lagos after completing his doctoral program in the same university in 2008. His research interests are in crime, social, and urban history of Africa. His most recent publication Armed Robbery in Postcolonial Lagos, 1960-2007 has just been published in the monograph series of the College of Humanities and Culture, Osun State University. Other research interests include marital and church history in Africa. He is the co-author of In the Service of God and Humanity: St. Peter’s Church (Faji) Lagos, 1853-2003 (University of Lagos Press, 2003). He has to his credit a number of international awards, the most recent of which is the African Humanities Program Postdoctoral Fellowship awarded by the American Council of Learned Societies in 2010. He is a pioneer member of the Network of Nigerian Historians, an intellectual think-thank that is poised to advance the study of history in Nigeria. Giovanna Santanera is an Anthropology PhD student at the University of Milan, Italy (Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca). She is currently working on a research project that focuses on the political significance of Nollywood video films in Nigeria. Her research interests include media, pentecostalism, popular culture, and the African diaspora. Her MA dissertation Nollywood in Turin: A Research Project among Nigerian Immigrants examines the interaction between media consumption strategies and the dynamics of cultural change set in motion by delocalization. Paul Ugor, PhD, is a Newton Fellow at the Centre of West African Studies (CWAS), University of Birmingham, UK. He locates his work at the intersection of three fields of study—postcolonialism, cultural studies and the sociology of youth. His current research at CWAS examines the identity politics of youth in three cities in Nigeria, especially as a response to difficult social, economic and political conditions in their everyday

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Contributors

lives. His recently published works include, Youth, Cultural Politics and New Social Spaces in an Era of Globalization (co-edited, 2009); “Contemporary Hollywood, the African Other, and the Persistence of the Empire” in Colonization or Globalization? Postcolonial Exploration of Imperial Expansion (2010), and a forthcoming essay, “Failed States, the Privatization of Sovereignty, and the Militarization of Youth in Nigeria: Contested Citizenship in Nollywood Films” in Delimiting Citizenship: Aboriginal and Diasporic Literary Perspectives (2011). Uyilawa Usuanlele, PhD, had his education in Nigeria, Sweden, and Canada and majored in African history. He worked as an administrator and Researcher with the National Council for Arts and Culture (NCAC), Lagos and Benin City, Nigeria. He was a founding member/ Coordinator of Institute for Benin Studies, Benin City, Nigeria. He has contributed articles and chapters to journals and books and presently teaches African history at State University of New York (SUNY) Oswego, New York State. Pauline von Hellermann, PhD, is a lecturer in Anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London. She works on environmental governance and landscape change in West and East Africa, combining archival, ethnographic, and photographic research methods. Shehu Tijjani Yusuf is currently completing his doctoral program on the history of Nigerian railway at the Institute for History, Universitiet Leiden, Netherlands. He also teaches history at the Department of History, Bayero University, Nigeria.

INDEX

A Abeokuta 197-8, 202, 204-5, 222, 249-50, 255, 260, 303, 325, 327 Aderinto, Saheed 9, 21, 23, 26, 301, 106, 253-4, 385, 418 Adesina, Olutayo 31-2, 61, 401-2 Adewoye, Omoniyi 215-17 administration 20, 25, 43, 58, 67-9, 71, 79, 83, 85, 172, 176, 195, 199, 201-3, 252 adults 268-9, 272, 303, 407 Afigbo, A.E. 31, 189, 240, 379, 382-3 Africa 31-6, 56-7, 59-61, 88-91, 127-8, 142-6, 159-61, 166-8, 188-9, 258, 320-2, 340-1, 347-8, 364-70, 416-21 Africa-based scholars 143-4 African AIDS Vaccine Program (AAVP) 408 African Banking Corporation (ABC) 37 African businesses 43-4 African City 60, 162, 214, 216, 280, 311-12, 314, 342 African Colonial History 104 African Criminology 340 African economic historians 378 African Economic History 35, 5860, 84, 421 African entrepreneurs 43-4, 77 African Historiography 31, 48, 131 modern 144, 146 African History 17, 31, 34, 98, 140, 142, 144, 146-7, 151, 309, 419-20, 422 African Labor History 82

African Popular Culture 9, 346-9, 351, 353-5, 357, 359, 361, 3635, 367, 369 African societies 48, 146, 308, 324, 348-9, 364 African states 30, 154-5, 364 African traders 262 African Urban History 61 African Video Film 365-6 African women 88, 97, 140, 142-4, 146, 154, 158-9 African women's history 140, 142, 144 Africans 14, 16, 22, 24, 32, 34, 367, 40, 48, 51-2, 63, 72-3, 141-2, 144-8, 158 age 11, 34, 141, 172, 217, 234, 261, 264-5, 267, 269, 272-4, 303-4, 374, 389-90, 412-13 agreements 78, 125-6, 170, 173, 183, 187, 202-3, 206, 210, 393 agriculture 36, 58, 63, 149, 186, 192, 198, 203, 213, 218, 221, 244, 246, 285 AIDS 103, 261, 339, 407, 409, 415-17 Ajayi, J.F.A 33, 158, 160, 379, 383 Akintoye, Akintoye 215, 217, 252, 255 alaayes 27, 196, 287 Albert, Olawale 22-3, 60, 139, 234, 317 alcohol 39-41, 63, 287, 307, 420 Apalara, Alfa Bisiriyu 318, 339, 342-3 alliances 182-3, 187, 200, 239, 409 ammunition 243, 246-7, 249 archaeology 14, 131, 216

412 Area Boys 27, 266, 276, 286-8, 307, 309-10, 315 assaults 265, 296, 299, 301 associations 99-101, 156 authorities 27, 32, 51, 53, 68-9, 934, 100, 134, 161, 167-9, 174, 177, 221, 288-9, 307-8 Awe, Bolanle 23, 141-50, 152, 154, 156-8, 160-2, 239, 248, 253-6, 284 awujale 148, 203, 245, 251-2 Ayandele, E.A. 31, 239-40, 247, 252-5 Ayoola, Tokunbo 20-1, 233 B Barber, Karin 109, 128, 348, 355, 365-7, 370 Basutoland 320-1, 341 behavior, sexual 405-6, 411-12 Benin 103, 149, 166-7, 174-7, 182, 189-94, 391, 402 Benin City 169, 175, 190-1, 194, 303, 382, 401, 422 Benin District 10, 170-1, 173 Benin Division (BD) 8, 10, 24, 166-71, 173-81, 183, 185-94 Benin Forest Scheme 166, 168, 182-5, 187, 193 Benin kingdom 169-70, 173, 191 Benin lands 180-2, 191 BNA (Benin Native Authority) 178-81, 183-4, 186, 194 Boma Boys 26-7, 266-7, 270-1, 281, 283, 287, 301-5, 315-16 Britain 25, 45-7, 57, 74, 76, 173, 186, 199, 203, 229, 231, 258, 278, 314, 339 British Colonial Administration 189, 319-20 British Empire 41, 46, 104-5, 169, 188, 259, 268, 271, 273 brothels 10, 95, 98, 266-7, 273, 302-4

Index C caregivers 396-9, 410 cash crops 45, 168, 181, 205-7, 209, 211-13, 220 centers 16, 20, 89, 91-2, 132, 145, 158, 219, 286, 326, 351, 355, 360, 391-2, 394-400 faith-based 398, 400 major 219, 221 chieftaincy Dispute 320-1, 341 chieftaincy titles 126, 241, 244-5, 323 child 18, 46, 113, 116, 120, 263, 268, 323, 358, 389, 402, 411 Child Prostitution 274, 284, 38990 children 15-16, 26-7, 99-100, 11819, 211, 231-2, 261, 263-4, 2689, 271-2, 276-8, 281, 320-2, 389-91, 407-8 million 407, 413 Christianity 151, 217, 324-6, 3402, 398 cities 26, 47-9, 55, 57, 79, 90, 1345, 253-4, 259-60, 262-3, 291, 305-6, 310-12, 323-5, 420-1 citizenship 189, 236-7, 239, 241, 243 civil society 106, 240, 243, 387, 399 clientele 286, 397, 399 cocoa 43-5, 64, 70, 76, 205-6, 2089, 211, 213, 217, 262, 289, 349 colonial courts 203, 207, 213-14 colonial currency 36-9, 59 colonial economy 38, 42-3, 65, 89, 92, 211, 262, 292 Colonial Forest Reservation 8, 166-7, 169, 171, 173, 175, 177, 179, 181, 183, 185, 187, 189, 191, 193 colonial government of Nigeria 75, 166 colonial officials 65, 67, 75

The Third Wave of Historical Scholarship on Nigeria Colonial Penal Administration Committee 271, 283 colonial period 19, 26, 29, 39, 42, 71, 76, 90, 95, 146-7, 174, 2389, 241-3, 253, 275-6 colonial rule 16, 19, 24, 28-9, 37-8, 45, 49, 51, 77, 99, 150, 152-3, 167, 237, 251-2 colonial service 153-4, 191 colonial subjects 42, 47, 49, 179, 320 colonialism 19, 28, 32, 36, 102, 142, 144, 147, 150-2, 154, 161, 195, 201, 212, 238 colonialists 21, 25-7, 37-8, 49, 88, 90-2, 96-7, 101, 151-2, 202, 288, 300, 325 colonies 37, 41, 43, 67, 69, 74-5, 93, 106, 143, 173-4, 186, 203, 269-73, 280-5, 314-15 conflicts 25, 28, 33, 42-3, 53-4, 67, 106, 119, 138, 152, 197-9, 24950, 321-2, 325, 385 corpse 332, 334-5 cotton 43, 45, 64, 70, 205, 220, 349 courts 24, 127, 195-7, 201-4, 20810, 212-13, 216, 248, 268, 274, 297, 299-301, 305, 307, 336-8 Cowboys 10, 279, 305-6, 310, 314, 317 crime 9, 15-16, 19, 26, 28-9, 32, 48, 54, 281-4, 299-300, 304-5, 309-12, 318-19, 329-31, 339 criminality, self-help 38, 50, 58-9 Cross River Basin of Nigeria 31, 102, 282 crusade 318, 326-30, 332 cults 116, 279, 304, 310, 326, 3323, 337-40, 358 culture 28, 39, 56, 58-9, 63, 104, 109, 148-9, 151, 159, 252, 3478, 370-1, 389, 401 currency 36-9, 45, 54, 59, 63 currency counterfeiting 38, 63

413

CYPO (Children and Young Person's Ordinance) 94, 263, 272-4, 276 D dangers 28, 41, 90, 147, 376, 385, 400 death 28, 79, 123-4, 174, 197, 203, 211, 245, 290, 296, 320-2, 328, 330-1, 333, 337 decolonization 14, 52, 141, 150-2, 160 delinquency 26, 259, 261, 276, 279, 289, 291, 295, 297, 299, 305, 308, 310, 312, 317 Denzer 23, 141, 145-58, 160, 1623 development 29-30, 54-7, 62-71, 78-81, 106, 120-3, 126, 155, 219-20, 239-40, 271-2, 288, 365, 378-9, 388-9 disciplines 17, 51, 53-4, 130-2, 272, 291, 372, 376, 379-82, 386 discrimination 26, 237-8, 241-2, 251-4, 410, 414, 416 disputes 195-7, 201, 206, 208-9, 218, 320 district officer 93, 106, 179, 182, 185, 191-3, 204, 238, 338 division 66, 68-9, 77, 117, 166-7, 172, 177, 212, 303, 326, 401 divorce 150, 162, 206, 211-12, 413 documents 18, 90, 93, 96-7, 99, 101, 106, 109, 363, 377, 404 E Ebute Metta 263, 297, 303, 314, 324-6, 328, 333-4 economic history 20, 35-6, 42, 45, 47, 57-9, 64, 222 EFCC (Economic and Financial Crimes Commission) 396 Egba 152, 198, 236, 245-6, 24950, 255

414 Ekiti 25, 195, 197-9, 202, 204-6, 211-12, 215, 236, 250, 407 Elder Dempster 71, 73-6, 84, 302 electricity 16, 48-51, 55, 63, 292 elite 148-9, 151, 154, 156, 356 elite women, educated 162, 274 emics 8, 22, 130-1, 137-9 Enugu 269-71, 278-9 epidemic 52, 405, 408, 410, 412, 414-15 ESAs (European segregation areas) 51-2 ethnicities 16, 19, 21, 23, 39, 81, 132, 135, 145, 149, 156, 239, 347, 421 etics 8, 22, 130-1, 138-9 Europe 18, 34, 42, 63, 72, 91, 223, 225, 302, 362-3, 375, 389-90, 392, 394, 419 Eweka 174-5, 177, 179-80, 187 execution 246, 319, 322, 332, 338, 343 exploitation 24, 57, 65, 91, 125-6, 172, 190, 288, 358, 362, 386, 389, 400 exports 46, 63, 67, 222-3 crude oil 350 F families 12, 92, 99, 196, 206-9, 241, 247, 261, 277, 291, 320, 327, 363, 410, 413-16 farmers 32, 72, 161, 168, 172, 175, 180, 190, 196-8, 205-7, 209, 213, 223, 226, 229 farms 172-3, 180-1, 185, 187, 190, 196, 198, 207-8, 211-12, 222, 253-4, 385 father's 211-12 Faulkner, Donald 266, 269, 271, 281, 283, 286, 309 filmmakers 355-7, 362, 367 films 29, 346, 354, 357, 360, 369, 408 First World War 71-3, 84

Index fiscal policy 36, 39, 41, 43, 63 forest regulations 175, 177-8, 187 forest reservation 166-70, 172-4, 177-81, 186-7 foresters 169, 172-3, 177, 180, 182 forestry 169, 180, 186, 191 scientific 166, 169 forestry regulations 173, 175, 178, 187 forests 125, 170, 172-3, 179-80, 185, 187-90, 192-4, 211 virgin 206 Fourchard, Laurent 26-7, 60-1, 280-1, 283, 285, 420 freedom 274-5, 356, 397, 399-400 G gangs 287, 290, 298-300, 305-6 gender 15, 21, 23, 31, 33, 81, 89, 102-4, 106, 140-1, 143-5, 14950, 154-5, 159-62, 418 generations 17, 110, 155-6, 180, 182, 291, 359, 365-7, 374, 415 Germany 33, 46, 71-2, 167, 233, 375, 418 Girl hawkers 33, 312 girls 93-4, 96-7, 153-4, 261, 265, 267, 272-7, 289, 306, 312, 388, 392, 401-2 Globalization 16, 32, 58, 63, 102, 161, 346, 349, 361, 364, 369, 384-5, 387, 422 Gold Coast 21, 44, 76, 89-90, 93, 96-8, 100, 104, 267 H Hausa 16, 23, 134-5, 137, 228, 230-2 Hausa women 137 hawking 11, 117, 270, 272, 274, 276, 281, 283 Heap, Simon 27-8, 60, 281, 31415, 408

The Third Wave of Historical Scholarship on Nigeria Hellermann, Pauline von 8, 24, 188-9, 194, 422 hinterland 7, 38, 58, 62-4, 67, 72, 82, 85, 203, 222, 246, 248-9, 251, 261, 319 historians 15-19, 22-5, 29-30, 356, 47-8, 54, 131, 137-8, 140-1, 145-7, 151-3, 157-9, 288-90, 371-6, 378-84 economic 45, 378 generations of 15, 29 mainstream 23, 375 pioneering 27, 141, 157-8 women's 15 Historians and Africanist History 31, 161 historians of Africa 90-1 historians of Nigeria 18, 20, 23, 29-30, 88, 108, 141 historical analysis 108, 145, 290, 372 historical antecedents 238, 266 historical background 129, 290, 378 historical evidence 128, 379 historical geography 141, 188, 312 Historical Perspective 31, 56, 105, 139, 143, 234, 284, 387 historical reconstruction 127-8, 373, 376 historical research 14, 16-17, 1920, 27, 54, 88, 140, 240, 258, 377 historical Scholarship 4, 7, 9, 1315, 17, 19-21, 23, 25, 27, 29, 31, 33, 55, 141, 375 third wave of 16, 19 Historical Society of Nigeria (HSN) 16, 31, 59, 82, 140, 189, 217, 252, 382 historical study 16, 26, 62, 64, 379-80, 383 historical traditions 375, 381 historical understanding 134, 379 historical works 62, 379, 381 Historical Writing 379, 383

415

historical writing, second wave of 14-15 historiographical essays 23, 157 historiographical work, critical 23, 141 historiographies 7, 20-1, 23-4, 32, 35, 57, 87, 141, 157, 374, 382-3, 418 nationalist 14-15, 88, 102, 158, 161 history 18-23, 26-8, 34-7, 53-6, 107-9, 140-2, 145-9, 158-61, 236-40, 253-5, 287-9, 341-2, 346-9, 371-85, 418-22 academic 14, 31, 158 alternative 347, 364 branches of 14, 157 constructing alternative social 29, 346 discipline of 54, 377 oral 14, 19, 22, 29, 101 popular 29, 242 public 147, 381 recent 357, 376, 379-80 HIV/AIDS 30, 404-5, 407-12, 41417 control of 404, 408, 410-11 HIV/AIDS in Nigeria 9, 404-5, 407, 409, 411-15, 417 control of 408, 411 HIV-positive 411, 413 HIV-positive status 406, 414 HIV prevalence 404, 406-8 HIV prevalence in Nigeria 406-7, 412 HIV status 406, 413-15 home 19, 46, 89, 92, 99-100, 1023, 153, 198, 290-1, 295, 297-8, 302, 307-8, 342, 362-3 homeland 99, 198, 247, 363 hometown associations 99-100, 106 homicide 319-20, 322, 324, 340 homosexuality 89, 145, 161 honor 3-4, 35, 42, 56-8, 112, 11920, 159, 162, 214, 253

416 Hopkins, A.G 36-7, 57, 59-60, 383 horses 112, 116-17 host community 99-100, 135, 229, 231-3, 235 hostels 11, 272-3, 275-7 hostilities 46, 240, 246, 253-5, 329 housing 56, 64, 72, 229, 263, 270, 279-81, 313-14 human trafficking 18, 30, 103, 385-8, 390-1, 393, 399-400, 402 humanities 31-3, 35, 48, 53, 56, 102, 130, 380, 382, 384-5, 421 humans 123, 321, 385-6 husbands 96, 100, 206, 211-12, 221, 274, 355, 417 I Ibadan 26, 31-2, 55-8, 125, 135, 139, 159-63, 198-9, 205-6, 208, 236-56, 265, 278-9, 309-13, 341-2 founding of 236-7 pickpocketing in 31, 279, 310, 314-15, 420 Ibadan-Ijaye War 247-8, 250 Ibadan-Ijebu Relations 239, 242, 253 Ibadan markets 248, 250 Ife 113-14, 117-19, 121-3, 125-7, 129, 198, 214, 236, 243 Igbafe, P.A 190-1, 193-4 Igbo 16, 135-6, 149, 224, 226, 228-9, 231, 267, 411 Igbo Women 149, 162 Ijebu 26, 38, 197-8, 203-4, 216, 236-55, 260 Ijebu chief 247 Ijebu History 252 Ijebu Ode 148, 216, 250, 252 Ijebu origin 241, 251 Ijebu residents 237-8, 240, 243 Ijebu Settlers 26, 241-2, 253-4 Ijebu towns 246-7, 251-2

Index Ijebuland 216, 245, 248 Ijesa 195, 199-200, 202, 205-6, 209, 215, 250 Ijesa and Ekiti 8, 25, 205, 212-13 Ikoyi 52, 207-8, 263, 292, 367, 391 Ile-Ife 22, 33, 56-7, 62, 108, 11011, 117, 119-20, 122-3, 127-9, 198, 204, 214, 252-3, 382 Ilesa 199-201, 203-4, 208-9, 215 Ilesa Native Court 204, 209, 217 illicit sexuality 32, 91-2, 96, 100 imperial power 92-3, 105 imperialism 14, 24, 27, 38-40, 423, 57, 90, 97, 105, 147, 151-2, 161 independence 78, 155, 176, 202-3, 211, 251, 255, 259, 295, 311, 372-3 indigenous religions 324-6, 339 industry 20, 67, 69, 79-80, 156, 362, 367 infrastructure 24, 34-5, 47-8, 51, 54, 56, 61, 68, 121, 152, 361, 366 infrastructure history 20, 35, 47-9, 53, 55 institutions 54, 56, 130-1, 138, 202, 210, 269, 277, 298, 338, 361, 372, 381, 387 traditional 108-9, 324 Interview 128-9, 190, 194, 216, 218, 234-5, 253, 255, 342 interviewees 135 investigation 14, 94, 185, 258, 276, 321, 332-5, 338-9, 355, 387, 392, 394, 412 Isale Ijebu 246, 254-5 Islam 128, 135, 324-6, 329, 332, 340-2, 370 island 259, 292, 294, 296, 300, 308, 324 Italy 362-3, 375, 388-90, 392-4, 401-2, 421 Iyalode 162

The Third Wave of Historical Scholarship on Nigeria J Jaguda Boys 26-7, 31, 265-6, 270, 276, 279, 281, 298-301, 315, 420 jail 204, 298, 300-1, 308 journalism 376-7, 381 judgment 25, 126, 210, 337, 377 jurisdiction 93, 175-6, 181, 191, 202-3 juvenile delinquency 8, 26-7, 31-2, 102, 258-9, 261, 263-5, 267-9, 271-3, 275-81, 283, 285, 28990, 296-8, 307-8 Juvenile Delinquency Subcommittee 271, 282-3 juveniles 26, 264, 268-9, 296-7, 303, 307, 312 K Kano 23, 64, 134-7, 139, 219, 222, 225-6, 229, 234, 259, 360 killings 236, 319, 321-2, 324, 329, 337, 358 kingdom 123, 169, 174-5, 189, 191, 204 kings 22, 32, 108, 111-12, 116-17, 119-23, 125, 148-9, 152, 161, 166, 196, 200-1, 203-4, 209 paramount 245 knowledge historical 18, 35, 53, 146, 376, 380 production of 35, 144-5, 157-8 L labor 18, 21, 63, 66, 81, 90-3, 99, 149, 156, 181, 206, 211, 219, 221, 224-5 lagoon 259, 324, 332, 334-6 Lagos 31-4, 48-53, 55-8, 63-5, 6772, 81-4, 258-67, 269-71, 273-7, 279-81, 283-92, 299-305, 30717, 324-8, 339-42

417

city of 64, 324, 390 government of 221-2, 325 pickpocket in 281 pickpockets in 314 population of 260, 325 Lagos Juvenile Court 264, 277 Lagos market women 275 Lagos newspapers 265, 270 Lagos Police Courts 314 Lagos police magistrate courts 297 Lagos Political History 160 Lagos Town Council 283, 300, 304 Lagos Women's League 151, 154, 274 land control 180, 182 land disputes 197, 205, 211-12 land laws 25, 195 land tenure 187, 189, 261 customary 168, 170, 190 land-use practices 24, 186-7 landholdings 206, 208 landowners 196, 207, 209 landscape 166-7 laws 18, 32, 38, 40, 45, 51, 94, 102, 105, 237, 251-2, 273-4, 297-8, 300-1, 391 legislation 42, 93-4, 173, 269, 278 life histories 147, 241 linguistics 130-2, 139 liquor 40-1, 59-60, 64, 104 liquor trade 39-40 litigants 195, 204, 213-14 Liverpool 70, 189, 223 localities 224-5, 229, 296, 326 locations 79, 92, 145-6, 175, 207, 219, 226, 328, 334, 356 London 57, 106, 139, 160-2, 18890, 213-17, 252-3, 279-82, 309, 311-14, 316-17, 341-2, 365, 382-3, 401 M Mabogunje, Akin 61, 214-15, 241, 253-6, 259-60, 279-80, 313-14 Macgregor 203, 215-16

418 Madobi 11, 25, 219-21, 224-35 Madobi Station 11, 225-6, 228 Madobi village 11, 220, 224, 2267, 232, 235 magistrates 268, 301, 304, 315, 336 mainland 263, 270, 297, 324, 326 Mainstreaming 9, 371, 373, 375, 377, 379, 381, 383 Male Juvenile Delinquents in Lagos Island 287, 289, 291, 293, 295, 297, 299, 301, 303, 305, 307, 309, 311, 313, 315 Mann, Kristin 162, 197, 213-14, 310-12 maritime history 16, 20, 35, 56, 62-3, 81, 83, 85, 279 comparative 62-4 maritime trade 21, 64-5, 71-2, 7981, 84-5 Maritime Trade in Lagos 63, 81-2 market women 151, 275-6, 411 masquerades 296, 328-9 Mba, Nina 141-2, 145-52, 154, 158, 160-3, 284 Media Globalization 9, 346-7, 349, 351, 353, 355, 357, 359, 361, 363-5, 367, 369 medicine murder 320-1, 323-4, 341 memory 8, 26, 112, 160, 236-9, 241-3, 245, 247, 249, 251, 253, 255 methodologies 7, 17, 21-2, 87, 138, 140, 154, 158, 374-8, 380, 382 middlemen 226, 228, 233 migrant and wage labour 56, 280 migrants 56, 67, 117-18, 123, 137, 176-7, 228-9, 231-3, 259-62, 280, 324, 362-3, 370, 386 migration history 132, 134 migratory prostitution 92, 96, 101 military 93, 97, 148, 154, 198-9, 243-5, 250, 288, 351, 374

Index minorities 16, 41, 237-8, 241-3, 278 missionaries 36, 41, 153-4, 239, 246, 250-1, 325 Modakeke 117-19, 129 Modern Nigeria 54, 162, 265, 3423 monarch 119, 124, 126, 311, 313 money 37-8, 49, 57, 59, 66, 68, 912, 100, 237-8, 265-7, 298-9, 302, 358-9, 363, 368 mosques 298, 326, 329, 340 movies 354, 357, 359-63, 367-8 murder 9, 28, 119, 155, 201, 31825, 327, 329-31, 333-5, 337, 339-43, 358 Mushin 326-8, 330, 334, 342 music 21, 81, 109, 111, 127-8, 147, 354, 408, 416 Muslim communities 39, 326, 331, 338 Muslims 28, 39, 77, 135, 235, 3257, 339 N Native Administration 167, 178, 180, 183, 187, 189-90 NACA (National Agency for the Control of AIDS) 405, 408-9, 416-17 NAPTIP (National Agency for the Prohibition of Traffic in Persons) 96, 391, 394-6, 402 National Council for Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC) 77, 126 National Electric Power Authority (NEPA) 50, 61 nationalism 15-16, 19, 31, 63, 81, 88, 100, 102, 106, 141, 150, 152, 160, 283, 418 native courts 8, 25, 119, 195, 197, 199, 201-5, 207-13, 215, 217 NEPA (National Electric Power Authority) 50, 61

The Third Wave of Historical Scholarship on Nigeria Network of Nigerian Historians (NNH) 54, 421 Network of People living with AIDS in Nigeria (NEPWAN) 408 New African Diasporas 32 New Approaches to Nigeria 8, 25, 221, 223, 225, 227, 229, 231, 233, 235 NGOs 387, 393, 397, 404, 408 Niger 222-3, 407 Niger Coast Protectorate 169 Nigeria 13-20, 22-37, 48-51, 54-8, 67-71, 79-80, 100-2, 104-6, 160, 258-64, 309-14, 377-85, 387-90, 401-2, 404-22 capital of 300, 308 exploitation of 42, 74 governor of 269, 271 history of 365, 373, 404 postcolonial 16, 89 postindependence 109, 150, 1545, 240, 242, 252 transformation of human trafficking in 30, 399 twenty-first-century 96 Nigerian Civil War 19, 21, 81 Nigerian Cocoa Farmers 217-18 Nigerian Historians 16, 31, 33, 61, 371-2, 378-80, 382-4 enabled 378 mainstream 157 Nigerian History 15, 17, 19-20, 23, 29-31, 34, 53, 101, 157-8, 220, 242, 254, 357 mainstream 142, 146, 158 palpable postcolonial 360 researching recent 29 subfield of 36, 91, 142 Nigerian immigrant women 388 Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) 393-4 Nigerian maritime history 20, 63, 81 Nigerian migration 138, 370

419

Nigerian migration history 130, 132, 370 Nigerian National Archives 21, 31, 90, 93, 101, 191, 373 Nigerian National Democratic Party (NNDP) 262, 275, 280 Nigerian National Shipping Line see NNSL Nigerian Navy 21, 81 Nigerian Penal System 281, 284 Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) 68-9, 83 Nigerian Railway 25, 66, 68, 82, 220-1, 224-5, 422 genesis of the 220, 233 Nigerian researchers 414, 417 Nigerian Women 96, 141, 144-5, 150, 154, 157, 284, 387-90, 402 trafficked 388 Nigerian women seafarers 21, 81 Nigerian Women's History 88, 143, 146, 160 Nigerian Women's Party 151, 154 aspirations of 295, 379 Nigeria's maritime industry 64, 71 Nigeria's Railway History 8, 25, 219, 221, 223, 225, 227, 229, 231, 233, 235 Nollywood 29, 33, 346, 348-9, 354-7, 360-3, 365-70 Nollywood narratives 29, 346, 355 Nollywood's history 349, 353 Nollyworld 367, 369 Northeast Yorubaland 56-7 Northern Nigeria 32, 37, 39-41, 43, 45, 59, 64, 170, 219, 221-3, 225, 228, 233, 238 NPF (Nigeria Police Force) 94, 96, 100, 265, 281, 339, 388, 394 O oba 112, 116, 118, 121, 125, 136, 149, 167-8, 170, 172, 174-5, 178-88, 190-3, 331 Oba Akenzua II 10, 166, 179-84

420 Oba Eweka 175, 177, 179, 191-2 Oba Eweka II 10, 166, 173-6, 186 offenders 264, 275, 279, 281, 297, 300, 320 young 258, 264, 268-9, 271 offenses 264-5, 268, 285, 309, 319-20, 324 office 123, 208-9, 231, 391-2 officers 93, 100, 200, 202, 271 Ogoja 21, 89, 93, 99-100 Ogunremi, G.O. 57-8, 62, 82, 162 Oke Ado 237-8, 253-4 Oko-Baba 327, 330, 332-3, 335, 337, 340, 342 Olukoju, Ayodeji 16, 18, 20, 3357, 59-82, 84-5, 280-1, 314, 380, 382-4, 423 oonis 22, 108, 111-12, 116-23, 125, 127, 149 ordinance 170, 173, 175, 178, 213, 263, 270-1, 274-5, 300, 304, 315, 317 Osifodunrin, Paul 3-4, 7, 12, 14, 20, 28, 34, 318, 340, 421 Owerri Provinces 93, 99-100 ownership 168, 196-7, 206-9, 212 Oyo Yoruba 236-7, 239-40, 243-4, 251 P palm kernels 44, 46, 67, 205 pandemic 30, 404-5 paper money 38 parents 211, 267, 271, 274, 289, 291, 300, 307, 327, 353, 390, 396 Paris 55-6, 279, 285, 401, 420 personal communication 367-8, 370 petitions 47, 89-90, 93, 98-100, 106, 182, 186, 193, 210, 238, 284, 337-8 pickpockets 265, 281, 287, 299, 301, 310, 314 plantations 181-2, 186

Index poetry 107, 109-10, 127-8 police 100, 262, 266, 270, 274, 276, 280-1, 284-5, 287, 300-2, 306-7, 314-15, 317, 330-6, 3589 police investigations 322, 332-3, 340 Police Magistrate 281, 311, 314 police officers 273, 278, 338-9, 390 police reports 94, 264 policies 37, 46-7, 49, 75, 79, 143, 170, 174, 188-9, 213, 250, 2778, 405, 408, 414-15 economic 42-3, 249, 388 foreign 239, 249-50, 254 policymakers 372, 378, 382-4 Political Change 25, 191, 260, 279-80, 311, 313 political history 15, 17, 22, 33, 36, 146, 242, 356, 420 political instability 18, 322 politics 15-16, 23-4, 28, 32, 39-41, 52, 58-9, 65, 89-91, 103-5, 155, 158-9, 316-17, 346-8, 364-5 population 48-9, 99, 117, 231, 238, 243, 259-61, 279, 291-2, 295, 305, 359, 411, 417 Port Harcourt 65-7, 69, 83, 90, 214, 267, 309, 311 ports 7, 43, 62-70, 72, 79-82, 85, 266, 301 poverty 27, 30, 104, 156, 229, 259, 261-2, 271, 273, 288, 295, 304, 308, 323-4, 400-2 power 21-3, 99-101, 103, 108-9, 122-3, 126-7, 143, 145-6, 14851, 159, 174, 179-80, 237-8, 243-5, 359-61 preacher 328-9, 331, 341, 367 president 16, 34, 204, 300, 360, 390-3 prevention 271-2, 308, 409-10 prices 43-5, 71-3, 163, 222-3, 2256, 247-8, 262, 401

The Third Wave of Historical Scholarship on Nigeria

421

prisons 119, 269, 271, 273, 279, 282-3, 297, 301, 315-16 producers 44-5, 58, 71, 81, 352-4, 361-2 professional historians 29, 240, 376, 381 prohibition 39-40, 59, 101, 156, 270, 300, 304, 391-2 property 99, 189, 197, 199, 201, 209, 211-13, 264, 295, 300, 323 prostitutes 9, 21, 32, 89-90, 92, 94, 96, 101-2, 137, 267, 273-5, 286, 291, 304, 388 prostitution 21, 31-2, 88-92, 94, 97-106, 261, 267, 272, 274, 282, 302, 308, 386, 389-90, 400-2 juvenile 264, 267, 270 practiced 89, 92-3, 101, 388 Protectorate 169-70, 281, 284 protests 175, 182, 185-6, 189, 238, 275 proverbs 110-11, 128, 147, 242 public health 93, 405, 414-15

research 12, 14, 17-19, 23, 29, 48, 63, 80-1, 97, 133-4, 141, 143, 406, 413-14, 418-20 scholarly 24-5, 55, 154, 157 reservation 166-71, 173-5, 177-80, 182-3, 185-8 large-scale 166-9, 178, 180, 182, 186 reserves 37, 74, 125-6, 167, 170-1, 173, 175, 177-8, 182-3, 185, 187, 189, 192-3, 377 new 10, 175, 177, 183-6, 193 resistance 24, 28, 37-8, 45, 58-9, 70-1, 161, 167, 289, 347, 368 resources 15, 24, 50, 65, 91-2, 118, 122, 144, 146, 149, 154, 172, 174, 351, 411-13 ritual murder 320, 322-4 Royal Niger Company 40, 175 Royalty 7, 109, 111, 113, 115, 117, 119, 121, 123, 125, 127, 129

R

scholars 14-19, 23-4, 30, 34-7, 42, 45, 48, 54, 61, 131-2, 141-2, 144-5, 219-20, 372, 411-12 scholarship 1, 3, 16, 20, 23, 25, 34, 36-7, 41, 53-4, 88, 142, 153, 157-8, 221 segregation 51-2, 60, 242, 269, 281 settlers 118, 191, 198 sex 7, 15-16, 21, 88, 90-2, 97, 101, 104-5, 145, 157, 161, 172, 390, 411 sex trade 30, 89, 93, 98, 394, 401 sex trafficking 388-9, 392, 401-2 sex work 22, 89-90, 93, 100, 38791, 393-4, 396, 399-400 sex workers 391, 393-5, 397-400, 411 sexual exploitation 385-7, 389-90 sexuality 15-16, 19, 32, 54, 88-91, 96-7, 100-5, 141, 144, 150, 158, 418 history of 15, 91, 101, 103

railway 11, 24-5, 39, 43, 68-70, 73, 82, 219-26, 228, 232-3, 263 railway construction 25, 221, 233 reformatories 268-9, 283, 298 refugees 117, 198, 259 regions 17, 25, 30, 37, 39, 67, 74, 76-7, 79, 89, 179, 195, 199, 221-2, 351 regulations 97, 100-1, 175, 177-8, 272, 291, 401, 420 rehabilitation 100, 312, 392-400 religion 19, 21, 23, 28, 40, 53, 81, 131, 135, 139, 153, 243, 324-6, 331-2, 341 traditional 28, 325, 329, 332, 338-9 rent 190, 208-10, 261 repatriation 272-3, 277, 300-1, 308

S

422 sexually transmitted diseases see STDs shelter 157, 302, 391-2, 395 shipping 21, 42, 65, 69-70, 72, 747, 81, 84 slavery 32, 102, 195-6, 207, 214, 216, 261, 282, 312, 314, 401, 421 slaves 39, 116, 148, 151, 198, 200, 206, 209, 246-7, 259, 269, 385 social change 82, 88, 106, 156, 162, 197, 205, 233, 238, 280, 284, 311, 314, 355 social history 31, 58, 63, 81, 102, 363-4 138, 160, 380, 383-4, 386, 416, 41819 social scientists 18, 27, 36, 48, 131, 290 soldiers 94, 96, 198-9, 205, 208, 244, 267 songs 7, 22, 107-13, 115, 117-29, 242 composition of 123-4 poetic 107-8 prosaic 107 thematic 108, 110 sources 7, 10, 17-22, 24, 30, 37-8, 47, 89-90, 98, 147-8, 206-7, 224-5, 227-8, 258-60, 275-6 historical 29, 127 oral 22, 111 South Africa 106, 202, 268, 309, 320, 361, 390, 420 Southern Nigeria 25, 37, 40-1, 59, 89, 149, 166, 169-70, 179, 1889, 214-15, 217, 221-2, 224-5, 269-70 Spain 137, 139, 389, 393-4 State Action Committee on AIDS (SACA) 408 stations 11, 224-6, 263, 307, 3323, 336, 351 STDs (sexually transmitted diseases) 390, 406, 411-12 stigma 410-11, 413, 417

Index stigmatization 400, 410-11, 41314, 416 strangers 53, 117, 134, 172, 219, 229, 233-5, 237, 240-1, 243, 245, 250-1, 253, 265-6, 330 street traders 272, 277-8 streets 28, 203, 241, 261, 266, 272, 274, 278, 284, 287-8, 290-1, 294, 296, 308, 328-9 hooliganism in lagos 283-4 subject 17, 21, 23-4, 40, 45-6, 64, 72, 78, 91, 100-1, 110-11, 202, 241, 308, 376-7 suicide 17, 319, 340 survival 27, 79, 207, 211, 246, 249, 360 T Tamuno, Tekena 62, 82, 220, 233, 240, 311, 342-3 tariffs 69-71, 80 taxes 39, 42, 205-6, 231 technology 50, 54, 235, 353, 365 territories 131, 158, 171, 176, 208, 222, 239, 246, 248-52, 254 towns 48, 99, 104, 123, 135, 147, 198, 201, 207, 221, 231, 236-7, 244, 246, 250-1 trade 20, 36, 39, 42-3, 45-6, 65-8, 70-1, 202-3, 222-3, 243-4, 2468, 266-7, 279-80, 299, 387-8 coast-hinterland 239-40, 246 international 43, 358-9 trade embargo 247 trade relations 246, 248, 253 traders 32, 42, 44, 76, 98, 161, 181, 190, 198, 200, 205, 208, 220, 225, 248-50 tradition 30, 89, 93, 123, 174, 190, 211, 237, 295, 374 traffic 92-4, 97, 100, 103, 222, 228, 389-91 traffickers 394-6, 400 trafficking 94, 96-7, 103, 385-7, 389-94, 396, 399-402

The Third Wave of Historical Scholarship on Nigeria transport 25, 43, 51, 58, 76, 225-7, 420 trial 137, 268, 272, 333, 336-9

423

Venereal Diseases 32, 88, 91, 100, 102, 104-5 vessels 68, 70-1 victims 150, 156, 187, 239, 266, 270, 287, 302, 309, 320-1, 324, 336, 359, 387, 393-5 Victorian Lagos 341-2 video films 29, 355, 362 videos 352-3, 356, 361, 363, 366, 369 villages 99, 104, 172, 185, 194, 202, 207, 219-20, 232, 236, 244, 250-2

Warfare 56, 161, 169, 197, 214, 253 West Africa 36, 48, 57-8, 63, 65, 73-7, 82, 96, 172, 188, 197, 233, 259, 310, 363-4 West African Monetary History 59 woman 120, 148-9, 211-12, 335 women 14-16, 21, 23, 36, 88-94, 96-103, 105-6, 140-3, 145-63, 211, 213-14, 266-7, 385-8, 401, 414-17 contributions of 146, 150 homogenization of 142-3, 149 marginalization of 142, 153-4 ordinary 149, 152, 156 pregnant 407, 415 status of 142, 150 trafficking in 401 white 103, 154 writing 146, 158-9 young 110, 276, 300, 390 women's activities 146-7 women's contributions 143, 156 women's emigration 93, 98-9 women's history 15-16, 140-3, 158-9 women's movement 100, 155 Women's Party 275, 284 Women's Research 144, 159-60 Women's Rights 212, 402 Women's studies 31, 33, 102, 141, 160, 418 Women's Studies Quarterly 31, 312 Women's War 27, 152, 161 World War II 26-7, 43, 46, 52, 96, 153, 186, 258-9, 261-2, 266, 270, 302, 372, 375 WOTCLEF (Women Trafficking and Child Labor Eradication Foundation) 388, 393

W

Y

WAFF (West African Frontier Force) 94, 96-7, 105

Yoruba 16, 22-3, 26, 107-8, 134-6, 149, 161-2, 197-9, 214, 226-9,

U UAC (United African Company) 44, 68, 76, 179, 185 UK 4, 32, 71, 82, 312, 365-6, 380, 418-21 underdevelopment 18-20, 28, 30, 35, 47, 53-4, 57, 89, 378 Urban Crime 31, 279-81, 283, 285, 310 Urban Facilities 35, 48, 50 Urban history 31-2, 48, 52-3, 61, 102, 279, 310, 317, 420-1 Urban Nigeria 48, 134 Urban politics 53-4, 56 Urban Poverty 31, 280-1, 283, 285, 310 Urban Setting 55, 253-4 urbanization 16, 27, 48, 51, 88, 258-9, 271, 290, 292, 309, 31213 V

424 231-3, 239, 252-5, 313-14, 31819 popular 351 Yoruba hinterland 199, 202, 222 Yoruba History 118, 128, 254 Yoruba Land Law 197, 214, 21718 Yoruba middlemen 227, 229 Yoruba migrants 219, 229 Yoruba Oral Tradition 127-8 Yoruba poetry 109 Yoruba Women 149, 153, 160, 162

Index Yorubaland 8, 22, 107-8, 120, 123, 127, 197, 202-3, 206, 211, 222, 236-7, 239, 243-7, 249-53 history of 197, 212 young girls 94, 99-100, 267, 270, 273-4, 276, 301, 321, 389-90 young persons 263, 269, 273, 281 youth 10, 15-16, 19, 26, 33, 53, 122, 260-1, 271-2, 277-8, 282-4, 296-7, 307-8, 312, 420-2 youth crime 27, 263-4 youth offenders 258, 264-5, 268, 270

Professor Olukoju delivering his inaugural lecture at the University of Lagos on June 21, 2006.