The Great Upheaval

Women and Nation in Postwar Nigeria

Judith A. Byfield

• Publisher: Ohio University Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780821446904
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: African History
• Index: History

This social and intellectual history of women's political activism in postwar Nigeria reveals the importance of gender to the study of nationalism and poses new questions about Nigeria's colonial past and independent future.

In the years following World War II, the women of Abeokuta, Nigeria, staged a successful tax revolt that led to the formation first of the Abeokuta Women's Union and then of Nigeria's first national women's organization, the Nigerian Women's Union, in 1949. These organizations became central to a new political vision, a way for women across Nigeria to define their interests, desires, and needs while fulfilling the obligations and responsibilities of citizenship. In The Great Upheaval, Judith A. Byfield has crafted a finely textured social and intellectual history of gender and nation making that not only tells a story of women's postwar activism but also grounds it in a nuanced account of the complex tax system that generated the "upheaval."

Byfield captures the dynamism of women's political engagement in Nigeria's postwar period and illuminates the centrality of gender to the study of nationalism. She thus offers new lines of inquiry into the late colonial era and its consequences for the future Nigerian state. Ultimately, she challenges readers to problematize the collapse of her female subjects' greatest aspiration, universal franchise, when the country achieved independence in 1960.

1 The Birth and Demise of a Nation

The Egba United Government

The political landscape in Abeokuta had changed dramatically since the Egba and Owu refugees established this new town in the shadow of the geological formation known as Olumo Rock. From its location, which offered good security and ample farmlands, Abeokuta became one of the leading political and economic centers in Yorubaland as well as a center of missionary activity. This chapter considers competing political ideas as military chiefs, traders, European missionaries, and Christian converts wrestled to control and shape the town’s political, economic, and social landscapes. Critically, it identifies the main proponents of the nation in Abeokuta and the corresponding nation-state they envisioned in the decades before British control of Yorubaland. It underscores the fact that Abeokuta had an ongoing internal conversation about nationalism that would be significantly augmented by the expanding British presence by the end of the century.

Abeokuta’s chiefs created a new political structure in 1898 under great pressure from British colonial officials, the Egba United Government. The EUG in many ways seemed to be the fruition of the nation that many Egbas and non-Egbas had imagined over the course of the nineteenth century. On the surface, this new government appeared to achieve the centralization of Abeokuta’s political structure that many had failed to secure before. The four quarters that composed the town were united under the leadership of the alake, the king of Ake quarter. Educated men played a central role in the EUG and helped transform Abeokuta’s political structure into a modern monarchy that combined elements of the indigenous political structure with practices that would deliver the benefits modernity promised.¹

Britain’s recognition of Abeokuta as a self-governing kingdom facilitated the efforts of political elites in Abeokuta and in Lagos to craft a nation out of this polity. As the rest of Yorubaland fell to colonial imposition, Abeokuta became the space from which an African modernity and independence could be created and modeled. Colonial officials expected the alake to serve as the political center of this nation in the way that the kabaka (king) functioned as the political head of a self-consciously culturally and politically defined Buganda.² However, their efforts to construct the alake as the final arbiter of local politics were met with constant challenges in the remnants of the town’s heterogeneous political structure. Moreover, Britain’s recognition of the EUG did not allow the autonomy African elites had imagined. Thus, the alake’s government was actively constrained by British needs and demands as well as local Egbas’ demands for redress against destructive policies.

This chapter examines the emergence and subsequent demise of the EUG. It is especially concerned with the social and economic consequences of the EUG on men and women, the wealthy and poor as they navigated the new political landscape. It considers the articulation of nationalist thought in Abeokuta as this nineteenth-century city-state struggled to define and defend itself against the cultural and political onslaught of British colonialism. Finally, the chapter highlights the numerous ways in which Abeokuta’s sovereignty and modernity assumed greater significance beyond the town’s inhabitants because it became a symbol of African and racial pride. Thus, many experienced its loss of independence in 1914 as a seismic shift. That sense of loss further deepened when the colonial government imposed taxation, leading to a peasant tax revolt in 1918. These events collectively helped to solidify a national identity at the same time it deepened inequality and stratification across multiple layers of society. The chapter highlights the distinctive ways in which colonialism and British gender ideals shaped the inequalities embedded in this evolving nation.

REFORM AND EXPERIMENTATION

In a 1904 article for the Journal of the Royal African Society, the governor of Lagos, William MacGregor, noted that Abeokuta was engaged in “a most interesting experiment in native government.” Furthermore, the “Alake is well aware of the difficulties and of the great importance of this task. If he and his colleagues are given a fair chance, it may safely be predicted that the experiment will succeed to such an extent that it will be extended before long far beyond the limits of the Lagos Protectorate.”³ The subject of this experiment, the EUG, enjoyed the greatest degree of independence of all the Yoruba provinces.⁴

In the article, MacGregor also painted Abeokuta and its political leadership in glowing terms. Abeokuta had “taken the lead in industrial development and progress. . . . The Alake presides over his own Council [which] . . . exercises legislative, executive and judicial functions. . . . The members are allowed complete freedom of speech. The meetings of the Council are conducted with the greatest decorum and regularity.”⁵ It would be remiss to believe, as MacGregor suggests, that this experiment in a centralized form of government with modern elements began only at the end of the nineteenth century. It is important to understand the length and depth of the antecedents to this government.

Within the first decade of the town’s existence, Saros—Yorubas rescued from slave ships and settled in Sierra Leone—began returning to Egba towns. In Sierra Leone a few liberated Yoruba adopted Islam, but the majority accepted Christianity and elements of British culture. The first Saros arrived in 1839 and soon requested Christian missionaries to support them in the practice of their new faith and to help expand its membership.⁶ The first missionary to visit Abeokuta was Thomas Birch Freeman, a Wesleyan missionary of African and English ancestry. Sodeke, the balogun of the Egbas (paramount military chief), welcomed Freeman and invited him to settle in the town.⁷ Freeman did not accept the offer, but in 1846 the Church Missionary Society (CMS) established the first permanent station. Sodeke and his successors received the Saros and the missionaries warmly because they brought critical resources in the form of access to European traders, and therefore guns and ammunition from the coast, as well as new skills. One of the most important missionaries in Abeokuta was Henry Townsend, who visited the town in 1842 and then returned in 1846 to head the CMS station. Townsend acted as secretary to the alake for over ten years and directed “Anglo-Egba policy from the Egba side.”⁸ As Agneta Pallinder-Law argues, his position was very similar to that of a war chief or lineage head. In the eyes of the town authorities, Townsend was responsible for the Saros, the converts, the missionaries, and visiting Europeans—traders, missionaries, or representatives of the British government. Townsend is also important in the annals of Abeokuta’s history because he established the first mission schools, introduced the printing press, produced a bilingual newspaper, encouraged the development of cotton exports, and established an industrial institute that produced the first bricks.⁹ Townsend imagined that his influence would bring his political vision to fruition. He hoped to centralize political power in Abeokuta around the alake and set in motion the evolution of a Christian Egba theocracy. This theocracy would become the nucleus of a united Yoruba state.¹⁰ European missionaries’ influence evaporated, however, after 1867, when civil unrest forced them to leave Abeokuta.¹¹

Townsend was not the only person to imagine a Christian state in Abeokuta. G. W. Johnson shared similar ideas, but he did not support the missionary presence there. Johnson, a tailor by profession, was born in Sierra Leone of Egba parents. He studied music in England for three years and tried a business venture in Liverpool.¹² After it failed, he returned to West Africa, eventually visiting Lagos in 1863 and Abeokuta in 1865. He “saw as his goal the creation in Abeokuta of a ‘Christian, civilized state,’ independent of foreign leadership.”¹³ Like Townsend, he believed Abeokuta needed a central government. In 1865, he devised the Egba United Board of Management (EUBM), through which he hoped to bring chiefs and Saros into one governing body. His ally, Bashorun Shomoye, became the president-general of the board, while Saros were given executive posts.¹⁴ Johnson also composed a hymn to national unity,¹⁵ and he created a flag that “contained the names of the four Egba kingdoms, but had in the middle the insignia of the crown of Queen Victoria.”¹⁶ The insignia clearly suggests that he hoped the new state would continue to share political relations with the British. The EUBM attempted some innovative developments. Johnson organized a postal service to Lagos, opened a secular school, and tried to persuade the mission schools to teach in English instead of Yoruba. The EUBM also tried to generate a central revenue stream for the board by collecting customs duties.¹⁷ Although the late Egba historian S. O. Biobaku characterized the EUBM as “little more than an empty bureaucracy, parading sovereign pretensions, and issuing largely idle threats,”¹⁸ he noted that it fostered some constructive developments. He identified two significant outcomes of Johnson’s initiative: (1) the stress on the federal aspects of the Egba constitution and (2) the establishment of “the right of the immigrant elements, the Egba Saro, to participate in, and to direct, the affairs of the Egba.”¹⁹ Despite its weaknesses, it has to be recognized as one of the earliest political experiments to combine the legitimacy of traditional rulers with the knowledge of a Western-educated, Christianized elite.²⁰

Johnson was the main spokesperson between the Egba chiefs and the Lagos government from 1865 to the 1880s.²¹ However, the EUBM did not gain the widespread support within the Christian community or among the chiefs, nor did it have the support of the Lagos government. In Abeokuta, Johnson competed against CMS-affiliated Saros for influence with the Egba chiefs. Although many converts fled from Abeokuta with the European missionaries during riots in 1867, many returned within a year. The presence of Christians remained strong in Abeokuta in part because they had the support of Ogundipe, the head of the olorogun (military chiefs) and “the uncrowned King of the Egbas from 1867 to 1887.” He brought the outbreak against the Christians to an end by sending around his staff, the symbol of his authority.²² In addition to protecting the lives and property of the converts in his township, Ikija, he saved the Abeokuta church.²³

Johnson’s influence weakened soon after his main supporter, Bashorun Shomoye, died in 1868. He tried to sustain the prospects for the EUBM by adding his support to the candidate for alake in 1869 backed by the military chiefs and leading traders, Oyekan.²⁴ However, Oyekan lost to Ademola I, who was supported by Henry Robbins, a layman within the CMS and the richest trader in Abeokuta.²⁵ Oyekan, who ultimately assumed the throne in 1879, supported Johnson’s initiative because he was very poor when he assumed the office. Reports in the Lagos Times noted that previous kings brought their own personal wealth to the office since they were barred from trade and farming. Lacking substantial wealth, Oyekan stood to benefit from Johnson’s plan to create a new port and levy export duties on cotton that would belong exclusively to the alake. The plan received swift condemnation from chiefs in the Owu quarter, who controlled the port and, traditionally, any fees collected, as well as by Saros and Lagos immigrants who argued that the duty would predominantly fall on them since they dominated cotton production. Ironically, after Oyekan’s death, Chief Ogundipe resurrected the idea in 1881. He hosted a meeting of chiefs and people where it was decided to open a new port-of-entry and tollgate specifically for the alake. Ogundipe’s second proposal, that G. W. Johnson collect the tax, was quickly dismissed by the CMS-affiliated Saros, but more people beyond the Christian elite were invested in the idea of a financially secure kingship.²⁶

CMS-affiliated returnees remained an important factor in Abeokuta politics despite the absence of Townsend and other European missionaries from 1867 to 1875.²⁷ Saros maintained their political role because they continued to support the military rulers of the town. Robbins and Rev. William Moore, for example, provided ammunition from their own funds for the Egba military.²⁸ Military chiefs in turn accepted converts into their ranks. John Okenla, was a warrior, a devotee of the Yoruba deities Obatala (god of creativity) and Sango (god of thunder and lightning), and a high priest of Ifa (god of divination) before converting to Christianity. His conversion did...