Saheed Aderinto

Researching Colonial Childhoods: Images and Representations of Children in Nigerian Newspaper Press, 1925-1950

This article takes an introductory excursion into newspaper sources for researching Nigerian children’s history during the colonial period by analyzing and describing items including news, editorials, stories, photos, advertisements, columns, debates, features, and letters among others. It situates these newspaper sources within the context of the circumstances under which they were produced and the prevailing politics of identity, gender, and agency, on the one hand, and the interaction between the forces of “tradition” and “modernity” on the other. Instead of approaching children’s experience from the well-established standpoints of disease, violence, delinquency and crime, this paper examines the following areas: children and education; children and motherhood; and children as consumers. These uncharted areas of Nigerian children’s history render alternative and useful perspectives on agency and the centrality of childhood to colonial state’s ideas of progress, civilization, modernity, and social stability. Cet article relate une exploration initiale à travers des sources journalistiques pour effectuer une recherche sur l’histoire des enfants du Nigeria pendant la période coloniale par la description et l’analyse entre autres de nouvelles, d’éditoriaux, d’histoires, de photos, de publicités, de rubriques, de débats, de chroniques, et de lettres. L’article situe ces sources journalistiques dans le contexte et les circonstances dans lesquels elles ont été produites: l’opinion politique dominante concernant les questions d’identité, de relation entre les sexes, et d’organisation d’un côté, et de l’autre, l’interaction entre les forces de “tradition” et de “modernité.” Au lieu de considérer le monde de l’enfance sous les angles constamment explorés de la maladie, de la violence, de la délinquance et du crime, cet exposé examine les domaines suivants: les enfants dans l’éducation; les enfants et l’expérience maternelle; et enfin les enfants en tant que consommateurs. L’investigation de ces domaines non encore explorés de l’histoire des enfants du Nigeria permet l’émergence de perspectives utiles et différentes concernant la relevance et l’importance du domaine de l’enfance dans la construction des idées propagées par l’état colonial sur la notion de progrès, de civilisation, de modernité, et de stabilité sociale.

Journey to Work: Transnational Prostitution in Colonial British West Africa

I was brought here from Nigeria by the accused [Bassey Assor] about three years ago. . . . I was brought to Sekondi and after a few weeks taken to Prestea. At Prestea a whiteman came and made some arrangement with [the] accused and I was then told to go into a room with the whiteman. I objected but was forced into the room by the accused and the man had connexion [sic] with me which resulted in my vagina bleeding profusely. I was in pain and ill for some time afterwards. On recovery I was taken to another whiteman but ran away from him and returned to the accused. The accused beat me and made me return to the man but I again left. After this I was taken to Konongo, Tarkwa and Bibiani. At each of these places the accused sent me to different men who had connexion with me. The men paid the accused and sometimes gave me chop [food] money. After leaving Bibiani I and the accused returned to Sekondi where we lived together in one room with a partition down the centre. Every evening I had to sit at the door and men would come to accuse [sic] and ask for me. If I refused to go with a man the accused would beat me.

'The problem of Nigeria is slavery, not white slave traffic': globalization and the politicization of prostitution in Southern Nigeria, 1921-1955

This article challenges a well-established assumption in the social sciences and among non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that prostitution is a “new” post-colonial challenge of Africas development that “suddenly” emerged in the aftermath of the economic and social impacts of the Structural Adjustment Programs of the mid-1980s. By uncovering the first major domestic and transnational prostitution in Nigeria between the 1920s and 1950s, I seek to connect colonial history of prostitution with what is esoterically designated in post-colonial studies and popular literature as “human trafficking”. But more significantly, I demonstrate how and why the colonialists disguised domestic and transnational prostitution – also known in world politics as white slave traffic – as domestic slavery. This study observes that scholars have under-researched the interaction between global and local forces in the making of colonial Africas politics of sex. In addition, how the politics of abolition of domestic slavery in colonial Africa dovetails with the regulation of prostitution has not received critical attention, despite the fact that the rhetoric of barbarism of human cargo featured prominently in the justification for the encroachment and colonization of the continent.

Framing the Colonial Child: Childhood Memory and Self-Representation in Autobiographical Writings

This chapter examines the memory of childhood in the autobiographies of 30 Nigerians born between 1900 and 1950.1 The identities of the autobiographers cut across multiple ethnic as well as gender lines, and are drawn from both the southern and northern parts of the country. My primary concern is how colonial children as autobiographers remember their childhood, with emphasis on their encounter with colonial modernity and how location and sociocultural transformation influenced child-rearing practices as they were growing up. Unlike in North America and Europe where a distinct subgenre of childhood autobiographical writing has emerged, in Nigeria, with the exception of Wole Soyinka’s Ake, Tanure Ojaide’s Great Boys, Olu Bajowa’s Spring of a Life, and Adelola Adeloye’s My Salad Days, among others, self-narration of childhood is usually a portion of a general life history spanning from birth to adulthood.2 Be that as it may, the memory of childhood in autobiographies represents one of the largest repositories of documentation about children’s life under colonialism. They reveal children’s everyday encounters with “traditional” order and colonial modernity, and render a textual window into the realities of colonial domination and its enduring legacies.

Empire Day in Africa: Patriotic Colonial Childhood, Imperial Spectacle and Nationalism in Nigeria, 1905–60

ABSTRACT Anyone born or raised in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, after 1960 would remember Children’s Day, observed every 27 May. However, few knew that it started as Empire Day in the first decade of the twentieth century—fewer are aware that it was a significant symbol of imperial domination, decolonised from the late 1950s to align with postcolonial ideals of self-determination and nation-building. African historical research has examined the sites and symbols (such as western biomedicine and education, police and prison, and indirect rule) through which British imperialism established and maintained itself in Africa. However, little is known about Empire Day, an invented tradition of ritualistic yearly veneration of the glory of the British Empire, which was first celebrated in Britain in 1904 and was immediately introduced to the African colonies. In this article, I examine the story of Empire Day as a significant colonial spectacle and performance of imperial authority in Nigeria, and how it assumed new meanings and functions among diverse groups of Nigerian children and adults. Empire Day, more than any other commemoration, placed children at the centre of imperialism and recognised them as a vital element in the sustenance of an imagined citizenship of the British Empire.

Inside the ‘House of Ill Fame’: Brothel Prostitution, Feminization of Poverty, and Lagos Life in Nollywood’s The Prostitute

This chapter engages the filmic representation of brothel prostitution in a Nigerian video film, titled The Prostitute. It takes a close look at the intersections of urbanization, gendered violence, poverty, and popular culture in the film. The Prostitute renders an interesting insight into unlocking the contradictory depiction of prostitution as a form of violence against women and as a solution to their social and economic marginalization in Nigeria. Moreover, the film clearly portrays the sexual economies of brothel prostitution and the central place it takes in everyday urban life. Straddling the fields of history, gender and sexuality, and urban and Nollywood studies, this chapter demonstrates that prostitution cannot be dissociated from the postcolonial discourse of underdevelopment and bad leadership in Nigeria, as elsewhere in many African countries.

“500 Children Missing in Lagos”: Child Kidnapping and Public Anxiety in Colonial Nigeria

The title of this chapter is a front-page headline of the July 31, 1956, issue of the West African Pilot, the best-selling newspaper in 1950s Nigeria.1 The newspaper reported the arrest of one Lamidi Alabi, accused of kidnapping three children (Ganiyu Adisa, Musibawu Adio, and Asani Afoke, all boys, between the ages of three and four) on July 30 and the tumultuous atmosphere at the Lagos Central Police Station, where he was then held. It was truly a difficult day for the police force, which tried to control a mob of over 5,000, composed of a “surging crowd of angry women” that wanted to lynch the 38-year-old Alabi for committing a dastardly act; among them were “several mothers” who each sought to ascertain that her child was not among the victims.2 The riot police, a special security force, had to be called in to get the outburst under control.3 The Evening Times reported that traffic at Tinubu Square “came almost to a standstill.”4 Alabi’s arrest did not end the public interest in his case. His first court appearance played host to a “record crowd” of “anxious” onlookers whose interest in the saga only increased as the police investigation and criminal proceedings progressed.5