Book: The Great Upheaval: Women and Nation in Postwar Nigeria
Publisher: Ohio University Press, (Athens, OH:) 2021)
by
Judith A. Byfield
Preamble
Good morning. I would like to thank Philip Olayoku for the opportunity to share this book with you. I also have to thank Professors Lisa Lindsay and Babatunde Oduntan for taking the time from their busy schedules to participate in this conversation. I wanted to discuss the book in the context of this organization and its goals, so I looked up the Transitional Justice Policy of the AU.
This Transitional Justice Policy (TJP) is conceived as a continental guideline for African Union (AU) Member States to develop their own context-specific comprehensive policies, strategies and programmes towards democratic and socio-economic transformation, and achieving sustainable peace, justice, reconciliation, social cohesion and healing. … The TJP is meant to assist AU Member States to address these objectives in an integrated and sustainable manner.1
It was a fruitful exercise because it helped me to think about the way in which History contributes to the goal of Transitional Justice. If Member States are indeed expected to develop their own context-specific comprehensive policies and strategies toward socio-economic transformation, justice, social cohesion and healing, it is important to understand earlier, historical examples and moments of those debates. Notions of justice and social cohesion are long standing features of any society, but they assume different form at different historical moments. They may be shaped by the circulation of ideas, adoption of new religions, new social identities, new economic practices and partnerships or new state formations.
The Great Upheaval can contribute to your goals and deliberations because it highlights a moment in Nigeria’s political history when attention to ideas such as democracy, social cohesion, and sovereignty were at the forefront of many discussions. Unlike many studies of Nigeria’s late colonial and nationalist era, the Great Upheaval foregrounds women in these debates. It reveals that many women of the period were concerned with these issues, however their engagement with these ideas through protests, letters to newspapers and organizational membership have been ignored and thereby largely erased from the historical record.
The Great Upheaval: Women and Nation in Postwar Nigeria argues that the creation of the Abeokuta Women’s Union, the tax revolt it led in 1947 – 48, and the emergence of the Nigerian Women’s Union are benchmarks in a history of women’s political activism in Nigeria, a history in which women organized with the explicit goal of transforming Nigerian society so that they could participate fully as citizens in the nationalist era and in post-colonial society. Equally important, the Nigerian Women’s Union attempted to redefine the ways in which political agendas were gendered and disrupt the notion that only a subset of political concerns were women’s issues. They weighed in on topics such as imperialism, nationalism, tyranny, and freedom, that ricocheted across newspaper editorials, articles, and protests. The members of the Abeokuta Women’s Union and the Nigerian Women’s Union who participated in countless meetings, joined protests, and made demands of local officials, the colonial government and nationalist leaders worked to ensure that women would be treated as full citizens in all spheres of Nigerian life and be allowed to contribute to democratic and socio-economic transformations, justice and social cohesion.2
Colonialism and Women’s Marginalization
Nigerian women’s marginalization during the colonial era meant that the vast majority of women did not have any formal place in the bureaucracy of the colonial state. With few exceptions, men filled the ranks of paramount chiefs or Sole Native Authority, local governing councils, police, and the broader colonial work force.3 In Abeokuta, women’s marginalization meant that women only attended meetings of the council when they were summoned or wanted to convey grievances to the alake, the traditional king and Sole Native Authority, and male chiefs who dominated the Egba council. When the Iyalode, the highest titled woman and in theory women’s representative to the alake, Madame Jojolola died in 1932, her title like so many other women’s titles lapsed.4 The title was only resurrected in 1982 when it was awarded to the late Chief Esther Bisoye Tejuoso, a wealthy business woman.5
While women in Abeokuta lacked formal representation in the recognized governing bodies, they were not silent. British officials insisted that literacy was the only valued medium of political complaint and they disparaged men or women who took to the streets to protest colonial policies. Nevertheless, women made use of both avenues of complaint. In the 1930s when Alake Ademola intervened in the adire industry by banning caustic soda and synthetic dye, dyers hired lawyers to represent them. These lawyers followed the route sanctioned by colonial officials and sent petitions to the alake and Egba council as well as colonial officials in Lagos. In addition, dyers held the alake under siege in the palace. This combined strategy forced colonial officials to step into the conflict despite their insistence that this was a local issue that only the alake could resolve.
Post-War Politics
Susan Andrade argues that nationalism, “the most visible macropolitical discourse of the continent” in the post-World War II period, “seemed to occlude women’s political involvement.”6 Women’s erasure from this discourse is in part a result of the narratives created during the nationalist era by some participants and an early generation of scholars than the actual events of the era. The Great Upheaval draws on a wealth of materials – the Ransome-Kuti Papers, Egba Government records, Colonial Office records, newspapers – to understand the circumstances that underlay the women’s tax revolt in Abeokuta in 1947/48 and how this local action galvanized men and women across Nigeria.
The AWU utilized a variety of strategies to register the women’s displeasure and to call attention to their critique of colonial rule. They wrote petitions to the Alake and the Resident and they organized mass rallies outside courts or jails when women were arrested for non-payment of taxes.7 They wore special cloths that identified them as supporters of the tax campaigns and sometimes they undressed to demonstrate their disdain for the Alake. They organized vigils in front of the palace which effectively held the Alake under seize in the palace for several days at a time. During these vigils, November 29 -30, and December 8 – 10, 1947, the markets were closed, and the women organized food and water so that they could sleep outside the palace. They also sang abusive songs to the Alake.
The 1948 annual report aptly captured the disquiet of the year. It stated:
… 1948 has been one of the most momentous in the history of Egbaland. The year has seen the departure from Abeokuta on 29th July, after demonstrations by the women, of the Alake, Ademola II. He took up residence at Oshogbo and presented the Egba Central Council, which on his departure was constituted the Egba Native Authority, with the instrument of abdication on 31st December, 1948.8
The AWU success in removing Alake Ademola from the throne generated tremendous mobilizing across Nigeria as new women’s unions formed and came together with existing organizations to create the Nigerian Women’s Union on May 15, 1949. Newspapers of the 1950s reveal that women’s political engagement did not subside as new constitutions led to the creation of the regional legislatures and political parties. In fact, women’s political engagement contributed to major debates of the day. The Daily Service, a Lagos based newspaper and official organ of the Nigerian Youth Movement, generated comments from both men and women in response to the question – “Are Nigerian Women Ripe to Enter Politics?” posed by the column – Social Problems of The Time by Betty. One respondent, Oladipo Oke, thought the question was not worth asking: “In my own opinion the question is not whether Nigerians are ripe or not to enter into politics. The point is that Nigerian women should not enter into politics at all.” He elaborated,
The primary duty of a woman anywhere in the Universe is the keeping of a home, a far more important civil duty in as long as future events depend essentially on the foundation laid by our women. In Europe, Asia and America, how many women have we heard of as political leaders or even political enthusiasts? Except for old women who may have less to do in the home, I see no reason why our women should be allowed to indulge in politics to the neglect of their natural and important duty of keeping the home.9
Mr. Oke may have represented one end of a spectrum, but he was not alone. Another commentator, Afolabi Aiyegbusi, insisted that with a few exceptions, women were not ready to enter politics. He preferred that Nigerian women “be trained as doctors and nurses to attend to the sick and the dying as teachers, welfare officers and clerks.”10 F. A. Adebayo from University College Ibadan concurred with the general dismissive tone in many of the entries submitted by men. Adebayo thought that ninety-five percent of women lacked the qualities necessary to be a good politician – eloquence, endurance, perseverance and tolerance. He noted that,
Most of our women are not eloquent . . . Women cannot endure to be slighted in public. They give up easily in the face of attacks and become despondent . . . They cannot bear the thought of going to Prison. A politician must be prepared to go behind the bars several times. Most of our women who go abroad for further studies study Nursing, Dress-Making, Bakery and Confectionary. None or very few go for Political Science, Journalism, Elocution. Now Betty it does not need Solomon’s wisdom to know that our women are not yet ripe for Politics.11
These men combined patriarchal ideals and notions of female unpreparedness to naturalize the idea that only men were appropriate and suitable participants for politics. While it was clear that some of these commentators supported women’s education, they had very specific ideas of where that education should be invested.
The Daily Service also received a number of responses from women, some of whom engaged the male letter writers directly. In a response directed to Afolabi Aiyegbusi, Remi Carrow wrote, “I say ‘yes’ a thousand times. Although women have not been given ample chance to play their part in public discussions . . . women will always claim their right to have a say in politics.” Carrow noted that women had been undervalued in the Bible, neglected in the religious field and unrepresented in the Synod. “Women,” she said,
should always be represented in provincial town councils and other political organisations . . . I see no reason why we should be found incapable to express our views in things affecting the welfare of our country. Let my comrades now wake up from their slumber and challenge the opposite sex at least for once.12
Bimbola was even more forceful in her response:
For generations past, only men have been allowed to take active part in politics. It would be interesting to look into what achievements they have made to this long period of time. True, they have “achieved” two world wars, the magnitude of which can only be imagined . . . If menfolk have failed so woefully in this business of politics, is it not time that women be given a chance, at least for a change? Patience, endurance, perseverance are few of the qualities required in politics. Who can deny the undisputed fact that women possess more of these qualities than men? Men have tried and failed; give us a chance, let them go to the kitchen and hands off politics entirely. We are over-ripe.13
Conclusion
The Great Upheaval shows that many women were invested in promoting a politics of inclusion. They wanted to see women engaged in all levels of politics as thinking, contributing members of their society and free from cultural and social restraints. They imagined formulas for ensuring women’s participation that while dismissed at the time have found new life today.14 Moreover, they insisted that their socialization as wives, mothers, and economic actors actually prepared them to be effective political actors and instilled in them the values necessary to be stewards of the society. They also brought clear ideas about the priorities that should inform political agendas – education, health care, women’s economic activities, voting rights. Equally important, they appreciated that women had to work in coalition and across the divides of ethnicity, region, and class to achieve these goals.15
Unfortunately, they met strong resistance. This resistance was reflected most in the agreement by all major political parties and the colonial government to deny the vote to women in Northern Nigeria. The colonial government enshrined this compromise in the 1954 Lyttleton Constitution that stipulated that the country “did not have to have a uniform system of electoral regulations based on universal adult suffrage.”16 In 1958 Awolowo admitted “with solemn remorse, that we have committed a grievous wrong. . .” however he felt compelled to honor the agreement.17 As a result, only women in the East and Western regions gained the right to vote at independence. In order to address concerns of democracy, socio-economic transformation, and justice anew it is incumbent on us to understand the past – how those earlier discussions were undermined and how women’s voices and insights were erased from the historical picture.
This presentation is excerpted from an article that will appear in the forthcoming volume African Feminist Histories edited by Alicia C. Decker, Maha Marouan and Jacqueline-Bethel Tchouta Mougoué. I thank the volume editors for permission to share this with you.
1 African Union, Transitional Justice Policy, (2019): 1. https://au.int/sites/default/files/documents/36541-doc-au_tj_policy_eng_web.pdf
2 For a fuller discussion on women and citizenship see: Pinkie Mekgwe, “Theorizing African Feminism(s): The ‘Colonial’ Question,” in Texts, Tasks, and Theories: Versions and Subversions in African Literatures, vol. 3, ed. Tobias Robert Klein, Ulrike Auga, and Viola Pruschenk (New York: Editions Rodopi, 2007), 166.
3 Nwando Achebe, The Female King of Colonial Nigeria: Ahebi Ugbabe (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011); Female Monarchs and Merchant Queens in Africa (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2020).
4 Judith Byfield, The Bluest Hands: A Social and Economic History of Indigo Dyers in Abeokuta (Nigeria), 1890 – 1940 (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2002).
5 Nyaknno Osso, ed. “Chief Bisoye Esther Tejuoso,” Biographical, Legacy & Research Foundation, Who’s Who in Nigeria (Online) https://blerf.org/index.php/biography/tejuoso-chiefbisoye-esther/.
6 Susan Andrade, “Gender and ‘the Public Sphere’ in Africa: Writing Women and Rioting Women,” Agenda: Empowering Women for Gender Equity 54 (2002): 45.
7 Nina Mba, Nigerian Women Mobilized: Women’s Political Activity in Southern Nigeria,1900–1965 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 150.
8 J.M. Beeley, Snr. District Officer, Annual Report, 1948 – Egba Division, 2.
9 Oladipo Oke, “Social Problems of the Time by Betty, Are Nigerian Women Ripe For Politics?” Daily Service, January 16, 1950.
10 Afolabi Aiyegbusi, “Social Problems of the Time by Betty, Are Nigerian Women Ripe For Politics?” Daily Service, January 11, 1950.
11 F. A. Adebayo, “Social Problems of the Time by Betty, Are Nigerian Women Ripe For Politics?” Daily Service, January 26, 1950. This was the final reply printed on this question. It was followed by the scintillating question – Is Jealousy A Sign of Love? Daily Service, February 10, 1950.
12 Remi Carrow, “Social Problems of the Time by Betty, Are Nigerian Women Ripe For Politics?” Daily Service, January 12, 1950.
13 Bimbola, “Social Problems of the Time by Betty, Are Nigerian Women Ripe For Politics?” Daily Service, January 21, 1950.
14 Aili Mari Tripp, “Women’s Mobilization for Legislative Political Representation in Africa,” Review of African Political Economy 43, no. 149 (2016): 382–399.
15 Alice J. Kang and Aili Mari Tripp, “Coalitions Matter: Citizenship, Women, and Quota Adoption in Africa,” Perspectives on Politics 16, no.1 (2018): 73–91.
16 Richard L. Sklar, Nigerian Political Parties: Power in an Emergent African Nation (1963 Reprint. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2004), 133.
17 Sklar, Nigerian Political Parties, 274.
Judith A. Byfield is professor at the Department of History, Cornell University, New York, USA.