Abstract
Oluwatoyin Oduntan’s Power, Culture and Modernity in Nigeria: Beyond the Colony probes deeply into the interplay of power and culture in Abeokuta, Nigeria. It addresses the emergence of Egba nationality and identity and the centralisation and domination of the Alake chieftaincy beginning in the nineteenth century. The book is a careful and rigorous re-interpretation of existing but hitherto neglected and obscured sources and records in colonial archives. These unearthed sources lead to the displacement of several assumptions about the emergence of states in Africa and the role of European influences, particularly westernisation, Christianity, and modernisation. Contrary to conventional understandings, the core thesis of the book is that modern Africa evolved from a wide diversity of identities and through the resolution of many ideas and interests. Drawing on the realisation that modernity was not colonially imposed, the book argues that modernisation radiated to Abeokuta through little Londons (Freetown, Dakar, Banjul, Accra [Kumasi], Lagos, Liberia, Niger) with western educated African elite reviving and modernising old traditions and introducing a national consciousness and movement to secure political independence. Abeokuta was thus a part of the global flows of ideas and resources in which Nigerians were active agents in the process of modernisation.
The book is divided into six chapters with an introduction and a conclusion. The chapters highlight the emergence of Abeokuta; the evolution and strengthening of its monarchy; its working amidst contesting interests; and influences resulting in the eventual empowerment of Alake. It also exposes the weakness of colonial medicine vis-à-vis the African experience and exposes the contradictions in the central monarchy as it operated in Egbaland.
Chapter 1 debunks the assumption that Abeokuta grew as a primordial community whose origins included the sections that composed it (Ake, Owu, Oke-Ona, and Gbagura). Instead, it can be traced to the nineteenth century with the arrival of Aku and Saro settlers, along with the constitution of a coherent modern identity. Chapter 2 investigates the extent of the influence of different interests and groups and their limitations, all of which combined to shape the history of Abeokuta. Chapter 3 chronicles and analyses the various developments that culminated in the strengthening of the monarchy, negating the claim that the Alake monarchy was an institution representing something modern given the experimentations with a central government, a council, and a bureaucracy starting with the Egba United Board of Management (EUBM).
Chapter 4 discusses the efforts at reinforcing the process of centralisation and continued Egba identity amidst contending interests resulting in the relegation of the sectional kings. Chapter 5 argues that colonial intervention in the smallpox outbreak in Abeokuta was an episode in a long historical continuum, particularly given the existence of more than colonial medicine. The outbreak was more broadly conceived than a medical experience to embrace other forms of well-being, political discourses, and consequently as a factor in elite power and political organisation. Chapter 6 discusses how the disenchantment with Alake’s totalitarian power, which the Sole Native Authority (SNA) symbolised, led to the realisation of the need to curtail Alake’s power. This is despite the fact that the 1930s was the height of the push towards nationhood. The loss of privileges by the chiefly elite contested in the 1930s underscores the thesis that identity, tradition, and modernity are dynamic social resources and are malleable to changing circumstances.
One major trend often touted in the emergence of states in Yorubaland is to link Ile-Ife as the source of Yoruba civilisation and to suggest that Oyo was the foremost Yoruba empire until the early nineteenth century. This claim often neglects that beyond primeval states, some other states emerged due to circumstances like wars, trade, growth of infrastructural provisions such as railways, or the arrival of migrants from plagued or troubled areas. This assumption thus contrasts with patterns of state formation elsewhere, not only in Africa but also in other parts of the world. Rather than appeal to identity couched as modernity by the Aku settlers, the former slaves, and the Europeans, states instead emerged from layers of identities that blended over time, sometimes with strains of differences. This demonstrates the extent of irreconcilable struggles. Rather, enduring features and characters of different layers of settler identities are adopted as representing or symbolising the new state. The emergence of Egba identity beginning from the late eighteenth century around the warlords, though informed by security concerns, cohered with Aku settlers’ position for a homeland. Not surprisingly, the strain did not manifest until the mid-nineteenth century due to Aku’s desire for dominance and control.
The emergence of a seemingly similar culture in Egbaland towards the end of the nineteenth century was not due to the existence of Egba singularity at the beginning of the evolution of Egba state. Rather, it owed much to the efforts of an evolving social order, which rested on a coherent set of customs amidst many contesting ideas. Implicitly, whether at the intra- or inter-group level, acceptance, accommodation, and compromise resulted from the subjection of parochial self or narrow group interest to larger or wider group interest often produced hybrid but somewhat harmonious and appealing product. This was the situation in Egbaland with the emergence of the Alake institution in 1854. But the strain arising from the estrangement of the Saros from the main body of the CMS and the struggle over who should exercise the greatest influence eventually led to the Ifole of 1867. It was also the situation in some other parts of Africa where the colonial government constructed the monarchy or excessively strengthened it to serve colonial interests.
Underscoring the importance and relevance of the monarchy was the willingness to accept and relate with it as an institution representing their existence as a people more, so that it was the vogue in many centralised African states and kingdoms. On the other hand, the colonial government viewed the agency as an avenue that could serve colonial interest and aid the colonial enterprise in its indirect rule paradigm. The convergence of executive, parliamentary, and judicial power in Alake that contributed to the emergence of a constitutional monarchy and the entrenchment of Alake’s dominance, aided by indigenised Christianity (despite the emergence of Olowu in 1855, Gbagura in 1870, and Osile of Oke-Ona in 1897) lends credence.
Like it was in other parts of Nigeria, the outbreak of the Second World War and the advent of decolonisation resulted in a readjustment on the part of the educated elite. The growth of Yoruba and Nigerian national discourses, the emergence of political parties, the making of the 1949 Egba constitution, the promulgation of the 1951 Macpherson constitution, and the 1952 Local Government Reform, all combined to redefine the configurations of the struggles in Abeokuta.
The book makes an original contribution to knowledge by debunking the assumptions upon which existing accounts of the emergence and growth of Abeokuta are based. This it did by seeing the new elites as innovations and developments upon existing forms and by contextualising modernity as having been gradually introduced, rather than being a fixed cultural difference and revolution. By demonstrating that modernity for the Egba transcended Europe though including attractions to European forms, the book contributes to the recovering of an African history in which Africans are actors in the shaping of their lives.
