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Understanding the Continuities of Indirect Rule Through Pre-Colonial Forms of Female Resistance, Ethnic Power Politics and Economic Violence in Southeast Nigeria

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Understanding the Continuities of Indirect Rule Through Pre-Colonial Forms of Female Resistance, Ethnic Power Politics and Economic Violence in Southeast Nigeria Bard College Bard Digital Commons Senior Projects Spring 2019 Bard Undergraduate Senior Projects Spring 2019 Still Sitting on Men: Understanding the Continuities of Indirect Rule Through Pre-Colonial Forms of Female Resistance, Ethnic Power Politics and Economic Violence in Southeast Nigeria Evan Richardson Bard College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/senproj_s2019 Part of the African Studies Commons, Growth and Development Commons, Nature and Society Relations Commons, Other Political Science Commons, Physical and Environmental Geography Commons, Political Economy Commons, and the Regional Economics Commons This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License. Recommended Citation Richardson, Evan, "Still Sitting on Men: Understanding the Continuities of Indirect Rule Through Pre- Colonial Forms of Female Resistance, Ethnic Power Politics and Economic Violence in Southeast Nigeria" (2019). Senior Projects Spring 2019. 188. https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/senproj_s2019/188 This Open Access work is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been provided to you by Bard College's Stevenson Library with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this work in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights- holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/or on the work itself. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Still Sitting on Men: Understanding the Continuities of Indirect Rule Through Pre-Colonial Forms of Female Resistance, Ethnic Power Politics and Economic Violence in Southeast Nigeria Senior Project Submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College by Evan Richardson Annandale-on-Hudson, New York May 2019 Acknowledgements I thank God for my life and everything given to me over the last four years. This project is dedicated to my parents, Barbara and Scott Richardson, for the love they gave me all my life and for their sacrifices to help me through college. I also would like to thank my advisors, Wendy Urban-Mead and Sanjib Baruah. Wendy has been indispensable for helping me and reading each sentence I wrote as I stumbled through rough drafts for this project, but more importantly by teaching me how to read, write and comprehend history. Sanjib has likewise been crucial to this project because he inspired me during my Sophomore year to think about Political Economic Development and how complicated the world is beyond the nation-state model. The two of them shaped how this project was formed and how it moved forward. I also would like to thank my grandmother, Jean Yonelunas, for her many forms of support that helped me stay focused and determined. My aunt, Lori Yonelunas, has also supported me in all my current and future endeavors; she also gave me her old iPhone, and if I did not have it, I would not have been able to navigate around life well for the last few months. I would also like to mention my aunt Kris and uncle Bobby Yonelunas for surprising me at my baseball games with their adorable sons, Jonathon and Jaxon, and always being available and helpful while I am so far from home. I would also like to thank my summer family, Julia, Steve, Sam and Anna Duke, for taking such great care of me in Winchester last summer. I want to mention my Animal Kingdom, Bunz, Frank, John, Matt and Mike, for all the Fortnite played and quality memes sent. Bard Athletics and my Bard Baseball family have also been crucial in keeping me grounded, focused and determined throughout the entirety of my college experience. The same goes for my friends and co-workers at the post office, Holly, Nicole, Deb, Mike and Cindy, as well as for keeping me in good spirits and keeping me from going broke. I also need to mention how important the Bard Library, library staff and ConnectNY system have been for helping me find, manage and access some extremely obscure materials. Finally, I would like to acknowledge my girlfriend, Ariel, for helping me stay focused on completing this project, but most importantly for being someone I could count on and enjoy spending time with over the last three years. Table of Contents Introduction…………………………………………………………………….………………….1 Chapter I…………………………………….……………………………………………………..9 Chapter II..………………………………………………...……………………………………..33 Chapter III………………………………………………..………………………………………57 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………….77 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………..…………83 1 Introduction On November 25, 1929, a conflict between Nwanyeruwa and Mark Emeruwa led to one of the foundational moments of women’s resistance in Nigeria.1 Emeruwa came to Nwanyeruwa’s compound while her husband, Ojim, was away. While she was crushing palm nuts to make palm oil, he asked her to count her “goats, sheep and people” to which she responded “I have been in mourning for the death of [my son’s wife who died in labor]. Was your mother counted?”2 He began strangling her, and she strangled him back with palm oil still on her hands. She called other women over to help her, Emeruwa fled and the women chased him to Warrant Chief Okugo’s compound. Protesting did not stop with Okugo giving up his cap, and Nwanyeruwa’s actions led to the amassing of over 10,000 women to protest the British Native Courts system and Indirect Rule; over fifty women died, and the actions of British soldiers who shot them were “deemed to be completely ‘justified’” out of fear for their lives caused by the unarmed women.3 To this day, “Madam Nwanyeruwa ‘is and still remains a name to conjure with’ in the history of female militancy in Nigeria.”4 In August, 2016, women protested the Nigerian government and Seven Energy and, speaking through their “Women Leader, Mrs. Dorothy 1 Aba Commission of Inquiry, Notes of Evidence Taken by the Nigerian Commission of Inquiry appointed to Inquire into the Disturbances in the Calabar and Owerri Provinces, December, 1929, Lagos, 1930, p. 24-26, para. 363-364. 2 Aba Commission of Inquiry, p. 24, para. 363. 3 Marc Matera, Misty L. Bastian and Susan Kingsley Kent, The Women’s War of 1929: Gender and Violence in Colonial Nigeria, (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), p. 187. 4 Felix K. Ekechi, “Historical Women in the Fight for Liberation,” in The feminization of development processes in Africa: Current and future perspectives, edited by Valentine Udoh James and James Etim, (Greenwood Publishing Group, 1999): 95-113, p. 101. 2 Nkanta,” threatened to “protest naked to ‘provoke the gods’ of their lands.”5 Three years earlier, a different case of women protesting “‘defied soldiers to shoot them or leave their community.’”6 Women’s resistance and coercive violence are still defining aspects of the Nigerian political system and society. The legacy of Nwanyeruwa and the women involved with the Women’s War of 1929 is elicited in the movements and non-violent protests of women in the Niger Delta today. The focus of this project is not simply a history of Nigeria, Nigerian women or power relationships. It is not simply a political analysis of the crises of colonial and independent Nigeria. It is, rather, meant to serve as an example for the necessity of investigation and exploration of the two fields as symbionts. Too often, scholars trying to understand why a country is ‘underdeveloped’ will look at the current political effects or only at the ‘colonial legacy.’ While the later has been used to show a level of continuity in events and study through today, there is a necessity for development theory to accept that there are multiple reasons as to why certain phenomenon of the past have a heavy influence on actions of the present. Meaning that colonialism at large did not cause the problem of ‘underdeveloped’ post-independence countries, but, rather, the implementation and administration of different aspects of colonialism yielded different results and experiences. The first chapter is formed around the ideas presented by Marc Matera, Misty L. Bastian and Susan Kingsley Kent’s study of the Women’s War of 1929, who in turn had expanded on the work of Judith Van Allen.7 Matera and Kent are both historians and Bastian is an anthropologist. 5 The Whistler NG Editor, "Oil Spillage: Akwa Ibom Women To Protest Naked Against FG, Oil...," The Whistler NG, August 31, 2016, https://thewhistler.ng/oil-spillage-akwa-ibom-women-to-protest-naked-against-fg-oil- companies/. 6 Rafiu Ajakaye, "Women Protest in Nigeria's Oil-rich Delta – Naked," Anadolu Ajansi, July 10, 2013, https://www.aa.com.tr/en/world/women-protest-in-nigerias-oil-rich-delta-naked/213152. 7 Matera, Bastian and Kent, and see Judith Van Allen, “‘Sitting on a Man’: Colonialism and the Lost political Institutions of Igbo Women,” presented at the Annual Meeting of The African Studies Association in Denver, 3 Van Allen is a political scientist who has been studying African women for over forty years.8 These authors formed the basis for the secondary source work of this chapter on the changes to gender relations. Their work showed that the British brought with them not only a new political system, but also a new cultural system, one that meant to divide and subjugate the Igbo population, and Nigeria at large. Their works build off The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa9 by Frederick John Dealtry Lugard and the Notes of Evidence from the Aba Commission of Inquiry.10 The former is a written manual on how Indirect Rule was administered and why it was needed in Nigeria. This text and Lugard’s career with the British colonial administration as Governor-General of Nigeria created the structure of Indirect Rule in Nigeria.
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