1.1 NIGERIAN WOMEN’S MOBILIZATION IN THE PAST
throughout the twentieth century, Nigerian women have the social power under their control in their own interests, and in the interests of the community. The Aba women’s wars of 1928 –1929, the Egba women’s movement of the early 1930s to the 1950s, the Oghanete women’s uprising of 1984 the Ughelli women’s anti-tax protects of 1985 –1986 and the Ekpan women’s uprising f 1986 are some examples. In 1928 –1930, Aba women rose in mess protect against the oppressive rule of the Colonial government. These Igbo women of eastern Nigeria feared that the head count being carried out by the British was a prelude to women being taxed. The women were unhappy about the over taxation of their husbands and sons which they felt was pauperizing then and cause economic hardships for the entire community.
They also represented the British imposition on the community of warrant chiefs, many of whom carried out what the women considered to be abusive and extortionist actions such as obtaining wives without paying the full bride wealth and seizure of property. Previously, new village leaders or heads had been democratically chosen and removed by the people themselves. Power and been diffuse, decisions were reached informed or through village assemble of all adults who chose to attend. While they had less influence then many women did control local trade and specific crops. Women protected their interests through assemblies. This had been changed by the colonial government which appointed its agents as warrant Chiefs to rule over the people. The abuses of the British appointed natives judged and tax enumerators impelled the women to stage a protect on 24 November 1929, Using a deeply rooted practice of censoring men through all night song and doner ridicule (sitting on a man) the woman rampages spread. Late December 1929 the women forced the Umuahia warrant chiefs to surrender their caps thus launching their successful campaign to destroy the warrant chief system. In Aba, women song and demand against the Chief and then “proceeded to attack and loot the European trading stores and Bardays Bank and to break into the prison and release the prisoner. Some 25,000 Igbo women faced colonial repression and over a two month period of insurrection, December 1929 to January 1930, at least 50 were killed.
Similarly, between the 1930s and 1950s, the women of Igbo in Western Nigeria pressed for and subsequently secured the abdication of the Aleke or King of Egbaland from his throne he was forced to abdicate on the grounds that he was collaborating with the exploitative colonial government. The Egba women also claimed that the King was hiding under the cover and protection of the colonial government perpetrate misrule, hardships and oppression on Egba people, and especially on the women.
These instances of women’s political intervention during the colonial apoch demonstrate the use of market power and the expression of indigenous feminism’s. Rapid and massive mobilization was possible because of women’s strong societal organizations and effective communication networks based on concentration in the markets and disposal along the trade routes, Nigerian women’s actions have to do with market control and with duel focus on both the state and those among their own menfolk who were instruments of the state first, women engaged in the business of long and short distance marketing took the initiative in mounting mobilizations. But peasant women and town women joined the market women to constitute a mess movement. The social power mashed by this analyses centered on the women’s ability to withhold food frame the cities. They paralysed the trading system within which they exercised considerable power. Not only was food denied the cities, but cash crops were denied the colonial authorities and their merchant allies in repeated confrontations over who should determine prices (in the Western Nigeria Cocoa holdup during the second world war for example).
Second, women mobilized not only against the British State directly but also against collaborating indigenous men whose power was underprimed by a male deal with men in the colonial regime. In so doing, women stood against class formation which distorted popular control over indigenous political institutions. The women manifested their distress at the deterioration of their own circumstances with the encroachment of capitalist relations. As such their actions where feminist in as much as they were aimed specifically at defensibly the interests women. However, the discourse which women used then and now to explain their motives and objective cannot be assumed to resembled feminist discourses from other societies or periods, and requires analysis in its own right. In mobilizing against the colonizer-Chief alliance among men, women were acting simultaneously on behalf of women and on behalf of both men and women in the peasant and trading classes. We see here the coincidence and inflexibility of feminist and class politics in the history of Nigeria women’s uprisings. To what extent have these qualities persisted in women’s uprising in the post colonial era ?
Since independence in 1960 Nigeria has been characterized by political instability and series of coups which degenerated into the guided civil war. The oil boom of the 1970s profoundly transformed Nigerian society from one based on agricultural exports to one based on exports of crude oil. The State received dollars from oil sales and here relaxed the exhortation of alternative revenue sources such as exports crops and agricultural development. A massive class of middle men flourished on the basis of State connections Nigerian women were mobilizing again against the State and indigenous men folk.