tag:theconversation.com,2011:/uk/topics/yoruba-43878/articlesYoruba – The Conversation2023-05-21T10:11:24Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2045692023-05-21T10:11:24Z2023-05-21T10:11:24ZNigeria’s city of Ilé-Ifẹ̀ has survived and thrived for 1,000 years: here’s how<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527512/original/file-20230522-8471-udx56t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Men arrive for the celebrations for the Olojo Festival in Ile-Ife.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/men-arrive-for-the-celebrations-for-the-olojo-festival-in-news-photo/1243465845?adppopup=true">Samuel Alabi/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>By the end of this century, the three <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0956247816663557">most populous cities</a> in the world are expected to be in Africa, with Lagos in Nigeria leading as home to 88.3 million people.</p>
<p>When thinking about what city life is like now and could be like in future, it’s helpful to know something about African urban history.</p>
<p>It’s a <a href="https://markuswiener.com/books/the-history-of-african-cities-south-of-the-sahara-from-the-origins-to-colonization/">history</a> that goes far back, long before the onset of European colonial rule in the late 19th century. And the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Yoruba-culture-geographical-Afolabi-Ojo/dp/B0007AJB6W">Yorùbá-speaking area of west Africa</a> was a key player in the continent’s ancient urban history. </p>
<p>Ancient Yorùbá towns and cities, such as Ilé-Ifẹ̀, Ọ̀wọ̀, Ìjẹ̀bú-Òde, and Ọ̀yọ́-Ilé, have attracted attention from different disciplines – especially <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/1368563211">sociology</a>, <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/26109263">anthropology</a> and <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/581348">geography</a>. But their deep history, including how, why, and when they developed, isn’t well known. </p>
<p>In a <a href="https://www.brepolsonline.net/doi/pdf/10.1484/J.JUA.5.133451">recent article</a> I set out my findings on the early centuries of Ilé-Ifẹ̀, in south-west Nigeria. </p>
<p>Ilé-Ifẹ̀ <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/31069933">occupies</a> a central place in Yorùbá history and identity. It is claimed to be the <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/134236">harbinger of Yorùbá civilisation</a>. More than a thousand years old, Ilé-Ifẹ̀ is one of the oldest and longest-occupied cities in Africa. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/881237478">Ilé-Ifẹ̀ literally means “House of Abundance”</a>. The name also refers to a place that is diverse and always expanding. In my paper, More than a thousand years old, Ilé-Ifẹ̀ is one of the oldest and longest-occupied cities in Africa.
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<p>My archaeological and historical findings <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Yoruba-New-History-Akinwumi-Ogundiran/dp/0253051495/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3JSE0VSNINING&keywords=the+yoruba+a+new+history&qid=1683303629&sprefix=the+yoruba%3A+a+new+%2Caps%2C103&sr=8-1">show</a> how Ilé-Ifẹ̀ became a commercial hub, a pilgrimage and intellectual centre, a magnet for migrants, and a legitimator of social order for a multi-lingual region about 1,000 years ago.</p>
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<img alt="A man holding work tools" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525583/original/file-20230511-18-99kbzb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525583/original/file-20230511-18-99kbzb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525583/original/file-20230511-18-99kbzb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525583/original/file-20230511-18-99kbzb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525583/original/file-20230511-18-99kbzb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525583/original/file-20230511-18-99kbzb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525583/original/file-20230511-18-99kbzb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The author’s excavation in Oduduwa Grove in 2014.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Akinwumi Ogundiran</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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<h2>My research</h2>
<p>I began my study of Ilé-Ifẹ̀ in the mid-1980s, learning historical, ethnographic and archaeological field methods in shrines, temples and sacred groves in the city and its suburbs. I later researched oral traditions and ritual archives in the ancient city to understand indigenous urbanism (the way people relate to the built environment), social organisation and governance. My research extended to other parts of the Yorùbá-speaking region in Nigeria, combining archaeological methods with oral traditions, rituals and language history. I also benefited from published scholarship on Yorùbá history.</p>
<p>My comparative and interdisciplinary approaches highlighted three kinds of urban scale: complexity, multiplexity and referentiality. </p>
<p>Complexity is about social organisation and communities building from the ground up. </p>
<p>Multiplexity is about the way diversity of skills and social differences are cultivated and harmonised to form an organic whole greater than the sum of its parts. </p>
<p>Referentiality is about the values the city generates for its residents and a vast area beyond its core. </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-long-view-sheds-fresh-light-on-the-history-of-the-yoruba-people-in-west-africa-162776">A long view sheds fresh light on the history of the Yoruba people in West Africa</a>
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<h2>Community building as urbanism</h2>
<p>My key finding was that the <em>raison d’être</em> of urbanism in Ilé-Ifẹ̀ was community building. Unlike some other African urban centres, such as the <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/971462750">Swahili cities</a> in East Africa, Ilé-Ifẹ̀ did not begin as a terminus of long-distance trade routes. Neither did it begin as a hub of craftworks. </p>
<p>Rather, it started as a political unit integrating smaller social units called <em>ilé</em>. The city <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Yoruba-New-History-Akinwumi-Ogundiran/dp/0253051495">came into being</a> as a result of the self-organising strategies that several <em>ilé</em> embarked upon at the end of the first millennium AD.</p>
<p>They did this to manage resources and potential conflicts in the face of increasing population and ecological stress.</p>
<p>Ilé-Ifẹ̀ soon set the pace for urbanism in the region through overlapping innovations in sociopolitical ideology, technology and cosmogony (ideas about how the world began). </p>
<p>The intellectuals and political leaders of Ilé-Ifẹ̀ <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Yoruba-New-History-Akinwumi-Ogundiran/dp/0253051495">developed</a> a coherent framework for Yoruba city-making by standardising the ideology of divine kingship and what an urban layout should look like. For example, spatial arrangement of the palace, markets, temples, city walls and gates, crafts centres, and road network. They developed a new cosmogony that unified and universalised the Òrìṣà pantheon -the deities in Yorùbá religion.</p>
<p>They also created <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/39540639">a new economy that centred on primary glass production</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/7053610462">The glass industry in Ilé-Ifẹ̀ was devoted to bead-making.</a> Glass beads were <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Yoruba-New-History-Akinwumi-Ogundiran/dp/0253051495">used</a> to legitimise divine kingship across the region and to finance external trade that brought imports such as brass and possibly salt and silk from across the Sahara. Ilé-Ifẹ̀’s trading partners <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Yoruba-New-History-Akinwumi-Ogundiran/dp/0253051495">included</a> cities on the River Niger and other parts of the western Sudan region, such as Timbuktu and Gao. </p>
<p>The city was also a centre of learning. Its intellectuals created schools, some of them devoted to <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/9530098196">healing and wellness</a>, <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/824618137">astronomy</a> and <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/945376243">critical inquiry through divination</a>. They attracted students from far and near. </p>
<p>Commemoration and religious sites were set up across the city that attracted tourists. Many of these sites survive today as <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/205471">sacred groves</a>.</p>
<p>Our findings show that the community-building origins of Ilé-Ifẹ̀ made ancestor veneration important to the well-being of households, families and the city. <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/44441752">Mortuary art</a> was an important sector of the city’s economy. </p>
<p>The city’s economic buoyancy made it a magnet for immigrant labourers and fortune-seekers. The significance of its bead production also attracted diplomats, traders and pilgrims from across the region. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-we-found-the-earliest-glass-production-south-of-the-sahara-and-what-it-means-142059">How we found the earliest glass production south of the Sahara, and what it means</a>
</strong>
</em>
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<p>All of these made it a cosmopolitan city. Consequently, it attained the moniker “city of daybreak”, a nod to its status as a place of novelty and innovations. </p>
<p>During the 13th and 14th centuries, <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/35790974">the core city was about 4km in diameter</a>. Beyond that, its satellite areas <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Yoruba-New-History-Akinwumi-Ogundiran/dp/0253051495">stretched for about 30km</a>. </p>
<p>The city of Ilé-Ifẹ̀ has weathered many storms in its long history. Its growth was interrupted at different times <a href="https://www.brepolsonline.net/doi/pdf/10.1484/J.JUA.5.133451">by drought, famine, epidemic outbreaks, political intrigues, warfare and economic collapse</a>. Its community-building foundation and enduring institutions likely explain its resilience. Now a city of about half a million people, it offers lessons to urban planners and city managers everywhere.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/204569/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>For the research related to this article, Akinwumi Ogundiran gratefully acknowledges funding from the Ijesa Cultural Foundation, Boston University Humanities Foundation, Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, National Endowment for the Humanities, American Philosophical Society, and the Carnegie Foundation. </span></em></p>We need deep-time African urban history and theories to make sense of contemporary urban life and anticipate its future possibilities in African terms.Akinwumi Ogundiran, Chancellor’s Professor, and Professor of Africana Studies, Anthropology & History, University of North Carolina – CharlotteLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1864822022-07-19T13:50:37Z2022-07-19T13:50:37ZIslam has a small presence in Nigeria’s Igbo region: what a new Quran translation offers<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474132/original/file-20220714-32419-d3htnf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Muslims preparing for prayer in a mosque. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/muslim-devotees-prepare-to-offer-the-friday-prayer-of-the-news-photo/1232351375?adppopup=true">Olukayode Jaiyeola/NurPhoto via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A new translation of the Quran into the Igbo language was <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-africa-61754470?ns_mchannel=social&ns_source=twitter&ns_campaign=bbc_live&ns_linkname=62bf28b29db6d5693fa57c8e%26First+Igbo+translation+of+Quran+published+in+Nigeria%262022-07-01T17%3A10%3A09.761Z&ns_fee=0&pinned_post_locator=urn%3Aasset%3A3cbff91e-3701-44f1-bcdf-51f4dbc7ecd4&pinned_post_asset_id=62bf28b29db6d5693fa57c8e&pinned_post_type=share&at_custom1=%5Bpost+type%5D&at_medium=custom7&at_custom2=facebook_page&at_custom4=5098803E-F966-11EC-AEFE-4B5AFC756850&at_campaign=64&at_custom3=BBC+News+Africa&fbclid=IwAR1z3lO07Ixvbytqx3W7ORxFCDD6np3hHftsunLJV7SvJedZPkKmjS3c1WY">launched on 1 July 2022</a> at the Ansar-Ud-Deen Mosque in Abuja, Nigeria. <a href="https://iqna.ir/en/news/3479522/quran-translated-into-igbo-language-in-nigeria">According to the translator</a>, Muhammed Muritala Chukwuemeka, the project to produce this Nso Koran began five years ago.</p>
<p>This is the third of Nigeria’s main languages to have its own version of the Muslim scripture. The Quran is also available in Yoruba and Hausa, which are spoken by large populations of Muslims. The Yoruba make up <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/muslims/portraits/nigeria.html#:%7E:text=They%20comprise%20approximately%2029%20percent,Christian%20and%20half%20are%20Muslim.">about 21% of the country’s population</a> – <a href="https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/nigeria-population/">estimated to be over 216 million</a> – and about half of the Yoruba are Muslim. The Hausa-Fulani make up <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/muslims/portraits/nigeria.html#:%7E:text=They%20comprise%20approximately%2029%20percent,Christian%20and%20half%20are%20Muslim.">about 29% of Nigeria’s population</a>, and are predominantly Muslim. </p>
<p>It is remarkable that Igbo has joined them because the Igbo population is <a href="https://joshuaproject.net/people_groups/12189/NI">estimated at 98% Christian</a>. There are only about <a href="https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783112209455/html">13,500 Igbo Muslims</a>. </p>
<p>I have been researching Islam in southeast Nigeria, the Igbo homeland, for two decades. I published a <a href="https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783112209455/html">book</a> which tells the story of how Islam was introduced in Igboland, how the Christian majority responded and what it’s like to live as an Igbo Muslim. It considers the factors that compelled conversions to Islam among the Igbo, the contestations over conversions, and some developments that followed the emergence of Islam in southeast Nigeria. </p>
<p>While researching the book in 2009, I became aware of another Igbo Quran but it was not commonly accessible to the average Igbo Muslim. The Igbo Muslims may also have chosen not to associate with that version of the Quran because it came out of a project sponsored by the <a href="https://www.alislam.org/">Ahmadiyya Movement</a>. The movement is considered <a href="https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783112209455/html">heretical</a> by the mainstream Islamic denominations.</p>
<p>The existence of a new translation into Igbo means that more Igbo Muslims have access to their scriptures. They can read for themselves what their religion prescribes. Non-Muslims in southeast Nigeria could also learn more about Islam. If Nso Koran becomes widely available, and not restricted only to Muslims, it could facilitate inter-religious dialogue. This could aid better understanding of the main religions in Igboland and promote peaceful coexistence in a region that perceives itself as marginalised by more powerful Muslim groups. </p>
<h2>Islam in Igboland</h2>
<p>Islam was introduced into Igboland, southeast Nigeria, <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0362331909001153">during the colonial period</a>. I have studied the historical development of Islam in this region using oral, archival, and written sources and as far as I have been able to establish, the earliest known Muslim migrant was Ibrahim Aduku. He came from Bida in Nupeland to trade horses with communities in Enugu-Ezike in northern Igboland. Aduku’s grandson told me his grandfather started visiting Enugu-Ezike “<a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0362331909001153">around the time the British station (outpost) was established in the town</a>.” Comparing colonial records with trade reports, along with interviews conducted between 2003 and 2009, I estimate that Aduku would have arrived in the area <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0362331909001153">around 1909</a>.
Through Aduku, other itinerant Muslim traders and Islamic marabouts entered northern Igboland from north-central Nigeria. A different stream of Muslim migrants began to arrive in 1918 from the Yoruba town of Oshogbo in southwestern Nigeria. Some also came from Ilorin, north central Nigeria. They settled at Ibagwa. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783112208724/html">In 1958</a>, the first known group conversion to Islam among the Igbo occurred in Enohia in Abakiliki Division, southeastern Nigeria. Okpani Nwagui, a Roman Catholic Christian who a year earlier had converted to Islam, <a href="https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783112208724/html">mediated this conversion</a>. He assumed the name Ibrahim Niasse Nwagui. </p>
<p>By the outbreak of the <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/civil-war-in-nigeria">Nigeria-Biafra war in July 1967</a>, the population of Igbo converts to Islam stood at roughly <a href="https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783112208724/html">200</a>. </p>
<p>In 1984, the scholar Abdurahman Doi wrote that there were <a href="https://www.ajis.org/index.php/ajiss/article/view/2888">3,450 indigenous Igbo Muslims</a>. The latest figure, collated from hajj records in 2013, puts the <a href="https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783112209455/html">number at 13,500</a>. </p>
<p>With the rise of Boko Haram and its <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13602004.2015.1007667">war against Christianity in Nigeria</a>, Islam in Igboland faced a crisis and began to record desertions. But while some are leaving Islam, <a href="http://muslimsincalgary.ca/islam-in-igbo-land/">others are joining</a>.</p>
<h2>Factors aiding Islam growth</h2>
<p>Since the 1909 arrival of Ibrahim Aduku, Islam has been advancing gradually in southeast Nigeria. Almost all major towns in Igboland have converts to Islam; and many more Igbo now know about Islam than was the case in 2003 when I started researching the subject. </p>
<p>Over these decades, several factors have aided the growth of Islam in Igboland. </p>
<p>They include mixed religious marriages and dissatisfaction with existing religious groups. Another factor is the desire for integration within established Muslim financial and political networks. This was heightened by the political and economic marginalisation of the Igbo since the Nigeria-Biafra war. </p>
<p>Growth has been aided by proselytising among the Igbo by Muslims intent on gaining converts, who equally hope that <a href="https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783112208724/html">their growing numbers</a> will bring about political unity in the country. There is also the pull of financial and other inducements in bringing the Igbo into Islam. </p>
<p>In my <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-african-history/article/abs/being-igbo-and-muslim-the-igbo-of-southeastern-nigeria-and-conversions-to-islam-1930s-to-recent-times/3E2664245EB99C9E08C0135DD0B58785">research</a> on conversions to Islam in the region, few identified genuine spiritual quest and religious conviction as the reason.</p>
<p>Relations between Christians and Muslims in Igboland <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/45198652?searchText=Negotiating%20Relationships%20in%20a%20Mixed%20Religious%20Society%20Islam%20in%20Southeast%20Nigeria&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3DNegotiating%2BRelationships%2Bin%2Ba%2BMixed%2BReligious%2BSociety%253A%2BIslam%2Bin%2BSoutheast%2BNigeria%26so%3Drel&ab_segments=0%2FSYC-6490%2Ftest_segment_1&refreqid=fastly-default%3A35bc9f860c833bc01797bd2d8f5e3c92">have generally been peaceful and tolerant</a>, after initial tensions around conversions.</p>
<h2>Islam’s future in Igboland</h2>
<p>Islam’s future in southeast Nigeria will depend on the factors above and also more recent developments. Coming into play will be the existing relations between Muslims and non-Muslims, regional dynamics that affect the political and economic realities of the people, and individual convictions. </p>
<p>At the centre of this is the poor relationship between the Igbo and the federal government since 2015. This is especially evident in the <a href="https://punchng.com/ohanaeze-laments-marginalisation-buhari-says-igbo-control-economy/">perceived exclusion</a> of the southeast from government’s infrastructural and other development projects. This and the Boko Haram insurgency <a href="https://punchng.com/ohanaeze-laments-marginalisation-buhari-says-igbo-control-economy/">have lately heightened anti-Islam sentiment</a> in Igboland.</p>
<p>It’s hoped that at least the new Nso Koran will guide Igbo Muslims in what the religion prescribes, facilitate dialogue and aid peaceful coexistence among all religious communities.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/186482/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Egodi Uchendu receives funding from Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Germany. </span></em></p>Having the Quran in Igbo language will help in propagating Islam in the south eastern part of Nigeria.Egodi Uchendu, Professor (of History and International Studies), University of NigeriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1840962022-06-12T09:05:35Z2022-06-12T09:05:35ZNigeria has failed to marry its rich cultural diversity and democracy. Can it be done?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467712/original/file-20220608-22-hzhpmo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Nigeria's cultural diversity can enhance democracy. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/okaiben-family-performs-ekassa-dance-during-the-coronation-news-photo/615873406?adppopup=true">Pius Utomi Ekpei/AFP via Getty Images </a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Democracy in Nigeria has been characterised by <a href="https://www.premiumtimesng.com/features-and-interviews/318339-10-ways-politicians-rig-elections-in-nigeria.html">election rigging</a>, rotation of the same set of candidates for various electoral positions and <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321017220_A_Conceptual_Analysis_of_the_Rule_of_Law_in_Nigeria">subversion of the rule of law</a>. Thuggery, god-fatherism, imposition of candidates by political parties, internal party rivalry and general apathy by voters are other features. </p>
<p>Some have adopted the view that the British colonial administration in Nigeria interrupted the country’s cultural evolution through premature amalgamation. This resulted in the marriage of strange bed mates. In this vein scholars <a href="https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/3975454">mention</a> the divide-and-rule policy of the British colonial administration as the beginning of the animosity and divisions among different cultural groups in the country. </p>
<p>Other observers have <a href="https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/229607386.pdf">traced</a> the challenge of democracy to the eagerness of the minority political elites in Nigeria to exploit cultural differences to further their political agenda. To these scholars, the Nigerian elite often trumpets religion, for example, to discredit opponents and win elections. </p>
<p>The above notions are instructive.</p>
<p>But, in <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/THB6WUBNQMGDDDHXIK9K/full?target=10.1080/14725843.2022.2075318">my view</a> the crisis facing democracy in Nigeria is not so much in the cultural plurality of the country as in the unwillingness of political elites to create the space capable of dealing with both social complexity and cultural pluralism. </p>
<p>In order words, the problem of Nigeria’s democratic experiment lies in the lack of a constitutional machinery. There have been repeated calls for reforms to the <a href="https://www.constituteproject.org/constitution/Nigeria_1999.pdf">1999 constitution</a>. Ideas include accommodating the interests of different cultural groups. Changes should also institute the space for public participation and debates. Both are encapsulated in the principle of popular rule.</p>
<h2>Cultural plurality</h2>
<p>Nigeria is one of the most culturally diverse countries in the world. This heterogeneity rests on ethnic, religious, linguistic and historic differences.</p>
<p>Nigeria is made up of <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/1122838/population-of-nigeria/#:%7E:text=As%20of%202022%2C%20Nigeria's%20population%20was%20estimated%20at%20around%20216.7%20million">over 200 million people</a>. It has <a href="http://rogerblench.info/Language/Africa/Nigeria/Atlas%20of%20Nigerian%20Languages%202020.pdf">300 ethnic groups</a>, over 520 languages, several dialects and religions. </p>
<p>This unique demographic composition has continued to create problems of cohabitation. An example is the Nigeria Civil War (1967-1970) which had its origin in ethnic and religious politics. The conflict <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170214103207/http:/www1.american.edu/ted/ice/biafra.htm">claimed</a> an estimated 100,000 military casualties while between 500,000 and two million Biafran civilians died of starvation.</p>
<p>The First Republic (1 October, 1960 to 15 January, 1966) was a watershed in Nigeria’s democratic practice. An attempt to unify the country failed. The result was election violence and eventually <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-35312370">a military coup</a>. Both created a constitutional crisis and deep-seated hostility. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/coup-counter-coup-and-the-biafran-war/a-19437061">counter-coup of 28 July 1966</a> was spurred by what some military establishments from the North tagged a retaliation of the initial “Igbo coup”. It further tore the fabric of ethnic unity in Nigeria. </p>
<p>It was not surprising that the retaliatory coup and <a href="https://www.languageconflict.org/event/1966-anti-igbo-pogrom/">the anti-Igbo pogrom</a> that followed in the North, meant that the centre could no longer hold. This led to the bitter civil war, the consequences of which are still with Nigerians today. The nationalist agitations by a segment of the Igbo ethnic group represented by the <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-drives-the-indigenous-people-of-biafras-relentless-efforts-for-secession-163984">Indigenous People of Biafra</a> and the trial of its leader, Nnamdi Kanu are evidence. </p>
<p>In effect, the fear of domination of one ethnic group or section by another has persistently undermined efforts at democratic consolidation in Nigeria. </p>
<h2>Efforts to deal with the problem</h2>
<p>The country has made concerted efforts to address the challenges of nation building and democratic sustainability. These have included:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>constitutional reforms. The country has held numerous constitutional conferences all of which have failed.</p></li>
<li><p>zoning formula. This has involved political parties allocating their elective positions and offices to different sections of the country.</p></li>
<li><p>rotational presidency. There is an informal agreement between different nationalities that the presidential office will be occupied within specified periods and terms. </p></li>
<li><p>federal character principle: this is a quota system that accrues to each region of the country in terms of offices at federal establishments.</p></li>
<li><p>political restructuring. This refers to the effort being made to enable the federal government to shed some of its powers. It also represents devolution of powers from the centre to the regions. </p></li>
</ul>
<p>There is also local government reforms, state creation exercises, bureaucratic reforms and National Youth Service Corps Scheme.</p>
<p>But these institutional efforts to unify Nigeria’s multicultural dilemma have failed.</p>
<p>I think this is because none have attempted to address what I consider to be the biggest threat to democracy in the country – the mixture of ethnicity and religion.</p>
<h2>Ethnicity and religion</h2>
<p>Almost all social, political and economic relations in Nigeria revolve around two identity formations: the two dominant religious groups in the country – Islam and Christianity.</p>
<p>This unique composition has the Hausa-Fulani to the North who are predominantly Muslims, and the Igbo/Yoruba to the South, who are predominantly Christians. </p>
<p>The geographical arrangement keeps presenting itself in Nigeria’s democratic experiment. This is particularly true in relation to the presidential office which has been <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/THB6WUBNQMGDDDHXIK9K/full?target=10.1080/14725843.2022.2075318">occupied much longer</a> by the Hausa-Fulani Muslims to the North.</p>
<p>There is a heavy concentration of power embedded in the presidency. This has enabled the ethnic group occupying the position to allocate more resources to its regions. </p>
<p>Similarly, the ethnic militia agitations and the pressures for secession by some ethnic groups are all in relation to the dominance of the power at the centre by the North.</p>
<h2>Looking to the future</h2>
<p>It is clear that Nigeria has failed to harness the rich tapestry of its cultural varieties within a constitutional democracy. Consequently, the rich differences in the country’s cultural orientations, which ought to promote the principle of constitutional democracy, have had the opposite effect. </p>
<p>In my view democracy can work to the benefit of Nigeria. Ordinary people should demand that ways are created for them to participate in decisions that affect them, regardless of their ethnic or religious identity. This should be the case in spite of the intervening centrifugal forces of ethnic pluralism and cultural diversity. </p>
<p>For its part, the country’s leadership should minimise the politicisation of ethnicity and religion. And it should replace nepotism and sectionalism with meritocracy. </p>
<p>The excessive powers vested in the federal government should also be decentralised. This would enable different regions to regain autonomy, thus spreading the putative benefits of federalism.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/184096/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Felix Chidozie does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The fear of domination of one ethnic group or section by another has persistently undermined efforts at democratic consolidation in Nigeria.Felix Chidozie, Senior Lecturer, Covenant UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1711332021-11-16T14:32:03Z2021-11-16T14:32:03ZNigeria is a federation in name only. Why Buhari isn’t the man to fix the problem<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/431709/original/file-20211112-15357-a9d4iw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Is President Muhammadu Buhari committed to the genuine federalisation of the Nigerian polity? </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The scenes and stories emerging from Nigeria are simply frightening. Nigeria, not a regional powerhouse but traditionally a veritable continental player, has been missing in action in most vital spheres of leadership because it’s saddled with a leader who has abdicated the duties and responsibilities of leading.</p>
<p>When the <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/10/nigeria-the-lekki-toll-gate-massacre-new-investigative-timeline/">#EndSars protests engulfed Nigeria</a> in late 2020, General Muhammadu Buhari demonstrated an appalling lack of understanding, empathy and foresight. In desperately ill health and busy with frequent visits to hospitals abroad, he handed over his responsibilities to an array of sycophants and shady characters who have no business with leadership.</p>
<p>Buhari’s initial stint as head of state was as a military general <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Muhammadu-Buhari">between 1983 and 1985</a> when he was deposed in a palace coup d'etat by General Ibrahim Babangida and his cabal. Given his military antecedents, can Buhari be truly committed to the genuine federalisation of the Nigerian polity? </p>
<p>I would argue not. The military establishment is generally strictly hierarchical in nature and concepts and practices relating to the devolution of power are often problematic to entrench.</p>
<p>The over-centralisation of power became doubly evident during the nefarious reign of General Sani Abacha whose regime hanged the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/pidgin/tori-50371699">Ogoni nine in 1995</a>. I conducted a series of studies on the Ogoni tragedy culminating in <a href="https://www.cambridgescholars.com/product/978-1-5275-6075-8">a book</a>, Ken Saro-Wiwa’s Shadow (expanded edition): Politics, Nationalism and the Ogoni Protest Movement.</p>
<p>Indeed, Nigeria’s current political problems are simply too daunting to embark on an honest journey to true federalism at this stage. Federalism entails the sharing of political power between the central seat of government and other federating units within a polity. In this way, power, responsibilities and obligations are not solely imposed on the central government but shared with other regions or states (as in the case of the United States) of a nation.</p>
<h2>Neither unitary nor federalist</h2>
<p>The Nigerian military has toyed with <a href="https://www.cambridgescholars.com/resources/pdfs/978-1-5275-6075-8-sample.pdf#page=23">the idea of federalism</a> since the first putsch that installed Major-General Johnson Aguyi-Ironsi as head of state in January 15, 1966. </p>
<p>Since then a rash of military adventurers have held the country in thrall. It continued to claim that was a federation when in fact there was a steady concentration of political power at the centre to the detriment of the federating units. These eventually rose to 36 states.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the federal seat of power became more arbitrary – distant, unresponsive and insufferably corrupt and inefficient.</p>
<p>The notions of nationhood and national interest are, at the best of times, inchoate and contentious. They have become more meaningless if not completely lost. </p>
<p>In June 2020, the US Council on Foreign Relations declared that Nigeria was <a href="https://allafrica.com/stories/202106010607.html">on verge of state collapse</a>. John Campbell and Robert Rotberg, both of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/05/27/nigeria-is-a-failed-state/">corroborate this view</a>.</p>
<p>Nigeria’s unpoliced borders have been usurped by well-armed mercenaries, cattle rustlers and a bewildering assortment of jihadists, bandits and terrorists. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, <a href="https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/why-so-many-school-kidnappings-in-nigeria/?">the country bleeds</a>. School children by the hundreds are captured frequently by terrorists who demand and receive millions in ransom. Since January 2021, well over <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-57960544">1,000 students</a> have been kidnapped for ransom in Nigeria. </p>
<p>Ethnic tensions and agitations have reached fever pitch, lives are lost daily on the highways and farmlands at an alarming rate. Girls and women are routinely raped on the way to and from markets and farms by bandits. There is no security to be found anywhere.</p>
<p>Militants in the Niger Delta led by the Niger Delta Avengers have <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/1165870/quarterly-oil-production-in-nigeria/">destroyed oil installations</a>. </p>
<p>The banned Indigenous People of Biafra movement has become <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-drives-the-indigenous-people-of-biafras-relentless-efforts-for-secession-163984">re-vitalised</a>. Largely inspired by the Biafran secessionist bid of 1967-70 it is led by the ex-fugitive <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/11/10/nigeria-trial-of-separatist-leader-nnamdi-kanu-adjourned">Nnamdi Kanu</a>. The Inspector General of Police, Usman Baba has <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/10/nigeria-the-lekki-toll-gate-massacre-new-investigative-timeline/">confirmed</a> that the Eastern Security Network, the militant arm of the movement, is responsible for the deaths of 187 soldiers, police and paramilitary operatives.</p>
<p><a href="https://guardian.ng/news/yoruba-groups-warn-against-move-to-silence-akintoye-igboho-kanu/">Sunday Adeyemo</a>, a currently exiled Yoruba freedom fighter, is fervently agitating for the creation of a Yoruba nation. He says there would be no elections in 2023. </p>
<p>None of this began under Buhari’s leadership. But things have got worse under his leadership.</p>
<h2>Why Buhari can’t deliver</h2>
<p>Buhari is the nominal leader of the Fulani, an ethnic group to be found in considerable numbers in virtually every West African country. He is <a href="https://www.crisisgroup.org/africa/west-africa/nigeria/262-stopping-nigerias-spiralling-farmer-herder-violence">alleged</a> to have invited his ethnic kinfolk from across West Africa in 2015 to aid his presidential ambitions.</p>
<p>Such a case of ethnic particularism deflects the purpose of Nigerian nationhood. It also undermines the concepts of sovereignty, territoriality and ultimately, modernity. </p>
<p>Buhari also has no understanding the notion of true federalism. </p>
<p>He is pursuing a grand agenda of Fulanisation. As the nominal leader of the Fulani in West Africa there has been an alarming influx of Fulanis from other West African nations. </p>
<p>The retreat into ethnic chauvinism has also meant an evisceration of the nation-state as a modernist project. Since it has become quite difficult to transform this dire state of affairs within Nigerian territory, there has been an expatriation of political struggles abroad as activists seek to pursue their causes outside the country. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-01/nigerian-president-announces-conditional-lifting-of-twitter-ban">ban on Twitter</a>, just as the brutal clampdown on anti-SARS protesters is an anti-people onslaught, a measure against digital democracy, an attack on the idea of freedom and finally, an act of feudalist terror. </p>
<p>Buhari’s desperation demonstrates him to be a Don Quixote. He is out-of-place, out-of-joint, irretrievably lost within a borderless technological universe that he does not understand. </p>
<p>With this sort of frame of mind, concepts such as federalism go out of the window. Indeed the immediate problems of political survival and dominance are far more pertinent than such highfalutin concepts.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/171133/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sanya Osha does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Nigeria’s current political problems are simply too daunting to embark on an honest journey to true federalism at this stage.Sanya Osha, Senior Research Fellow, Institute for Humanities in Africa, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1673912021-09-08T14:23:17Z2021-09-08T14:23:17ZTribute to Yusuf Grillo: Nigerian art activist, scholar and bridge builder<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420021/original/file-20210908-22-kj1stl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=132%2C51%2C882%2C465&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Yusuf Grillo contributed significantly to art and art education in Nigeria.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">TY Bello/Instagram</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Nigerian contemporary visual artist and scholar <a href="https://www.vanguardngr.com/2021/08/breaking-legendary-artist-yusuf-grillo-dies-at-87/">Yusuf Grillo</a> died on 23 August 2021, aged 87 years. Art scholar Sule James explains Grillo’s influence and impact on art on the continent.</em></p>
<h2>Who was Yusuf Grillo?</h2>
<p>Yusuf Grillo was not only an artist but also an administrator, educator, and mentor to other artists. He was born in 1934 to the family of Yinus Ventura Grillo and Kalia Grillo in Lagos. His grandfather had returned from Brazil to his African homeland after the abolition of the slave trade. Grillo was identified in Yoruba culture as Omo Arugbo (child of old age) because he was the last of 11 children. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/419988/original/file-20210908-25-m4cumi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Painting of a woman with eyes closed" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/419988/original/file-20210908-25-m4cumi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/419988/original/file-20210908-25-m4cumi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419988/original/file-20210908-25-m4cumi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419988/original/file-20210908-25-m4cumi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419988/original/file-20210908-25-m4cumi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1137&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419988/original/file-20210908-25-m4cumi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1137&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419988/original/file-20210908-25-m4cumi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1137&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A painting by Yusuf Grillo.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Bonhams</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>He attended Saint Andrew’s Primary School, Oke Popo, Lagos; Saint Peter’s Primary School, Faji; and the Anglican Christ Church Cathedral School, where Aina Onabolu, the father of modern Nigerian art, was a visiting art teacher. He also attended the Secondary School of the Yaba Technical Institute (now Yaba College of Technology). He learnt and benefited from the artistic practices of other pioneers of modern art in Nigeria, including <a href="http://www.artnet.com/artists/akinola-lasekan/">Akinola Lasekan</a> and J.K. Oye. (Both were contemporaries of Aina Onabolu).</p>
<p>In 1956, he enrolled to study Fine Arts at the Nigerian College of Art, Science and Technology, Zaria, now Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. He graduated with a diploma in Fine Arts in 1961, specialising in painting.</p>
<h2>What role did he play in advancing art in Nigeria?</h2>
<p>During his long art career, over six decades, Grillo played a significant role in the advancement of contemporary art and art education in Nigeria. He was a prominent member of the Zaria Art Society, formed by students at his college. Their creative activism left indelible imprints on Nigeria’s artistic terrain. The first three sets of students who graduated in 1959, 1960 and 1961 were not all opposed to the imported curriculum, replete with colonial imprints from the Royal Art School. But they were opposed to their British lecturers’ abhorrence of any African art background in their works. The students saw this as culturally slavish and unrelated to their artistic heritage. </p>
<p>This gave rise to the “Natural Synthesis” artistic ideology, which defined modern African art as a synthesis of the old and the new. The old was the indigenous cultural artistic practices of Africa, while the new was the Eurocentric stylistic variables promoted by the West, especially during the colonial years of the 20th century. The Zaria students stated in their manifesto that they had a duty “to promote, through art, Nigerian cultural values with utmost dedication, love, and willpower”. They passionately pursued this ideology and explored indigenous themes in their art.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/419992/original/file-20210908-13-1va0mj0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A painting of a man and woman on a bicycle." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/419992/original/file-20210908-13-1va0mj0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/419992/original/file-20210908-13-1va0mj0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419992/original/file-20210908-13-1va0mj0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419992/original/file-20210908-13-1va0mj0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419992/original/file-20210908-13-1va0mj0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419992/original/file-20210908-13-1va0mj0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/419992/original/file-20210908-13-1va0mj0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A painting by Yusuf Grillo.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Bonhams</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These pioneering members of the Zaria Art School may be perceived as classmates but they were not. Their years of training in Zaria simply overlapped. Grillo personified the spirit of “Zarianism” as he was sensitive to Yoruba traditions and drew inspiration for his works from that culture. In doing so, he represented images from Yoruba traditions that echo the lived experiences of people in fashionable Yoruba cultural dress forms.</p>
<p>Another major role Grillo and other “Zarianists” played in advancing art in Nigeria was towards the establishment and growth of other art institutions in the country. Grillo laid the artistic foundation at Yaba College of Technology, Lagos, where he taught art for several years from the early 1960s and served as head of department for 26 years.</p>
<h2>What was the core of his work?</h2>
<p>The bulk of Grillo’s works show the influence of Yoruba culture, through which he forged his interest in creating African cultural identity. His subject matter was influenced by human activity. His themes are derived from everyday life events around him, rooted in Yoruba indigenous context. Although a devout Muslim, Grillo installed many splendid stained glass designs in churches in Nigeria. He participated in several group and solo exhibitions and produced large bodies of paintings in public and private collections.</p>
<h2>What techniques was he famous for?</h2>
<p>Although Grillo is famous for Western naturalistic style, the technique he is known for is the use of planular forms and angular structures which found an appropriate correlation in the Yoruba wood carving style. His works highlight more vigorous engagement with the blue, purple, and green palettes. The formal characteristics of his paintings show stylised and elongated figures. They are easily identified by their slimness, elegance and grace, which represents the contemporary ideal of beauty in the Lagos of his youth. </p>
<p>The style and techniques of Grillo’s works must also have been influenced by his interest in mathematics and experiments with cubist forms, using bolder geometric shapes. In addition, his interaction with architects and workshop training he attended in Bradford in Britain taught him about stained glass techniques. It also spurred his interest in mosaic, santex, and other materials which can be used to embellish buildings on monumental scales.</p>
<h2>What legacy does he leave?</h2>
<p>It might be argued that the most enduring legacy Grillo bestowed is his faithfulness to Yoruba culture without ossifying traditions. He represents a creative bridge that filled the transitory gap between dynamic Yoruba wood carving traditions and contemporary Yoruba art.</p>
<p>He will be remembered for the gaps he filled, the many artists he mentored, his creative works and for laying the foundation of modern art in Yaba College of Technology, Lagos.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/167391/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sule James does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Yusuf Grillo charted a path in African art and enabled the emergence of more artists.Sule James, Research Associate, University of JohannesburgLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1627762021-06-27T08:44:48Z2021-06-27T08:44:48ZA long view sheds fresh light on the history of the Yoruba people in West Africa<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407624/original/file-20210622-15-19458vb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A group of drummers playing traditional Yoruba drums.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/an-old-drum-beats-a-path-from-the-ancients-to-erykah-badu-news-photo/144148269?adppopup=true">Pius Utomi Ekpei/AFP via Getty Images </a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRy92OJCtcY">Yoruba</a> are among the most storied groups in Africa. Their ancestral homeland <a href="https://theculturetrip.com/africa/nigeria/articles/an-introduction-to-nigerias-yoruba-people/">cuts</a> across present-day southwest Nigeria, Benin Republic and Togo in West Africa. They <a href="https://theculturetrip.com/africa/nigeria/articles/an-introduction-to-nigerias-yoruba-people/">number</a> between 35 and 40 million. Their dynamic culture, philosophy, arts, language, sociology and history have attracted <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Yoruba-Nine-Centuries-African-Thought/dp/0810917947">numerous studies</a>. </p>
<p>What has been missing in this rich literature is a deep history that benefits from a diverse range of disciplines and sources. <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Writing-African-History-Rochester-Diaspora/dp/1580462561">Scholars</a> have long recognised the value of combining different methods and sources, beyond documentary and oral traditions, to study pre-colonial African history. </p>
<p>I wrote <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv177thv2">The Yoruba: A New History</a> to fill this gap. The book is a product of the studies I have carried out in different parts of Yoruba region over the past 30 years as an <a href="https://pages.uncc.edu/akinwumi-ogundiran/">archaeologist, anthropologist, and historian</a>. </p>
<p>By providing insights from different disciplines I have been able to uncover new themes in Yoruba history.</p>
<p>I provide a 2,000 year account of cultural changes and continuities, how local and global processes have affected social transformations, the meanings people made out of their experiences, and how these affected actions, and what the consequences were. </p>
<p>I weave multifaceted stories about ups and downs, successes and failures, coping with risks and opportunities and solving existential crises. These have ranged from climate change to shifting global political economies, and the impact on the ideas of gender, class, and power, among others.</p>
<h2>The history</h2>
<p>In the first half of the book, I account for how the Yoruba community evolved on the western side of the Niger-Benue Confluence in present-day Nigeria <a href="https://www.nhbs.com/the-cambridge-world-history-volume-2-a-world-with-agriculture-12000-bce-500-ce-book">about 4000 years ago</a> and the dramatic changes that stimulated their <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv177thv2">rapid geographical expansion between 300 BC and AD 300</a>. </p>
<p>The climate change that commenced in the last quarter of the first millennium BC, <a href="http://cup.columbia.edu/book/the-way-the-wind-blows/9780231112086">known as the Big Dry</a>, sparked this expansion process. Extreme droughts pushed families and social groups to look for new water corridors and resources. The early centuries of this ecological crisis were also a period of new technological innovations, especially the <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1022222325095">adoption of iron metallurgy</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="The book cover" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408135/original/file-20210624-17-17a0ptn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408135/original/file-20210624-17-17a0ptn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408135/original/file-20210624-17-17a0ptn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408135/original/file-20210624-17-17a0ptn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408135/original/file-20210624-17-17a0ptn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408135/original/file-20210624-17-17a0ptn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408135/original/file-20210624-17-17a0ptn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Yoruba: A New History.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Akinwumi Ogundiran</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>By the time the Big Dry ended and optimum wet conditions returned in the 3rd AD, the Yoruba had expanded from the Niger-Benue Confluence <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv177thv2">as far as the Atlantic coast</a>. The second half of the first millennium AD was a period of <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv177thv2">rapid socio-political innovations</a>. The idea of divine kingship alongside a unique system of urbanism evolved in multiple places and <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv177thv2">became the basis of social order</a>. </p>
<p>Between the 12th and 14th centuries, Ile-Ife was the centre of the Yoruba world. It was an emporium and holy city. Its economy was based on a novel technology of glass manufacture mainly devoted to making beads, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv177thv2">the primary currency of power, authority and wealth in the region.</a></p>
<p>Ile-Ife remains the only place in sub-Saharan Africa known as an industrial centre for <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0021934717701915">primary glass production</a>. </p>
<p>Ile-Ife used its technological and economic advantages to restructure the ideology of divine kingship. It also used this advantage to standardise the Yoruba religious system (Orisa pantheon) and make itself (literally) the beginning and end of time. It brought vast territories, as far as the River Niger and the Atlantic coast, under its political control and cultural influence. These <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv177thv2">included even non-Yoruba-speaking peoples</a>. </p>
<p>For these and other reasons, I concluded that Ile-Ife built the first empire in the Yoruba world during the 13th and 14th centuries.</p>
<h2>Collapse and rebirth</h2>
<p>The Ife Empire came to an end by 1420 due to <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv177thv2">several colliding factors</a>. These included long spells of drought that kicked off around 1380 across West and East Africa (the equivalent of the <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/04/01/how-the-little-ice-age-changed-history">Little Ice Age</a> in the northern hemisphere), political disturbances in Western Sudan (for example, the collapse of the Mali Empire), and internal crisis within the Ife Empire. </p>
<p>Conflict, war, disease, famine, and dynastic changes <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv177thv2">rocked</a> most of the Yoruba world and other parts of West Africa. </p>
<p>It was not until the late 16th century that the region began to recover, thanks to <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv177thv2">regional cooperation notably championed by Oyo</a>. By then, the political landscape had been permanently changed. Some of the minor kingdoms of the Classical period were now in control (for example, Oyo), and several new states emerged from the rubbles of the old ones. </p>
<p>This was also the beginning of the integration of the Yoruba into a newly emerging global political economy that focused on the Americas and the European maritime might. </p>
<p>The book explores how the commercial revolution of this early modern period, especially the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40282457">Atlantic slave trade</a>, shaped Yoruba political landscape, culture, and society starting from the early seventeenth century through the mid-nineteenth century. </p>
<p>During this time, the Yoruba economy <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv177thv2">became far more monetised than before</a>. There was an overall increase in productivity due to economic specialisation. The cowrie currency that powered this economy was imported while the external trade of the region was driven by <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv177thv2">a dependency on imported addictive commodity – tobacco</a>. Both <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/african-studies-review/article/abs/jan-hogendorn-and-marion-johnson-the-shell-money-of-the-slave-trade-cambridge-cambridge-university-press-1986/4A5EC59DD8F214A81F5655182D06149A">cowries and tobacco exports</a> were exchanged for human cargo in the Bight of Benin, where <a href="https://iupress.org/9780253217165/the-yoruba-diaspora-in-the-atlantic-world/">almost a million Yoruba</a> entered the Middle Passage, mostly between 1775 and 1840. </p>
<p>The second half of the book focuses on the effects of this new experience on social valuation, the theory of rights, privileges, and power, as well as gender and class relations. </p>
<p>I bring it to a close with the collapse of the <a href="https://www.fulcrum.org/concern/monographs/1r66j125t">Oyo Empire</a>, the second empire in Yoruba history, and its aftermath in the mid-nineteenth century. </p>
<h2>Reflection</h2>
<p>In the concluding chapter, I reflected on what this 2000-year history means for the present. </p>
<p>The book tells the story about the unique gifts that the Yoruba people gave to the world in social organisation, resilience, technology, arts, philosophy, religion, and ethics. </p>
<p>From time to time, many scholars, <a href="https://www.academia.edu/4351601/Crises_of_Culture_and_Consciousness_in_the_Postcolony_What_is_the_future_for_Nigeria">including me</a>, have lamented how African historical experience rarely informs public policies in contemporary Africa, mainly because <a href="https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789463005159">policymakers have a poor understanding</a> of that history. </p>
<p>An awareness of the challenges faced by ancestral Yoruba and how they solved those problems for more than 2000 years is as important as understanding why they came short in some instances. </p>
<p>In searching for solutions that address contemporary challenges, it would help to pay more attention to African history.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/162776/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Akinwumi Ogundiran receives funding from the National Humanities Center, National Endowment for the Humanities, Wenner-Gren Foundation, American Philosophical Society, Dumbarton Oaks, and Yip Fellowship (Magdalene College, University of Cambridge). </span></em></p>By providing insights from different disciplines, a new book uncovers new themes in the history of Yoruba people of West AfricaAkinwumi Ogundiran, Chancellor’s Professor, and Professor of Africana Studies, Anthropology & History, University of North Carolina – CharlotteLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1515092021-01-21T13:30:14Z2021-01-21T13:30:14ZHow African body markings were used to construct the idea of race in colonial Brazil<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373845/original/file-20201209-18-1p7j6g9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A man in Brazil attends an event memorialising the struggle of black people and Africans against slavery.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Fabio Teixeira/Anadolu Agency/Getty</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the 1700s, the gold rush in southeast Brazil created a high demand for mining labour. The Minas Gerais region became one of the main destinations for African <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/in-brazil-the-wounds-of-slavery-will-not-heal/a-43754519">slaves</a>. For the first half of the century, demand was met by a trade circuit connecting the ports of the Bight of Benin to Salvador in Bahia. </p>
<p>People from those ports acquired a reputation among the Portuguese as the best hands for mining gold. </p>
<p>With time, they created a commercial system of slave classification. Many Africans were grouped with the understanding that they are naturally suited for certain jobs. Slaves were sorted by anatomy and the purported ability to function better in certain climates, resistance to diseases, and life expectancy. Based on this classification, they were either assigned to the fields or less rigorous housework.</p>
<p>This process of stereotyping was unwittingly aided by many Africans with body markings. The markings represented aspects of their lives. They were commonly scarification marks, tattoos and cuts. These indicated their identities, ethnicity, religious affiliation, life events, accomplishments and social status. </p>
<p>Sometimes they were made to obtain spiritual protection. Others were permanent beauty marks. These meanings were lost to the Portuguese. They used them simply to profile and identify slaves. The markings also helped to recapture escaped slaves and ensure slaveholders paid taxes.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374217/original/file-20201210-18-4vbqd3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374217/original/file-20201210-18-4vbqd3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/374217/original/file-20201210-18-4vbqd3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374217/original/file-20201210-18-4vbqd3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374217/original/file-20201210-18-4vbqd3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374217/original/file-20201210-18-4vbqd3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374217/original/file-20201210-18-4vbqd3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/374217/original/file-20201210-18-4vbqd3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Scarifications on an Ethiopian Topossa man.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Eric Lafforgue/Art in All of Us/Corbis/Getty Images</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In my <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0144039X.2020.1814055">study</a> of colonial archives, I researched how physical attributes shaped the way Africans were viewed. Race relations in Brazil are generally thought of in terms of multiple skin colours categories associated with various interethnic relationships. But its largest enslaved population consisted of Africans. So, it is important to understand how colonial society dealt with their diversity of origins to construct blackness.</p>
<p>Slavery in Brazil did not, in fact, automatically erase the diversity of African origins and reduce people to one racial category – ‘Black’. It happened over <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/in-brazil-the-wounds-of-slavery-will-not-heal/a-43754519">time</a>. </p>
<h2>The slave economy</h2>
<p>In the Brazilian regions where gold and diamonds were mined, slave ownership was taxed. The tax office began listing slaves’ Christian names, ages, origins, purchase price and body markings in official registries. They also put this information on the identification cards that slaves had to carry with them. Scarification was then used as a marker of the person’s homeland. </p>
<p>Here’s a description I found from 1752: </p>
<p>“Domingos Sabarú, 20 years old, with smallpox pockmarks, and four small spears on top of his right eyebrow, two circles on top of the left eyebrow, a small grid in the middle of the eyebrows, a star at the temple in the corner of his right eyebrow and the more signs that are on every face of Sabarú, valued at 300 thousand réis”. (Sabarú is currently Savalou, Benin).</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A paper with a description of body markings." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/377544/original/file-20210107-17-qodkyj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/377544/original/file-20210107-17-qodkyj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377544/original/file-20210107-17-qodkyj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377544/original/file-20210107-17-qodkyj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377544/original/file-20210107-17-qodkyj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=657&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377544/original/file-20210107-17-qodkyj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=657&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/377544/original/file-20210107-17-qodkyj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=657&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Brazilian colonial record describing African body markings.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Arquivo Público Mineiro, Matrícula de escravos.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These colonial interpretations of African scarifications oversimplified their original meanings. In several regions, their meanings went far beyond ethnicity or origin. In West Africa, some skin patterns express religious affiliation with specific entities of the hierarchy of gods and deified ancestors called <a href="http://www.afropedea.org/fon-pantheon-gods-vodun">voduns</a> in the Gbe-speaking area or called <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/orisha">orishas</a> in the Yoruba territories. In these cases, marking were acquired as part of the rites of initiation.</p>
<p>Other markings are records of significant events such as a death in the family. They can also symbolise belonging to a complex multi-levelled society. These marks indicated an individual’s age, medical history, and their social, political and gender-related status. Some marks are formed from the injection of medicines and substances believed to offer protection from unseen forces. Some were just creative expressions.</p>
<p>Brazil represented almost half of the entire Atlantic trade. Its 18th century colonial society never saw Africans as homogeneous people. Nor was the African body classified solely on the basis of skin colour. Identity was formed as a combination of body modifications and phenotypical traits, or physical attributes. </p>
<h2>African diversity and blackness</h2>
<p>The Portuguese colonialists were concerned with commerce and social control. They saw body markings as tools for identification and cataloguing, to increase the economic efficiency of commodified human lives.</p>
<p>In addition to body marks, clerks also habitually described anatomical features. The hair texture, skin tone and nose shape of individual Africans were recorded and contrasted with European features.</p>
<p>In the end, the same gaze that used visual markers to categorise the diversity of African origins eventually lumped them together in a simplified idea of ‘blackness’. But one did not exclude the other. They were two facets of the same process that transformed Africans into ‘Blacks’.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/151509/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>This research was supported by the CAPES grant 0382/2016/ 23038.009186/2013-63
</span></em></p>A study of the historical records describing African slaves in Brazil yields some unexpected findings.Aldair Rodrigues, Adjunct assistant professor, Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Unicamp)Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1465942020-10-01T14:35:37Z2020-10-01T14:35:37ZNow’s the time to share ideas about the future for people and nature<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/360245/original/file-20200928-22-1atxecj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">What does a more desirable future for people and the planet look like.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Nature is under pressure. Ecosystems are being degraded rapidly and a billion species are at risk of extinction. This is the shocking picture <a href="https://ipbes.net/global-assessment#:%7E:text=IPBES%20(2019)%3A%20Global%20assessment,on%20Biodiversity%20and%20Ecosystem%20Services.">set out</a> by an independent intergovernmental body, the Inter-governmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (<a href="https://ipbes.net/">IPBES</a>). The platform was established to make stronger connections between science and policy. Its view is that the only solution to the crisis is <a href="https://theconversation.com/revolutionary-change-needed-to-stop-unprecedented-global-extinction-crisis-116166">radical change</a> in the way humans live.</p>
<p>Humans are deeply implicated in the crisis underpinned by the notion of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-the-anthropocene-began-with-european-colonisation-mass-slavery-and-the-great-dying-of-the-16th-century-140661">anthropocene</a>, which is the time that humans have become the dominant impact on earth. This is highlighted in the current crises of a global pandemic, racial tensions and growing inequalities.</p>
<p>There is a lot of <a href="https://ipbes.net/global-assessment">research</a> on the impacts that human actions will have on the future of the planet. These range from carbon emissions leading to <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/">climate change</a> through to <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09506-1">plastic waste</a> devastating ocean life. But there’s little research on what sort of future people want. This is even more true for understanding what a better future could look like for different people and in different contexts. Such stories of the future are important tools for decision-makers whose choices will bring about change. </p>
<p>The IPBES expert group on scenarios and models <a href="https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/pan3.10146">responded</a> to this gap in positive stories of nature. We worked on creating visions that reflect the diverse values that nature holds for people. We also wanted these visions to be applicable in different contexts. </p>
<p>We started with a workshop in New Zealand in 2017, with 73 participants from 31 countries, representing all UN regions. Using a <a href="https://theconversation.com/incubating-ideas-on-how-southern-africa-can-manage-the-anthropocene-69916">method</a> developed from the <a href="https://goodanthropocenes.net/">Seeds of Good Anthropocenes</a> project in South Africa, the participants identified “seeds” of change that they believed would be the start of a better future. These seeds were as diverse as displacing GDP growth as a metric and giving rivers legal standing, and as distinct as centres of distinction on indigenous and local knowledge and gene editing technologies.</p>
<h2>Visions of the future</h2>
<p><a href="https://niwa.co.nz/coasts-and-oceans/research-projects/ipbes-nature-futures-workshop">Seven radical visions</a> of desirable nature futures emerged from this. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/360244/original/file-20200928-24-x6dya0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Graph displaying desireable future frameworks" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/360244/original/file-20200928-24-x6dya0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/360244/original/file-20200928-24-x6dya0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/360244/original/file-20200928-24-x6dya0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/360244/original/file-20200928-24-x6dya0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/360244/original/file-20200928-24-x6dya0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/360244/original/file-20200928-24-x6dya0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/360244/original/file-20200928-24-x6dya0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">How the 7 desirable visions generated in the 2017 workshop in New Zealand formed the basis of the Nature Futures Framework that sets out three core values of nature: nature for nature, nature for society and nature as culture. These value perspectives build on the IPBES guidance on multiple values for nature.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Authors’ own and images from Mary Brake, Reflection Graphics; Dave Leigh, Emphasise Ltd.; Pepper Lindgren-Streicher, Pepper Curry Design</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Building from the visions, the expert group then developed the <a href="https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/pan3.10146">Nature Futures Framework</a>. This is a simple way to show and talk about the ways in which nature has value for people:</p>
<p>● Nature for nature, in which nature has value in and of itself;</p>
<p>● Nature for society, in which nature is primarily valued for the benefits or uses people derive from it;</p>
<p>● Nature as culture, in which humans are perceived as an integral part of nature.</p>
<p>The framework aims to illustrate all the ways nature is appreciated. It’s intended to allow multiple voices to debate what a more desirable future for people and the planet could look like. A recent application of the framework with youth from <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/26395916.2020.1821095">around the world</a> illustrated some common features of desirable futures. These included an emphasis on diverse community solutions, a reconnection with nature and a reconfiguration of the economic system to showcase what really is valuable for well-being. </p>
<p>Differences include how technology is employed in the future. This looks into whether it’s a central solution like energy and transport for example, in a hyper-connected world where everyone is educated about diverse cultures and places. It could also be a more locally diverse future that emphasises being in place and where innovation is based on indigenous and local knowledge. What these diverse futures show is not a “better or worse” future, but alternatives that can help inform decisions in the present. People have a diversity of relationships with nature. Only when this is appreciated can the world find its way to a better future.</p>
<h2>A call to arms for participation</h2>
<p>Reaching this global understanding requires buy-in and input from as many people around the world as possible. The newly constituted IPBES Task Force on Scenarios and Models is, therefore, calling on researchers and practitioners to contribute. They can take part in scenario processes or use the framework in their own exercises. </p>
<p>It is especially important to get participation from the <a href="https://ipbes.net/assessment-reports/africa">African continent</a>. The region is often marginalised in global environmental scenarios, despite its bio-cultural diversity. To reach as wide an audience as possible, the Nature Futures Framework’s paper on creating desirable futures has been <a href="https://relationalthinkingblog.com/2020/09/18/qa-laura-pereira-on-a-new-generation-of-nature-futures/">translated into a range of languages</a> under-represented in global research. These include <a href="https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/action/downloadSupplement?doi=10.1002%2Fpan3.10146&file=pan310146-sup-0002-Afrikaans.pdf">Afrikaans</a>, <a href="https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/action/downloadSupplement?doi=10.1002%2Fpan3.10146&file=pan310146-sup-0003-Arabic.pdf">Arabic</a>, <a href="https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/action/downloadSupplement?doi=10.1002%2Fpan3.10146&file=pan310146-sup-0004-Bemba.pdf">Bemba</a>, <a href="https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/action/downloadSupplement?doi=10.1002%2Fpan3.10146&file=pan310146-sup-0011-isuZulu.pdf">isiZulu</a>, <a href="https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/action/downloadSupplement?doi=10.1002%2Fpan3.10146&file=pan310146-sup-0017-Setswana.pdf">Setswana</a>, <a href="https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/action/downloadSupplement?doi=10.1002%2Fpan3.10146&file=pan310146-sup-0018-Shona.pdf">Shona</a>, <a href="https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/pan3.10146">Twi</a>, <a href="https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/action/downloadSupplement?doi=10.1002%2Fpan3.10146&file=pan310146-sup-0024-Wolof.pdf">Wolof</a>, and <a href="https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/pan3.10146">Yoruba</a>.</p>
<p>Before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, 2020 was to be a “super year” for nature. Various global decisions that will shape the planet’s future were to be taken, including the <a href="https://www.cbd.int/">Convention on Biological Diversity’s</a> renegotiation of biodiversity targets. As these events have been postponed, and as the world seeks to recover from the pandemic, it is even more essential that decisions about the future consider humans’ diverse relationships with nature.</p>
<p>Such decisions can be supported by visions, scenarios and pathways that are collectively developed and made accessible to all interested stakeholders. New types of globally relevant scenarios are urgently needed to show what could be achieved and catalyse the interventions needed to move towards these more desirable futures.</p>
<p>A starting point can be registering as a stakeholder on the IPBES portal: <a href="https://ipbes.net/">https://ipbes.net/</a>. Building a better future requires everyone’s buy-in. The scientific community is starting to realise how important it is to listen to voices from the ground. Without these voices, targets for the planet will remain out of reach.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/146594/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Laura Pereira does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>What are the visions that reflect the diverse values that nature holds for people?Laura Pereira, Researcher/Lecturer at the Centre for Complex Systems in Transition, Stellenbosch UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/881922018-02-12T14:58:41Z2018-02-12T14:58:41ZWhy tackling sexual violence is key to South Africa’s decolonisation project<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/205473/original/file-20180208-180829-14sgqi3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">South Africa has been dubbed "the rape capital of the world".</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Siphiwe Sibeko</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Horrific incidences of rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment are so common in South Africa that it has been dubbed the “<a href="https://www.news24.com/MyNews24/The-Rape-Capital-of-the-World-20140821">rape capital of the world</a>”. Yet these issues have been curiously neglected in the country’s politics.</p>
<p>In South African political discourse, transforming race relations is prioritised over the transformation of gender relations. Race and gender are regarded as two separate projects, and improving race relations in the aftermath of apartheid and colonialism is presented as more pressing than tackling gender issues.</p>
<p>But, as South African feminist scholar <a href="https://scholar.google.co.za/citations?user=SMB9nJoAAAAJ&hl=en">Shireen Hassim</a> argues, the country is bedevilled by a kind of race discourse which silences and displaces feminist attempts to discuss the workings of gender power politics. At the same time, she argues, political power is gendered and masculinised in ways that remain unacknowledged.</p>
<p>Many feminist scholars have shown that gender is deeply intertwined with the colonial project’s racism. Their research suggests that neither the logic nor the effects of racism within colonial and post-colonial contexts can be properly grasped without clearly understanding the gender dimension.</p>
<p>In a <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1350506817732589">recently published paper</a> a colleague and I focused particularly on the work of three such scholars: Nigeria’s <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Invention-Women-African-Western-Discourses/dp/0816624410">Oyèrónké Oyĕwùmí</a>, a sociologist; Argentinian philosopher <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=ciTuCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA49&lpg=PA49&dq=sociologist;+Argentinian+philosopher+Maria+Lugones&source=bl&ots=KuE1GyTiIQ&sig=QgwlW_qBo3FvLZx93TULGe2-gPM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwihmtuh_p_ZAhVYOMAKHTMEDJoQ6AEILTAB#v=onepage&q=sociologist%3B%20Argentinian%20philosopher%20Maria%20Lugones&f=false">Maria Lugones</a>; and South African feminist scholar <a href="http://www.jacana.co.za/mfbooks-joburg/rape-a-south-african-nightmare-detail">Pumla Dineo Gqola</a>. </p>
<p>They argue in different ways that the sexual exploitation and objectification of black women by colonial powers and the demonisation of black male sexuality as bestial were central to the colonial project. Read together, their work shows that these constructions of black sexuality where not merely a historical aberration or mistake. They were key to the workings of colonial power. And that logic persists in the postcolony.</p>
<h2>Sex and the colonial project</h2>
<p>The Western distinction between masculine and feminine, Lugones <a href="http://www.jstor.org.ez.sun.ac.za/stable/4640051">writes</a>, served as a mark of civilisation for colonisers. Becoming “civilised” meant internalising this distinction, its concomitant norms and values. </p>
<p>The gender configurations and societal structures of the colonised did not conform to western gender norms. In terms of colonial logic this served as “evidence” of the colonised people’s bestiality and inferiority. It meant they needed to be “saved” by western conquest. </p>
<p>In her book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Invention-Women-African-Western-Discourses/dp/0816624410"><em>The Invention of Women</em></a> Oyĕwùmí detailed how the British colonial administration in Yorùbáland, Nigeria, posited men’s superiority over woman. Administrators reduced and homogenised women into an identifiable, clearly demarcated and predetermined legal, social and biological category. This was defined by their anatomy and meant they were always subordinated to men. </p>
<p>The colonisers introduced the category “woman”. This undermined the fact that females in precolonial Yorùbá society had multiple identities that were neither gendered nor linked to their female anatomy. These could include farmer, hunter, mother, cook, warrior, ruler – “all in one body”. Oyĕwùmí writes that the creation of (Yorùbá) “woman” as a category was one of the colonial state’s very first “accomplishments” in Yorùbáland.</p>
<p>So Lugones’ and Oyĕwùmí’s work shows in different and complementary ways that the process of “civilising the native” was not only a racial one. It was also deeply gendered. The striking implication is that issues of sexuality in a post-colonial society like South Africa cannot be separated from race and culture, and vice versa.</p>
<h2>Lasting consequences</h2>
<p>In line with these arguments, <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com.ez.sun.ac.za/doi/full/10.1177/1350506817732589">I contend</a> that South Africa’s sexual violence problem can also be framed as a central part of the colonial legacy. Addressing this crisis, then, should be understood as a top priority for any serious decolonisation agenda.</p>
<p>One of Gqola’s arguments is particularly relevant here. She explains that black male sexuality is demonised through the colonial gaze as bestial and predatory. Black female sexuality is structured as its counterpart. Black women are always already raped and therefore paradoxically “unrapeable” both in law and in social understanding. </p>
<p>In other words, in the colony the sexuality of the colonised people was constructed so that nothing which was done to a black woman would be classified as rape. There were two reasons for this. Firstly, black women were portrayed as being so primitively sexual that no sexual advances were unwelcome. And, because black men were demonised as “natural rapists”, this meant black women were always <em>already</em> raped, by black men.</p>
<p>This legacy endures in South Africa. Today rape is normalised. It’s not taken seriously by society and it is left mostly <a href="http://www.heraldlive.co.za/news/2017/10/30/8-conviction-rate-disturbing-justice-system-fails-rape-victims/">unpunished by the criminal justice system</a>.</p>
<h2>Decolonisation and addressing sexual violence</h2>
<p>Scholars like Lugones, Oyĕwùmí and Gqola teach us that the colonial logic of sub-human sexual categorisation permeates and thoroughly infuses the ongoing colonial production of racial hierarchies. </p>
<p>The decolonisation of South African society requires sexual violence to be recognised and approached as a key aspect of the colony. It must be viewed as a problem that sits at the heart of colonial denigration, exploitation and abjection of the racialised body.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/88192/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Azille Coetzee receives funding from the SARChi Chair in Gender Politics, Stellenbosch University.</span></em></p>South Africa has tended to prioritise race relations over gender relations since formal apartheid ended.Azille Coetzee, Postdoctoral fellow, SARChi Chair in Gender politics, Stellenbosch UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/846202017-09-27T17:03:03Z2017-09-27T17:03:03ZEconomic inequality lies behind growing calls for secession in Nigeria<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187777/original/file-20170927-24154-141spub.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Women carry goods across a makeshift bridge in the Ilaje slum in Lagos. Widening inequality is fuelling tensions across Nigeria.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Finbarr O'Reilly</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The rise of ethnic and religious nationalism in Nigeria in the last decade has led to such high levels of tension that it’s prompted people to ask if it will <a href="https://www.pri.org/stories/2014-03-10/roots-nigerias-religious-and-ethnic-conflict">survive as a country</a>. Or if Nigeria is on the brink of another <a href="http://dailypost.ng/2017/09/03/nigerian-christians-warn-another-civil-war/">civil war</a>. </p>
<p>What’s behind the growing tensions is <a href="https://www.oxfam.org/en/even-it-nigeria/nigeria-extreme-inequality-numbers">unequal</a> distribution of the country’s wealth. Inequality has caused mistrust among ethnic groups. This, in turn, has led to conflict and violence. </p>
<p>Nigeria has in fact been at war with itself for some time – a war that has become intensified in the last two decades. </p>
<p>A number of events illustrate this. For instance, militancy in the oil rich Niger Delta region started after the 2003 general elections where arms and ammunition were purchased by some politicians and handed to young people in an attempt to influence the elections. But after the elections, many young Nigerians, angered by high rates of unemployment, turned the weapons against their sponsors and the <a href="http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/nigerias-oil-war-who-are-niger-delta-militants-1520580link">Nigerian state</a>. </p>
<p>Another example is the role played by the Oodua Peoples Congress, a group that advocated for an autonomous region for the Yoruba speaking southwest Nigeria. The congress started its agitation in 1994, a year after the annulment of the 1993 presidential election won by M.K.O Abiola, a member of the Yoruba ethnic group. Their dominant message was the alleged marginalisation of the <a href="https://www.hrw.org/report/2003/02/28/oodua-peoples-congress-opc/fighting-violence-violence">Yoruba ethnic group</a>.</p>
<p>And in 2009 the Boko Haram insurgency erupted after <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2009/aug/06/mohammed-yusuf-boko-haram-nigeria">the brutal murder</a> of Mohammed Yusuf, an Islamic cleric based in Maiduguri who had started a movement seven years earlier to push for an end to corruption and action against inequality. He also supported Islamic practices in the northeast region of Nigeria. Yusuf was arrested by the police and died in custody in 2009. Many members of his sect immediately staged a peaceful protest. Protests later became violent when they started targeting police offices and police posts across the North. </p>
<p>Now there is a resurgence of opposition in Biafra. It echoes back to 1967 when the then military governor of the Eastern region of Nigeria, Col. Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu declared the Igbo speaking East independent from Nigeria. This followed Igbos in the North being targeted after the first military coup d'etat that ended Nigeria’s first republic. The 1966 coup, mostly led by military officers from the Igbo speaking east of Nigeria, was perceived by many in the North to have specifically targeted and killed many Hausa/Fulani politicians from the Northern region. </p>
<p>Economic inequality cannot be separated from the root of all these developments. Nigerians are frustrated because they can see <a href="https://www.oxfam.org/en/even-it-nigeria/nigeria-extreme-inequality-numbers">economic inequality growing at a faster pace than ever before</a> and no one seems to be doing anything about it. </p>
<p>Will these agitations lead to an outright war in the scale of the 1960s civil war? There is no categorical answer to that. But I doubt that there will be another civil war on the scale of 1967-1970, although there may be large scale violence. </p>
<h2>A history of violence</h2>
<p>Violence has always been part of the history of economic and political marginalisation in Nigeria. </p>
<p>Examples can be drawn from the mass violence that led to the 1967-70 civil war as well as the ethno-religious violence of the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and the 2000s. These included the <a href="https://www.onwar.com/aced/chrono/c1900s/yr90/fnigeria1992.htm">Zango Kataf conflict</a>, <a href="https://rlp.hds.harvard.edu/faq/maitatsine-riots">Maitatsine riots</a> in the North between 1980 and 1985, the Agbekoya farmers uprising in the West 1968-70, the first iteration of the resurgence of Biafra by the Ralph Uwazuruike-led <a href="https://www.ecoi.net/local_link/31666/262387_de.html">Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra in 2000</a> and the national protests against the annulment of the June 12, 1993 <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1993/07/07/world/rioting-in-nigeria-kills-at-least-11.html?mcubz=1">presidential election</a> won by Chief M.K.O. Abiola. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187684/original/file-20170926-19342-1843y70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187684/original/file-20170926-19342-1843y70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187684/original/file-20170926-19342-1843y70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187684/original/file-20170926-19342-1843y70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187684/original/file-20170926-19342-1843y70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187684/original/file-20170926-19342-1843y70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187684/original/file-20170926-19342-1843y70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A 2003 picture of current Nigeria President Muhammadu Buhari with Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu who led the failed Biafran secessionist war in the 60s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">REUTERS/Howard Burditt</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Many of these mass actions started as protests against perceived injustice. But they were aggravated by the forceful response of the Nigerian government. The protests all paralysed state activities. But none threatened the survival of the Nigerian state more than the oil related conflicts in the Niger Delta. </p>
<p>Beginning with the state murder of Niger Delta rights activist <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1993/07/07/world/rioting-in-nigeria-kills-at-least-11.html?mcubz=1">Ken Saro Wiwa in November 1995</a> and crystallising in the insurgency against oil corporations and the state, protest action in the Niger Delta have affected the production and sale of oil which is the mainstay of the <a href="http://www.africafocus.org/docs06/nig0608.php">Nigerian economy</a>.</p>
<h2>How Nigeria got here</h2>
<p>The resurgence of ethno-religious protests in Nigeria can be traced to the fact that wealth circulates among a small group of elites. Although they come from all ethnic and religious <a href="https://economicconfidential.com/editors-pick/12-people-who-control-nigerias-economy/">groups</a>, they resort to fanning ethno-religious sentiments when they feel there’s a threat to their wealth. Cries of marginalisation becomes the dominant cry when they’re out of power. </p>
<p>The election of President Muhammadu Buhari in 2015, triggered new tensions. This is because he is considered a member of the Northern elite. Immediately after his election protests began supporting self-determination or secession by various groups from the South. These included the <a href="http://dailypost.ng/2017/09/23/biafra-police-dare-ipob-members-protest/">Indigenous People of Biafra</a> in the South East as well as groups such as the <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2016/05/20/niger-delta-avengers-who-they-are-and-what-they-want.html">Niger Delta Avengers in the South-South</a>. </p>
<p>Control of Nigeria’s oil resources in the Niger Delta always comes into the mix. Recent clashes involving the Biafra group in Port Harcourt – capital city of oil rich Rivers State – must be understood in that context. It is no surprise that once again, the Niger Delta is at the heart of the current clamour for secession just as it was between 1966 and 1970 when oil extraction started taking root in Nigeria. </p>
<p>But there are important differences between today’s protests and those staged earlier in Nigeria’s history. The main ones include the fact that people are mobilised differently, and the way in which information is disseminated and consumed. </p>
<p>News travel faster than it used to and unfounded rumours spread like wildfire. Fuelling the tensions is the fact that hate speech is rife. The state is as guilty as the agitators. Voices of reason and objective analysis are lost in the noise especially now that everyone with a smart phone has become a ‘journalist’. In the confusion, the road to anarchy looms large over Nigeria. </p>
<h2>What’s to be done</h2>
<p>An inclusive economic and political system is the only solution. The current public discourse is focused on political restructuring along ethnic lines. The calls for a political arrangement where major ethnic groups will have control over their geographical areas as well as resources therein might help. The danger is that rather than unify Nigeria, it would further divide the country along <a href="http://leadership.ng/2017/06/30/politics-intrigues-behind-restructuring-debate/">ethnic and religious lines</a>.</p>
<p>What’s missing in the conversation is the fact that the environment for violence and oppression of most Nigerians has come about because of the way in which the country’s economy is structured. The elitist economy cuts across all ethnic groups. The disenfranchisement, marginalisation and exploitation defy ethnic colouration. </p>
<p>For restructuring to be meaningful, Nigeria must create an inclusive economic and political system where ethnic and religious affiliation will no longer be a defining factor in economic and political participation. What Nigerians need, and are clamouring for, is a country that will accommodate them regardless of ethnic or religious creed. Political, religious and ethnic tolerance is the key to economic and political success, therefore economic and political inclusivity must account for greater tolerance for it to be effective.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/84620/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Omolade Adunbi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Protests are raising tensions in Africa’s most populous country, with agitators and federal troops clashing on the streets. But is Nigeria on the brink of another civil war?Omolade Adunbi, Associate Professor of Afroamerican and African Studies, University of MichiganLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.