Chieftaincy and the State in Abacha's Nigeria

Chieftaincy and the State in Abacha's Nigeria

Dr. Insa Nolte
(University of Birmingham, UK)

The lecture investigates the relationship between chieftaincy and the state in modern Nigeria. It focuses on the politics and mythical history of kings in the Yoruba city of Abeokuta. During the 1990s, the royal politics of Abeokuta became very competitive and even violent. At the same time they drew heavily on different versions of mythical history. One reason for this lies in the traditional discourse of Yoruba kingship, in which a king's legitimacy can be discussed in terms of his mythical origin. However, the continued political relevance and even volatility of this traditional discourse in the 1990s was related to the nature of the Nigerian state, in which successive military governments seeking legitimacy closely associated royal and chiefly status with political power.

After a first degree in economics at the FU Berlin, Insa Nolte completed a PhD on 'Chieftaincy and Politics in Ijebu-Remo, Nigeria' at the Centre of West African Studies (CWAS) at the University of Birmingham, UK. In 2000-2001 she was a Junior Research Fellow at St Antony's College, Oxford, and afterwards she returned to CWAS as a lecturer. She is currently leading an ESRC-sponsored research project on Yoruba ethnic nationalism in Southwest Nigeria.