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Understanding the Crisis in Modern Nigerian Historiography1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2014

A. O. Adeoye
A. O. Adeoye*
Affiliation:
Bendel State University
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Extract

The method of exposition adopted in this essay is one which divides the discussion into three concentric circles and proceeds accordingly. Firstly, we give a brief historical sketch of the antecedents. This sets the scene for the next stage, where we investigate the nature of the crisis and the reasons for it. Finally, attention is especially drawn to the materialist critique of orthodox historiography in order to bring into relief the ideological dimensions of the problem. On the whole, in this study we have drawn generously from ideas developed in works dealing generally with African historiography, even though this essay is specific to the Nigerian social formation.

Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 19 , 1992 , pp. 1 - 11
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1992

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Footnotes

1.

Focus here is on the historiography championed by professionallytrained historians.

References

Notes

2. At Ibadan, Zaria, Nsukka, Ife, Lagos, and Benin, which were established before, and a few years after, independence. Several others have since been established.

3. The Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria (JHSN).

4. As witnessed by the couple of theses and several articles devoted to it. See, for example, Hess, R. A., “Perspectives of Nigerian Historiography, 1875-1971: The Historians of Modern Nigeria” (Ph.D., Howard University, 1972)Google Scholar; Kapteijns, L., “African Historiography Written by Africans, 1955-1973: The Nigerian Case” (Ph.D., Free University of Amsterdam, 1977)Google Scholar; Ajayi, J. F. Ade, “A Critique of Themes Preferred by Nigerian Historians,” JHSN 10 (1980): 33–39Google Scholar; Ikime, O., Through Changing Scenes: Nigerian History Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (Inaugural Lecture, University of Ibadan, 1979)Google Scholar; Saulawa, A.M., “A History of Historical Writings in Nigeria Since 1960 AD,” Savanna 10 (1989).Google Scholar

5. This is attested by the numerous works devoted to the Ibadan School of History. See Afigbo, A. E., “The Flame of History Blazing at Ibadan,” JHSN 8 (1975):9–17Google Scholar; Omer-Cooper, J. D., “The Contribution of the University of Ibadan to the Spread of the Study and Teaching of African History Within Africa,” JHSN 10 (1980):23–31Google Scholar; Omolewa, M. “The Education Factor in the Emergence of the Modern Profession of the Historian in Nigeria, 1926-56,” JHSN 10 (1980):41–62Google Scholar; Lovejoy, P. E., “Nigeria: The Ibadan School and Its Critics” in Jewsiewicki, B. and Newbury, D., eds., African Historiographies (Beverly Hills, 1986), 197–205Google Scholar; Ogunsola, , “ The History of the History Department, University of Ibadan” (B. A. long essay, University of Ibadan, 1986)Google Scholar; Taiwo, Adegboyega, “The Impact of the Ibadan School of History on Nigerian Historiography, 1960-1975” (M.A., University of Lagos, 1987).Google Scholar

6. On this collaboration see Alagoa, E. J., “Nigerian Academic Historians” in Jewsiewicki, /Newbury, , African Historiographies, 189–96.Google Scholar

7. Uya, O. E., “Trends and Perspectives in African History” in Uya, O. E. and Erim, E., eds., Perspectives and Methods of Studying African History (Enugu, 1984), 1–9.Google Scholar

8. Kapteijns, “African Historiography.”

9. Otherwise known as the “continuity thesis,” intended to establish a continuum between the past and the present which colonial rule had broken; to demonstrate the autonomy and originality of African civilization in order to disprove the notion of passivity and vindicate African capacity for self-government. Given this framework, the colonial era is seen as a mere episode or interlude, since it is considered to be “relatively short, too short, to have any significant or lasting impact on Africa” (Taiwo, “Impact,” quoting an interview with J. F. Ade Ajayi, the leading exponent of the continuity thesis). The Diopist tradition is derived from Diop's, Cheikh Anta trenchantly argued book, African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality? (New York, 1974).Google Scholar

10. First used by Hopkins to imply a kind of narcissism that portrays a “golden age” image of precolonial Africa, emphasizing stability, harmony, and classlessness; see Hopkins, A. G., An Economic History of West Africa (London, 1973), 10.Google Scholar

11. Which glorified the neocolonial state as the culmination of a long evolutionary trend, thus implicitly legitimizing the nationalist bourgeoisie that inherited power from the colonialists. See Bernstein, H. and Depelchin, J., “The Object of African History: A Materialist Perspective,” HA 5 (1978): 1–19Google Scholar; 6 (1979): 14-43.

12. Mamdani, M., “Project Outline,” CODESRIA Bulletin, 8/2 (1987).Google Scholar

13. I have generously relied on Kapteijns in this section. See Kapteijns, “African Historiography,” part 2, for a classification and elucidation of the main texts.

14. Ibid., 106-09, 116-19.

15. Temu, A. and Swai, B., Historians and Africanist History: A Critique (London, 1981) esp. chapter 1Google Scholar; Ranger, T. O., “Towards a Usable African Past” in Fyfe, C., ed., African Studies Since 1945 (London, 1975), 17–30.Google Scholar

16. Ibid.

17. Swai, B., “The State of African History: Social Responsibility of the Coming Generation of African Historians” (paper presented at the 34th Annual Congress of the Historical Society of Nigeria, 1989), 1–2.Google Scholar

18. Temu/Swai, Historians, passim.

19. Kapteijns, , “African Historiography,” 122.Google Scholar

20. Ibid., 123.

21. Marx, Karl and Engels, Friedrich, The German Ideology (Moscow, 1976), 63.Google Scholar

22. Lovejoy, , “Ibadan History,” 201–02.Google Scholar

23. Ajayi, J. F. Ade, “In Search of Relevance in the Humanities in Africa” FESTAC Colloquium (1977).Google Scholar See also his “Critique.”

24. Ibid., 8.

25. Ayandele, E. A., “How Truly Nigerian is Our Nigerian History?” African Notes 5/2 (1969):19–35.Google Scholar

26. Ayandele, E. A., “The Task Before Nigerian Historians Today,” JHSN 9/4 (1979):1–13.Google Scholar

27. Afigbo, A. E., “Some Thoughts on the Teaching of History in Nigeria,” Ikenga 2/2 (1973):4.Google Scholar But Afigbo seems to have repudiated this position when he argued years later that history was neither in a state of decline nor of neglect. See his “History and National Development: The Case of Nigeria,” (paper presented at the 32nd Congress of the Historical Society of Nigeria, Jos, 1987).Google Scholar

28. Ikime, , Through Changing Scenes, 6–9, 18.Google Scholar

29. A distinction between schematic and unschematic social history is made by Hecht, J., “Social History,” International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (18 vols.: New York, 1968–1879), 6:455–62.Google Scholar

30. Nzimiro, Ikenna, The Crisis in the Social Sciences: The Nigerian Situation (Oguta, 1986), 71.Google Scholar Here Nzimiro is referring to an aspect of the poverty in Nigerian historiography generally.

31. As expressed in another context by Jewsiewicki, Bogumil, “Introduction” in Jewsiewicki, /Newbury, , African Historiographies, 12.Google Scholar

32. Ajayi, , “Critique,” 38–39.Google Scholar

33. Afigbo, A. E., The Poverty of African Historiograpy (Lagos, 1977).Google Scholar

34. Alagoa, E. J., The Python's Eye: The Past in the Living Present (Inaugural lecture I, University of Port Harcourt, 1981), 22Google Scholar; also his “Methodology in Nigerian Historiography,” JHSN 10 (1980):133Google Scholar; and “Nigerian Academic Historians,” 195.

35. Ajayi, “In Search of Relevance.”

36. Ayandele, , “Task,” 2.Google Scholar

37. Ibid., 1-5, 11-13.

38. Afigbo.

39. In the sense used by Waterman, P., “On Radicalism in African Studies” in Gutkind, P. W. C. and Waterman, P., eds., African Social Studies: A Radical Reader (London, 1977), 1–17.Google Scholar

40. Swai, , “State of African History,” 8–12.Google Scholar

41. Temu/Swai, Historians, chapter 5; Bernstein/Depelchin, “Object of African History.”

42. This is Peel's main criticism of the monographs done under the Ibadan History Series. See Peel, J. D. Y., Ijeshas and Nigerians: the Incorporation of a Yoruba Kingdom, 1890s-1970s (Cambridge, 1983).Google Scholar

43. Swai, B., “National History Yes. But of What Sort? A Survey of Some Objectivist Positions and Materialist Criticisms of African Nationalist History” (paper presented at the 33rd Congress of the Historical Society of Nigeria, Kano, 1988), 8.Google Scholar For a conception of relevant social research from the point of view of the radical paradigm see Waterman, “On Radicalism.”

44. Ranger, “Usable African Past.”

45. Temu, /Swai, , Historians, 10.Google Scholar

46. See, for instance, Nzimiro, Crisis; Plumb, J. H., ed., Crisis in the Humanities (Harmondsworth, 1970)Google Scholar; Mills, C. Wright, The Sociological Imagination (Harmondsworth, 1970)Google Scholar; Ake, C., Social Science as Imperialism (Ibadan, 1978)Google Scholar; and Rorty, Richard, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton, 1980).Google Scholar