1 00:00:00,420 --> 00:00:13,950 We are having posting the one of the greatest teachers of all of Africa in Oxford, 2 00:00:13,950 --> 00:00:18,990 Professor Gavin Williams is a teacher of Teach US, Professor Professor Sir. 3 00:00:18,990 --> 00:00:25,350 There are so many things to say about him that I would not bother to introduce him because I know you all know him. 4 00:00:25,350 --> 00:00:33,480 But his book, which is one of the books that have defined the study of Nigeria, remember reading this in graduate school? 5 00:00:33,480 --> 00:00:37,980 I do a search for students that they are not much of. 6 00:00:37,980 --> 00:00:45,090 Not much of what I read an apology. I got to remember only very, very few things about about it now, 7 00:00:45,090 --> 00:00:55,110 but I remember very well that he was one of the key text that was used in Ibadan to teach us about status society in in Nigeria. 8 00:00:55,110 --> 00:01:00,930 So I'm quite happy that the new edition has been published with a new chapter in it. 9 00:01:00,930 --> 00:01:05,700 So we would introduce our colleague who will be reviewed. 10 00:01:05,700 --> 00:01:11,250 We'll be reviewing the book today. Dr Portia Roelof is an alum of Oxford. 11 00:01:11,250 --> 00:01:25,620 She studied PBE here in Queens College so many years ago and took a moustache from a source and a Ph.D. from King's College. 12 00:01:25,620 --> 00:01:31,920 She was recently a fellow at the LSC in the Department of International Development, 13 00:01:31,920 --> 00:01:43,920 and she just started the Clement Fulford Junior Research Fellowship in Politics and Political Theory S.A. College this October, just this month. 14 00:01:43,920 --> 00:01:49,020 So we are happy to welcome Portia, who would review the book. 15 00:01:49,020 --> 00:01:57,000 But first, we want to hear from the author about the experience of publishing a new edition of the book before Portia would review the book. 16 00:01:57,000 --> 00:02:02,770 And then we'll hear from his response to the review, and then we'll throw it open for discussion. 17 00:02:02,770 --> 00:02:20,250 So I please can you join me in welcoming were only a few copies available of the book, so I suggest that it simply be sent round. 18 00:02:20,250 --> 00:02:29,460 There are sufficient for them to be sent round. At least six people can see what what it looks like. 19 00:02:29,460 --> 00:02:35,850 Let me explain how this book came to be produced in 1980, 20 00:02:35,850 --> 00:02:44,550 at the suggestion of a Nigerian publisher I published four essay is which were all written in the 21 00:02:44,550 --> 00:03:01,920 1970s and represent my thinking about the literature of that period on the political economy, 22 00:03:01,920 --> 00:03:09,360 politics, sociology of Ibadan of Nigeria in that period. 23 00:03:09,360 --> 00:03:14,730 So that in that sense, the book is a book about a generation. 24 00:03:14,730 --> 00:03:27,480 It's about a generation of people writing about Nigeria in that period and coming after an earlier generation of scholars. 25 00:03:27,480 --> 00:03:35,590 I say in the book that basically putting it simply, we thought our work was an advance on this. 26 00:03:35,590 --> 00:03:44,880 Actually, I no longer hold that view. I think that much of the work of authors in the 1960s, 27 00:03:44,880 --> 00:03:58,920 like Richard Sklar can post JP Mackintosh were worked on politics, which we never really could succeed in surpassing. 28 00:03:58,920 --> 00:04:09,420 As I say, what the book is about is what I had to say in the 1970s in the context of debates and discussions with other colleagues, 29 00:04:09,420 --> 00:04:19,350 one of whom is one of whom is you're writing about and trying to interpret Nigeria from that period. 30 00:04:19,350 --> 00:04:28,440 How this book came to be written is that in Niger that it was first published in 1980. 31 00:04:28,440 --> 00:04:45,330 In 2010, I gave a lecture at the University of Ibadan, and Professor Odiegwu Agbaji said, I must lecture on state and society in Nigeria revisited. 32 00:04:45,330 --> 00:04:50,800 And I said, Look, I think I no longer study in Nigeria. 33 00:04:50,800 --> 00:04:57,090 The last thing I ever wrote on Nigeria was written in 1995. 34 00:04:57,090 --> 00:05:00,400 I don't actually know anything about Nigeria. 35 00:05:00,400 --> 00:05:13,510 At least over the subsequent 15 years, that's slightly untrue, because I could borrow, as you see from the work of many of my graduate students. 36 00:05:13,510 --> 00:05:20,480 He said he did know a lot about Nigeria. 37 00:05:20,480 --> 00:05:33,560 Therefore, I took the lecture I gave on that occasion, I revised it and rethought some of the themes which are discussed there, 38 00:05:33,560 --> 00:05:45,980 and particularly themes which had not really appeared in the first edition, notably discussions of religion and ethnicity. 39 00:05:45,980 --> 00:06:00,050 And it suggests that it may be helpful if I simply go through the contents of the first book, so I'll do that very briefly. 40 00:06:00,050 --> 00:06:09,800 The first chapter is called Ideas of Development. It can both be summarised in three words following Henry Ford's long history. 41 00:06:09,800 --> 00:06:12,830 Development is bunk. 42 00:06:12,830 --> 00:06:27,410 The next is on the political economy of Nigeria, which is historical account of the neo colonial and colonial political economies. 43 00:06:27,410 --> 00:06:32,660 As I interpreted them, I said I wouldn't choose the language of Neo anything. 44 00:06:32,660 --> 00:06:46,130 No. And of then the character of the Nigerian political economy and the attempt to make. 45 00:06:46,130 --> 00:06:58,760 An attempt to produce a credible a credible account of Nigeria through a lens of an intellectual perspective, 46 00:06:58,760 --> 00:07:10,070 which place that history within a context of the relations between politics and economics. 47 00:07:10,070 --> 00:07:16,040 It links, I think, to the intellectual context of those of us. 48 00:07:16,040 --> 00:07:22,310 Robin Cohen included who founded the review of African political economy. 49 00:07:22,310 --> 00:07:27,320 The next chapter is entitled Politics in Nigeria. 50 00:07:27,320 --> 00:07:33,470 I can summarise it simply straightforwardly from the text. 51 00:07:33,470 --> 00:07:38,540 Any study of politics must examine the allocation of scarce resources, 52 00:07:38,540 --> 00:07:48,090 the determination of public policy and the relation of conflicts amongst the classes. 53 00:07:48,090 --> 00:07:58,830 The subsequent one for which which has, I think, gained some considerable attention is a study of the political economy, 54 00:07:58,830 --> 00:08:12,930 the political consciousness of the poor in Ibadan and looks both at the urban poor and at the rural society, 55 00:08:12,930 --> 00:08:30,180 particularly a photo of cocoa farmers who engaged at that time in the Agbekoya Rebellion Agbekoya meeting the farmers rely on suffering. 56 00:08:30,180 --> 00:08:43,650 The classic work on the subject is Christopher Bell's book The Poor The Political History of the Nigerian Peasantry. 57 00:08:43,650 --> 00:08:55,590 Contrary to the title, he and I also wrote together, bringing out joint work together in the volume Nigeria economy and society. 58 00:08:55,590 --> 00:09:01,020 A interesting article has been written on the subject, but again, 59 00:09:01,020 --> 00:09:14,160 you're wrong and there is a very good I don't know whether it's an whether it's a Nollywood film of the Agbekoya. 60 00:09:14,160 --> 00:09:22,290 I think if you type it in online, you'll get the film, which is. 61 00:09:22,290 --> 00:09:39,080 That represents the drama very well, and I think allowing for a certain dramatic licence is a very accurate account of the events. 62 00:09:39,080 --> 00:09:46,130 Finally, I looked at ideologies of economic development. 63 00:09:46,130 --> 00:09:59,160 My concern was to try to understand the ideological foundation of the economic development analysis and practise of that period. 64 00:09:59,160 --> 00:10:07,610 That analysis and practise being shaped very much by the Michigan State University School and very much, 65 00:10:07,610 --> 00:10:22,130 I think, in terms of an imposition of policies foundered in the. 66 00:10:22,130 --> 00:10:29,980 Theoretical assumptions, at least of what came to be known as neoclassical economy by all, 67 00:10:29,980 --> 00:10:45,550 by ideology, I meant the assumptions with which people think rather than sets of goals and values. 68 00:10:45,550 --> 00:10:53,590 As for the last chapter, I've already given you an account of how it came to be written, 69 00:10:53,590 --> 00:11:08,850 and in many ways that is perhaps the chapter which is most interesting or important to discuss. 70 00:11:08,850 --> 00:11:22,080 OK, thank you. The question is, how can I find him at the back of my line-up for those who can stand up? 71 00:11:22,080 --> 00:11:28,980 Thank you very much to the African Studies Centre for inviting me to L.A. to listen Julia, 72 00:11:28,980 --> 00:11:37,770 the organisers, to St. Anthony's College for hosting it and to govern for inviting me to review his book. 73 00:11:37,770 --> 00:11:46,100 About 10 years ago, I was an undergraduate here studying under governance, and so it really feels like a huge honour to be kind of given this, 74 00:11:46,100 --> 00:11:54,360 this chance to kind of speak back to to the what really is the canon now in Nigerian politics. 75 00:11:54,360 --> 00:12:01,170 Just a couple of comments on that kind of genealogy in which I feel really happy to be located. 76 00:12:01,170 --> 00:12:07,170 Before I kind of got into the review of the book, first of all, in a tiny amendment to Wiley's bio of me, 77 00:12:07,170 --> 00:12:12,030 I actually did my Ph.D., l'Asie with Kate Mara, who is here, and so I just went to there. 78 00:12:12,030 --> 00:12:19,620 It's not at King's. Yeah. And that is that is another kind of I think, yeah, 79 00:12:19,620 --> 00:12:25,530 the kind of the sense of a developing genealogy of scholars from and through Oxford on Nigerian 80 00:12:25,530 --> 00:12:29,710 studies is is something that kind of comes out of a lot of the work that's coming out at the moment. 81 00:12:29,710 --> 00:12:36,270 It's very collaborative. But also I kind of just looking back on it today thinking I was so lucky that I got 82 00:12:36,270 --> 00:12:40,530 to study here for my undergraduate and that was my first initiation to studying 83 00:12:40,530 --> 00:12:48,630 the politics of countries in Africa because I really I take my armies in vacation 84 00:12:48,630 --> 00:12:53,530 to try and study African politics in a way that neither exercises nor analyses it. 85 00:12:53,530 --> 00:12:58,240 And I really think that was what was happening in the kind of syllabus and curriculum that we dealt with. 86 00:12:58,240 --> 00:13:08,490 That was really kind of in some ways, it predated a lot of the kind of neo patrimonial ISM literature that came out of the 1990s and 2000s, 87 00:13:08,490 --> 00:13:12,960 which was very much what I then encountered when I left and I did a master's in African politics. 88 00:13:12,960 --> 00:13:17,010 So I felt like I was really lucky to have this much more grounded, realistic, 89 00:13:17,010 --> 00:13:21,480 kind of non ideological study of African politics to kind of ground me in before I 90 00:13:21,480 --> 00:13:26,130 went out and kind of into the world and kind of looked at the broader electorate. 91 00:13:26,130 --> 00:13:33,090 So that was very valuable in terms of reviewing this book. 92 00:13:33,090 --> 00:13:37,470 Gavin said, Please feel free to be critical. 93 00:13:37,470 --> 00:13:45,690 And I don't know if I'm going to be critical, but I'm hoping that I can replace the frankness of criticism with the frankness of confusion. 94 00:13:45,690 --> 00:13:48,060 And so reading this book, 95 00:13:48,060 --> 00:13:56,550 State and Society in Nigeria that was entirely written before I Was Even Born does present some aspects of kind of confusion and. 96 00:13:56,550 --> 00:14:00,370 And I try to work through in reading the book and making sense of it. 97 00:14:00,370 --> 00:14:03,840 And so so that's what I'm going to present now. 98 00:14:03,840 --> 00:14:09,750 So I'm going to start with the kind of the the balance and the tension between transparency and confusion. 99 00:14:09,750 --> 00:14:15,690 I think you get in that kind of form in the structure of the book and reading it from Oxford in 2019. 100 00:14:15,690 --> 00:14:19,440 And then I'm going to try and make sense of some of these confusions by talking about the interplay of 101 00:14:19,440 --> 00:14:24,400 possibility and frustration that I think really runs through the book in the study of Nigeria at the time. 102 00:14:24,400 --> 00:14:29,190 And so first of all, the the transparency. 103 00:14:29,190 --> 00:14:34,290 So this book, I don't know if it came across in governance kind of summary, 104 00:14:34,290 --> 00:14:40,950 but it really is the most amazing document of thinking and progress of the revisions. 105 00:14:40,950 --> 00:14:46,650 The reconsiderations, the edits that go into a body of scholarly work so often edited out. 106 00:14:46,650 --> 00:14:50,910 So I think even and I think there's actually more to this than governance lets on. 107 00:14:50,910 --> 00:14:58,530 So we start with an introduction. It's written in 1980 after the subsequent five essays. 108 00:14:58,530 --> 00:15:08,130 We then have two essays on politics and political economy in Nigeria, which, as far as I understand, were written in 1976 and 1977. 109 00:15:08,130 --> 00:15:12,090 There's also then an addendum to those first two essays. 110 00:15:12,090 --> 00:15:19,560 So essay for written in 1979, applying the insights of those two chapters to the 1979 election. 111 00:15:19,560 --> 00:15:26,550 So we already have some looking back, some revision, some changing of of the position, some kind of self-criticism. 112 00:15:26,550 --> 00:15:37,590 We then have two further essays Rural Development and No Political Consciousness in Ibadan and Ideology in Rural Development, 113 00:15:37,590 --> 00:15:43,260 written in 1972 and 1973. So they actually predate the earlier essays in the book. 114 00:15:43,260 --> 00:15:49,320 Then we have the conclusion written in 2010, which is again updated in 2016. 115 00:15:49,320 --> 00:15:56,460 So in terms of kind of showing you are working and leaving of breadcrumbs for the readers to follow and to situate their work, 116 00:15:56,460 --> 00:16:01,260 it's tremendously helpful and coming to the work kind of 40 years later, 117 00:16:01,260 --> 00:16:08,340 potentially it really helps you kind of deconstruct and make sense of the scholarship that's gone into it. 118 00:16:08,340 --> 00:16:18,930 Moreover, there's a real there's a kind of wealth of references and you get a strong sense of us, as Gavin says, 119 00:16:18,930 --> 00:16:24,240 the kind of generation in which he was working in the milieu that really, really influenced that scholarship. 120 00:16:24,240 --> 00:16:32,310 So again, getting rid of the sense of kind of writing from nowhere, writing from a universalist standpoint that's broken down as we see now, 121 00:16:32,310 --> 00:16:38,010 this is where I was writing from here and my colleagues here and my friends. This is what I was reacting to. 122 00:16:38,010 --> 00:16:43,050 Yeah. That said, reading the work when you don't know what any of those references are. 123 00:16:43,050 --> 00:16:49,050 When they refer elsewhere off the page to other other bodies of literature that you're not familiar with, 124 00:16:49,050 --> 00:16:55,050 you still kind of realise how how big a gap there is between the reader and the kind 125 00:16:55,050 --> 00:17:00,450 of writer thinking about that a little bit in terms of reading from here in Oxford, 126 00:17:00,450 --> 00:17:07,020 the possibility of following up those references are filling in the blanks is just a case of kind of walking to the Rhodes library, 127 00:17:07,020 --> 00:17:11,550 walking to the cell. A lot of these parts, a lot of those references you can follow up. 128 00:17:11,550 --> 00:17:14,820 If you were a postdoc in many universities in Nigeria, 129 00:17:14,820 --> 00:17:22,080 the ease with which you could fill in the blanks and make sense of of any work that this work as well would be much, much more difficult. 130 00:17:22,080 --> 00:17:28,440 So I think that that's worth bearing in mind and also just the kind of the sense 131 00:17:28,440 --> 00:17:34,500 of of what has happened in the interim between the writing of this book and now. 132 00:17:34,500 --> 00:17:44,620 So this book covers a period of independence and the Nigerian Civil War and the shift from a kind of military dictatorship into civilian rule. 133 00:17:44,620 --> 00:17:48,570 So it covers a lot and yet reading from 2019. 134 00:17:48,570 --> 00:17:56,010 There's a strong sense that some of the most decisive moment in Nigeria's political and political economic history haven't happened, 135 00:17:56,010 --> 00:18:02,820 that just around the corner, that kind of waiting to happen. So for this, I'd say it's a 1993 crash in oil prices, 136 00:18:02,820 --> 00:18:08,850 which actually governs analysis of the kind of contradictions of industrial development under Obasanjo in the late 70s, 137 00:18:08,850 --> 00:18:15,480 really pre pre figures, but also the imposition of structural adjustment policies in the late 80s and early 90s. 138 00:18:15,480 --> 00:18:20,040 So there is a sense of kind of reading before these almost catastrophic events occur. 139 00:18:20,040 --> 00:18:25,020 And so there's a sense of foreboding and kind of dramatic irony in places. 140 00:18:25,020 --> 00:18:31,410 But then I think there's also a kind of a confusion I had, which I think is kind of inherent in the text, 141 00:18:31,410 --> 00:18:39,750 and that's what I'm going to devote the rest of this review to. So whilst it's clear what it is governance is doing in terms of the kind of activity 142 00:18:39,750 --> 00:18:46,020 like he's describing the politics and political economy of Nigeria in various periods. 143 00:18:46,020 --> 00:18:51,930 I did. I did get a sense of confusion or ambivalence over what it was really for, 144 00:18:51,930 --> 00:18:56,460 what was the motive, what was the motivation of doing this sort of analysis? 145 00:18:56,460 --> 00:19:01,800 And so I think there are two contending options for what the motivation is. 146 00:19:01,800 --> 00:19:07,770 And so the first one is this kind of it set out in the introduction, 147 00:19:07,770 --> 00:19:15,000 where he draws on classical Marxist Lenin Shenkman and others who argue that capitalism is not an end in itself, 148 00:19:15,000 --> 00:19:23,160 but it's a means to expanding the productive capacity of the economy such that socialism can be ushered in in the state withers away. 149 00:19:23,160 --> 00:19:27,090 And so there's a lot of evidence in the book. This is this is the motive you're analysing. 150 00:19:27,090 --> 00:19:32,790 How far is Nigeria along this journey in terms of the development of capitalist society? 151 00:19:32,790 --> 00:19:39,540 So, for example, he notes that the development of capitalism is too serious of business to be left to the capitalists. 152 00:19:39,540 --> 00:19:47,010 The conclusion of the second essay is that neither the military government nor its political rivals have demonstrated their capacity to 153 00:19:47,010 --> 00:19:54,390 establish the social institutions necessary for a successful Nigerian capitalist revolution and the maintenance of a capitalist society. 154 00:19:54,390 --> 00:20:00,540 Similar conclusions come in the next essay and then looking back on what he was trying to do, 155 00:20:00,540 --> 00:20:07,740 he says What we were trying to do was to make sense of the international economic context and the formation of a capitalist society. 156 00:20:07,740 --> 00:20:12,120 So that gives you a pretty standard kind of Marxist account of the time. 157 00:20:12,120 --> 00:20:19,170 This is why we're doing this analysis to kind of measure Nigeria on its path towards this kind of a logical end. 158 00:20:19,170 --> 00:20:24,060 And yet running alongside this motivation. There seems to be a contradiction as well. 159 00:20:24,060 --> 00:20:33,330 So after the introduction, spends several pages setting up this framework for analysis, it also kind of conducts an about turn in the last two lines. 160 00:20:33,330 --> 00:20:41,790 It says the starting point of the essays in this volume is a radical rejection of development through the exploitation and subjection of producers, 161 00:20:41,790 --> 00:20:48,360 whether in the name of socialism or liberation. Rather, it's a commitment to the emancipation of labour, 162 00:20:48,360 --> 00:20:56,280 the creation of conditions that enable people to produce freely in cooperation with each other, rather than under the direction of capital and state. 163 00:20:56,280 --> 00:21:01,320 So here we see a motivation, which is slightly different. It's about the emancipation of labour free production, 164 00:21:01,320 --> 00:21:08,900 but it seems to kind of untether itself a little bit from the really prescriptive analysis that we see of the kind of socialist. 165 00:21:08,900 --> 00:21:21,420 Line of thinkers. What's really interesting is that the very end of the book, so just before the 2010 conclusion, 166 00:21:21,420 --> 00:21:29,970 almost the last line is we must face the question under what conditions can farmers advance and protect their interests and how can they, 167 00:21:29,970 --> 00:21:33,660 an alliance with others, establish and maintain this conditions? 168 00:21:33,660 --> 00:21:39,480 So what I find really interesting here is we have almost several chapters describing the kind of 169 00:21:39,480 --> 00:21:45,660 mechanisms of capitalist development class relations within quite a fixed analytical framework. 170 00:21:45,660 --> 00:21:51,330 And almost the last line of the book, as it was written in the 70s, is to throw this all open and say, Well, are these conditions? 171 00:21:51,330 --> 00:21:58,320 We've got to work them out. Who knows what they might be? So I thought that was a really kind of interesting tension. 172 00:21:58,320 --> 00:22:02,430 And so to answer and kind of my answer to this, 173 00:22:02,430 --> 00:22:08,430 I think it's important to look at the kind of the way that possibility in frustration runs through the book. 174 00:22:08,430 --> 00:22:19,050 So reading this in 2019, one is really struck by the sense of ambition and political possibility that existed in Nigeria in the 1960s and 70s. 175 00:22:19,050 --> 00:22:28,050 So I won't go into it kind of in detail, but we see the hugely ambitious Independence Day announcement from General Gowon setting out a nine point 176 00:22:28,050 --> 00:22:33,810 programme where he's really saying how he's going to design and transform all aspects of the political system, 177 00:22:33,810 --> 00:22:41,940 the military social relations. We see this again in the 1976 draught of the Constitution, 178 00:22:41,940 --> 00:22:49,920 whether the draught is aimed for nothing less than defining a universal goal for the nation and seem to be pretty confident that they can stipulate 179 00:22:49,920 --> 00:23:00,000 what that goal is and kind of set out a blueprint to pack together amidst all of these kind of state led ambitions of the National Development Plans, 180 00:23:00,000 --> 00:23:07,260 income review process is quite kind of far reaching sense of possibility of what could be designed, what could be reinvented. 181 00:23:07,260 --> 00:23:12,480 You also see quite impressive kind of actions within society outside of the state. 182 00:23:12,480 --> 00:23:19,260 So I think in nineteen sixty three sixty four, there was seven hundred and fifty thousand workers withdrew the labour for two weeks. 183 00:23:19,260 --> 00:23:22,770 And this is at a time when the Nigerian population is a quarter of what it is today. 184 00:23:22,770 --> 00:23:28,020 So these are quite meaningful and kind of large scale political manoeuvrings. 185 00:23:28,020 --> 00:23:29,910 And yet at the same time, 186 00:23:29,910 --> 00:23:38,460 and I think it's also worth just noting the roles of Nigerian intellectuals in this process and in the sense of possibility and ambition. 187 00:23:38,460 --> 00:23:47,940 So I talk about it a bit more in the kind of written review. But if you look at the work of people like Yusuf Bangura, the work of Jibrin Ibrahim, 188 00:23:47,940 --> 00:23:56,700 there's a huge sense that political scientists and academics themselves can be perhaps at the forefront of this kind of expansive, 189 00:23:56,700 --> 00:24:01,860 ambitious reconsideration of what society in politics could be. 190 00:24:01,860 --> 00:24:08,730 So there are kind of a number of things in the book that point to this. 191 00:24:08,730 --> 00:24:13,020 One thing I wanted to just kind of highlight that is after the timeframe of the book. 192 00:24:13,020 --> 00:24:23,670 So in 1986, the National Political Science Association of Nigeria had a conference called Alternative Political Futures for Nigeria, 1990 and Beyond. 193 00:24:23,670 --> 00:24:29,220 And Jibrin Ibrahim writes after review of this conference for the review of African political economy that same year. 194 00:24:29,220 --> 00:24:34,710 And he notes that the one thing that the left and the right could not agree on in this country that they could 195 00:24:34,710 --> 00:24:39,630 agree on in this conference was that they were not going to advocate liberal democracy to the government. 196 00:24:39,630 --> 00:24:46,510 So, so there is a sense amongst the kind of Nigerian political science intelligentsia of politics is still the deciding. 197 00:24:46,510 --> 00:24:50,050 There is no kind of political consensus is still wide open. 198 00:24:50,050 --> 00:24:53,700 So I think that's kind of an interesting thing to note. 199 00:24:53,700 --> 00:25:00,570 And yet at the same time, you get the strong sense of frustration running through the book running through the era. 200 00:25:00,570 --> 00:25:08,220 There's a book about Ken Saro-Wiwa, his life by Roy Doyin and Toyin Falola, and they describe how in 1966, 201 00:25:08,220 --> 00:25:13,860 when there was news of the coup kind of ending the First Republic, there were celebrations in the University of Ibadan. 202 00:25:13,860 --> 00:25:18,150 People were cheering, they were hugging each other. They really describe this carnivalesque atmosphere. 203 00:25:18,150 --> 00:25:22,410 So the kind of the frustration and the disappointment with what Nigeria was 204 00:25:22,410 --> 00:25:31,350 turning into in the early years of independence were really kind of visceral. There's also a quote from the book, which is even earlier. 205 00:25:31,350 --> 00:25:35,680 It dates frustration to 1960, it says. By 1960, 206 00:25:35,680 --> 00:25:39,420 it was clear that hopes for life more abundant were only to be realised for the 207 00:25:39,420 --> 00:25:43,350 few Nigerians found that colonial rule had been replaced with politicians. 208 00:25:43,350 --> 00:25:51,840 Rule politics itself became the focus of resentment. It was identified with the corrupt and blatant enrichment of the few at the expense of the many. 209 00:25:51,840 --> 00:25:58,050 The nepotism, tribalism and repression with which politicians kept themselves in power. 210 00:25:58,050 --> 00:26:05,340 So reading that in 2019, you think, man, so this is 1960 like the Nigerian project was over before it was even begun. 211 00:26:05,340 --> 00:26:12,250 What are we meant to do with this information? So alongside this kind of great ambition, great sense of frustration. 212 00:26:12,250 --> 00:26:17,110 I think the book presents a number of ways of kind of getting over this, this this tension. 213 00:26:17,110 --> 00:26:21,310 And I think they were present in the kind of political life that Gavin was describing. 214 00:26:21,310 --> 00:26:28,840 So the first option as as proposed by Gavin and the kind of military government is that you take certain things 215 00:26:28,840 --> 00:26:34,840 outside of politics and you allow government to just steer the country in the direction of the national interest. 216 00:26:34,840 --> 00:26:40,290 So bureaucratic authoritarianism. 217 00:26:40,290 --> 00:26:48,810 So, for example, Darwin proclaimed that as such, the federal government operates a system which knows no loyalty other than loyalty to the nation, 218 00:26:48,810 --> 00:26:55,590 the people and development which are all above politics. So the sense of okay, you can you can bracket politics, you can limit it. 219 00:26:55,590 --> 00:27:00,930 There's another option as opposed to bureaucratic authoritarianism, which is constitutionalism. 220 00:27:00,930 --> 00:27:07,560 So if you look at, for example, the 1976 draughting process of the Constitution, 221 00:27:07,560 --> 00:27:13,050 and that's something I'm sorry, I didn't quite know the relationship between 1976 and 1979 invasion, 222 00:27:13,050 --> 00:27:24,750 but there is a sense led by political scientists like Billy Dudley, that constitutionalism can do the same job but in a different way. 223 00:27:24,750 --> 00:27:29,850 So, for example, political ideals and body and public goals and values should be placed above 224 00:27:29,850 --> 00:27:34,350 politics and define the framework within which political conflict can take place. 225 00:27:34,350 --> 00:27:37,620 And they were saying, you can do this by writing the Constitution. So again, 226 00:27:37,620 --> 00:27:42,480 another attempt to kind of section off what can be discussed within politics as a way of 227 00:27:42,480 --> 00:27:47,970 kind of limiting it and reaching the kind of public good or the national interest overall. 228 00:27:47,970 --> 00:27:54,540 However, in in governance, and we get the sense that neither of these is likely to work. 229 00:27:54,540 --> 00:27:59,400 So civilian rule is less likely to repeat the failure of politics and hence to invite in 230 00:27:59,400 --> 00:28:04,950 its turn for fresh demonstrations from the military of the failure of administration. 231 00:28:04,950 --> 00:28:11,130 So neither of these options can have face much, much prospect of succeeding. 232 00:28:11,130 --> 00:28:16,200 And so here we start to get a sense of of Gavin's own kind of normative motivation. 233 00:28:16,200 --> 00:28:22,720 In the book, he says that while there was no space in the politics of wheeling and dealings, 234 00:28:22,720 --> 00:28:26,220 more expansive political values like equality and legitimacy, 235 00:28:26,220 --> 00:28:30,720 they could nonetheless be sought through direct resistance to exploitation and oppression. 236 00:28:30,720 --> 00:28:37,620 As, for example, in the 1964 general strike or the TIV and Yoruba resistance to their respective regional governments, 237 00:28:37,620 --> 00:28:43,080 of which the prime example is a breakaway, a rebellion that he details in one of the chapters. 238 00:28:43,080 --> 00:28:49,860 Talking about the strike that I mentioned before, he says this was in effect, a strike against parliamentary politics. 239 00:28:49,860 --> 00:28:58,050 As part of this mobilisation, a demonstration of 30000 people, a Ibadan Racecourse chanted No AIG, no and C and C. 240 00:28:58,050 --> 00:29:03,630 So that's no to both of the political parties that are operating at the time. 241 00:29:03,630 --> 00:29:11,700 And so I think what's really interesting here, he argues a narrow conception of politics reduces it to the contest for political office, 242 00:29:11,700 --> 00:29:18,390 and the competition for it spoils politics in Nigeria often seems to be about justice. 243 00:29:18,390 --> 00:29:24,540 So what's interesting is that if you think about a lot of the work that's written on Nigeria at the moment, 244 00:29:24,540 --> 00:29:31,680 the kind of essentially like pro-democracy writings they say Nigeria will will improve, 245 00:29:31,680 --> 00:29:37,260 it will redeem itself if it sticks more tightly to the narrow electoral conception of democracy. 246 00:29:37,260 --> 00:29:43,680 So if it if it does succeed in placing certain things outside of politics, so the inviolability of electoral rules, 247 00:29:43,680 --> 00:29:51,450 the rule of law, these kind of can we see this kind of lean towards constitutionalism in the current commentary? 248 00:29:51,450 --> 00:29:56,430 Gavin offers us something totally different. 249 00:29:56,430 --> 00:30:04,080 He says at the end of the night, the kind of middle chapter the task the socialist seems to me to be fine, 250 00:30:04,080 --> 00:30:06,600 to find ways to build on the resistance of common people, 251 00:30:06,600 --> 00:30:13,680 to exploitation and to create a popular socialist movement which goes beyond the issues which concern workers alone and articulates 252 00:30:13,680 --> 00:30:20,910 the grievances of all exploited classes in opposition to the current alternatives of bourgeois politics and authoritarian rule. 253 00:30:20,910 --> 00:30:24,900 And he also points out in the same chapter that really all of the polity, 254 00:30:24,900 --> 00:30:30,930 all of the political parties that contest elections tend to offer the same thing and because this is happening in 1979. 255 00:30:30,930 --> 00:30:36,990 So we get this totally alternative view of how you fulfil the possibilities and ambitions 256 00:30:36,990 --> 00:30:40,800 of the moment and you do it not by limiting politics and putting it to one side, 257 00:30:40,800 --> 00:30:50,220 but opening it up and putting kind of class conflict back on the table of what can be contested within the realm of political competition. 258 00:30:50,220 --> 00:30:51,300 So in the remaining time, 259 00:30:51,300 --> 00:31:04,020 I just want to raise a kind of a potential complication to my my analysis and then kind of draw out what I think is a kind of main message. 260 00:31:04,020 --> 00:31:13,170 So what's interesting if, if is this suggests Kevin is not especially committed to a Marxist political economy analysis, 261 00:31:13,170 --> 00:31:19,920 why is it spend so much time using that conceptual framework and that kind of mechanisms to make sense of what's going on, 262 00:31:19,920 --> 00:31:26,880 especially as later in the book, we get more and more of a kind of loosening of that conceptual framework is more analytical. 263 00:31:26,880 --> 00:31:30,000 Categories are admitted into the analysis. 264 00:31:30,000 --> 00:31:39,360 So for example, the chapter on on farmers and Rural Development Governance quotes Polly Hill saying, We must study the farmer, not patronise him. 265 00:31:39,360 --> 00:31:44,760 You must assume that he knows his business better than we do unless there is evidence to the contrary. 266 00:31:44,760 --> 00:31:50,370 And so this is part of a justification of really grounded inductive bottom up research. 267 00:31:50,370 --> 00:31:53,430 And it was really interesting reading that chapter on the day that the Nobel prise 268 00:31:53,430 --> 00:31:56,850 was awarded for randomised controlled trials because I think that's a very, 269 00:31:56,850 --> 00:32:01,410 very strong critique. You know, 30 years before it's really worth reading. 270 00:32:01,410 --> 00:32:09,630 That chapter is a kind of engagement with the politics of research. But I mean, we get kind of more inductive approach in the final conclusion. 271 00:32:09,630 --> 00:32:14,340 He also kind of releases his grasp even on the idea of class. 272 00:32:14,340 --> 00:32:18,690 So he he says that he's rethinking his idea of the bourgeoisie class and status 273 00:32:18,690 --> 00:32:22,920 analytically separate how they relate to one another is an empirical question. 274 00:32:22,920 --> 00:32:29,070 I am now, if anything inclined to think that everything is about status and honour, it often appears to be so in Nigeria. 275 00:32:29,070 --> 00:32:34,620 Nigerian public life. So again, after a strongly class based analysis for several chapters, 276 00:32:34,620 --> 00:32:40,170 it kind of conclude by saying maybe class isn't actually the important kind of category here. 277 00:32:40,170 --> 00:32:46,260 We also see this in its kind of reverse in the chapter on political consciousness and Ibadan, 278 00:32:46,260 --> 00:32:51,120 with the shift away from talking about workers or farmers or any specific category, 279 00:32:51,120 --> 00:32:56,940 and accepting that this may in terms of political consciousness, function more as a group of just the have nots. 280 00:32:56,940 --> 00:33:00,480 So a kind of broader consciousness here. 281 00:33:00,480 --> 00:33:08,430 So I think what's interesting is you see in the book a kind of strengthening as the book goes on of the sense of motivation. 282 00:33:08,430 --> 00:33:17,800 And yet a weakening of the confidence, actually, a set analytical framework is going to explain or guide or analyse what's going on in politics. 283 00:33:17,800 --> 00:33:27,180 And so thinking of that in 2019, thinking of it today, I I feel that in some ways, what Gavin calls for has to some extent happened. 284 00:33:27,180 --> 00:33:34,950 So the kind of post politics, end of history consensus that was represented at least in this country by New Labour and in the US, 285 00:33:34,950 --> 00:33:42,480 by the kind of Clinton era has really fallen apart and we see much more of what Shantel move would call agonistic politics. 286 00:33:42,480 --> 00:33:47,070 All of a sudden, everything is on the table. Politics seems to have nothing that's off limits. 287 00:33:47,070 --> 00:33:52,800 There are many kind of core questions suddenly up for debate again, 288 00:33:52,800 --> 00:33:57,990 and this kind of poses the question how confident are we in our conceptual 289 00:33:57,990 --> 00:34:04,380 frameworks that we used to analyse this kind of newly opened up field of politics? 290 00:34:04,380 --> 00:34:09,000 And so I don't know what government thinks of that analysis. I think there's a lot in the book. 291 00:34:09,000 --> 00:34:10,440 Give us some of these tools. 292 00:34:10,440 --> 00:34:16,560 But there's also a really interesting kind of humility in awareness that whatever sort of conceptual tools you start out with, 293 00:34:16,560 --> 00:34:22,380 you may well end up kind of shifting them and adapting them in light of the complexities of the country that you study. 294 00:34:22,380 --> 00:34:34,830 So I'll leave it there. Thank you very much for that excellent review. 295 00:34:34,830 --> 00:34:36,372 I would open it up for.