Nation on Board

by Lynn Schler

  The commitment to the classic narrative of proletarianization in African labor history began to unravel in the wake of widespread disillusionment with socialist regimes both inside and outside Africa at the end of the 1970s. The corrolary weakening of labor movements at the end of the twentieth century led to a general crisis in labor studies, as William Sewell has noted, “because the organized working class seems less and less likely to perform the liberating role assigned to it . . . the study of working class history has lost some of its urgency.”16 It was increasingly evident that Africans had not been transformed into a revolutionary proletariat even when engaged in wage labor within capitalist enterprises. In addition, universalist conceptions were challenged by the growing body of literature focusing on local meanings for productivity and materiality. As Robin Cohen conceded in 1980, the major weakness of research into African working classes was the uncritical adoption of “traditional formula dichotomies,” and a narrow focus on strikes and unionization, with no attention to the ways in which local cultural and social influences shaped labor consciousness.17

  Post-structural criticisms cast doubt on the applicability of Marxist analysis to African contexts, and the growing discomfort with universalist categories led many historians to avoid class all together as a category of analysis. But rather than joining the retreat from the study of labor, some scholars have mobilized post-structural and postcolonial critiques to revisit materialist perspectives in African histories, and thus reinstate class as a valuable means of historical analysis. Recent studies are grounded in specific cultural and social contexts, and describe the ways in which African laborers have negotiated class interests in dialogue with ethnic, religious, regional, and gender-based alliances.18 There is a more complex understanding of the interactions and contestations that exist between capitalist and noncapitalist sectors, and the multiplicity of strategies and ideologies leveraged by laborers. These are timely efforts, especially in the face of the gradual slide of working classes toward economic, political, and social marginalization in recent decades. African labor has experienced persistent poverty, failed schemes of development, and disempowerment, and there is a pressing need for more research on the ways in which African workers have lived, interpreted, and responded to their changing material and political circumstances. We need to better understand the diverse histories and cultures of work in Africa, and the impact that broader processes have had on African working lives over time.

  In the Nigerian context, recent scholarship demonstrates that there is much to be gained from a reinvigorated focus on the working class. Several studies focused on the experiences and perspectives of labor have informed us of how work and productivity take on meaning and operate in specific social and cultural contexts. This can be seen in Paul Lubeck’s work, which examined the coexistence of precapitalist and capitalist social and economic institutions in postcolonial Kano. Lubeck found that Koranic students and malams constituted a vocal and influential subgroup within the industrial proletariat. Rather than occupying a separate sphere, Lubeck claimed, the ideologies and social practices of Islamic institutions articulated with capitalism and shaped class consciousness.19 Carolyn Brown’s study of coal miners in the Enugu Colliery during the colonial era also emphasized the role played by local culture in the construction of work regimes, class consciousness, and organizing among Igbo miners. According to Brown, Igbo miners drew upon local ideologies, cultural practices, and economic spheres to negotiate “what they would and would not do” in the face of exploitative structures in the mines.20 Finally, Lisa Lindsay examined the impact of wage earning on the construction of gendered identities and roles among Yoruba railway workers and their wives in southern Nigeria. Similarly to Brown, Lindsay argued that local notions of gender were resilient in the face of colonial modernizing projects, and shaped the ways in which working classes and their families navigated the colonial workforce.21

  Taken together, these contributions affirm that the ideologies, experiences, and identities of African working classes cannot be understood outside of the local contexts from which they emerged. Each of these groups of laborers resisted or modified the process of proletarianization within the context of the Islamic, Igbo, or Yoruba cultural and social institutions in which they operated. At the same time, the focus on a specific regional and cultural context has made it difficult to problematize the role of ethnicity in the construction of consciousness among the Nigerian working class, or to offer an alternative to the trope of ethnicity that has dominated the study of Nigeria in the past and present. As seamen were drawn from a broad range of ethnic groups and did not share a common cultural or social foundation, their experiences provide an alternative case study that can further complicate our understanding of the experiences of postcolonial labor in Nigeria. Among the socially diverse group of seamen, it will be seen that the lack of ethnic cohesion gave birth to new types of solidarities and conflicts within this one sector of the working class in the postcolonial era.

  The focus on seamen can further deepen and broaden our understanding of labor in the national context of Nigeria by including a transnational perspective in the examination of working-class lives. Leading scholars in the field of labor history have argued that a major limitation of classical labor history in Africa was that most studies were confined to the boundaries of national histories. As Philip Bonner, Jonathan Hyslop, and Lucien Van Der Walt argued, when national borders define the unit of analysis in the history of labor, we lose sight of the regional or transnational solidarities that often shape and define working-class identities and organizing.22 Bonner and his coauthors advocate for a transnational approach to labor history, which “does not accept that its field of enquiry should stop at the ‘national’ border, or that a ‘national’ unit is self-evident, or necessarily a particularly useful unit of analysis.”23 This investigation into the experiences of Nigerian seamen confirms that a transnational perspective can be imperative for understanding African working-class histories. Beginning with an analysis of the transcontinental migrations and cosmopolitan lifestyles that characterized seamen’s working lives, the narrative that unfolds problematizes and destabilizes the nation-state as a fixed context of analysis in the study of African labor. As will be seen, seamen’s working lives were deeply shaped by the broader histories of British imperialism and the black diaspora. Their organized struggles and working lives were inherently connected to the ideological currents and social ties linking communities across what Paul Gilroy has called the “Black Atlantic.” Seamen’s ties to the black diaspora provide rare insights into working-class expressions of Pan-Africanism. But as will be seen, seamen also forged bonds that cut across boundaries of race. Seamen’s organized and individual struggles exposed the broad array of cultural, religious, and ideological discourses that attracted them, inspired them, and shaped their worldviews.

  This was not an unbridled process, and as discussed later in this book, nationalism and nationalization became hegemonic forces that slowly ruled out these transnational alliances. The broader context of decolonization was characterized by the triumph of European capitalist interests and their African elite collaborators in constructing a postcolonial future favoring and protecting elite economic and political interests at the expense of rank-and-file labor. As several scholars have shown, African working classes have continually confronted limitations on their ability to assemble and exploit solidarities when these have come into direct conflict with the political and ideological agendas of power elites.24 Thus, in the era of decolonization, African labor was corralled into allegiances reflecting the political programs of the African power elite in collusion with colonial capitalist interests. Both local and transnational imaginaries lost ground to the nationalist perspectives, and it was ultimately the nation-state that became the preeminent framework within which class struggles were negotiated and fought in the postcolonial era.25 Thus, only by maintaining an awareness of seamen’s transnational experiences and perspective
s can we more fully appreciate the ways in which Nigerian seamen experienced the rise of nationalism and the bordering processes that accompanied it.26

  VISIONS OF DECOLONIZATION, NATIONALISM, AND THE POSTCOLONIAL FROM BELOW

  This history of Nigerian seamen aims to broaden our understanding of how nationalism and the nation-state were imagined by everyday Africans. To date, the history of nationalism in Africa is largely concerned with expressions of anticolonial agitation that brought about European decolonization and the establishment of independent, modern nation-states within the borders of former colonial territories. Across most of the continent, nationalist movements were led by Westernized elites who adopted political discourses, tactics, and platforms deeply influenced by Western-style political activity and political entities. In most contexts, members of this small male-elite were educated in Europe and the United States, and returned to lead the struggle that resulted in the transfer of power from colonialism to independence. Thus, in the words of Susan Geiger, the historiography and master narrative of nationalism have focused “almost exclusively on the lives, actions and contributions of ‘a few good men.’”27

  Recent decades have seen significant efforts to broaden this body of literature to include alternative (and sometimes subversive) voices to the history of nationalism in Africa. Jean Allman’s work on Asante nationalism argues that ethnic movements such as the Asante National Labor Movement that gave voice to anticolonial aspirations were not merely reenactments of primordial, tribal politics, but in fact constituted an alternative voice of African nationalism.28 Susan Geiger’s work also expanded the narrow boundaries defining nationalist organizing by documenting the central role women played in constructing and organizing the nationalist movement in Tanganyika, thus debunking previous claims that women had filled only an auxiliary or reactive function in the Nyerere-led movement.29 Tefetso Mothibe makes a similar case with regard to working-class nationalism in Zimbabwe, claiming that organized labor was not subordinated to petit bourgeois nationalism, but instead played a proactive and creative role in determining the direction the nationalist movement took.30

  But while important works such as these have made significant contributions to broadening and deepening our understanding of how nationalism emerged and took shape in Africa, they still remained confined to an overly narrow vision of what the “postcolonial” signified for African masses both on the eve of decolonization and into the period of independence. The historiography of nationalism in Africa, with all its modifications and expansions, largely adopts the political vision of the Western-educated male elite for the postcolonial nation-state. Fred Cooper argued, “Nationalist leaders often began to channel the variety of struggles against colonial authority on which they had drawn—embracing peasants, workers, and intellectuals—into a focus on the apparatus of the state itself and into an ideological framework with a singular focus on the ‘nation.’ In the process, many of the possible readings of what an anticolonial movement might be were lost.”31

  The agenda of the nationalist elite did not reflect the aspirations of all Africans. As colonialism drew to a close, individuals and communities from across the continent conjured up visions and interpretations of what decolonization could and should mean, but many of these have been subordinated, lost, or silenced by narratives of nation-building. Even within the context of nationalist ideologies, formulations that diverged from the political agenda seeking to establish modern nation-states existed, but they have been largely lost in the historical record. Although many of the paths taken in the era of decolonization became irrelevant, outdated, or even oppositional with independence, their significance should not be measured by their ultimate fate in the postcolonial landscape. As Fred Cooper has argued, the difficulty in writing a contoured history of decolonization and accurately assessing the significance of the new possibilities born in this era is that “we know the end of the story.”32 Looking back from the present, historians tend to privilege narratives describing processes of nation-building as the main theme of decolonization. Left behind are the other possible routes and outcomes—cultural, political, and economic alliances not corresponding to the physical or conceptual borders of postcolonial African nation-states.

  Histories of decolonization in African contexts have insufficiently examined how everyday Africans embraced and promoted alternative visions of postcoloniality rather than those ultimately enforced by political elites. And, little attention has been paid to the individual and communal journeys taken by nonelites toward the assumption of national identities and ideologies, and the consequences of their entwinement in this historical trajectory. One notable exception is Gregory Mann’s work on the fluid and changing notions of political belonging invoked by Senegalese veterans in the colonial and postcolonial eras. Mann argued that national identity was part of a broad and changing set of statuses inhabited by veterans in an effort to claim political and material benefits. For Senegalese veterans, national identity was a “claims-making” instrument that diverged from more formal, legal notions of citizenship signified by decolonization and the establishment of nation-states in Africa.33 Similarly, it will be seen that Nigerian seamen’s formations of nationalist consciousness bore little resemblance to elite visions, which were aimed at constitutional reform, political emancipation from foreign domination, and nation-building. For seamen, becoming “Nigerian” was a strategy for achieving better pay, more just relations with management, and an end to racial discrimination. Thus, this investigation into the Nigerianization of seamen unpacks the meaning and significance of a Nigerian identity and highlights its fluidity and evolution over time. It will be seen that decolonization was a process that everyday Africans responded to, interpreted, and experienced, rather than one merely dictated from above.

  While this book illustrates how ordinary people exploited opportunities to create a political agenda and postcolonial vision tied to their particular circumstances, it ultimately draws attention to the processes and institutions that finally prevented seamen from representing themselves and protecting their interests. For masses of Africans, decolonization was a process that ultimately ended in unfulfilled promises. The transition to independence was characterized by the collaboration between European capitalists and African political and economic elites to construct a postcolonial future favoring and protecting their specific interests. Once independence arrived, these elites had to confront the tremendous challenge of meeting the needs of the masses. Fred Cooper has claimed that while most African states took up projects of development, few had the necessary resources or dedication to serve the interests of the people. Instead, postcolonial ruling elites ensured their own survival and prosperity by becoming “gatekeepers” over the limited resources that moved into and around the newly born nation-states.34

  This book provides a clear illustration of the processes described by Cooper. Seamen’s expectations of the postcolonial reality went unfulfilled because the management of the Nigerian National Shipping Line had insufficient resources and managerial experience to develop the national line into a viable enterprise. Instead, Nigerian officers tightened their control over the resources moving in and out of Nigeria through the ships of the NNSL. Against this backdrop, seamen experienced a worsening of employment conditions on board ships, and a narrowing of possibilities for those engaged in independent trade. This case study thus illustrates how political and economic developments associated with the transition from colonialism to independence ultimately limited the autonomy of African labor in crafting postcolonial identities, and provides background for understanding the disillusionment working classes expressed toward the postcolonial reality. In chronicling the defeats and failures experienced by Nigerian seamen, the study exposes precisely how power was consolidated in the processes of nationalization at the expense of labor, and how deals struck between European and African elites on the eve of independence continue to limit the choices and opportunities available to African working classes t
oday.

  CORRUPTION AND DECLINE OF A POSTCOLONIAL BUSINESS VENTURE

  The history of the establishment, functioning, and ultimate demise of the Nigerian National Shipping Line can be seen as a microcosm of the broader fate of countless political and economic schemes in postcolonial Nigeria. This focused investigation into one enterprise provides insights into how the promise of economic nationalism slowly evaporated as it confronted the political and economic realities of postcolonial Nigeria. The story of the NNSL can be woven seamlessly into a larger narrative of mishaps and failures of government planning and economic development in the postcolonial era. These narratives of unrealized opportunities, failed government, underdevelopment, and corruption abound in the history of postindependence Nigeria, and scholars across disciplines have attempted to provide an appropriate theoretical framework for understanding their causes and long-term effects. Academics have debated the roots of the political and economic instability that has plagued Nigeria since independence, as well as the stark inequalities and misappropriations that only seem to deepen over time. Indeed, these debates are not limited to Nigeria, and many scholars inside and outside the continent struggle to understand the persistent economic and political difficulties faced by postcolonial African states.