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‘Hometown’ Voluntary Associations, Local Development, and the Emergence of Civil Society in Western Nigeria

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Joel D. Barkan ,
Michael L. McNulty  and
M. A. O. Ayeni
Joel D. Barkan
Affiliation:
Professor of Political Science, University of Iowa
Michael L. McNulty
Affiliation:
Professor of Geography, University of Iowa
M. A. O. Ayeni
Affiliation:
Professor of Geography, University of Ibadan.
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Extract

At a time when most African countries are characterised as ‘strong societies and weak states’, the tendency to afford the state ‘ontological primacy’ in explaining the nature of African political economy is being challenged. One manifestation of this has been a shift in scholarly attention to those intermediary and autonomous organisations which function and sometimes flourish in the space that exists between the state and the household – namely, the various groups which comprise ‘civil society’.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 29 , Issue 3 , September 1991 , pp. 457 - 480
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

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References

1 See Atul, Kohli (ed.), The State and Development in the Third World (Princeton, 1988);Google Scholar and especially, Hyden, Goran, Beyond Ujamaa in Tanzania: underdevelopment and an uncaptured peasantry (Berkeley, 1979; London, 1980).Google Scholar

2 Bratton, Michael, ‘Beyond the State: civil society and associational life in Africa’, in World Politics (Princeton), 41, 3, 04 1989, pp. 407–30.Google Scholar

3 See Joel D. Barkan and Frank Holmquist, ‘Peasant–State Relations and the Social Base of Self-Help in Kenya’, in ibid. pp. 359–80.

4 In this article we agree with Bratton, loc. cit. p. 417, that ‘a neutral definition of civil society’ is required ‘which does not prejudge the nature of state–society relations’. Civil society is that sphere of group activity which exists between the state and the household.

5 See Barkan, and Holmquist, , loc. cit.;Google Scholar Holmquist, Frank, ‘Self-Help: the state and peasant leverage in Kenya’, in Africa (London), 54, 3, 1984, pp. 72–91;Google Scholar Mbithi, Philip M. and Rasmusson, Rasmus, Self-Reliance in Kenya: the case of Harambee (Uppsala, 1977);Google Scholar and Thomas, Barbara P., Politics, Participation and Poverty: development through self-help in Kenya (Boulder, 1985).Google Scholar

6 Bratton, Michael, ‘Farmer Organisations and Food Production in Zimbabwe’, in World Development (Oxford), 14, 3, 1986, pp. 367–84.Google Scholar

7 The Journal of Voluntary Action Research (New Brunswick) was launched in 1972. In Pugliese's, Donato J. Voluntary Associations: an annotated bibliography (New York, 1986),Google Scholar only 17 of the 384 entries refer to studies of such organisations in Africa, including just four on Nigeria: Kerr, Graham, ‘Voluntary Associations in West Africa: “hidden” agents of social change [in Eastern Nigeria]’, in African Studies Review (Los Angeles), 21, 3, 12 1978, pp. 87–100;Google Scholar Sandra T. Barnes, ‘Voluntary Associations in a Metropolis: the case of Lagos, Nigeria’, in ibid. 18, 2, September 1975, pp. 75–87; Comhaire, J. L. L., ‘Voluntary Associations in Nigeria’, in Smith, David H. (ed.), Voluntary Action Research (Lexington, MA, 1974), pp. 101–10;Google Scholar and Kerri, James N., ‘Studying Voluntary Associations as Adaptive Mechanisms: a review of anthropological perspectives’, in Current Anthropology (Chicago), 17, 1, 1976, pp. 23–47.Google Scholar Three additional articles have come to our attention: Barnes, Sandra T., ‘Voluntary Association's Membership in Five West African Cities’, in Urban Anthropology (Brockport, N. Y.), 6, Spring 1977, pp. 33–106;Google Scholar Okonjo, Chokuka, ‘The Western Ibo’, in Lloyd, P. C., Mabogunje, A. L., and Bolanle, Awe (eds.), The City of Ibadan (Cambridge, 1967);Google Scholar and Osuji, Emman, ‘Rural Development by Self-Help Efforts in Abiriba, Imo State’, in Nigeria Magazine (Lagos), 147, 1983.Google Scholar

8 Hyden, op. cit., and Donald, Rothchild and Naomi, Chazan (eds.), The Precarious Balance: state and society in Africa (Boulder and London, 1988).Google Scholar

9 Geiger, R. K. and Wolch, J. R., ‘A Shadow State? Volunteerism in Metropolitan Los Angeles’, in Environment and Planning D: Society and Space (London), 4, 1986, p. 364.Google Scholar

10 This view was first articulated by Tocqueville in his observations of nineteenth-century America, and is the basis of the pluralist model of democracy which dominated social science in the 1960s. See Tocqueville, Alexis de, Democracy in America, edited by Mayer, J. A. and Max, Lerner (New York, 1966);Google Scholar Truman, David B., The Governmental Process (New York, 1958);Google Scholar and William, Kornhauser, The Politics of Mass Society (Glencoe, IL, 1959).Google Scholar

11 Logan, John R. and Molotch, Harvey L., Urban Fortunes: the political economy of space (Berkeley, 1987), p. 62.Google Scholar

12 Bellah, Robert, Habits of the Heart (New York, 1986), p. 212.Google Scholar

13 Fadipe, N. A., The Sociology of the Yoruba (Ibadan, 1970), p. 243 — originally written as a Ph. D. dissertation in 1939, and published posthumously.Google Scholar

14 See Marris, Peter, Family and Social Change in an African City: a study of rehousing in Lagos (London, 1961),Google Scholar and Little, Kenneth, West African Urbanization: a study of voluntary associations in social change (Cambridge, 1965).Google Scholar

15 Ibid. pp. 29–30, and Little, Kenneth, ‘The Role of Voluntary Associations in West African Urbanization’, in van den Berghe, Pierre L. (ed.), Africa: social problems of change and conflict (San Francisco, 1965), pp. 325–45.Google Scholar

16 Only Osuji, loc. cit. focuses explicitly on the rôle of voluntary associations in the development of rural Nigeria.

17 Berry, Sara, Fathers Work for Their Sons (Berkeley, 1985), p. 42.Google Scholar

18 The Directorate's publications refer to the ‘more than 90,000 communities to which virtually every Nigerian can trace his or her roots’ — Daily Times (Lagos), 26 May 1989. See also Directorate of Food, Roads, and Rural Infrastructure, Rural Development: the mobilisation approach (Lagos, 1987).

19 The early dominance of men in founding these organisations is a reflection of their educational and other opportunities in colonial society. Women tended to be active in either ‘auxiliaries’ or other spheres of action, notably the market.

20 The question of exact populations in Nigeria has been very problematic. The last ‘official’ census was taken in 1963, and its results are generally treated with some scepticism. A new census is being conducted in 1991.

21 Interview with DrAina, Olu, president of the Otan-Ayegbaju Progressive Union, 1 July 1989.Google Scholar

22 The authors wish to acknowledge the assistance given in this section by Boye Agunbiade of the Nigerian Institute of Social and Economic Research, as well as by D. G. Adeleke, Chief Ojelabi, the Reverend O. Oladele, and the late Chief J. L. Lawale.

23 For a concise summary of the conditions under which collective action is most likely to succeed in the context of peasant communities, see Popkin, Samuel L., The Rational Peasant (Berkeley, 1979), pp. 252–9.Google Scholar

24 Interview with Chief Opatola, J. O., 15 July 1989.Google Scholar

25 Egbe Omo Ibile Awe Central Planning Committee, Awe Development Plan: an Opticom approach (Ibadan, November 1982). This remarkable document defines a planning strategy for a particular community, but is viewed by its authors — several of whom are involved in efforts by the Government to stimulate the formation of more development associations – as a blueprint for other Nigerian communities.

26 Cf. Rondinelli, Dennis A., Nellis, John R., and Cheema, G. Shabbir, Decentralization in Developing Countries (Washington, D. C., 1983),Google Scholar World Bank Working Paper No. 581, and Barkan, Joel D. and Chege, Michael, ‘Decentralising the State: district focus and the politics of reallocation in Kenya’, in The Journal of Modern African Studies (Cambridge),27, 3, 09 1989, pp. 431–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

27 Under the Federal Military Government, councillors were appointed prior to 1987, and then elected on a non-partisan basis. After their dismissal in July 1989, and following the establishment of the Social Democratic Party (S. D. P.) and the National Republican Convention (N. R. C.), new elections were held in December 1990 as the second phase of the programme to return Nigeria to civilian rule.

28 Mabogunje, Akin L., ‘Last Things First: re-appraising the fundamentals of Nigeria's development crisis’, Lagos, 1985.Google Scholar

29 Ibid. Community development associations are viewed as a ‘hedge’ against future local government authorities under civilian rule. Local governments are almost totally dependent on the block grants they receive from the federal and state governments, and these funds may be sharply reduced once a civilian régime starts to divide the budgetary pie.

30 See Barkan, and Holmquist, , loc. cit., for a similar finding that the poor benefit the most from their membership of Harambee self-help groups in Kenya.Google Scholar