On Engendering Liberal Values in the Nigerian Colonial State: The Idea behind the Gaskiya Corporation

Abstract

This article considers an experiment in colonial race relations in Northern Nigeria of the 1940s, manifest in the creation of a book and newspaper production community, the Gaskiya Corporation in Zaria in 1945. The discussion traces the liberal ideas behind it, the putting of those ideas into practice, and the consequential difficulties encountered by the two main protagonists (Rupert East and Abubakar Imam) in the project as they found themselves on opposite sides of labour relations disputes. A central figure in the establishment of the Gaskiya Corporation, Rupert East, is finally deposed as its Chairman and leaves the colonial service when his view of the primacy of educational and cultural development is overtaken by the view that commercial viability is the first aim of the Corporation. Nevertheless, throughout the remainder of the twentieth century, the Corporation and its successor organisations lay at the heart of the development of Hausa literature and the spread of literacy in Nigeria.