PUNISHMENT AND THE POLITICAL BODY Flogging and Colonialism in Northern Nigeria

Abstract

Criminal law in colonial Northern Nigeria was administrated through a system of 'native courts'. In the Muslim Hausa areas of Kano Emirate, these courts applied the Maliki school of Islamic law, or at least those portions of it the British deemed not 'repugnant'. Categories of crime that had flogging as their stipulated penalty presented the colonial regime with a series of practical and political difficulties. While flogging was not, at least in the abstract, necessarily repugnant, its application threatened to become so. Different ethnic and religious affiliations corresponded, the British believed, to different degrees of social evolution: more 'advanced' people were more susceptible to pain and more responsive to extra-corporeal punishment. Islamic law distinguished between Muslims and non-Muslims, but for all categories of offender, the floggings actually administered regularly lapsed into a repugnantly brutal spectacle. Even in the abstract, the distinctions made between classes of offender did not correspond to those the British thought should be drawn between categories of person. These problems posed administrative dilemmas for colonial officials, but worse, they also threatened scandal in the metropole. The vexed administrative history of flogging in Northern Nigeria thus provides insight into the culture of colonialism and the ways in which colonized peoples were incorporated theoretically as subjects or citizens of the colonial state. The question of colonial punishment, indeed, is vital for our understanding of the targets and consequences of a colonial regime of governmentality.