The social relations of grain marketing in Northern Nigeria

Abstract

Clough examines the social relations of the internal marketing of one crop in the northern part of Nigeria, guineacorn, through case studies of rural traders. He examines the relationships between traders of varying degrees of wealth and political power, the manner and extent of profit‐making in the purchase and sale of peasant produce, and the particular social rules governing the interaction between the different levels of trader in guineacorn. The area of field‐work carried out between 1976 and 1979 embraced Malumfashi Division in the southern part of the Katsina Emirate, in Kaduna State; Danbatta weekly market, about 40 miles north of Kano City; and occasionally, the grain markets of Sokoto City and of Mai Aduwa, on the border between Nigeria and Niger. The research had a four‐fold focus: firstly, the production and marketing of guineacorn in the hamlet of Marmara, eight miles from Malumfashi town: secondly, the grain trade in the weekly market of Kankara town, 22 miles north of Malumfashi, and the bi‐weekly market of Yargoje village; thirdly, the retailing of guineacorn transported from Marmara hamlet in Danbatta market; and finally, the wholesale transfer of guineacorn between traders in these markets and also Sokoto and Mai Aduwa, much of it intended for Niger. It was a study of inter‐rural marketing between the grain‐surplus region of southern Katsina and grain‐deficit regions to the north. Clough's case studies describe four trading relationships in the private, commercial marketing of grain: the relationship between a Hausa/Fulani aristocrat and Hausa rural trader; relations between urban merchants and an inter‐village wholesaler living in the countryside; the connection between the inter‐village wholesaler and a hamlet wholesaler; and between the inter‐village wholesaler and a retailer in Danbatta market.