Traditional protest media and anti‐military struggle in Nigeria 1988–1999

Abstract

This article, derived from an extensive research report sponsored by the Ford Foundation through a grant administered by the African Centre for Democratic Government, Nigeria documents the deployment of traditional media theatre, oratory, folk music in the anti-military struggle of 1988-99 in Nigeria. These resources were used successfully by civil society to engage the authoritarian state in this period, notwithstanding the state's use of them to bolster its hegemony. Most of the protest artists were persecuted, but maintained their position and thereby deepened social anger against the military. THIS ARTICLE SEEKS TO DOCUMENT POPULAR RESISTANCE to military dictatorship through the use of traditional protest media in the Yorubaspeaking area of Nigeria. Based on fieldwork conducted in Ibadan and Lagos between January and June 2000, it shows how in times of repression, when the regular channels of free expression are closed or suppressed, civil society falls back on indigenous modes of communication to express dissent and to censure the authorities. Ibadan and Lagos were selected as study sites because they contain a rare concentration of indigenous media workers such as Ewi poets, theatre artistes, and folk musicians, whose work was scrutinized, and with whom this researcher carried out in-depth interviews. Historical and archival research was employed to complement the insights gained from primary data. As is well known, the period between the late 1980s and 1999 when a civilian democracy was inaugurated, was one of intense repression in Nigeria. The woes of a failed structural adjustment policy, aborted transitions and the ravages of a predatory and monumentally corrupt military class brought a once thriving nation to its knees, and to the bottom of the international economic pecking order. A 'transition without end' mounted by General Babangidal culminated in an annulled election in 1993, and gave way to the dark age of the Abacha period, between late 1993 and 1998. The brutal dictator's death in June 1998 ushered in the government of General Abdulsalami Abubakar, who, under pressure from a resurgent civil The author is a lecturer in political science at Lagos State University, Nigeria. He was formerly editorial page editor of the Daily Times, Nigeria's oldest newspaper. 1. Larry Diamond, Anthony Kirk-Greene and Oyeleye Oyediran (eds), Transition Without End: Nigerian politics and civil society under Babangida (Vantage Publishers, Ibadan, 1997).