9 - The Indigenization of Modernity, 1950–65

Summary

Marshall Sahlins's idea that native peoples around the globe can be observed to have “indigenized modernity” was discussed in chapter 1. Here in the concluding chapter it is worthwhile to return to the idea as a way to help explain developments in Northern Nigeria during the closing years of the colonial era. The following will discuss what were on one level two opposing historical developments. First, the “Middle Belt Movement” was a campaign by Christian Northerners in the 1950s to establish a separate and autonomous region free of Muslim influence and control. Second, in 1963 Sir Ahmadu Bello, premier of the Northern Province, launched a campaign aimed at bringing about the conversion of traditionalists to Islam. While some consideration will be given to the ways in which the two movements might be read as responses to each other, the chapter will focus on how they both reflect what might be called the “indigenization” of Western civilization.

By “indigenization” is meant, following Sahlins, the evolution of African-constructed and African-promoted ideas of culture based on European models. Western civilization as presented by European expatriates was concerned with the passing on of European culture as Europeans themselves saw it. When given an opportunity Westernized Northern Nigerians did not so much repudiate the models of Western civilization promoted by Europeans as reconfigure those models to bring to the forefront values that they themselves associated with Western civilization. Once Northern Nigerians acquired European culture, they did not dispose of it as something foreign, something alien to themselves; rather, they moved to make it a part of themselves. In doing this they did not radically alter the message they saw that culture as conveying, but they did come to emphasize those aspects of the message most salient to their own situations. “Indigenization,” as it occurred in Northern Nigeria, involved the redirection of the versions of Western civilization predominant in the region toward the securing of goals identified by acculturated Africans, not their European mentors.