4 - Voices of Protest

Summary

this chapter explores the medium through which the Nigerian population addressed and contested the series of rules, restrictions, and regulations imposed by the British to address the crisis generated by the war. In this context, the letters and petitions Nigerians wrote provided opportunities to locate African voices, as they confronted the new political and economic system introduced during the war. This chapter reveals that, although support for the war cut across class lines, most of the upper class and political elite were less concerned with the issues of daily survival, such as food insecurity and matters of daily subsistence, that lay at the root of these petitions. It concludes that the richness of these petitions allows for a better understanding of the impacts of the war on rural families and urban communities and situates the civilian experience within the larger context of the war and colonial society while creating a space for petitioners to participate in the larger discourse. It argues that Nigerian petitions reveal how local economic conditions and production systems linked a broad range of people, classes, and spatial categories and allowed them to move into the realm of public discourses on war, colonialism, and policy.