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Aspects of Social Organisation in a Nigerian Petrol Queue

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

John A. Wiseman
John A. Wiseman
Affiliation:
Department of Politics, The University of Newcastle upon Tyne
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Extract

This short article is based on the rather unusual research methodology of enforced participant observation. The participatory element was not simply a device to facilitate observation, but was enforced by the need to get petrol.1 The analysis presented here of Nigerian petrol queues has obvious parallels with earlier works by such writers as Max Gluckman and J. Clyde Mitchell.2 There are, however, some important differences, in terms of both the type of ‘situation’ analysed and the scope of the projections thereafter.3

Type
Africana
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 17 , Issue 2 , June 1979 , pp. 317 - 323
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1979

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References

page 317 note 1 From 1974 to 1977 I participated in approximately 150 petrol queues. The majority were in or around Zaria, but I also queued in Kano, Kaduna, Katsina, Maiduguri, Jos, Bauchi, Kontagora, Ilorin, Ibadan, Lagos, and a number of smaller towns.

page 317 note 2 Gluckman, Max, ‘Analysis of a Social Situation in Modern Zululand’, in Bantu Studies (Johannesburg), XIV, 1940, pp. 1–30 and 147–74;Google Scholar and Mitchell, J. Clyde, The Kalala Dance (Manchester, 1956).Google Scholar

page 317 note 3 There are also significant differences between Mitchell and Glucksman. For the former the situation provides a major empirical base for the analysis, whilst for the latter the situation provides more a didactic peg on which to hang an analysis.

page 317 note 4 Mitchell, op.cit. p. 1.

page 319 note 1 Mann, Leon, ‘Queue Culture: the waiting line as a social system’, in Open University, Social Sciences Foundation Course Team (ed.), Understanding Society (London, 1970), pp. 481–90.Google Scholar

page 319 note 2 Each individual queue was of finite duration, but as there was no sign of an end to the shortage the necessity for queueing was of indeterminate duration.

page 319 note 3 The taxi-drivers were particularly hard hit as they depended on getting petrol to make a living. They were forced to queue for long periods (often several days), and would then drive around as fast as possible to make up for lost work. Their driving standards, erratic at the best of times, deteriorated even further as they rapidly became exhausted.

page 319 note 4 On several occasions I witnessed the horrifying spectacle of petrol being carried away in open buckets.

page 320 note 1 Mann, loc. cit.

page 321 note 1 For details of the hierarchy, see Whitaker, C. S., The Politics of Tradition: continuity and change in Northern Nigeria, 1957–1966 (Princeton, 1970), p. 315.Google Scholar

page 321 note 2 It might be argued that status differences could be indicated by type of vehicle, but this is, at best, an extremely loose and approximate type of stratification which would not have the behavioural force of a more rigid and clearly structured system of stratification.

page 322 note 1 For an interesting account of the phenomenon of rôle segregation in a context which bears some relation to the discussion, see Jordan, James William, ‘Role Segregation for Fun and Profit: the daily behaviour of the West African lorry driver’, in Africa (London), 48, 1, 1978, pp. 30–46.Google Scholar

page 322 note 2 I also conducted research in a rural Hausa village. At Friday prayer sessions the traditional stratification system determined the position of a man in the mosque or outside, the building being too small to accommodate all the adult males. Cf. my ‘Structural and Ideological Tensions in a Rural Hausa Village,’ in African Studies Review (Waltham, Mass.), 09 1979.Google Scholar

page 322 note 3 Perhaps also any desire for the owners of four-wheeled vehicles to demand preferential treatment was mitigated by the fact that the average motor-bike would take about one gallon compared with around ten gallons for the average car.

page 323 note 1 The real test will be the return to party politics and civilian rule.

page 323 note 2 It is perhaps interesting to add that at no time did I witness discrimination in a petrol queue against women or racial minorities.