All Politics is Local: Gender, Social Media, and Political Fuji in Nigeria (Posted on Facebook on September 25, 2021)

Research and Scholarship in the Digital Age. Presented at Elizade University on August 4, 2021

There is Something inside Something that is called Something: Explaining Fuji Epistemology to the General Public (Posted on Facebook on September 19, 2021)

Queen Salawa Abeni: A Date with the Goddess of Sound(Posted on Facebook on November 11, 2021)

Malaria Blues 2021 (Posted on Facebook on October 22, 2021)

The Impersonator! (Posted on Facebook on September 27, 2021)

Call for Entries: The Nobel Prize for Streetology  (Posted on Facebook on December 4, 2021)

Animality and Colonial Subjecthood (Posted on Facebook on 07/19/2019)

So yesterday at the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign, I attempted to compress the central ideas of an entire book manuscript into a 45-minute Plenary Lecture of the Human-Animal Studies Summer Institute. Talking about your own work is not as easy as one would think. The photo of the hanged dog in the PowerPoint is dated 1952 from Eastern Nigeria. Some people may be disturbed about the possibility of writing a history of humans from the prism of animals or the idea that we can improve our understanding of colonialism through the experience of animals. But the goal of research is to challenge preconceived notions about everything--it is not to make people feel comfortable all the time! Colonialism was not just about humans; animals were also colonial subjects. We may not fully understand the extent of imperial domination until we bring animals into the orbit of colonialism. Colonial animality went beyond being an animal under foreign domination; it encompasses unveiling human existence that manifested in animalistic tendencies.

Animal behavior was not always in opposition or inferior to human attitude--context, situation, and circumstances matter. Like humans, laws and institutions of power governed animals' everyday life. Animals were sorted, indexed, and prioritized to meet colonialists' construction of normality, orderliness, and modernity. A goat found “trespassing” around the government house garden, like a dog seen in the street during rabies outbreak, would be impounded. That a dog can be hanged, like humans, for contravening colonial regulations speaks volume of how imperialism conceived biological bodies and affinity between its human and nonhuman subjects.

The idea of dog and cattle tax was not just about materiality--it also entailed obligation and protection derived from performing civic duty of increasing colonial treasury with levies. Colonial animals, like humans, were in the service of the empire. The donkey, the number one transport animal of British Nigeria, helped the invaders to achieve their capitalist expropriation. The horse became the insignia of imperial spectacle on the turf, performing power that fractured the tenor of inter-human politics. Burtu, the bird and mascot of the colonial army joined the guard of honor that welcomed Queen Elizabeth II to Nigeria in 1956.

The idea of "animals and other Nigerians" simply suggests that Nigerianness (like ethnic categories) transcends the human factor. There were human as well as animal Nigerians!

The Political Animal in Human History (Posted on Facebook on 02/13/2019)

People have noticed the increasing presence of animals, dressed in the motif of political parties, at rallies ahead of Nigeria's presidential election on Saturday. For many, this is a “new” trend. However, throughout history, animals have helped humans to set new standard of social and political relations and establish the authenticity of claims to superior power. The use of animal body, visual lexicon, and iconography in politics is sarcastic and satirical, no doubt. But it can also reveal a deep-rooted relationship that humans have established with the non-human creatures and the environment, for centuries.

For instance, a Daily Service newspaper reporter declared in a story published in the 1940s that “Strange things happen in Lagos day by day” after seeing a dog dressed in trouser and suit. The dog, whose suit and trouser was made from an expensive imported material, locally called Olowondabira (the rich is performing wonder), was paraded in Lagos Island on the eve and the day of the Muslim festival of Eld-il-Fitr. Why was the dog dressed in suit and trouser made from an imported textile, not in an African costume? Why use a dog, instead of a monkey or goat? And why did this happen during the Muslim festival in Muslim-dominated Lagos Island, not the mainland? Religion, class, and politics all combined to give this dog (like other animals) an ambivalent place in the struggle for power.

The good news is that this election period will soon end, and I will reclaim all my Atukulated and Buharists friends. I miss you guys! For supporters of Sowore, among other Boy Scouts and Girls Guides, continue to persevere, for your reward is in heaven. This my mouth will not kill me!

Of Gender, Race, and Class: Two Women’s Fight to Decolonize the Horse in Southern Nigeria (Posted on Facebook on 03/02/2019)

Hakurin Kaya Sai Jaki: The Donkey in Nigerian History (Posted on Facebook on 12/22/2018)

Of Satire and Fact: The Politics of Animal Advocacy in Nigeria (Posted on Facebook on 12/16/2018)

If you need some good laugh today, try read this satire, which reminds one of a recent misinterpretation of a story about President Buhari by Bishop Oyedepo.

In 1947, some educated Nigerians led the establishment of the Nigerian branch of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, a Britain-based animal advocacy group. Essentially, the group helped the police to prosecute offences such as beating a dog for stealing meat from egusi soup of its owner. However, many Nigerians viewed animal protection law as a modernist and Euro-centric idea, not in agreement with the intricate relationship between the human and non-human creatures of the country. They believed it extends the boundary of colonial violence.

Jubril Raji, the author of this satire definitely belonged to this group. Written during one of the slum clearance projects in 1950s Lagos, Raji’s satire (a form of resistance) is framed as fact. The RSPCA officer in question does not exist. And Raji is a pseudonym/fictitious name, I think. In colonial literary culture, a real petition would typically contain the physical address of the petitioner and some language of obedience to the British crown. Plausibly, Raji was punished for cruelty to an animal and sought to shame animal advocates with a biting humor. Or he felt that slum clearance violates the rights of the poor. These interpretations are not cast in stone—the satire can be read in other nuanced way.

A satire is not fact, but a sarcastic fact!