Space of Power and Power of Space

Abstract

Spatial struggles can shed light on sociopolitical processes in the evolution of African cities. Pressures on urban amenities apart, there are hassles over space orchestrated by the drift of large population of Africans to the cities. As a result, conflicts over space exist among the living as well as the “dead,” given the shrinking interment spaces in most cemeteries of urban Africa. This paper identifies the more recent controversy over burial space between Hausa Muslims and government, in the 1980s, as a continuation of an earlier struggle in the colonial era. Cemeteries are not just spaces for burying the dead; for Hausa Muslims in colonial Ibadan, the struggle for cemetery space presented a mode of agitation against colonialism. The struggle also sought to reassert Muslim Hausa identity and autonomy, which lost their potency under the weight of profound social changes activated by nationalist aspirations in colonial Nigeria.

Frontiers of belonging and politics of identity: the materiality of funeral rituals and festivals in Nigeria’s urban space

“…Since the Eyo is also about death and dying, it draws attention to the instrumentality of death and funerals in establishing belonging and ownership in Lagos. There is a body of literature on the politics of funerals in Africa (Smith 2004; Geschiere 2005; Onwuzuruigbo 2014; Adebanwi 2021). This is because interring the dead is an important ritual on the continent.…”

“…While African urban spaces were associated with ethnic groups (Plotnicov 1972), colonial intervention in the urban milieu in Africa generated identity questions and stimulated struggles for the ownership and control of cities (Onwuzuruigbo 2014). In recent years, there have been strong disagreements between different Nigerian groups over the ownership of urban spaces such as Lagos and Jos (Salvaire 2019;Trovalla et al 2014).…”