Violence and the Law in A Man of the People

Chapter Seven focuses on Chinua Achebe’s novel A Man of the People. In particular the chapter examines Achebe’s presentation of political disorder through scenes in which the law is suspended or displaced. The chapter argues that through these scenes Achebe points up the incoherence of the inheritance of colonialism, not least indirect rule, and the inevitability of the imposition of new states of exception as a response to this incoherence. Achebe directs our attention to the various ways in which the law and legal processes are sidestepped, dissipated and conflated in an era of political corruption through scenes of violence that stand in for, but are markedly not, the legal process of the trial. The chapter’s discussion is informed by reference to contemporary political and economic contexts.

‘Sensational Coverage of a Sensational Trial’: Treason, Journalism and the State

Chapter Six provides an extended examination of the newspaper reporting of the treason trial of Obafemi Awolowo, the second major treason trial after independence. How the Nigerian press covered the trial illuminates the ways in which legal process as a mode of nation formation was woven into the daily lives of newspaper readers. Moreover, attending to that press coverage illustrates the importance of narrative and literary form in the process of national self-construction. The chapter begins by outlining the relationship of politics and the press in Nigeria before looking at the defining features of the trial itself. The chapter examines how the trial was presented in the press and the readerly engagement that the press sought to foster. The chapter concludes by reflecting on the larger significance of the trial and its coverage in the media at the dawn of Nigeria’s first Republic.

‘I Am the Law’: District Commissioner Fiction and the State of Exception

Chapter Two identifies and anatomizes an important subgenre in the adventure tradition in literature: District Commissioner fiction. This subgenre is significant because, while in the nineteenth century the colonial hero was typically represented as a buccaneer outside the law, District Commissioner fiction repositions the hero within and as the law. Edgar Wallace’s Sanders of the River series is read alongside works by Arthur E. Southon in relation to theories of the state of exception, to demonstrate how the District Commissioner and the policy of indirect rule that he represents are figured exceptionally, standing outside the law as the force of law.

‘Natural Justice, Equity and Good Conscience’: History, Politics and Law in Nigeria, 1900–1966

Chapter One provides an account of the history of colonial and postcolonial Nigeria, focusing particularly on politics and law. The chapter recounts the long history of British colonial presence in West Africa and explains the introduction of indirect rule as a system of colonial government from the turn of the century. Some of the impacts of indirect rule are considered through reference to Obafemi Awolowo’s memoir, Awo, and Chinua Achebe’s novel, Arrow of God. The chapter also sketches out the divisions that indirect rule fomented and the resistance to which it gave rise. Finally, the chapter explains the implications of indirect rule for the implementation of law in Nigeria both during colonial rule and following independence.

Conclusion: Imagined States

The conclusion reflects on the prior chapters of the book. It also considers the literary and political influence of the period under discussion on later Nigerian fiction. The conclusion provides a brief account of the Biafran War, its relationship to the reception of Nigerian fiction at the time, and its impact on post-war fiction. The conclusion argues that the imaginative space of fiction has continued to be a crucial site of negotiation for ideas of statehood and the law. Moreover, fiction has continued to be a powerful tool for shedding light on the imaginative operations of the law and the state.

‘Written in the Interest of the People’: Representing the Law in Cyprian Ekwensi and Market Literature

Chapter Five examines how the law is represented and deployed in Cyprian Ekwensi’s Jagua Nana and People of the City and in a selection of Nigerian market fiction. The law and its transgression permeated a range of publications in the years immediately preceding and after independence. Fiction and non-fiction alike repeatedly engaged with questions of crime and punishment, and even invoked legal paradigms to explore sexual and emotional relationships. This chapter demonstrates how market literature sought to generate through its own imagined communities discussion about and regulation of the apparent lawlessness of modern urban life. In attending to the larger presence of the law in both high- and lowbrow literature of the period, this chapter shows how the law was shaped in the popular imagination at independence.

‘Beast of No Nation’: Bribery, Corruption and Late Colonial Administration in

Chapter Four explores the competing demands made upon young Nigerian civil servants in the colonial administration, through an examination of Chinua Achebe’s novel No Longer at Ease. The chapter contextualizes the social and sexual pressures under which the novel’s protagonist, Obi, buckles through discussion of contemporary popular culture and the experiences of real-life Nigerian colonial administrators. The novel is also discussed in relation to the British colonial texts to which it responds, notably Joyce Cary’s Mr Johnson and Graham Greene’s The Heart of the Matter. Achebe’s own reflections on the social uses of fiction are also considered. The chapter argues that as readers we are invited by Achebe into judgement of Obi, and in doing so we are brought into larger debates about the nation state and the law.

‘Seeking a Legal Form’: Joyce Cary’s

Chapter Three examines a later incarnation of the District Commissioner in Joyce Cary’s Mr Johnson. The chapter shows how, despite the novel’s ironic critiques of the figure of the District Commissioner and the policy of indirect rule, Cary reinstates the heroized exceptionalism dramatized in earlier popular District Commissioner fiction. The chapter also explores the precarious position of Mr Johnson himself as educated southerner within the administration of the North. The chapter presents the novel in terms of its animation of legal questions and the state of exception that underpinned indirect rule. The chapter’s discussion is contextualised through reference to W. R. Crocker’s scathing memoir of colonial service, Nigeria: A Critique of British Colonial Administration (1936).

Introduction: Literature, Imagination and the State of Exception

This chapter provides an introduction to the key ideas (statehood, the state of exception, imagination, law and civilisation) with which the book as a whole engages and how they relate to each other. The chapter also introduces several key interlocutors (e.g. Giorgio Agamben, Nasser Hussain, Benedict Anderson) on whose work the book builds. Discussion of these interlocutors indicates how their scholarship informs the book and some of the challenges that the book offers to their work. A summary of each of the ensuing chapters is provided with an explanation of the parameters of the book and its critical aims.