Immaculata Abba and Sa’eed Husaini introduce a project that aims at digitising important and imperilled archival holdings of Nigeria’s radical and pro-democracy activists to increase accessibility to these materials as well as to preserve them for posterity. Abba and Husaini invite researchers working in the social sciences and humanities to submit proposals for research papers that use archival research in the collections to produce new narratives of Nigeria’s rich and important history of the radical left.
By Immaculata Abba and Sa’eed Husaini
Archives of the Nigerian Left is a project run by the Center for Democracy and Development (CDD) and funded by the French Institute for Research in Africa (IFRA), using the Solidarity Fund for Innovative Projects (FSPI) awarded by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This project, which is a component of IFRA’s ‘Nigerian Heritage Digitisation Programme’, aims at digitising important and imperilled archival holdings of Nigeria’s radical and pro-democracy activists to increase accessibility to these materials as well as to preserve them for posterity.
CDD is an independent, not-for-profit, research, training and advocacy organisation established to mobilise global opinion and resources for democratic development and provide an independent space to reflect critically on the challenges posed to the democratisation and development processes in West Africa.
With few exceptions, the study of left radicalism in Africa has focused on countries where Soviet-aligned movements or prominent African socialist leaders took power. Less is understood about contexts like Nigeria where ideological counter-movements remained in opposition. This project aims at reducing the generational divide in historical memory of radical pro-democracy struggles in late 20th-century Nigeria where elite narratives are dominant but popular and ideological counter-movements are largely forgotten.
Since 2022, we have been working with archivists and families of activists, intellectuals and organisers active in the Left in the twentieth century. We situate the project in the company of the likes of Revolutionary Papers and are working to make the archives available and accessible online for researchers and the general public to learn about and study them. We believe that digitisation projects can be useful for resuscitating suppressed or minority heritages, despite the hierarchies of knowledge, resources, and power which such projects might also reinforce.
Our collection currently includes four archives, albeit in different stages of digitisation: Yusufu Bala Usman’s archive, Baba Omojola’s archive, the archive of Ola and Kehinde Oni, and the Socialist Library and Archives (SOLAR).
Yusufu Bala Usman worked in the Department of History, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, from 1970 until his death in September 2005. Among his many contributions to the study of African history and sensitising Nigerians to liberation struggles against neocolonial and imperialist oppression across the Global South, Yusufu Bala Usman was the Director of Research of the People’s Redemption Party. He is the author of many books including For the Liberation of Nigeria (New Beacon Books, London, 1979), Nigeria Against the I.M.F.: The Home Market Strategy (Vanguard, Kaduna, 1986), The Manipulation of Religion in Nigeria 1977-1987 (Vanguard, Kaduna, 1987). The self-proclaimed aim of the Yusufu Bala Usman Institute which currently holds his archive is to “critically examine and disseminate his ideas which, years after they were espoused, have proved prescient in their analysis of the society’s problems and provide possible solutions to the issues of today […]”.
Baba Omojola, a Nigerian socialist activist and intellectual who died in 2013, was a foremost opponent of military rule and gained prominence organizing across various radical collectives to build a united front in support of the transition to democracy as well as rallying support for African liberation movements and anti-apartheid struggles. In addition to serving as a political adviser to notable radical leaders such as Aminu Kano and Micheal Imoudu, he later became a key advocate for a new constitution for Nigeria aiming to empower Nigeria’s various ethnic groups.
Ola Oni was a political economist who taught at the University of Ibadan for 24 years. His life of activism began when he was a secondary school student at King’s College and included key roles in the Socialist Party of Workers, Farmers and Youth, the Nigeria Labour Party, and in the formation of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) in the 1970s and 1980s. He is the co-author (with Bade Onimode) of Economic Development of Nigeria: The Socialist Alternative.
Kehinde Ola-Oni is a socialist feminist activist and the life president of the Action Women of Nigeria. For four years, she was the coordinator of Women in Nigeria. The Marxist activist couple’s archive contains documents on the left political movement in Nigeria, particularly histories of the Trade Union and Women Union from the 1960s to the 1990s in South-West Nigeria (Ibadan).
SOLAR’s archive is a product of the combined archives and libraries Edwin and Bene Madunagu have collected since 1973. Parts of it constituted the free socialist public library that opened in 1995 in Calabar at a time when government-funded public libraries were collapsing in Nigeria. With a mission to be an important resource centre in Africa on revolutionary and progressive literature, SOLAR holds books, journals, essays, audiovisuals, and ephemera on the lives, struggles and quarrels of individuals and generations of Nigerian revolutionaries and activists from the colonial period to the present period.
Writing about his hopes when SOLAR was launched, Biodun Jeyifo, wrote that he hoped SOLAR would bridge ‘the chasm between generations for whom anti-imperialism and anti-capitalism are fundamental points of departure and the much younger generational cohorts for whom the effective ideological and strategic context for their struggles for justice and equality […] is subsumed under a “patriotic”, nation-state polity in which the be-all and end-all of revolutionary or democratic subjectivity are captured by “governance”, “state capture” […].’
Similarly, we hope that the Archives of Nigerian Left project as a whole offers a wellspring of inspiration for younger Nigerians and Africans to think about and learn from our shared struggles under global capitalism.
Our work at The Archives of Nigerian Left project also includes developing a website to serve as a central hub for these archives as well as organising workshops and conducting research to publicise knowledge about the archives and Nigeria’s heritage of left radicalism. We have previously funded journalists to engage with the project and now we would like to cultivate academic research around the archives.
As such, we invite researchers working in the social sciences and humanities to submit proposals for a peer-reviewed research paper that uses archival research in our collections to produce new narratives. We are especially interested in political theory, historical, historiographical, and sociological work that explores radical movements during military regimes between 1967 and 1999. Cross-cutting areas of emphasis may include Northern Nigeria, women’s contributions, guerrilla movements, discourse in popular media, and the intellectual thought of individuals and collectives.
Two selected scholars will receive €500 Euros (paid out in the Naira equivalent) to conduct their research and develop their proposals into peer-reviewed journal articles. Emerging scholars (including current graduate students at MA- or PhD-level), recent PhD graduates, early career academics and independent researchers are especially encouraged to apply.
Dates to remember:
- Deadline for proposal submission: 10 May, 2024
- Successful applicants will be contacted by: 15 May, 2024
- Deadline for final paper submission: 12 July, 2024
What to submit:
– A research proposal (1000 – 1500 words) that presents your research aim and questions, a literature review that shows how your research project contributes to the state of knowledge in your field, methodology (including your conceptual framework and what archives and what sections or material will you be looking at) and preliminary schedule.
– CV (one to two pages)
– 100-word bio (to be included in the body of your email)
Completed applications (or follow up questions), specifying the name of the grant in the subject line, should be emailed to cddabv@cddwestafrica.org cc: shusaini@cddwestafrica.org
Immaculata Abba is a freelance photographer, writer and scholar based in Abuja and Enugu, Nigeria. Sa’eed Husaini is research fellow at the Center for Democracy and Development in Abuja, Nigeria, and a regional editor for Africa Is a Country.
Featured Photograph: Protesters at the end SARS protest in Lagos, Nigeria (13 October 2020).
