GUEST PERSONALITY LECTURE |EVERYDAY EXTRACTION: LIMINALITIES AND ADULTERATION IN NIGER DELTA

On Thursday, 1st of February 2018, the Institute of Peace and Strategic Studies and African Studies Students’ Studies Association, University of Ibadan in collaboration with Thursday Film Series are delighted to invite you to a guest personality “EVERYDAY EXTRACTION: LIMINALITIES AND ADULTERATION IN NIGER DELTA” by Dr Rebecca Golden-Timsar. It will take place at 2PM Prompt in Drapers Hall, Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan.

Rebecca Golden-Timsar holds a PhD in anthropology from Tulane University (2012). She is currently Associate Director, Global Energy, Development, and Sustainability, University of Houston’s Graduate Certificate in Global Energy. Her research interests include gender, violence, youth, oil and extractive economies, religion, and contemporary African society. She was a Fulbright Scholar as well as a U.S. Institute for Peace Dissertation scholar. Dr. Golden-Timsar is the author of several publications; her most recent article entitled “Oil, Masculinity, and Violence: Egbesu Worship in the Niger Delta of Nigeria,” was published in Subterranean Estates: Life Worlds of OIl and Gas, edited by Hannah Appel, Arthur Mason, and Michael Watts(2013). Read more about her here

Abstract :

Egbesu, the powerful Ijaw arch-deity of justice and war both promulgated and mitigated violence for Ijaw youths in their struggle against inequality, the Nigerian federal government, petroleum multinationals, and “adulterated Egbesu boys.” The worship of Egbesu pervaded Ijaw youths’ perceptions of order at a time when, elsewhere, Islam and Christianity were central motors of Nigerian politics. The Ijaw Youth Council solicited power from the past to aid and to abet the articulation of militancy and resistance in the present, transforming local, national, and transnational landscapes of power, security, equality, and moral order.

This paper investigates the transformative aspects of extractive violence within Ijaw resistance groups as “original” and “adulterated” and are cast against the Ijaw warrior ethos, masculinity, and socio-religious liminality.

These transformations are intensified by the creative and mercurial roles that both youth and religion play in the mimetic (that is the imitation but with a distortion) production and reproduction of violence and injustices.

Entry is free and no registration is required.

History and National Development: The Historians and Government

It is essential that in every society that a sense of continuity be kept alive,  so that issues can be seen form a long term perspectives and be better understood.  Keeping alive in society such a sense of the flow of time is one of the most important functions of historians.  This why the proper teaching of history in schools at all levels [sic] is important.  Many other societies find ways to reinforce the teaching in schools,  through visual aids in museum,  national festivals and celebrations,  and various efforts in the mass media.  These forms of support either hardly exist in Nigeria or the notion of history that they project are themselves misleading.  It thus doubly necessary for us in Nigeria to look I again at our programs of historical education. 
Our planners need to abandon the imported model of modernization.  They need to educate themselves in the reality of our society in the present and how it has evolved from the past.  They need a healthy understanding of our history and our traditional culture so that they can be part of the dialogue between the past and the future, and confront the past in our present rather than continuing to waste effort in trying to run away from it. 

An excerpt from ‘Tradition and Development’  J.  F.  Ade-Ajayi. 

Book: Falola, Toyin Ed.  2000. Tradition and Change in Africa: The Essays of J.  F.  Ade-Ajayi.