British Scholar: Review of Tijani "Britain, Leftist Nationalists..."

Britain, Leftist Nationalists and the Transfer of Power in Nigeria 1945-1965
Hakeem Ibikunle Tijani (London: Routledge, 2006), 138 pages

Reviewed by: Roy Doron, University of Texas at Austin

Recent historiography on African decolonization has come to challenge the established view of the transfer of
power to independent Africa as an “amicable” transition and to focus on the groups that directly challenged
colonial rule rather than those who cooperated in the transfer of power. Works like Caroline Elkins’ Imperial
Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya, and David Anderson’s Histories of the Hanged: The
Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire both examine the Mau Mau revolt in Kenya and spearhead this new
look at the history of decolonization in Sub Saharan Africa. While most of the histories focus, understandably,
on Kenya and South Africa, Hakeem Tijani’s new book focuses on Nigeria, and more importantly on the leftists
who came to agitate for Nigeria’s decolonization.

Tijani’s book charts the beginnings of leftist intellectuals and political activists in Nigeria from Nnamdi Azikiwe
and his Zikist movement, which formed in 1945, based on Zik’s writings from the late 1930s, and interestingly
retained his name even after he politically realigned himself in favor of a less Marxist approach toward
decolonization. Tijani’s work excels at bridging the gaps between local, British and global Marxist circles of
thought. In such a short space, the author excels at showing how indigenous Marxist thinkers were caught in
the emerging Cold War between the West and the Soviet bloc and how they struggled against draconian
measures that the British administration, and later the Nigerian Government, enacted against them.

With a very methodical approach, Tijani charts the intellectual evolution of the Marxist thought in Nigeria and
how this pattern shifted from purely Leninist-Stalinist propaganda to a Marxist anti-colonial liberation
philosophy that would infect the labor unions and student groups and cause the British to react in a heavy
handed McCarthy-esque crackdown.

Though Tijani encompasses much in a very short book, at only 109 pages (without the endnotes), it is
amazing how much ground the author covers. The fact that the book is so short demands some sacrifices.
The most glaring drawback with this work comes from the very nature of Marxist thought. Marx himself said
that “the point [of history] is to change it”. While Tijani’s work here goes into great detail about the intellectual
foundations of Marxism in Nigeria, he leaves out much about the conflicts that ensued over the implementation
of the ideas into practice. For example, one of the greatest victories for leftist organizers in the covered period
is the annulment of the 1958 Anglo–Nigerian Defense Pact. Marxist organizers across Nigeria organized
students in bloody riots against this humiliating treaty. The author spends three pages on the intricacies of the
defense pact, but only two paragraphs on the protests that led to the annulment of the treaty, the most
successful application of Marxist ideology in practice. The battle for control of the labor unions receives
equally short treatment despite the large buildup in the intellectual importance of control over the unions.

The great strength of this book, however, lies in its discussion about the global battle for the intellectual heart
of Nigerian leftists. Whether indigenous, from the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), or Moscow itself,
many pressures were exerted on the local Nigerian communist organizations. These pressures shaped not
only how the Nigerian parties organized, but were strong enough that the Americans and British had to take
notice and enact laws that rivaled communist exclusion acts in the US and UK. Yet here, as elsewhere, the
inner workings of this conflict lack detail and life.

Yet, this book provides an important entry point to a much understudied segment and period in Nigerian
history and in the historiography of decolonization as a whole. Contrary to a commonly held belief, the
decolonization process was not always amicable and even in the most amicable of separations, as the
Nigerian case is modeled, there were powerful segments within the local populations that not only opposed the
colonial administration but were organizing to violently overthrow the government. Most importantly, this work
serves as an important addition and opens up many doors for future work on the amicability of the much
touted “amicable decolonization”.

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