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Latest

‘We Are Incredibly Bad, As a Species, at Valuing Things’ Charles Ebikeme’s First Draft

August 5, 2022

The UK’s Largest Benin Bronzes Repatriation Oxford and Cambridge Will Return 213 Stolen Benin Bronzes to Nigeria

August 4, 2022

The Road to 2023 2023 Election Updates

August 3, 2022

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Learn more👇🏾

Who was Elizabeth Adekogbe? #RxGender👥⁠ ⁠ E

Who was Elizabeth Adekogbe? #RxGender👥⁠
⁠
Elizabeth Adekogbe was a nationalist, journalist, teacher, and women’s rights activist, who was the founder and leader of the Women’s Movement of Nigeria, an organization that championed the rights of women in political, social, and economic spaces.⁠
⁠
Adekogbe was born in 1919 to the Ajaloorun, the king of Ijebu-Ife, in southwestern Nigeria. She was educated at Saint Agnes Catholic Training College, Lagos and Yaba College of Technology, Lagos, where she trained to become a teacher.⁠
⁠
In December 1952, she and a group of 14 women, founded the Women’s Movement of Nigeria (WM) in Ibadan, of which she was its leader. In July 1953 in Abeokuta, Adekogbe in collaboration with Funmilayo-Ransome Kuti and Margaret Ekpo founded the Federation of Nigerian Women’s Societies (FNWS), a sector of the WM. The main goal of FNWS was to prepare women to take up political offices. ⁠
⁠
Adekogbe would later leave the FNWS over some disputes on her role in the FNWS.⁠
Read more on Adekogbe and other pioneering Nigerian women by clicking the link in our bio.⁠
____________⁠
📝: Tomisin Awosika, Junior Editor⁠
📷️: 1) Elizabeth Adekogbe. UNKNOWN PHOTOGRAPHER.⁠
2) Mrs Louis H. Sweterlitsch and Elizabeth Adekogbe (right) of Nigeria examining itinerary and seated in an office. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. July 1957. Charles ‘Teenie’ Harris / Carnegie Museum of Art.

Today in 1960, Ivory Coast declared independence f

Today in 1960, Ivory Coast declared independence from France. #RxHistory⏳⁠
⁠
On 07 August 1960, just a few months before Nigeria followed suit, Ivory Coast declared independence from France and Félix Houphouët-Boigny became its first president.⁠
⁠
In 1956, France, through the Overseas Reform Act, granted territorial governments in French West Africa more authority. In 1958, Ivory Coast, a French colony at the time, became an autonomous member of the French Community, a more liberal improvement on the French Union. On 11 July 1960, France approved of Ivory Coast’s independence.⁠
⁠
Ivory Coast’s independence is closely linked to Houphouët-Boigny, its first president, who was also a founder in the Rassemblement Démocratique Africain (RDA), one of French West Africa’s interterritorial political movements.⁠
⁠
Unlike African countries like Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast maintained close ties to the west and this contributed to the country's economic and political stability post-independence. By the time Ivory Coast finally became independent in 1960, it was responsible for more than 40% of French West Africa's exports, making it one of the most prosperous African countries.⁠
____________⁠
📝: Adams Adeosun x Ugonna Eronini⁠
📷: Ivorian president Felix Houphouet Boigny (R) and Senegalese President Leopold Sedar Senghor parade in the official car, on August 10, 1961 in Abidjan, during the first Independence day anniversary. AFP via Getty Images

The Subversive Economy of the Lagos Danfo. #OnSite

The Subversive Economy of the Lagos Danfo. #OnSite⚡

Since the 1970s, Lagos has run on informal modes of mass transportation such as danfo buses. Known for their slogans and their savvy manoeuvring of Lagos roads, danfos have come to represent not just a way of getting around but also a lively archive of popular culture.

But the political economy of danfos, whose drivers and passengers have to navigate extortionist street thugs and government officials, is far from straight forward. Just this year in February, a danfo driver in Lagos took his own life by setting himself ablaze in protest after the seizure of his danfo by bribe-demanding LASTMA officials.

On average, danfo drivers in Lagos spend 30 hours in traffic each week—or 1,560 annually. (Drivers in Los Angeles and Moscow traffic spent only 128 and 210 hours respectively in the whole of 2018.) Many danfo drivers also face health issues, with most in Lagos, according to the State Ministry of Transportation, suffering from hypertension.

Danfo buses provide up to 70% of motorized trips. In this online essay, assistant professor at Harvard University, Daniel Agbiboa, asks what if—instead of through a Western lens—we looked at cities like Lagos through their own eyes? Through, for instance, the eyes of the danfo?

Learn more by clicking the link in our bio.
____________
📝: Daniel Agbiboa
📷: 1) Danfo buses at a bus stop in Ketu, Alapere, Lagos. 19 May 2018. Dami Akinbode.

2&3) Danfo labelled with slogans, along the Lekki-Epe expressway, Lagos, Nigeria. Andrew Esiebo / Panos Pictures.

4) Bright yellow passenger buses stop beside the railway tracks in Oshodi, Lagos Mainland. Andrew Esiebo / Panos Pictures.

Today in 1861, Britain annexed Lagos. #RxHistory⏳

On 06 August 1861, Britain annexed Lagos, declared it a British colony in 1862 and established it as a protectorate over most of its Yoruba neighbours between 1890 and 1897. With its population numbering more than 60,000 people, Lagos colony had become a sophisticated commercial hub by 1872.

But before that, Britain gained access to Lagos, a major slave trading port in the nineteenth century, under the pretext of a crusade against the transatlantic slave trade along the West African coast. Allied with Akitoye, an exiled king working to retrieve the throne of the Kingdom of Lagos, the British invaded Lagos in what the Yorubas now call ‘Ogun Ahoyaya’, in December 1851.

The British reinstalled Akitoye as the Oba of Lagos, and, on 01 January 1852, both parties signed a treaty abolishing the slave trade and establishing a consulate to further Britain’s interests. Some historians believe the treaty of 1852 afforded the British the opportunity to annex Lagos a decade later.

In 1906, the British added Lagos colony to the Southern Nigerian Protectorate. Later, in 1914, Lagos became the capital of the Protectorate of Nigeria.

Read more about the history of Britain in Lagos by clicking the link in our bio.
____________
📝: Adams Adeosun x Ugonna Eronini
📷: Annexation of Ado to Lagos Colony, 1891. N. Walwin Holm.

Charles Ebikeme’s argument for more accessible h

Charles Ebikeme’s argument for more accessible healthcare. #OnSite⚡

Health policy researcher, Charles Ebikeme, believes capitalism is making our world less healthy. In our latest First Draft interview, he discusses health policy in Africa, his recent interest in food writing and his ongoing writing on Soviet history.

According to Ebikeme: ‘Health is an investment. We are incredibly bad, as a species, at valuing things—especially the intangible things. Every cost benefit analysis in health is biased simply because we cannot effectively assign a benefit to, say, a child not getting malaria. Health is too expensive in the way we have conceptualized cost and benefit in our collective minds. Health, like education, is immeasurable because the benefits are equally immeasurable. And changing this mindset isn’t going to come from more and more data or evidence. It is going to come from imaginative and innovative ways we view the future we want to live in.’

First Draft is our interview column, featuring authors and other prominent figures on books, reading, and writing. Read Ebikeme’s interview by clicking the link in our bio.
____________
📝: Charles Ebikeme
🎨: Ojima Abalaka x Onyinye Dike (Art Director at The Republic)

Today in 2019, Toni Morrison died aged 88. #RxHist

Today in 2019, Toni Morrison died aged 88. #RxHistory⏳

On 05 August 2019, novelist, editor, and Nobel laureate, Toni Morrison, died at the age of 88 at the Montefiore Medical Centre in New York.

Morrison was born in Lorain, Ohio, on 18 February 1931, to African American working-class parents. Morrison's parents gave her a consciousness of her origin and language by telling her traditional African American stories. In 1953, she graduated from Howard University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English. She would later go on to teach English at Howard University where she met Harold Morrison, whom she married in 1958, and later divorced in 1965.

Morrison worked as an editor for LW Singer, an imprint of Random House, from 1965. She eventually became the first black female senior fiction editor at Random House. While at Random House, she worked on a collection that featured Nigerian writers, Wole Soyinka and Chinua Achebe, titled 'Contemporary African Literature'.

Toni Morrison’s first book, 'The Bluest Eye', was published when she was 39. In 1988, she won a Pulitzer Prize for her 1987 novel, 'Beloved', and became the first African American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993.
____________
📝: Adams Adeosun and Ugonna Eronini.
📷: Toni Morrison. Oprah Magazine.

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