This review is a brief discussion of Saheed Aderinto’s When Sex threatened the State: Illicit Sexuality, Nationalism, and Politics in Colonial Nigeria, 1900-1958 (University of Illinois Press, 2015, pp.241)
Dr. Saheed Aderinto’s engaging book is a rare and commendable historical treatise on the significance of sexuality and how it affects virtually everything: politics, history, culture, religion, imperialism, race, ethnicity, nation-building, security, social cohesion, and even law. My intervention in this review will centre more on the three interwoven themes of ‘Military prostitution’, ‘Political prostitution’ and ‘Sexual Terrorism’.
For a start, we should note that the book is divided into seven chapters; aside an introduction and an epilogue, all totalling 241 pages. When Sex Threatened the State is an unusual book in the sense that it illuminates the present by engaging the past. We should take cognisance of the fact that the period indicated in the title of the book, namely 1900-1958, is just an indicative periodic scope of study because the text connects with Nigeria’s today than it does with Nigeria’s colonial era.
How does the author make us think and interrogate illicit sexuality or what the author argues has been ‘normalised’ in the Nigerian society? I concede the fact that while other speakers will do justice to the legal, sociological and historical parts of the book, as a political scientist, I am intrigued by the multi-disciplinary effort by the author; just as one is impressed by the lucid, logical and original contributions by him, as well as the intellectually engaging tone of a text that reads like a play that was set in the city of Lagos; ‘the city of bubbles’. Indeed, a keen reader is captured from chapter one, through which the author historicises the cosmopolitan and metropolitan status of Lagos; from the Awori/Yoruba immigrant-founders, to the supra-political influence of the Benin Empire, up to the impact of the colonial incursion, and why Lagos is not a ‘no man’s land’.
Military Prostitution: As documented in chapter one through chapter four, soldiers, like other humans, are not exempted from prostitution, whether in barracks or at the war front. One of the key arguments by the author is that rather than finding long-lasting solutions to the cases of sexual abuse among and within the military rank and file, ‘racialisation’ of the army beclouded the colonial intentions. Graphically put, “Racialisation of African sexuality was just one of the numerous elements of prejudice in the colonial army – itself one of the strongholds of colonial racism. The African rank-and-file faced discrimination in promotion, remuneration and enforcement of discipline. The highest position they could aspire to was battalion sergeant-major, and they were paid less than their white counterparts. Besides, they were required to stand at attention to British soldiers (irrespective of ranks), salute all white civilians, and march barefooted unless on the battle field. While corporal punishment was inflicted on African soldiers, their white counterparts escaped sanctions for such common offences as drunkenness and were not punished for contracting VD. No African received a commission as an officer until 1948, when Lieutenant L.V. Ugboma was commissioned. This meant that between 1863, when the WAFF came into existence, and 1948, Nigerian soldiers did not occupy important positions of military authority” (Aderinto, 2015, p.96)
Political Prostitution: Although not a direct cause or consequence of illicit sexuality, political prostitution is analytically and ontologically derivable from the subject matter of Aderinto’s thesis. This is inherently embedded in what one may call the politics of prostitution and prostitution of politics: Many politicians are like prostitutes; they hobnob with anyone and or any party in power. We all vividly recall the cases of governors who rushed to marry President Yar’Adua’s daughters only to be close to power. We all know, of recent, how several Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) members and leaders were jumping into the ship of the soon-to-become ruling party, the All Progressives Congress (APC). Politics is sexy or rather politics is sexual; no doubt, since it gives some measure of gratification, be it economic, political or psychological just like sex itself is political, because it is relational and interactional.
Sexual Terrorism: Unlike in the colonial state, which is the focus of Aderinto’s book where sexual politics was gendered and of course engendered in racialised colonial Lagos (chapters 1 and 2), the contemporary Nigerian state is presently facing an existential challenge of immense proportion. Added to the physical insecurity stratagem of the Boko Haram insurgents.
In conclusion, whether we talk about prostitution among the soldiers, or the metaphoric manifestation among the politicians, who have also been severally alleged of being the most regular Aristos or ‘big men’ who patronise ‘big babes’ and sexually exploit the girls on campuses mostly for financial returns (see some of the sources cited in footnote 5, page 215 of When Sex Threatened The State), or we talk about the sexual coercion by terrorists, where girls and women are usually at the receiving end.
Nigeria is now a net exporter of trans-national prostitutes. According to Aderinto 2015 (pp.175 and 176), many Nigerian women sell sex in Italy, Spain, France and even Saudi Arabia. As at year 2000, about 10,000 out of 40,000 Nigerians living in Italy were prostitutes. This may sound like an exaggeration, but I am only quoting Aderinto who was only quoting Etim Ekpoyo, the then Nigerian Ambassador to Italy. This has no doubt contributed to the prevalence of HIV/AIDS and other sexually-transmitted diseases, both at home and abroad; Ikun n jogede, Ikun n redi, Ikun omope nkan to dun lo n pani (The squirrel is eating banana, the squirrel is happy, the squirrel has forgotten that what is sweet could be poison).
The import of our intervention in discussing parts of this book is that the Nigerian state is really threatened by illicit sexuality, both locally and internationally. The state must re-discover itself. The state must learn from its colonial past and redeem both itself and its young and adult population from a sexual scourge embedded in ‘moral panic’ and ‘moral anxiety’. The very sexual time bomb, which has manifested severally in most of the country’s social institutions, is highly worrisome and should be detonated without delay.
Man (and woman) shall not live by sex alone. The state must know this and take legal, political and institutional measures to rescue its future from illicit sexuality. Military prostitution, political prostitution and sexual terrorism are all but negative manifestations of illicit sexuality and state failure. The Nigerian state must rescue itself from its colonial past. And that, in my view, is the essence of Aderinto’s thesis in When Sex Threatened the State.
*Oseni (Ph.D) is of the Department of Politics and International Relations, Lead City University, Ibadan.