Transcultural tension and the politics of sewage management in (post) colonial Lagos

ABSTRACT

The culture of sewage management in Lagos dates back to pit latrines (Shalanga) in precolonial Lagos; this culture gave way to bucket latrines in the wake of British colonial administration in Lagos and then to mobile toilets in postcolonial Lagos. The introduction of bucket latrines created a new job category known as Agbepo (night-soil men) and a new material practice in the management of faecal waste among ethnicities and races inhabiting the urban space of Lagos. This material practice, I argue, created ethnic tensions and reveals the extent to which varying perceptions of sewage management determine how people perceive and relate with one another in Lagos. To validate my argument, my paper proceeds from the vantage point of the phenomenology of disgust, drawing on Chinua Achebe’s No Longer at Ease, archival materials, and selected live interviews to examine how varying perceptions of sewage management play out in the construction of relationships in Lagos.

KEYWORDS:

• Transcultural
• ethnicity
• night-soil men (Agbepo)

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the European Research Council under Grant AdG: 323343

and The MacMillan Centre for International and Area Studies at Yale University.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

John Uwa

John Uwa was a Project Researcher/Cultural Archivist with DirtPol – a project funded by European Research Council in 2014/15, and Yale University in 2015/16. With interest in cultural studies, literary theories and comparative literature, John is currently investigating the transformations and trans-mediation of Nigerian popular theatre. He has both local and international publications to his credit.