What Happens If We Start from Nigeria? Diversifying Histories of Geography

Abstract

This article asks this question: What if, rather than starting from the United States or the United Kingdom in histories of geography, we start from Nigeria? Focusing on Nigerian geographers working in Nigeria’s first university from 1948 to 1990 and drawing on archival evidence and new oral history interviews, this article argues that the view from Nigeria offers significant new perspectives on the history of geography. First, it highlights the intellectual contribution of Nigerian scholars, illustrating the partial and exclusionary nature of many traditional histories. Second, it illuminates the as yet unacknowledged impact of the Cold War on the discipline far beyond the United States and Soviet Union. Third, this new perspective makes it possible to consider afresh the contemporary Anglo-American hegemony of international geography, providing evidence of the consequences of this hegemony for scholars working beyond the West and revealing the less hierarchical alternatives that at some moments appeared possible. Fourth, by highlighting the shifting structures that facilitated and foreclosed opportunities for participation in the international geographical community, the article provides an original insight into the conditions of academic labor and considers the crucial question of what, for the work of constructing a more equal academic community in the future, we might learn from this earlier period. Key Words: academic labor, Anglo-American hegemony, Cold War, decolonization, history of geography, Nigeria.

本文提出以下问题：如果我们从尼日利亚而非英美的地理学历史出发将会如何？本文聚焦 1948 年到 1990 年在尼日利亚第一所大学工作的地理学家，利用相关的档案证据和新的口述历史访谈，主张尼日利亚对地理学的历史提供了重要的崭新视野。首先，本文凸显尼日利亚学者对智识的贡献，说明了诸多传统历史观的局部性和排他性。其次，本文阐释冷战仍不为人知且远超美国、苏联对该领域的影响。第三，此一崭新视野，让我们得以重新思考当今英美在国际地理学的霸权、提供证据证实此一霸权为西方以外的学者带来的后果，并揭露在若干时刻成为可能的较少阶层化的另类选项。第四，通过强调促进和排除参与国际地理学社群的变化结构，本文为学术劳动条件提供具原创性的洞见，并思考为了建立未来更为平等的学术社群，我们能从此一早先时期习得何等教训的关键问题。关键词：学术劳动，英美霸权，冷战，去殖民，地理学的历史，尼日利亚。

Este artículo formula la siguiente cuestión: ¿Qué tal si en vez de empezar las historias de la geografía con los Estados Unidos o el Reino Unido, empezamos desde Nigeria? Concentrándose en geógrafos nigerianos que han trabajado en la primera universidad de Nigeria desde 1948 hasta 1990, y con el apoyo de evidencia archivista y nuevas entrevistas de historia oral, este artículo sostiene que la visión desde Nigeria ofrece nuevas perspectivas significativas sobre la historia de la geografía. Primero, relieva la contribución intelectual de los eruditos nigerianos, ilustrando la naturaleza parcial y exclusivista de muchas historias tradicionales. Segundo, ilumina el hasta ahora desconocido impacto de la Guerra Fría sobre la disciplina mucho más allá de los Estados Unidos y la Unión Soviética. Tercero, esta nueva perspectiva hace posible una fresca consideración de la hegemonía angloamericana contemporánea sobre la geografía internacional, suministrando evidencia de las consecuencias que tal hegemonía acarrea a eruditos que trabajan fuera de Occidente y revelando alternativas menos jerárquicas que en ciertos momentos aparecen como nuevas posibilidades. Cuarto, al destacar las cambiantes estructuras que facilitaron y ejecutaron oportunidades de participación en la comunidad geográfica internacional, el artículo provee una perspicacia original de las condiciones del trabajo académico y considera la pregunta crucial sobre qué podríamos aprender de este período anterior para la construcción de una comunidad académica más igualitaria en el futuro. Palabras clave: descolonización, Guerra Fría, hegemonía angloamericana, historia de la geografía, Nigeria, trabajo académico.

This article asks this question: What if, rather than starting from the United States or the United Kingdom in histories of geography, we start from Nigeria? In answering this question, through a focus on the careers and experiences of Nigerian geographers from 1948 to 1990, we contribute to the broadening of disciplinary histories, which remain Anglo-American and exclusionary. We argue that uncovering more diverse histories of geography is crucial for four reasons.

First, it highlights important work by geographers from beyond the West that has often been written out of “international” disciplinary histories (Ferretti and Viotto Pedrosa 2018). Exploring intellectual contributions across a wider range of spaces and experiences demonstrates the ways in which individuals, responding to their own intellectual and regional contexts and priorities, shaped new theoretical and methodological innovations. Nigerian geographers worked with international colleagues to develop research agendas, also applying geographical insights in the specific context of postcolonial state-building. As they absorbed insights from abroad, they were active agents in these intellectual developments, rather than passive receivers of new ways of practicing geography. Nevertheless, they were working within colonial structures—intellectual and institutional—that defined what were deemed successful career trajectories and important ideas.

Second, diversifying our histories of geography sheds light on significant relationships between geography and geopolitics that have yet to be acknowledged. Geography in the Global South was often institutionalized in late colonial contexts, and universities were key sites for development funding tied to Cold War concerns (Livsey 2017). As countries became independent, geographers were engaged in regional planning for new postcolonial states. Although geography’s role in empire-building has been widely acknowledged (Bell, Butlin, and Heffernan 1995; Driver 1999), its relationship to decolonization and postcolonial state-building is only just starting to be explored (Lamego 2014; Clayton forthcoming). Moreover, whereas the impact of the Cold War context has been explored in detail with regard to Western, and particularly U.S. geography (Barnes and Farish 2006), there has been little reflection on impacts and experiences in geography in Africa.

Third, inserting often-overlooked histories of geography makes it possible to consider afresh the contemporary Anglo-American hegemony of international geography. Although it is crucial to acknowledge this hegemony, we risk presentism if we fail to explore the genealogies of our contemporary situation. We argue that, although the United Kingdom and United States remain important in disciplinary histories told from the South, these relations have not been static. Understanding the shifting status of different national geography schools over time helps to understand the specific (and regionally differentiated) contexts through which present-day international geography was produced.

Fourth, focusing on a view from beyond the West highlights the shifting structures that both facilitated and foreclosed opportunities for participation in the international geographical community, through travel, publishing, research, and teaching. Although these were primarily opportunities to participate in a Western-dominated university system, rather than to construct alternatives, we suggest that understanding these power dynamics in the past might offer important insights relevant to the urgent task of constructing a more equal international geographical community in the future.

The article explores these issues through a focus on the experiences of Nigerian geographers at the first university in Nigeria, University College Ibadan (University of Ibadan after 1962). It focuses on the years between 1948, when university geography was established in the (then) colony, and the 1990s, when many of this first generation of scholars retired. Although Ibadan was joined by many other Nigerian universities over the later decades, here we focus on one institution to offer a detailed assessment of the intersection of individual careers, personal experiences, and wider intellectual and geopolitical contexts. The article examines the department and the experiences of a number of geographers who studied and worked there, but within the narrative one name looms large: Akin Mabogunje. Mabogunje was part of the second intake of geography undergraduates at Ibadan and the first Nigerian lecturer in the department. As a pioneer, key influence on the department, and internationally renowned scholar, Mabogunje deserves attention in his own right. Here, his career is placed alongside those of his colleagues to highlight a range of experiences of Nigerian geographers working in this period.

Although the article provides important insights relevant to the broader experience of Nigerian scholars, as well as those working in other African universities, the experience at Ibadan was specific, even within Nigeria. Soon after independence, four new universities were founded in each of the three federal regions and the capital, each in a different political context. For example, Nsukka, in the east, was the brainchild of Eastern Region Premier Nnamdi Azikiwe, pan-Africanist and radical anticolonial nationalist. Azikiwe had “warned against the thoughtless imitation of western education” but when Nsukka opened in 1960 it drew on substantial U.S. assistance and looked much like Ibadan (Azikiwe, cited in Livsey 2016, 958; Livsey 2017). Ibadan’s British colonial roots bound it more tightly to the United Kingdom than these other institutions, which were also more clearly shaped by the politics of damaging regional competition within Nigeria’s colonial-era federal system bequeathed at independence (Livsey 2017).

The experience at Ibadan also differed from other colonial universities in Africa, reflecting the specific pro-Western orientation of independent Nigeria. Ibadan never moved substantially away from a universal (Western) university style. In contrast, the University of Dar es Salaam, founded just before independence in Tanzania, became, from the late 1960s, “the flag-bearer of anti-colonial nationalism and the home of the new, African public intellectual” committed to radical social transformation and reflecting the broader socialist politics of that country under Julius Nyerere (Mamdani 2018, 59). Despite Ibadan’s less radical orientation, experiences at the university provide important insight into current debates about decolonizing geography and wider structures of university education (Elliott-Cooper 2017). They highlight the complex but pervasive and wide-ranging legacies of colonialism on geography and the wider university in Africa, including on the experiences, struggles, and contributions of the influential first generation of scholars working within these structures.

Although the focus here is on inserting stories about Nigerian geography into histories of the discipline that are often Anglo-centric, we are not claiming to be uncovering histories that are unknown. Indeed, crucial to the following account is the important scholarship produced by Nigerian geographers exploring the intellectual development of the discipline in Nigeria and at Ibadan (e.g., Areola and Okafor 1998). Rather than recounting a history focusing solely on intellectual development, here we tell a story of the practice of geography, grounded in “social and biographical processes” (Barnes 2001, 410). We are as interested in friendships, solidarities, disappointments, and exclusions as in publications. It is in this wider understanding of academic labor that it is possible to better understand the experience, opportunities, and challenges of university careers developed against the backdrop of decolonization and ongoing coloniality. Through this it is possible to uncover the dynamics that have produced what Van Meeteren (2019) called the “skewed transnationalism” of international geography, dominated by Anglo-American scholars, and histories of geography that are similarly skewed.

The article begins by outlining the Anglo-American, exclusive nature of geography and its histories. The main body of the article explores histories of academic geography at Ibadan and is structured into four sections. The first explores the shifting relations between London and Ibadan as decolonization took place, examining the experiences of the first generation of Nigerian geographers studying for higher degrees in London before returning to prestigious jobs in Ibadan. The second places Ibadan within wider international networks of scholarship, highlighting the Cold War dimensions of these connections. This section also highlights how Nigerian geographers, through this mobility, became active contributors to the quantitative revolution. The third section takes on this concern with quantification and applied geography and shows how in a Nigerian context these took on increasing importance in demonstrating geography’s relevance to postcolonial development projects. The final section explores the experiences of Nigerian geographers as they became increasingly internationally isolated as structural adjustment, coups, and the growing neoliberalism of the global academy affected Nigeria. The conclusion draws out aspects of the history told here to reflect on its value for reshaping the global discipline of geography in the future.

Investigating Geography’s Exclusions

Today evidence highlights an uneven “spatial politics of geographic knowledge production” where theory from the Anglo-American sphere is privileged and universalized (Berg and Kearns 1998, 128). Key texts persistently produce center–periphery discourse and imaginaries, disguised by claims of “international” reach and audiences (Aalbers 2004; Bański and Ferenc 2013; Lawhon 2013). These inequalities within geography are sustained through practices such as publication, peer review, editorial decision making, conference interactions, and linguistic homogenization (Timár 2004; Derudder and Liu 2016; Fregonese 2017).

As a subdiscipline, historical geography is also not immune to accusations of Anglo-Americanism (Novaes 2015). Jöns, Monk, and Keighren (2017), building on feminist historiographies of geography (Domosh 1991; Monk 2004; Maddrell 2009), have recently called again for “more inclusive and comparative perspectives” in disciplinary histories. Yet, as Boyle et al. (2017) have argued, “The task of provincializing, historicizing, and relativizing metropolitan ways of thinking about the world and narrating historiographies of non-Western human geographies remains firmly on the nursery slopes” (49). This article begins to address this issue. In this, it draws on a substantial body of work exploring Nigeria’s national geographical traditions (Ojo 1978; Sada 1982; Okafor 1989; Areola and Okafor 1998; Mabogunje 2004; Udo 2004). Because of the linguistic and epistemic boundary-making practices outlined earlier, though, these accounts often do not feature in so-called international journals, limiting accessibility and readership.

In the following account we contribute particularly to the diversification of histories of post–World War II geography, which have often been dominated by the quantitative revolution and subsequent disciplinary developments (Livingstone 1992; Barnes 2001, 2002). Most of the considerable volume of writing produced attends to the North American (i.e., Washington, Iowa, Michigan, Chicago) and the British (i.e., Bristol and Cambridge) experience and focuses on “great men” (e.g., Garrison 2002; Berry 2006). Nearly two decades ago Barnes (2002) identified geographical absences in these narratives. asking, “Why are places in Africa not … there, or Asia, or Australia?” (508), and recently there have been moves to uncover alternative histories and geographies of the quantitative revolution (Barnes and Abrahamsson 2017; Ginelli 2018). As Power and Sidaway (2004, 587, 595) noted, there is value in pursuing these absences, to provide “disruptive” alternatives to the ways in which “the discipline is conventionally narrated.”

To understand the experiences of Nigerian geographers, we draw on a wide range of archival evidence, including correspondence, the papers of geographical associations, and teaching ephemera such as syllabi and handouts. Departmental archives are often patchy in their coverage, but substantial records were available in various places at Ibadan, including in the university central archive (The University Archives and Records Project) and in the department and individuals’ collections. The Oxford Colonial Records Project (records of British academics working at Ibadan) also held useful material. These materials provide substantial evidence of what Lorimer and Spedding (2002) called “geography’s more quotidian history” (295). Some of these more official collections reflect institutional priorities and, in the case of the earlier period, the interests of the colonial state. Although these dimensions are important to note, the quantity and heterogeneity of the materials and collections available to consult still provide valuable insights into how everyday labor intersected with intellectual and geopolitical developments.

In addition to these materials, the article draws substantially on autobiographical accounts, e-mail exchanges, and nine interviews with geographers in Nigeria, as well as with others in the United Kingdom and United States. Oral histories and other personal testimony can provide useful insight into academic lives (Barnes 2001; Tolia-Kelly 2017; Craggs and Neate forthcoming). Talking about professional lives, particularly with those reflecting in retirement, can lead to the downplaying of difficult periods and failures as career trajectories are smoothed out in the subsequent narration, and disappointment, anger, or sadness are sometimes edited out. Nevertheless, asking about everyday experiences and triangulating interview discussion with archival and secondary material provides insight into some of these less positive aspects of academic life. In this article, interviews are quoted extensively to allow the experiences and memories of Nigerian geographers to be heard in their own words. These interviews, along with other informal conversations during a two-week visit at Ibadan in 2017, helped to place archival materials and to understand the experiences of working as a Nigerian geographer in the second half of the twentieth century. In addition to access to uncatalogued archive materials, this visit provided the valuable opportunity to give a seminar in the department and discuss the research with many of those whose lives are central to the following account.

Although in some ways the account that follows contributes to the agenda of diversifying geography’s histories, in other ways it falls short: Women are an important absence in this article. This reflects both historic gender imbalances in the department (common beyond Nigeria) and the fact that several female geographers at Ibadan were unavailable for interview, having died or moved away. The article also focuses only on the experience of academic faculty members, not students (apart from those pursuing academic careers); support staff such as administrators, cartographers, or drivers; or those working in or doing geography beyond academia. Moreover, relying on the department at Ibadan for many referrals and contact details (several interviewees were retired and not contactable online) further restricted the pool of those interviewed to those with a continuing relationship with the university—likely to be those who spent a long and successful career at Ibadan and who left on good terms. This inevitably shapes the narrative presented, with an emphasis on insights from those who continue to value their association with the department (and be valued in return). These choices, to focus on academic geographers in the most prestigious university in Nigeria, developed under colonial rule, reinforces an elite version of Nigerian geography, produced in an institution that continued to reflect Western visions of the discipline, rather than seeking a more radical inclusivity. Nevertheless, we argue that there is value in exploring the site where many Nigerians locate the development of the discipline of geography in Nigeria and of exploring the opportunities, restrictions, and power relations attendant within these spaces.

Starting from Nigeria

Ibadan and London: Rethinking Relationships

University College, Ibadan (UCI), was founded in 1948 in Nigeria, then still part of the British Empire. It was one of a wave of colonial universities founded in Africa in the late 1940s. Ibadan was initially a college of the University of London and was part of a broader investment in colonial development initiated by the UK government after World War II. Geography was a founding subject at UCI. The relations with the University of London were colonial: London set assessments, examined work, and appointed staff (Livsey 2017). UCI became the University of Ibadan, separate from the University of London in 1962, two years after the country itself won independence. This section considers the shifting relationship between Ibadan and London in the 1950s and 1960s. It argues that, although their relationship was undoubtedly both colonial and deeply hierarchical in the first decades, it was not experienced solely in these terms. Indeed, exploring the experiences of geographers in London and Ibadan in this period demonstrates a more ambiguous relationship as the dynamics of decolonization took hold.

The first Nigerian geography students entering the University College twelve years prior to Nigerian independence were taught by British staff and followed a curriculum similar to that taught in London. Given the colonial context and staffing, it was, as an early student Mabogunje (2004) noted, “not surprising that the British tradition in geography formed the foundation of much of the training of geographers in the country” (63). Early students were part of a small elite and often experienced undergraduate life as one of fun, freedom, and opportunity, although there were also tensions, discrimination, and racism in what remained throughout the 1950s a colonial institution, with overwhelmingly white, mainly British, academic staff (Livsey 2017).

Initially, only general degrees in geography were taught at Ibadan, and students who wanted to continue their university education had to go abroad to pursue honors or higher degrees. After studying for an ordinary geography degree at Ibadan, Mabogunje enrolled at University College London (UCL) for his honors degree (winning the Parry Prize for his performance in the process). He followed this with a master’s and PhD at UCL (the latter at a distance), both supervised by the prominent historical geographer H. C. Darby. Although from 1955 it was possible to take honors geography degrees at Ibadan, those studying at higher levels continued to travel beyond Nigeria until the early 1970s. Olusegun Areola, who graduated from Ibadan in 1968, remembers that the head of department at Ibadan at the time, the British Michael Barbour, “had this policy of sending young graduates, especially ones who had a second upper or first class … to a university in Britain to do your PhD.” Mabogunje, Reuban K. Udo, and Johnson Ayoade, early Nigerian staff members at Ibadan, all gained their doctorates from UCL, and Areola studied at Cambridge. Long after decolonization, British staff in Nigeria influenced where Nigerian students pursued further study, often intervening very directly to secure funded positions abroad for those deemed future stars. This underlines a clear understanding held by British staff that Western (and primarily British) universities represented the highest standards. This was also a view shared by Nigerians. Discussions over the founding of a university in Nigeria from the 1920s onward highlight demands for British qualifications rather than local ones, reflecting understanding of the greater value of these qualifications for demonstrating equivalent status within an unequal colonial system (Livsey 2016).

As a first generation of Nigerian academics made career decisions, a United Kingdom PhD was in the 1950s a necessity and continued to be a smart choice in the following decade. This reflected a continuing understanding of an international hierarchy placing Western institutions above their African counterparts and structural limitations (few qualified supervisors) that meant that there were few opportunities for PhD study at Ibadan until the mid-1960s. By the 1970s, increasing numbers of PhD students began to study at Ibadan and other Nigerian universities, as well as in the United States (Areola 1998).

British geographers also shaped the curriculum studied and knowledge produced by Nigerian geographers at all levels. Mabogunje noted recently, for example, that “the historical geography angle,” imparted by H. C. Darby, was “one of the lasting impacts of studying at UCL in my career” (interview 2016). When Areola wanted to study soils in Nigeria for his Cambridge PhD under A. T. Grove,

unfortunately Professor Barbour [Ibadan Department Head] … said, “No money, no money for you to be coming back to Nigeria and roaming about the place and doing field work. Whatever you want to do, do it in Britain.”

Areola ended up studying soils in Wales, with repercussions for his future career:

When you do your PhD abroad, there is a period of adjustment, trying to establish new study areas, and it also affects your writing. Not many people are interested in soils in Montgomeryshire, temperate land, over here. So it was like starting all over, tropical soils. (Interview 2017)

Moving to England for study also offered opportunities for early Nigerian geographers and those they worked alongside, however. Mabogunje enjoyed long-lasting friendships with fellow geography students at UCL and with his lecturers, including Eric Brown, whom he invited to his wedding in London, and Hugh Prince, who taught nineteenth-century British historical geography and took Mabogunje and his wife to visit a number of country houses. Alongside new connections, there were plenty of fellow Ibadan students who would “keep running into each other” when studying in London (Mabogunje interview 2016). Despite these pleasures, London could also be a hostile place. Although memories of racism can be uncomfortable and upsetting, two interviewees discussed them explicitly in accounts of their PhD study in the United Kingdom. Ayoade, at UCL from 1968 to 1971, remembered that:

There were some of my colleagues, postgraduate students who were very friendly, and I remember one or two of them, I won’t mention names, who I think were not too friendly. In fact one of them, even when I greeted him once, he would come to the room where I was with others and he would not greet me. So I stopped talking to him. … That was 1969. (Interview 2017)

Areola was disappointed to find “that amongst the younger generation especially, people were so ignorant about African countries, they seemed to have some stereotype ideas. … I was shocked that that was the type of thing they were teaching the young people” (interview 2017). These accounts are consistent with the broader experiences of colonial students in the United Kingdom, who, in contemporary surveys, reported discrimination in housing, color bars in pubs and restaurants, prejudice, and violence (Stockwell 2008).

Although studying abroad was a necessary step for many early Nigerian geographers within the framework of opportunities available in the decolonizing state, most did not see Britain as a permanent destination. Studying and working abroad was a means to an end: advancing their careers and securing a permanent position in Nigeria. Mabogunje was offered an assistant lectureship at Liverpool University following his master’s at UCL in 1958 but turned this down to become the first Nigerian lecturer in the department at Ibadan. For Mabogunje, his years in London were much less significant than those he had spent as an Ibadan undergraduate, which coincided with the introduction of the Macpherson Constitution (1952), seen as a significant step toward self-government. As he recalled:

Those four years [as an undergraduate] at the University College, Ibadan were some of the most memorable and fruitful years of my life … although I went on to read for the B.A. (Honours) in Geography as an undergraduate at University College London, I never really felt the same excitement of life as an undergraduate in those two years. … Much of what happened to me as both an undergraduate and a postgraduate student in London, I saw as part of my training for participating in the development of the national and economic entity known as Nigeria. (Mabogunje 2011, 91)

Areola, studying in London a decade later in the late 1960s, described similar sentiments:

Those of us from Africa had limited time, we wanted to get things done and come back home. Not like nowadays where people study there and they want to stay. In our time we wanted to study over there and come back home … because we were really interested in coming back to teach, in my own department and to contribute. (Interview 2017)

The number of Nigerians employed as lecturers remained stubbornly low in the 1950s, frustrating many Nigerian lecturers who also complained about discrimination, racism, and pay disparities between local and international staff. When they returned, many young Nigerian scholars were better qualified than the existing foreign staff; when Udo joined the staff in 1963, he was one of only three with PhDs, alongside Mabogunje and the British Bill Morgan. Despite this, in the Geography Department the head of department remained British until 1972. The frustrations of working under a head of department who was less qualified but continued to have significant power and personal discretion in hiring and promotion decisions was highlighted in contemporary complaints to the vice-chancellor from geography staff (R. K. Akinola to K. O. Dike, 29 April 1965. University Archives and Records Project, University of Ibadan. UI/FASC.12.5). “Africanization” of universities across sub-Saharan Africa in the 1960s converted many posts held by foreign academics into local roles providing attractive positions for well-qualified Africans. Significant change was felt at Ibadan in the Geography Department and beyond after the university became independent from the University of London in 1962, although the transformations remained slower than some demanded.

Despite ongoing frustrations, a post at Ibadan in the 1960s came with a high level of prestige as well as financial reward. According to Mabogunje (2011), “Life at the University College, Ibadan in those days really entailed living in an ivory tower” (135). Udo remembered beginning his first post at Ibadan fresh from studying in London and being bombarded with flyers from motor companies hoping to sell him a car (interview 2018). Further particulars of a job advertised in 1970 stated that:

Lecturers’ offices are air conditioned … there is a geography laboratory. … The department has a drawing office with a staff of three cartographers, equipped with a Grant Projector and a Apollo dye-line machine. … Research in the department is encouraged by a generous annual grant from the University to cover the expenses of fieldwork and excursions. There are also a Peugeot 404 Estate Car and a driver assigned to the Department. (Further Particulars, Lecturer in geography 1970. University Archives and Records Project, University of Ibadan UI/FASC.12.5.42)

In the accounts highlighted in this section, the United Kingdom is not particularly significant and certainly not exciting, intellectually, politically, or socially. Ibadan, rather than London, was the place to be, and many were anxious to return. Going back to Nigeria provided opportunities to participate in the politics and development of the new nation and to take advantage of the growing academic opportunities leading up to and following independence. To understand this helps to unsettle accounts of the relationship between the two cities that places London, and its universities, consistently in a hierarchy above Ibadan and illustrates the ambiguous nature of decolonization and its impacts on the university in this period. Western qualifications continued to be understood as necessary, but the most promising academic futures were envisaged in Africa. Nevertheless, knowledge gained abroad would help to incorporate Ibadan, and other similar universities, within an already existing international system of higher education, rather than to challenge it. Opportunities were only available to those who were willing to embrace Western visions of academic practice, rather than those who fundamentally disrupted them.

These accounts are also a reminder of the optimism felt in the years around constitutional decolonization in Nigeria and the buoyancy of UCI in these years (Livsey 2017). Indeed, in common with several African universities including Makerere in Uganda and the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, Ibadan was an exciting, well-connected, global academic center in the 1960s. Accounts of decolonization often rightly highlight colonial continuities that persist today and the often violent struggles over power, land, and rights that accompanied late colonial rule and independence in many parts of Africa. These, however, were accompanied by positive affective experiences of the end of empire and the novel material and intellectual opportunities it afforded (to some) within newly independent nations. Vividly articulated in the accounts of Nigerian geographers, these experiences are important to acknowledge and existed alongside frustrating, problematic, and often violent colonial legacies within and without the university.

Ibadan’s International Networks

Alongside its institutional connections with the University of London, Ibadan was plugged into wider research networks through the books and journals arriving regularly in its library. Although one early British member of staff suggested that the better stocked libraries back in Britain were one reason for leaving Ibadan (J. Pugh to R. O. Buchanan, 2 January 1956, Personal Papers of John Pugh, by permission of Mike Pugh), by the 1960s, a Nigerian student recalled that there was “a good library, which was … adequately well stocked with books and recent journals” (Albert Aweto interview 2017). The library carried a range of international journals, including most British and U.S. geography titles, the Bulletin of the Ghana Geographical Association, and the Journal of Tropical Geography.

Moreover, Ibadan did not just receive knowledge (primarily, but not only, from the West) but the research produced in Nigeria was made available through Nigerian journals that traveled the globe. The library at Ibadan carried the Nigerian Geographical Journal (founded in 1957), and libraries across the world also carried subscriptions: Fifteen universities in the United Kingdom still hold copies, and so do institutions in other parts of Europe (France, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland), Africa (Botswana, Ghana, South Africa, Zimbabwe), Australia, Malaysia, and the United States.¹ Nigerian geographers also published widely—Mabogunje’s early publications included articles in Economic Geography (Mabogunje 1964) and The Geographical Review (Mabogunje 1962), both published in the United States, and in Africa: Journal of the International African Institute (Mabogunje 1961), published in the United Kingdom, as well as the Nigerian Geographical Journal (Mabogunje 1959; Mabogunje and Oyewoye 1961). He was also highly cited throughout the 1970s and 1980s, despite lists of most well-cited scholars being dominated by those in North America (Whitehand 1985).

Access to journals provided not only the latest research but also news of jobs and networking opportunities. As ’Bola Ayeni, Ibadan student and lecturer there from 1974, highlighted:

It was reading them [the international journals] that I got to know of [a post at] Iowa city, from … Annals. I applied and got the job. … It was there too I read about [Alan] Wilson. … And I wrote to him, and within one week he sent a big bunch of materials like that [gestures to indicate size] to me. (Interview 2017)

Ibadan was also plugged into international geographical networks through regular foreign visitors. These included the Americans Malcolm Murray, Mike McNulty, and Ed Soja and the British academics Terry Coppock and Michael Chisholm, all traveling to Ibadan on a visiting lecturer scheme (Areola and Okafor 1998). Many faculty members and students remember the 1960s and 1970s as an exciting period in which “we had staff from all different parts of the world. … We had a vibrant academic community” (Aweto interview 2017). Areola agreed:

That is one thing about Ibadan, up until the 1980s, there was this rich culture of having people from different parts of the world and I think that helped students from Ibadan. … The experience, the diversity of experiences. And it made us more cosmopolitan. (Interview 2017)

Many individuals made a substantial impression, and although lecturers from abroad contributed to the dynamism of the department throughout the 1960s, they also joined a community seen by Nigerian and foreign lecturers alike as an important center for research, with “the quality of discussion and research … quite remarkable” (Kenneth [Michael] Barbour memo, Oxford Colonial Records Project, Bodleian Library, Oxford MSS Afr. S. 1825 Box III [4]). Foreign staff members and visiting lecturers often returned home with positive “views of what was happening [in the department that] … made it easy for them to ‘market’ our department in other parts of the world” (Mabogunje 2011, 128). As a result, students from Britain, Pakistan, and Singapore traveled to Ibadan for postgraduate studies in the 1960s (Mabogunje 2011). One of these, Jennifer Bray, a British Oxford undergraduate who studied for a master’s degree in Ibadan from 1964, explained:

The time was Nigeria, four years into independence, pre-oil and pre-war, now awarding its own degrees, a country full of confidence and hope and a university truly international in outlook. I was a 21-year-old on an academic journey, wanting to be part of it all! (Personal communication August 2018).

The funding for visiting positions came largely from external sources in the United Kingdom and United States. Rockefeller Foundation funding was important for the Geography Department, giving it, according to Barbour, the head of department, “the air required to appoint a Visiting Lecturer for several years” (Barbour memo, Oxford Colonial Records Project, Bodleian Library, Oxford MSS Afr. S. 1825 Box III [4]). The American Foundations’ priorities closely mirrored those of the State Department (Livsey 2017). Livsey (2017) argued that, in the late 1950s and 1960s, African development had become a new Cold War battleground, and “Nigeria seemed like a good location to showcase to new African nations the benefits of cooperation with Washington” (120). Much of this funding flowed into the University of Ibadan.

This growing interest in Ibadan was very clear to those who worked there, who noticed growing U.S. influence at the university, as British curricula, faculty, and course structures began to change (Mabogunje interview 2016). Barbour remembered “parties with the American and French Ambassadors meeting [the] V[ice]/C[hancellor], Deans etc, and even Robert McNamara taking great pains to charm leading Nigerian academics and make them think better of the USA” (Barbour memo, Oxford Colonial Records Project, Bodleian Library, Oxford MSS Afr. S. 1825 Box III [4]). Rockefeller and Ford funding allowed for creation of new departments, new buildings to house them, library acquisitions, and the rapid expansion of staff (Livsey 2017). The historian C. C. Wrigley, then at Ibadan, recalled that the social science faculty was virtually “taken over” by Rockefeller (C. C. Wrigley, cited in Livsey 2017, 139).

Having a consistent stream of visitors from overseas also meant opportunities for Nigerian academics to travel to the West. As Areola noted:

It was easy getting places for summer school, for study leave, for sabbatical, and for joint research projects. And going on conferences, was also that much easier for us here, than I think for people in other universities because of all these connections, because they remained colleagues, it was like a network, and some of them they carried on until very late. (Interview 2017)

As early as 1959, Mabogunje traveled to universities in Germany to give lectures on Yoruba towns (Mabogunje 2011), and he traveled extensively following this. Many others followed over the next two decades. Crucial to many of these visits was continued U.S. funding. Mabogunje recalled:

With independence, Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, then started sending teams of their respected academics to come out to countries in Africa to find out in what way they can help. And so, in 1961, a team came from Rockefeller, it comprised … Professor [Gilbert] White of Chicago. … And so they came to Ibadan. … They were asking what else can we do to help. And of course I was saying I wanted to go to a university in the U.S. where I can supplement my quantitative and theoretical capabilities. And of course Gilbert White comes from the University of Chicago, but he thought the best teacher at that point in time was at Northwestern, that was Bill Garrison. … I had nine months. (Interview 2016)

This quote highlights the impact that funding associated with the Cold War might have on geographers’ careers far beyond the borders of the superpowers. Just as in the United States (Barnes and Farish 2006), Cold War funding helped to found the quantitative revolution in Nigeria. The quote also demonstrates the agency of Nigerian geographers within this process. Although U.S. intervention at Ibadan could feel imposed, it could also be negotiated and offer opportunities (Livsey 2017). Certainly, for Mabogunje, traveling to the United States was transformative: “I would say what Northwestern did was throw me into orbit, you know. That anytime you then had something quantitative and you were looking for a spread round the world my name always came up” (interview 2016).

When in 1968 Mabogunje published his book Urbanization in Nigeria, which drew substantially on quantitative factor analysis of census data, the influence of this visit and training was clearly articulated in the preface:

This book derives in part from my doctoral dissertation. However, much of my thinking that has influenced its present form began only during my nine-month stay as Visiting Scholar in the United States of America in 1962. Before then, my insight into the urban situation in Nigeria was handicapped by my lack of acquaintance with sophisticated analytical methods. This deficiency was corrected during those pleasant months I spent with the staff at the Department of Geography and Economics at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois. (Mabogunje 1968, 6)

William Garrison and Duane Marble got particular mentions, as did “the Computing Centre of Northwestern University … for the use of their IBM 7090 Computer” (Mabogunje 1968, 7). Northwestern provided, then, both intellectual and technological resources crucial to developing a quantitative analysis of urban development in Nigeria (this was Mabogunje’s first contact with a computer). Although Ginelli (2018) suggested that we might view this relationship as “technological dependency,” access to computers was in the early 1960s relatively rare within universities in Europe and North America as well as in Nigeria.

Mabogunje (2004) argued that the 1960s saw Nigerian geography shift from a discipline primarily influenced by British geography to one increasingly affected by developments in the United States, including those of quantification (see also Sada 1982; Okafor 1989). To view Nigerian geography as derivative of other national traditions, however, and to understand the role of Nigerian geographers within this as merely passive is to overlook the extent to which individuals actively shaped their own academic careers and became important contributors to these very paradigms.

Urbanization in Nigeria (Mabogunje 1968) provided an innovative account of the growth of cities in Nigeria beginning in the precolonial period. Always aiming for comparison and explanation rather than particularity, the book is rich in detail about the historical development of Nigerian cities. At a time when, as the book notes, urban theory tended “to regard urbanization as a peculiarly European and American phenomena,” it took seriously urban growth unrelated to the West, and analyzed the patterns of life and urban forms of Nigerian cities (Mabogunje 1968, 33). Crucially, Mabogunje’s study provided a counterpoint to the large number of studies, carried out primarily by white European anthropologists and sociologists, focusing on the (mal)adjustment of “the African” to modern (colonial settler) city life (Mabogunje 1968). The book was well reviewed, and it remains important for scholars researching Nigeria’s towns and cities (it was the subject of a panel discussion at the Lagos Studies Association Conference in 2018). Although the focus on precolonial historical urbanization remains innovative, evaluations from the time focus on the value of the new quantitative methods applied. Wheatley, writing in Economic Geography, noted that:

No analysis of this degree of sophistication has, to my knowledge, been carried out anywhere else in the non-Western world. … All this adds up to a scholarly contribution of first rate importance to the study of urbanism and urbanization not only in Nigeria but in the non-western world at large: with its publication urban geography in Africa has come of age. (Wheatley and Mabogunje 1970, 103)

By 1970, the head of department noted in a letter to a colleague at UCL that Ibadan had fully embraced these new approaches: “In recent years the department has veered quite heavily towards quantification and theoretical studies, and any visitor engaged in model-building, physical or intellectual, simulation, etc. could be sure of finding a congenial milieu” (Barbour to Bill Mead, 1 July 1970, Geography Department Archive, UCL). In addition to providing a new research orientation, when Mabogunje returned from Northwestern, he, alongside Barbour, the British geographer who remained head of department until 1972, set about reshaping the curriculum to suit this new quantitative and theoretical era.

Syllabus changes and the everyday labor of teaching are an important, although often overlooked, part of broader disciplinary change. In this relatively young department, it was possible for dramatic changes to be made quickly, especially when led by a rising Nigerian star. Ayeni remembers approvingly that when Mabogunje “came [back], he made courses in statistics compulsory, courses in mathematics compulsory, courses in Research Design compulsory” (interview 2017). Others were less keen:

Mabogunje went to Northwestern and got so taken in by all this quantification, statistical revolution and so. We were still undergraduates then and so we were guinea pigs for his ideas. Nobody liked statistics but we had to go through it. (Areola interview 2017)

Correspondence between various key protagonists in the quantitative revolution in the United States and Britain and the Department at Ibadan, discussing external examining, references, or research methods highlights the extent to which Ibadan was a part of these networks, not just observing them at a distance (Ayeni interview 2017; Peter Haggett to Registrar, UI, 16 April 1972. University Archives and Records Project, University of Ibadan. UI/FASC.12.5.42). Mabogunje described this recently as being part of “this fraternity of quantitative geographers” and was in demand as part of this international community (interview 2016). Mabogunje remembered “a wonderful six weeks in Berkeley” in 1964 where funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation brought together scholars from Nigeria, India, Sweden, and the United States (interview 2016). He was also a sought-after member of several International Geographical Union commissions including Quantitative Methods (1964–1972) and Regional Systems and Policies (Chair, 1976–1980; CV of A. L. Mabogunje 1979, Archive of Geography, Leipzig, II-16-12 [Nigeria]). Based on his quantitative urban work and broader esteem, over the course of the 1960s and 1970s, Mabogunje also held visiting professorships in several places central to the quantitative revolution, such as Lund, Northwestern, and Cambridge (CV of A. L. Mabogunje 1979). Recent work has suggested that histories of the quantitative revolution should stretch further than a few institutions in the United States and United Kingdom (Barnes and Abrahamsson 2017; Ginelli 2018), and this account suggests that Nigeria, too, could be a stop-off on the flight map of quantitative disciplinary development (Taylor 1977).

Alternative Disciplinary Directions

As geographers in Nigeria were increasingly developing quantitative approaches in the 1960s, these methods followed a different trajectory to that in the United States and Europe, with geographers becoming increasingly engaged with questions of postcolonial national and regional development policy throughout the 1970s (Okafor 1998; Mabogunje 2004). This was true of many postcolonial African universities, where “relevance” became increasingly important (Mamdani 2018). Whereas in Tanzania, this was linked to the role of the African university in a new socialist state, in Nigeria, by the late 1960s, development was linked to reconstruction after the devastating civil war (1967–1970). Ibadan was less affected by the war in the east than other institutions (the University of Nigeria, Nsukka was devastated), although across the university many Igbo staff and students left, and some faculty members, including in the Geography Department, suffered huge personal losses in the ensuing violence (“A Final Interview” 2011).

The aftermath of the war produced requirements for both physical reconstruction and national unity. Quantitative, theoretical geography was seen as crucial in responding to these needs. In 1970, the federal government produced its second national development plan, and “the government was asking universities that every subject showed its relevance to national development” (Mabogunje interview 2017). Geography, working with the Economics Department, established a Planning Studies Program in response to the demands of the National Universities Commission (Mabogunje 1998). Mabogunje was critical of the second national development plan “because of its nonregional orientation” and, through connections with the Economics Department, was able to get into “the circles of the people concerned with the planning of the country” to argue for a more spatial focus for development policy (Mabogunje interview 2017). As a result of working with government, Mabogunje argued that “people started to see geography in a slightly different light, that it’s not just a teaching subject, but it’s a subject that really affects the day to day development” (Mabogunje interview 2016).

An interest in policy relevance was clear in Mabogunje’s work from the mid-1960s. This is evidenced by the final chapter of his first monograph that articulated, according to reviews, a “clear message for politicians and civil servants” with a plea for “a clearly formulated plan” (Kuper 1972, 69–70). During his career, Mabogunje applied his geographical training to a wide variety of development projects as a government advisor, as well as publishing on the issue for the United Nations (Mabogunje 1971). This interest was shared across the department and the faculty (that also included Economics and the affiliated National Institute for Social and Economic Research [NISER]). In 1972, the University of Ibadan hosted a conference on “Regional Planning and National Development in Tropical Africa” with attendees from across more than a dozen African countries, as well as from the United States and United Kingdom, and Mabogunje and his colleague Adetoye Faniran later published an edited volume on this theme. When Mabogunje (1980) published his second monograph, The Development Process: A Spatial Perspective, reviews focused on the book’s uniqueness in attempting to offer “ideas for action in tandem with a useful and sharp critique of current developmental efforts” (Sutton 1982, 620).

An early scheme Mabogunje was involved with was the Kainji dam, initially planned under the colonial government but built between 1964 and 1969. The dam was a large modernization project involving huge infrastructural developments and top-down planning, providing opportunities to develop the nation through electrification. At a regional level, it was meant to provide more “basic public utilities” in newly planned, “central places” amalgamating smaller villages into larger settlements (Adeniyi 1976, 237). Mabogunje edited a volume exploring the project’s socioeconomic impacts published by NISER in 1973 (Mabogunje 1973). It highlighted many problems including large-scale displacement and inundation of agricultural lands (see also Adeniyi 1976).

Mabogunje drew on this early experience when he became involved in the project to establish a new national capital a decade later. In his words, “The instruction from the federal government was that every inhabitant of the area must be moved out … we say you don’t have to move people out, you have to compensate them” (interview 2017). The new capital Abuja was to act as a growth pole for a poorer and less developed area of Nigeria, drawing on modern regional planning ideas (Darwent 1969), as well as providing a geographically central capital replacing Lagos on the south coast (Salau 1977). The development work at Abuja involved Mabogunje alongside many other department members, providing an important and enjoyable professional opportunity (Abumere 1998). According to Areola, “Everybody was excited, and it was virgin territory at that time” (interview 2017). Involvement could also be financially rewarding, and for several of the human geographers involved detailed work over more than two years, which frequently took team members out of the classroom at Ibadan, much to the frustration of some students (Mabogunje 2011).

By the late 1970s, then, the department specialized in planning issues, and urban planning in particular. In a book providing a departmental history, chapters focused on mapping and national development, Nigerian population censuses, regional development, industrial geography, and transport geography, alongside physical geography topics (Areola and Okafor 1998). Eighteen of thirty-nine PhD theses (nearly 50 percent) between 1968 and 1996 were in urban geography (Ayeni 1998).

The department also focused on the problems of uneven regional development, including innovative early work by Mabogunje on its social dimensions (e.g., Mabogunje 1971). Much of this work, however, was not rooted in broader Marxist critiques of global development within the capitalist system, such as work of those including Andre Gunder Frank and Walter Rodney that was influential across the continent, including at the University of Dar es Salaam (Frank 1966; Rodney 1974; Okafor 1989, 1998; although see Filani 1985; Okafor 1995). Although there was a strong and diverse tradition of Nigerian Marxism throughout this period (Mayer 2016), this was not strongly reflected in the research and teaching of the department (S. Okafor, personal communication May 2019). Mabogunje, for example, into the 1980s “worked essentially within the liberal tradition of the radical paradigm, with a welfare (rather than a radical or Marxist) orientation that reflected his concern for poor regions and cities, and for distributive equity” (Okafor 2006, 6). From the 1980s there was an increasing critique of the failure of more positivist and technical scholarship to consider or deliver social justice, but these approaches continued to dominate (Areola 1998).

Solidarity and Exclusion

By the early 1980s, shifting political and economic contexts were leading to worsening conditions for faculty and students. Mabogunje retired from the university at fifty, in 1981; by then, he remembered, “things had deteriorated … the universities were being starved of funds by the military, and so the quality of research had started nose-diving” (interview 2016). Reflecting on the materiality of this deterioration highlights the infrastructural issues and inequalities that produce hugely challenging working conditions. Comparing the 1970s to the conditions experienced from the 1980s onward, Albert Aweto, awarded his PhD in 1978 from Ibadan and now working in the department, explained:

Of course, then the facilities were better, at least the infrastructure, the power outage was rare if it occurred at all … water was always available. So many of the problems students now contend with, like power, electricity outage, water, were nonexistent then. … But all that began to change with the inception of the structural adjustment program, which resulted in the massive devaluation of our national currency. It became difficult for our library to import books and journals from abroad so there was no continuity in terms of the journals. You may be looking for a particular issue of the journal and it is not on the shelf, it was not even ordered because of the problem of obtaining foreign exchange to purchase journals from abroad. (Interview 2017)

When University of Iowa geographer Gerard Rushton visited Ibadan to work on a collaborative research project in 1982 with ’Bola Ayeni, Ayeni remembered, “Things were so bad. There was no water, there was no electricity. Every morning I would get buckets of water—I lived in town—to carry them in campus, so they would wash their faces. Things were very bad.” According to Ayeni, the trip increased Rushton’s view of the Nigerian’s work: “He said if someone can stay in the environment I know, and write [that is impressive].” Many did not, though. Speaking in 2004, Udo reflected on the damaging impact on African scholarship of the “ongoing brain drain by Africans who are fed up with poor pay, decaying infrastructure, police brutality and general social insecurity” (98). This impact was not limited to Ibadan or indeed Nigeria. Structural adjustment hollowed out universities across Africa, restricting funding, bringing in student fees, and shifting understandings of their value from that of public good to individual career investment (Luhanga et al. 2003; Mamdani 2007). The broader impacts of structural adjustment on livelihoods, health, and development began to be the focus of geographical research at Ibadan in the 1990s (e.g., Iyun 1995).

Individual campaigns, connections, and solidarity made a difference in individual cases, allowing people to continue to travel, research, teach, and publish. One important example was a “twinning relationship, which started in 1988 between the University of Ibadan and the University of Iowa,” which allowed for staff and student exchanges, joint research, and library donations (Udo 2004, 98). This built on long-standing connections and friendships developed through the visiting scholar scheme nearly two decades earlier: Mike McNulty of Iowa had visited Ibadan for a semester in 1970 and 1971 and made long-standing friendships with a number of Ibadan colleagues (Udo 2004).

The valuable twinning relationship was brought to an abrupt end when Sani Abacha became head of state in Nigeria in 1993 (in a return to full military rule) and “the U.S. took a tough stance against Nigeria, including stopping that funding” (Ayeni interview 2017). But connections continued and hard work in Nigeria and the United States resulted in the establishment of a geographic information systems lab. Bola Ayeni, then-head of department, leveraged his friendships and connections with colleagues at Iowa to salvage something from the situation. Ayeni went to the United States to physically carry the computers with Iowa geographer Rex Honey (interview 2017). The resulting master’s program in geographic information systems is, according to Udo (2004), “perhaps the most visible and memorable achievement” of the twinning (98). Although these ongoing connections mitigated some of the challenges facing Nigerian geographers, broader disparities were becoming starker. Although many of these conditions have improved since the 1990s, there remain substantial challenges to practicing geography and communicating research internationally from Ibadan.

Conclusion

What happens when we start from Nigeria when telling our histories of geography? In some ways, we might argue, things look much the same. Similar disciplinary traditions have waxed and waned over the second half of the twentieth century in Nigeria and many Western countries. Despite some attempts to develop more pan-African geographical perspectives, Nigerian geography was and continues to be influenced by British and U.S. ideas, funding streams, and markers of esteem. Mabogunje, often cited, internationally mobile, and highly decorated, was successful because he was able to fit into Western networks and practices, rather than because he fundamentally challenged them. Yet to dismiss Nigerian geography as merely derivative is to miss important contributions to the discipline and reinforce colonial-era visions of the agency and creativity of academics from the Global South. Moreover, the view from Nigeria provides important insights about the broader practice of geography, allowing us to reflect anew on “the scope, scales, territories, embodiments and lived geographies” of the discipline (Tolia-Kelly 2010, 359).

Starting from Nigeria can contribute to the urgent task of highlighting the diversity of ideas within geography. Although Mabogunje can hardly be understood as excluded by many measures, he and his colleagues are not a central part, or even a footnote, in many histories of geography that claim universality while consistently prioritizing work in the West (e.g., Livingstone 1992). Our article begins to address the issue of historiographical exclusion by focusing on the experience and contributions of one group of geographers from beyond the West.

Beginning from Ibadan places the perspectives of Nigerian geographers centrally in our understandings of the discipline and highlights their agency in shaping not only their own careers but also some important approaches in geography. Many have noted that research in the Global South is often viewed as case study, rather than contribution to theory (Robinson 2006); this has led to the overlooking of important and diverse contributions to geography from the South (Ferretti and Pedrosa 2018). Although more radical traditions were not central to the discipline as practiced at Ibadan, Nigerian geographers made important contributions to the quantitative revolution and urban geography, applied geography, and national and regional development. For many, however, Nigeria was, and has remained, absent from the maps of theoretical innovation. In part this is a consequence of the continued coloniality of intellectual and political relationships after decolonization. As Nigerian academics pursued their work in the 1960s and 1970s, African research continued to be viewed primarily as empirical. In newly independent Nigeria, though, academics at the country’s premier university occupied a privileged position in relation to government. Whereas in the United Kingdom and United States geography was increasingly sidelined, in Nigeria, geographers, alongside economists, were central to development planning in the decades after decolonization. The evaluation of the importance of geographical research is dependent on the perspective and measures used.

Viewed from today, Anglo-American hegemony can be seen as an inevitable unchanging reality within which we work. From Nigeria, though, looking across several decades, the ebbs and flows of inclusion and exclusion are easier to see. In the 1950s and 1960s, geography at Ibadan was understood as far more central to the discipline than other comparable institutions such as the University of Malaya in Singapore (now the National University of Singapore). Opportunities to participate in the fora that have (problematically) become associated with the “best” scholarship—Western journals, conferences, and lecturing positions, for example—have in some periods been more open to scholars from the Global South than they are today. Decolonization and the Cold War produced many opportunities for Nigerian scholars to travel, study, research, and publish, at the same time entrenching Anglo-American hegemony within Nigerian geography. The opportunities were to participate in a system designed and predicated on Western disciplines, structures, and systems, rather than for a more radical decolonization of these systems of knowledge (Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Zondi 2016; although see Sharp 2019). Nevertheless, they made a meaningful difference to the practice of geography in Nigeria. Reflecting on this period demonstrates how during and after decolonization, coloniality was entrenched and reproduced. At the same time, and often underpinned by the very same funding structures and ideologies, this era witnessed an increasingly diverse faculty and curricula and strong challenges to racism within the academy. This history is therefore crucial to debates about decolonizing geography and the university today (Esson et al. 2017; Bhambra, Gebrial, and Nisancioglu 2018; Esson 2018).

Shifting geopolitical priorities have now foreclosed many opportunities for Nigerian scholars or at least made access more difficult. Structural adjustment compounded this. Although opportunities were only ever open to a tiny minority of the population, this was not only determined by ability to pay, as is often the case today. We know that material conditions—pay, infrastructure, security, funding for travel, teaching, and research—are hugely important in shaping geography and the university, but few papers engage in detail in the production of these conditions and personal experiences of these inequalities (although see Inayatullah 2010). Nigerian scholars worked creatively to keep teaching and researching despite increasingly challenging conditions and structural inequalities. Moreover, although conditions for doing geography across the world have never been equal, the disparities have not remained static. This knowledge can help us consider how and why conditions have changed over time and how these conditions have affected the possibilities for producing and communicating geographical scholarship widely.

Finally, the view from Nigeria demonstrates the important historical role of individual careful practices and solidarity. In this article, friendship and commitment, alongside racism and prejudice, have been highlighted as important aspects of academic lives. Commitment to Ibadan geography (from Nigerian and non-Nigerian scholars) provided a crucial lifeline in moments where material conditions provided huge barriers to scholarship. Individuals leveraging resources at a university level to provide books, computers, scholarships, and sabbaticals or supporting individuals’ careers through references, nominations, research materials, or friendship all helped to support Nigerian scholars as the conditions of political and economic austerity bit in the 1980s. Friendships and connections (as well as racism and exclusion) persist through whole careers and can be important intellectual and political as well as social practices; however, opportunities for friendship, collegiality, and solidarity (particularly for working meaningfully with colleagues from the Global South) are often restricted in the contemporary academy. Although there are many examples of such transnational friendship and collegiality existing today (often unseen and unvalued by universities themselves), other partnerships—formed often through short-term or pragmatic Global South collaborations for research funding—can fall short of meaningful engagement and are often extractive. The challenges, opportunities, and practices of this earlier period can contribute to debates around how to address the exclusionary nature of geography and its practices today.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Acknowledgments

Thank you to the many Nigerian geographers who spoke to us about their experiences. We are really grateful for the support, advice, and comments from members of the Geography Department at the University of Ibadan, especially Chris Ikporukpo, Ibidun Adelekan, Tolu Osayomi, and Stanley Okafor. Thank you to Abraham Olayemi for access to the University Archives. We thank Paul Ashmore, Katherine Brickell, Tim Livsey, Jon Binnie; Leibniz-Institut für Länderkunde; the King’s Geography Contested Development research domain; the Cambridge Cultural and Historical Geography seminar; the LSE Urbanisation, Planning & Development seminar; and Sussex Geography Research Seminar; and especially the Department of Geography seminar, University of Ibadan, for their constructive engagement with this article. Finally, thanks to the reviewers and editors for their helpful feedback on this article.

Note

Additional information

Funding

Research in this article was supported by the Department of Geography Research and Impact Fund at King’s College London and a Research Accelerator Grant from Manchester Metropolitan University.

Notes on contributors

Ruth Craggs

RUTH CRAGGS is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Geography at King’s College London, London WC2B 4BG, UK. E-mail: [email protected]. Her research focuses on decolonization and postcolonial geopolitics.

Hannah Neate

HANNAH NEATE is Senior Lecturer in the School of Science and the Environment at Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester M1 5GD, UK. E-mail: [email protected]. Her research focuses on modernism, knowledge, and expertise in the second half of the twentieth century.

Notes

1 This list is based on the Worldcat catalog, which covers only 170 countries and those libraries that are able to participate; therefore, these numbers are likely to be an underestimate.