Department of History and Strategic Studies

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Browsing Department of History and Strategic Studies by Author "Ajiola, F.O"

Now showing 1 - 9 of 9
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    Open Access
    Accumulation and Dispossession: Cocoa Production, Rural Development and the Structural Adjustment Programme in Southwest Nigeria, 1986 – 1996
    (A JOURNAL OF THE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY & STRATEGIC STUDIES UNIVERSITY OF LAGOS, 2018) Ajiola, F.O
    The production and sales of cocoa were critical factors in rural development in colonial southwest Nigeria. Although abundant literature exists on the contributions of cocoa to economic development in southwest Nigeria, the impact of cocoa production on rural social relations, and community development in southwest Nigeria during the period of the structural adjustment programme is yet to be fully explored. This paper, therefore, examined the relationship between cocoa production and rural development in southwest Nigeria with a view to mapping out the transformation that occurred in the postcolonial rural social formations. The data comes from Idanre, the largest cocoa-producing town in the southwest, Nigeria. Primary and secondary sources were used. These included oral interviews, which were conducted with informants purposively selected due to their knowledge of cocoa production and community development in Idanre. Following economic liberalization and abolition of the Cocoa Marketing Board in 1986, Idanre witnessed urban-rural migration, as many indigenes and migrants outside the community returned to cocoa farming. These returnees competed for scarce resources with the local population and at the same time, facilitated the introduction of innovation, both capital investments, technological and modern socio-cultural traits. SAP also encouraged many non-cocoa producing families to invest in the cocoa business and they made a fortune through which they contributed to the transformation of both their livelihoods and the community.
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    Open Access
    Afro-European partnership for countering insurgency and counter-terrorism in Africa
    (Routledge (Taylor & Francis Group), 2021) Ajiola, F.O; Lawal, O.T
    This chapter examines the partnership and other efforts of the European Union (EU) in countering terrorism and insurgency in Africa. It discusses terrorism and insurgency and identifies the driving force behind its spread. The 21st century has witnessed the proliferation of Islamic terrorism across the world. The terrorist organisations such as the Islamic State in Syria (ISIS), Al-Qaeda, Al-Shabaab, Boko-Haram and other emerging Islamic fundamentalists across the globe are a threat to world peace and security. Terrorism as a concept is overly complicated because individuals or groups conventionally perceived as terrorists did not see themselves as such. Terrorism and insurgency can hardly be separated from one another because they both represent violent struggles; however, the central area of departure is that the insurgent groups are usually open to dialogue and are not faceless like the terrorist groups. The EU contributed tremendously to countering terrorism and insurgency effort in Africa. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781351271929-15/afro-european-partnership-counterterrorism-counterinsurgency-africa-felix-oludare-ajiola-olawale-taofeeq-lawal
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    Open Access
    Colonial Capitalism and the Structure of the Nigerian Cocoa Marketing Board, 1947-1960
    (A Journal of the Faculty of Arts, University of Lagos, 2020) Ajiola, F.O
    Colonial capitalism had far-reaching consequences on the income and earnings of Nigerian cocoa farmers and the environment in the first five decades of the twentieth century. Although literature exists on the history and contributions of cocoa to capital formation and economic development in Nigeria, very little or nothing is known of the challenges and bottlenecks encountered by the cocoa producers in the production and exports of their cocoa throughout the period of colonial capitalism in Nigeria. This paper examines the genesis, structure and impact of what became popular as the largest statutory commodity export monopolies in the British Colonial Empire - the Cocoa Marketing Board - which was inaugurated in 1947. Through a careful diagnosis of the factors that aided the establishment of the Commodity Marketing Board, the paper argues that the Nigerian Cocoa Marketing Board was used to serve various interests and purposes, which hardly benefited the producers. Rather, the board was a tool of oppression and further exploitation of farmers through rapacious taxes, price regulations and unfavourable grading policies. Indeed, the colonial government found the cocoa board a ready-made instrument for taxing farmers, enriching colonial treasury, and financing anti-decolonization activities.
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    Open Access
    Deforestation, Food Security and Environmental Sustainability in Southwest, Nigeria, 1960-2015
    (University of Lagos Press and Bookshop Ltd, Works & Physical Planning Complex University of Lagos., 2017) Ajiola, F.O; Ilesanmi, T.E
    Abstract The forest region of Nigeria—especially the south-western agrarian, and other non-farming communities has witnessed ruthless deforestation either for urbanization or other consumerist purposes, since the past few decades. This constitutes a major challenge in the drive towards achieving sustainable food production from the agrarian areas as well as environmental sustainability. Deforestation is a major threat to the ecosystem and agricultural activities in Nigeria. This article examines the relationship between deforestation, food insecurity and environmental sustainability in South-western Nigeria. Social, economic and environmental historians in Nigeria have overlooked the impact of the phenomenon on food security and environmental sustainability in Nigeria. The study adopts the historical methodology and uses the vent-for surplus theory to show that food insecurity, substandard human quality of life, low life expectancy, epidemics and changes in the biodiversity in southwest Nigeria are results of deforestation and environmental mismanagement. The paper recommends that reducing the growing de-agrarianization, food shortage, and environmental challenges in Nigeria, requires the need to reinvent the wheel by strengthening institutional regulations, including non-state agencies monitoring the use of the environment and conservation of biodiversity. Traditional environmental protection mechanisms, such as taboos, myths, superstitions may also help to reduce the alarming rate of environmental mismanagement.
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    Open Access
    The Development of Afro-jazz Culture and the Role of Agency in Nigeria
    (National Institute for Cultural Orientation, 2020) Ajiola, F.O; Williams, P.
    Throughout history, music has been one of the most common means by which man expresses his emotions, feelings and sentiments. The primordial man used music to express fear, pain and danger. Music was an important part of oriental mysticism. The Asian Indian developed a system of melodic modes called raga to express moods, days and seasons chanting form the core of Tibetan religious music. African traditions are replete with the use of music as part of rituals, ceremonies and social associated with the proper growth and functioning of institutions of society. Music over the ages has proved to be one of the indispensable arts cultivated by man for the growth, nurture and transfer of his institutions and values to future generations. This paper investigates the development and impact of Afro-jazz genre which snowballed into the Nigeria social space through the penetration of pop culture since the period of the Second World War. The paper highlights the role of agency in popularizing jazz culture among the Nigerian elites. The role played cream of Africanist musicians and musicologists, notably Bobby Benson, Tunde Amuwo, Bob Edwards, Willy Payne, Soji Lijadu and later Mike Aremu in redefining pop culture through a blend of indigenous culture with the western jazz genre is significant in understanding the changes and continuity in the made in the Nigerian social space since the twentieth century.
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    Open Access
    Economies of African States Since Independence
    (Unilag Press & Bookshop Ltd, 2021) Ajiola, F.O
    This chapter discusses the economies of African states since independence, within the context of mono-commodity export concentration, structural adjustment programme, resource curse and corruption, aid, dependency and galloping poverty and inequalities. Over the past four decades, Africa’s economic crises have progressively worsened. Despite a combination of internal and external measures fashioned across the region, the ailment still exhibits symptom of economic stagnation. A number of self and foreign imposed adjustment measures had been vigorously adopted with their concomitant distasteful socio-economic consequences on the people and economies of Africa. Currently, solutions to the economic problems of Africa are being sought at various levels including African governments, African sub-regional and regional inter-governmental associations and institutions. Yet, African’s economic horizon has remained gloomy. In real terms, non-oil commodity prices have fallen, in great proportion. Agriculture’s shares of gross domestic products (GDP) are now a shadow of what they used to be at independence. Cocoa, palm produce, coffee, tobacco, and most other agricultural export commodities are becoming anachronistic across the region. Besides, the declining value of the currencies of many African countries due to a plethora of factors has had grave consequences on nation building in the region. However, the failing commodity prices and many socio-economic problems deriving from various policies designed for short-term problem and maladjustment have continued to shroud the recovery path. Importantly the burden of external debt and debt servicing have consumed a huge chunk of annual GDP of many African countries. Meanwhile, recovery processes are increasingly frustrated by further application for unnecessary loans from China, and neoliberal institutions.
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    Open Access
    GLOBALIZATION AND THE NIGERIAN YOUTHS
    (Dahomey International Business ESEP Le-Berger Université, Republic of Benin, 2016-07) Ajiola, F.O
    ABSTRACT Globalization is not a new development in the international system. Given the interconnection of socioeconomic and political activities, woven through the information and communication technology across the globe, the penetration of western culture in Africa is becoming increasingly profound, having historical connection with the ‘Columbus epoch’ which began in the 15th century. The global arena is now increasingly international, driven inter alia by the revolution and expansion of computer technology. Satellite ditches and telecommunication systems now connect virtually all corners of the globe. The world is indeed going through fundamental changes in virtually all ramifications, especially in terms of the influx of western culture‘ subtle imperialism’, gaining expression through the blog, satellite ditch, and several computer applications in Africa. However, technological expansion to Africa, rather than enabling and ennobling youth’s intellectual and existential development, gives more impetus to illicit juvenile manifestations. Technology has been the bane of youth mediocrity; it has created new dimension of criminality and illicit culture. Currently there are astronomical legitimate online mails Nigerians cannot access as a result of the misuse of computer technology by Nigerian youths. This paper examines the misuse of computer technology by Nigerian Youths to popularizing illegal and illicit culture, including the burgeoned cybercrime, occupation of astronomical youth, and other alien practices such as sexual liberalism and other evolving idiosyncrasies, antithetical to African culture.
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    Open Access
    Indigenous Social And Economic Structure In Precolonial Idanreland
    (The Nigerian Economic History Association., 2015) Ajiola, F.O
    Pre-colonial Idanre was built on household farming, and reciprocal economic system among family members, age group and the community. Economic system in precolonial Idanre was therefore, conducted with an eye on widening social affinity, enhancing inclusive development and tightening cultural bond rather than accumulating wealth and economic surplus for individual aggrandizement. With this, social stratification, class conflict, expropriation and monopolization of the means of production, and uneven development were virtually non-existent, until the colonial epoch when agrarian capitalism adopted by the British government to maximize the extraction of raw materials - cocoa in the case of Idanre - based on the vent-for surplus theory, gained momentum. This paper thus examines the precolonial social and economic structure of Idanreland. This work shows that in order to gain a fuller understanding of the dynamics of pre-colonial social and economic system in Yoruba land, scholars must focus on neglected rural, but productive Idanre society. The study adopts the historical methodology; using on primary sources, especially oral tradition, the British intelligent reports and other official colonial document sourced at the National Archive Ibadan in addition to a handful of relevant secondary sources.
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    Open Access
    ISAKOLE AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF AGRICULTURAL LAND CONFLICTS IN COLONIAL YORUBALAND
    (Southern Journal for Contemporary History, 2021) Ajiola, F.O
    This paper, with a focus on the people of the Nigerian towns of Idanre and Akure, (re)considers the genesis of land conflicts in eastern Yorubaland of colonial south western Nigeria. The historical method was deployed. Primary sources, notably archival records from the National Archive, Ibadan, the Cocoa Research Institute of Nigeria, Owena, and farmers’ unions in the two communities, were used. Memories of the descendants of cocoa farmers were collected, paying attention to the growth of cocoa cultivation and the historical relations between Idanre and Akure people in the precolonial period, in addition to secondary sources which were subjected to historical analysis. The expansion of cocoa farms and the ensuing rivalry over the collection of Isakole, an indigenous form of tribute or ground rent, instigated acrimonies among Idanre and Akure Chiefs throughout the colonial period. The animosities culminated, however, in unresolved inter-community disputes and land conflicts between Idanre and Akure. The imbroglio, which affected the rhythms of agricultural life in the two communities, was not only a subject of protracted litigation and arbitration; it claimed an immense number of lives and valuable properties on both sides in the colonial period. The paper argues that the land conflicts were fuelled by unmitigated competition for Isakole between Idanre and Akure chiefs, but the divisive posture of the British colonial authorities over the jostling exacerbated the conflict.