ABSTRACT
Introduction In the epigraph above, Eniyidia of Mbiopongo, one of the participants of the Women’s War of 1929, extends the problematic of the war beyond the colonial imposition of taxes to the realm of femininity and sexuality. Although most of the literature written on the Women’s War of 1929 primarily focuses upon it as a major instance of anti-colonial resistance in Nigeria, the impact of the war far exceeds its conventional interpretations as it can be used as praxis to understand global dialectics of gender, activism, and the body politic. The Women’s War was more than just a struggle against colonial taxation; instead, it was a struggle against the structural erasure of indigenous femininity and its practices within the colonial project. Situating the women of 1929 within the proposed colonial narrative of absence provides a rubric through which the quote above can be fully conceptualized. By referring to women’s reproductive capabilities, Eniyidia of Mbiopongo centers the female body within this narrative, and in doing so, offers a novel way of understanding the historic moment. Considering the ways in which the women organized and protested against the colonial regime using bodily undress, or nakedness, it would seem that the body emerges as both rationalization and justification for the women of 1929. Interestingly enough, the colonial administration did not hold the same bodily preoccupations as the women and were seemingly preoccupied with the taxes. The successful implementation of taxation was the rationale behind the widespread inquiries and investigation about the Women’s War of 1929. As a result, the primary objective of the colonialists was to investigate why the women opposed the tax. This reason is articulated by women involved in the conflict: “How are we women to pay tax? Where can we get the means from to pay it? That was our grievance, and we made the demonstration to make you feel that we were aggrieved.” 2 Underlying these women’s responses is the unwavering notion that taxing and counting women was fundamentally wrong. Nevertheless,
it is clear that the colonial administrators either failed to understand the women’s rationale or simply deemed it as insignificant, because they simply proceeded to punish the women for their “misconduct” and did not attempt to remedy the situation. Another instance of this ideological clash between the colonial administration and the women is present in the labeling of the incident. The colonial powers labeled the incident as a riot and referred to it as such in their archives, while the women labeled it Ogu Umunwaanyi, or Women’s War. How is it that the colonial authorities were so completely and consistently wrong about the women’s positionality regarding the war? In this chapter, I argue that there is an inherent incompatibility between the British colonial system of thought at the time and the indigenous Igbo and Ibibio systems of thought that motivated the Women’s War. As a result, we must read the Women’s War as a clash between different epistemological conceptualizations of the female body and its political materiality. The word “body” here not only refers to the corporeal body, but it also refers to its attendant existential and cultural state of being. Thus, when the Igbo and Ibibio women of 1929 resisted using the indigenous practice of naked protest, they were purposely disarticulating the grammar of coloniality by imposing the problematic of the “obscene” female body onto the colonial regime, while asserting their right to the control of indigenous femininity and its practices.
