ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the working lives of Nigerian textile workers based on newspapers, corporate records, and oral history interviews with workers from Chinese-owned UNTL. It examines the attractiveness of Kaduna-based Nigerian textile factories as a whole for young job-seekers in the immediate post-independence era and how UNTL managed to keep its workers with the factory for decades. Against the consensus that there was little possibility of upward mobility for post-independence Nigerian factory workers, this chapter argues that some of UNTL textile workers were able to rise both socially and materially without exiting the factory system. It also discusses how leisure activities became the symbol of some workers’ better control over their time and therefore a distinguishing mark of their prestige.
