Migrated Archive: State Censorship of Media and Knowledge Production, Shared Memory, and Colonial Legacy in the Western Region of Nigeria

The study explores how state censorship affects how people remember and forget the colonial past. The research focuses on the files FCO141/13599 and FCO141/13600 on ‘Nigeria Development of Libraries’, and FCO141/13624 and FCO141/13625 on ‘Nigeria Broadcasting’. They contain correspondence between British administrators in the colonies and the Colonial Office in London on the affairs of Nigeria from 1956 to 1959. The content of the conversations originated from the power granted by the Macpherson Constitution to each region of Nigeria to enact laws to manage their affairs. The emergence of the Western Region Broadcasting Service, established in 1956, unsettled the British monopoly of the mass media in Nigeria. The British administrators in Nigeria called for the British to invest more in Nigerian libraries to counter the American influence on the colony. The British aimed to maintain its influence over Nigeria’s intellectual space as the country prepared for its independence in 1960. The research examines the politics of memory as it affected the control of the media in Nigeria’s colonial history. It identifies the nature of colonial correspondence and the politics of conversations between the Colonial Office in London and colonial administrators in Nigeria. The main problem analysed is the mechanism employed by the British administrators to control the colonies’ access to information. The study focuses on memory as it analyses colonial politics and the preservation of the colonial past in Nigeria. It establishes that the British government colonised Nigeria politically and intellectually from the evidence provided by the ‘migrated’ archive.

 Ilupeju Taariqa-Rahamat Adepeju, University of Lagos, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Ilupeju Taariqa-Rahamat Adepeju MA (Hons), PhD History and Strategic Studies University of Lagos. Ilupeju’s thesis title is ‘Memory in History: A Study of Selected Chronicles on Lagos and Ijebu’. Her research focuses on textual representation of the past from indigenous perspectives. It explores how identity politics shapes the recollection of the past, exploring how the past is preserved differently across cultures. Her MA dissertation was on ‘Local Chronicles, Community Politics and the Search for Truth: A Study of Iwe Itan Ejigbo’. Ilupeju’s research interests include African history, African historiography, Yoruba historiography, memory studies, gender studies, religious studies, economic history, and colonial history.