Elections Observatory

IFRA-Nigeria’s Elections Observatory

IFRA-Nigeria intends to play a role in observing and analysing the social impacts of Nigerian policies, polities, and politics in a short- and long-term perspective. In this electoral setting, IFRA launched an observatory overseeing the 2023 elections in Nigeria. The aim is to produce data and analysis from various standpoints on the election process. To further this endeavour, IFRA-Nigeria sponsored and spearheaded several initiatives. A Roundtable on the 2023 Nigerian elections kickstarted this initiative on the 8^th of December 2022.

IFRA-Nigeria & IFRI partnerships

IFRA-Nigeria partnered with the Institut Français des Relations Internationales (IFRI) and commissioned a paper to Dr. Sa'eed Husaini, researcher at the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD) that was published in February 2023. The paper titled “Nigeria’s 2023 Election: Democratic Development and Political Fragmentation” is freely accessible following this link.

On the 16^th of March 2023, IFRA-Nigeria, and the French institute of international relations (IFRI) co-organised an online seminar on the Nigerian general elections featuring Dr. Elodie Apard, Research Officer at IRD, Dr. Benjamin Augé, Research Associate at IFRI; Dr. Sa'eed Husaini, Researcher at the Centre for Democracy and Development and Dr. Cyrielle Maingraud-Martinaud, Deputy Director of IFRA-Nigeria. The debate was moderated by Alain Antil, Director of IFRI’s Sub-Saharan Africa Centre. This event reviewed the electoral process and the results of the elections while replacing them in historical dynamics and structural challenges of the country. The recording of this event is available here.

Screenshot of the online conference co-organised by IFRA-Nigeria and IFRI on March 16^th, 2023

Ethnographic fieldwork projects

IFRA-Nigeria is funding six young Nigerian researchers to conduct fieldwork-based research upon different topics and to promote new point of views and analytical lenses to understand topical issues in social sciences. These researchers conducted ethnographic fieldwork on various aspects of the electoral events. The research was carried out in several regions and covered issues such as the involvement of women in the electoral process, the violence they suffered and their way to reorganise themselves and answer to violence; the challenges faced by the ad hoc collation agents of the Independent National Electoral Election (INEC), and the nature of elections in a local government bordering Benin.

Adedeji Adebayo (researcher) with Ms. Iyabo Ojo, Ìyál'ọ́jà (chief) of Ikere-Ekiti at her house in Ikere, February 22^nd, 2023 – credit: Adedeji Adebayo

Building from research conducted within IFRA-Nigeria elections observatory, the institute hosted a day of roundtables and a keynote lecture by Professor Eghosa Osaghae on June 14^th aimed at assessing what happened during this election cycle and what it means for the political and social dynamics of the country.

Professor Eghosa Osaghae at the institute of African studies (University of Ibadan) on June 14^th

IFRA-Nigeria staff and five of the six researchers recruited to observe and analyse the election process, June 14^th 2023. From left to right: Mr Ikefuama Okechukwu Livingstone, Mrs Elizabeth Njo Obimbua, Dr. Adedeji Adebayo, Mr Lateef Olalekan Aremu, Dr. Barbara Morovich (IFRA-Nigeria director), Dr. Olusapo Olakunle Thompson, Mr Youssef Bouri (Researcher Project manager), Dr. Cyrielle Maingraud-Martinaud (IFRA-Nigeria Deputy director and researcher),

List of researchers and provisional research titles

Dr. Adedeji Adebayo

How much does a vote cost? Politics of inducement in Ikere Local Government Area, Ekiti State, Southwestern Nigeria

Elizabeth Njo Obimbua

Electoral violence and the female gender in Lafia local government area of Nasarawa state

Ikefuama Okechukwu Livingstone

Border spaces: interrogating voting behaviour in Nigeria’s ungoverned spaces

Lateef Olalekan Aremu

Protecting the vulnerable actors: violence during electoral campaigns and participation of women in politics in Ibadan metropolis

Dr. Olusapo Olakunle Thompson

An assessment of the challenges of the independent national electoral election (inec) ad hoc collation officers in the 2023 general elections

Obafemi Seyi Peter

Countering vote-buying with voter education; a field researcher’s account of the 2023 general elections in Egbeda Iga of Oyo state.

Nigerian Heritage Digitisation Program

In 2022, the Embassy of France in Nigeria and IFRA-Nigeria have been awarded funding to support efforts by Nigerian researchers and professionals, from partnered institutions, to develop their ideas and projects on the conservation of Nigerian Heritage and Patrimony.

From left to right: Dr. Sa'eed Husaini, researcher at the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD), Dr. Sola Olorunyomi, associate professor at the University of Ibadan, 

In 2022, the Embassy of France in Nigeria and IFRA-Nigeria have been awarded funding to support efforts by Nigerian researchers and professionals, from partnered institutions, to develop their ideas and projects on the conservation of Nigerian Heritage and Patrimony.

The objective of this project is to put digital technologies, as well as French and Nigerian expertise, at the service of the protection, enhancement, and dissemination of Nigerian heritage processes to different local and global communities. In practice, it is a response to the growing challenges in the world of research of Nigerian cultural and heritage studies with the objective to improve the protection, conservation, dissemination, and training about heritage and develop sustainable capacity in this area.

The Solidarity Fund for Innovative Projects (FSPI) is a program run by the French Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs designed to help French institutions abroad carry out research-action activities in the country where they work, in close collaboration with local stakeholders.

In this FSPI project, IFRA-Nigeria will be working with Nigerian partners to

1) Select processes of Nigerian cultural heritage and their conservation,

2) make these heritages more accessible to a wider audience with the help of digital tools,

3) provide training opportunities for a new generations of Nigerian researchers,

with a specific focus on the gender and age of the researcher. At the beginning, the project is made up of five different component projects but with dynamic connectivity in the core objectives of the broader FSPI project.

Objectives of the FSPI project:

• Structuring Franco-Nigerian relations in the sectors of protection, promotion, and dissemination of Nigerian heritage processes.
• Building a fair partnership and collaboration models aimed at co-constructing projects and jointly mobilising French and Nigerian expertise to develop skills.
• Demonstrating the relevance of such an approach through the implementation of projects that are eventually replicable and provide deliverable added value in the medium term.

Five components of the project

1. Protecting political activists’ archives to write another history of Nigeria

• Partners: Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD), Abuja & Socialist Library and Archives (SOLAR), Calabar. Coordination: Dr. Sa’eed Husaini (CDD).

Objectives:

• Create an inventory and digitise pre-selected archives of professors Bene and Edwin Madunagu in Calabar as well as other activists’ archives.
• Academics and activists will be sponsored to publish research on the digitised archives (as well as the papers of professors? Ola and Kehinde Oni previously digitised by IFRA-Nigeria). Workshops will be organised to disseminate knowledge about the digitised archives.

2. Digitising and promoting the documentary collections of the National Museum of Lagos

• Partners: National Commission for Museums and Monuments (Lagos National Museum) & African Artists’ Foundation, Lagos. Coordination: Pedro Taye

Objectives:

• Digitizing and promoting the documentary collections of the National Museum of Lagos, especially the maps and papers of the Museum’s founder Kenneth Murray.
• Training of staff and other heritage specialists.
• Researchers will be hired to work on the digitised collections.
• Partnership with the African Artists’ Foundation to have artists working on and interrogating the digitised collections.
• Final exhibition and event with the artists and researchers.

3. Creating a digital archive of the intangible heritage of Benin (Nigeria)

• Partner: Institute for Benin Studies, Benin City

Objectives:

• Creating a digital archive of the intangible heritage of Benin (Nigeria)
• A group of young researchers specializing in Benin Studies will be trained in sound and video recording and the challenges of digitizing intangible heritage during a five-day masterclass at the start of the project
• Elements of Edo’s intangible heritage (songs, ceremonies, rituals) will be collected, annotated, translated, and archived on a dedicated website
• A high-level event will be organized in Benin City and broadcast online to present the digital archive

4. Promoting the religious architectural heritage of Ibadan

• Partners: Institute of African Studies & University of Ibadan & others. Coordination: Cell Generation Technology (CGT) & Dr. Cyrielle Maingraud-Martinaud (IFRA-Nigeria)

Objectives:

• Organisation of workshops on the religious architectural heritage of Ibadan
• Digitisation of selected religious buildings
• Training of Nigerian researchers in techniques for digitising religious architectural heritage
• Creation of an interactive digital map of notable places of worship in Ibadan

5. Protecting the urban archaeological heritage of Ile-Ife

• Partner: Epot Integrated Concept & Museum of Natural History, Ile Ife.

Objectives:

• Mapping historical pavements of Ile-Ife. 
• Training in the preservation of archaeological heritage
• Raising public awareness of the protection of urban archaeological heritage 
• Creating interest through open access of the digitised heritage of Ife
• Partnership for the creation of a center of interpretation on one of the sites

Gender, Law, and Political Activism in West Africa (GLOW project)

Project Overview

From the beginning of the XX^th century, inhabitants of French and British colonies experienced a « paradoxical citizenship » (Spire 2003): although they were French or British citizens, their political and social rights were limited (Saada 2005, Saada and Noriek 2007, Urban 2017). In terms of personal status, legal pluralism was imposed with the application of customary and religious norms (Rodet 2007). This “politics of difference” (Cooper 2009) included mechanisms for excluding/integrating rights based on multiple colonial-imposed demarcation lines that vary over time and from one colonial territory to another, such as race, gender, class, religion, ethnicity or metissage (Saada 2005; Cooper 2014; André 2016). The many ways in which colonial governments tinkered with these different categories produced a diversity of legal, political and social statuses for people living under colonial domination.  From the beginning of the XXth century, social mobilisations emerged to reform colonial laws. Women played an important role in these mobilisations, making law a central issue in nationalist or women’s movements (Scully 2000, Adeboye 2009, Panata 2016, Rillon 2022). Despite their involvement in the fights for independence, women were largely excluded from post-colonial governments and played little or no part in the drafting of national legislation (Tripp et alii 2009). Therefore, in the post-colonial period, women’s activists mobilized again to address legal inequalities. They often focused on family laws, where inequalities were most striking (Bernard and N’Diaye 2021, N’Diaye 2021). Their demands then extended to equal rights in the public sphere (elected office, political participation, professional equality) (Iweriebor 1988, Tripp 2016) and in the private sphere (sexual and reproductive rights, dress codes) (Bleek 1994, Kaler 2003).

Research on the role of African women in nation-building processes during the 20^th and 21^st centuries has developed over the last forty years. Many studies have focused on women’s movements and mobilizations. The literature analysing the interactions between gender and law in Africa has gradually developed into a dynamic, multidisciplinary field of research (Ndengue 2016, Idriss 2019, Panata 2020, Barthélémy 2022). However, this literature has developed in unequal ways across the continent (Coquery-Vidrovitch 2007). For decades, women have been mobilizing for legal recognition of gender equality, yet the intersection between women’s mobilizations and the law remains largely unexplored. This research programme aims to bridge this gap by conducting studies that explore the intersection of gender, activism, and law in West Africa from the 20th to the 21st century. By examining the history of women’s mobilisations for legal rights, the project seeks to provide a fresh perspective on the political and social history of the region during both the colonial and post-colonial periods. It aims to offer new insights into the legal construction of political and social inequalities over time.

This project adopts a multidisciplinary approach, that aims to bring together researchers from a variety of fields, including historians, sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists and legal experts. By doing so, this program aims to overcome disciplinary and methodological barriers that hinder the historical analysis of the relationship between law and mobilization, as well as the origins of certain legislative debates that have been ongoing for decades. GLOW also promotes multiscalar approaches, analysing both local mobilisations and the impact of international standards on mobilisations and legislations. In addition, the collaboration between anglophone and francophone researchers is central to the project, as it highlights the differences and similarities in legal heritage and moves beyond linguistic and imperial boundaries. Finally, GLOW encourages associate researchers to adopt a variety of methods, using a diverse range of sources such as legal texts, case law, parliamentary debates, reports from international conferences, activists’ writings and documents, visual documents, interviews, and observations to propose both “top-down” and “bottom-up” analyses.

Organising Team

– Olufunke Adeboye (University of Lagos) – PI : This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

– Barbara Morovich (IFRA Nigeria) – Co-PI : This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.  

– Marième N’Diaye (CNRS-Les Afriques dans le Monde) – Co-PI : This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.  

– Sara Panata (CNRS-Les Afriques dans le Monde) – Co-PI: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Are you interested in this project ? Do not hesitate to contact us !

Genre, Droit et Mobilisations en Afrique de l’Ouest (Projet GLOW)

GLOW est un projet scientifique entre l’Université de Lagos et le laboratoire Les Afriques dans le Monde (Bordeaux), en partenariat avec l’IFRA Nigeria.

En 2024, il a reçu un financement de l’Institut des Sciences Humaines et Sociales du CNRS en tant qu’International Emerging Action (IEA).

Présentation du projet

A partir du début du XX^e siècle, les populations sous domination coloniale vivent une « citoyenneté paradoxale » (Spire 2003) : tout en étant des nationaux des empires, Africaines et Africains font l’objet d’un traitement différencié de la part de l’administration coloniale et ne bénéficient pas des droits politiques et sociaux dont jouissent les citoyen.ne.s de la métropole (Saada 2005, Saada et Noriek 2007, Urban 2017). En matière de statut personnel, le pluralisme juridique s’impose avec l’application des normes coutumières et religieuses (Rodet 2007). Cette « politique de la différence »(Cooper 2009) comporte des mécanismes d’exclusion/intégration des droits basés sur des catégories multiples qui varient au fil du temps et d’un territoire colonial à l’autre (Saada 2005 ; Cooper 2014 ; André 2016) : le genre, la race, la classe, la religion ou encore le métissage (Denzer 1975, Goerg 1997). Les nombreux bricolages opérés par les gouvernements coloniaux en fonction de ces différents critères produisent une diversité de statuts juridiques, politiques et sociaux pour les peuples sous domination coloniale. Dès le début du XX^e siècle, des mobilisations sociales émergent pour revendiquer des réformes du droit colonial. Les femmes ont joué un rôle important dans ces mobilisations et ont ainsi contribué à faire du droit positif un enjeu des luttes portées par les mouvements nationalistes ou féminins (Scully 2000, Adeboye 2009, Panata 2016, Rillon 2022). Malgré leur implication dans les combats pour l’indépendance, elles sont largement exclues des gouvernements postcoloniaux et ne participent pas (ou très peu) à l’élaboration des législations nationales (Tripp et alii 2009).  Les femmes vont donc à nouveau investir le terrain des luttes sociales pour réclamer l’abrogation des discriminations juridiques dont elles font l’objet, souvent à partir du droit de la famille, où les inégalités sont les plus marquées (Bernard et N’Diaye 2021, N’Diaye 2021). Les revendications s’étendent ensuite et touchent aussi bien à l’égalité des droits dans la sphère publique (fonctions électives, participation politique, égalité professionnelle) (Iweriebor 1988, Tripp 2016) que dans la sphère privées (droits sexuels et reproductifs, codes vestimentaires) (Bleek 1994, Kaler 2003).

Les recherches sur le rôle des femmes africaines dans les processus de construction nationale se sont développées au cours des quarante dernières années. Plusieurs études se sont concentrées sur les mouvements et les mobilisations des femmes. Cette dense littérature n’a eu de cesse de se renouveler au cours de la dernière décennie (Ndengue 2016, Idriss 2019, Panata 2020, Barthélémy 2022). La littérature qui analyse les rapports entre genre et droit en Afrique subsaharienne s’est progressivement constituée en champ de recherche dynamique et pluridisciplinaire. Néanmoins, cette littérature s’est développée de manière inégale sur le continent  (Coquery-Vidrovitch 2007). Par ailleurs, le croisement entre mobilisations féminines et droit reste encore peu exploré alors que les femmes se mobilisent depuis plusieurs décennies pour la reconnaissance juridique de l’égalité des sexes.

Ce projet de recherche collectif vise à combler ces lacunes à travers des analyses qui croisent les rapports entre genre, droit et mobilisations sur le continent africain aux XXe et XXIe siècles. Il s’agit ainsi de renouveler l’histoire politique et sociale de la région à l’époque coloniale et postcoloniale en proposant des éléments de compréhension des inégalités socio-politiques et de leurs constructions juridiques dans le temps.

Avec une approche multidisciplinaire, qui ambitionne de mettre en dialogue historien.ne.s, sociologues, anthropologues, politistes et juristes, ce programme veut dépasser un cloisonnement disciplinaire et méthodologique qui fait obstacle à un travail d’historicisation des rapports entre droit et mobilisations et à la reconstruction de la genèse de certains débats législatifs, menés pourtant depuis plusieurs décennies. Ce projet privilégie aussi des approches multiscalaires, qui analysent à la fois des mobilisations locales mais aussi l’impact des normes internationales sur les mobilisations et sur les législations. Par ailleurs, le dialogue entre Afrique anglophone et francophone est central dans le projet, à la fois pour souligner les similitudes et différences en termes d’héritages juridiques, mais aussi pour sortir des frontières impériales et linguistiques et ainsi pouvoir tracer les éventuelles continuités dans les mobilisations sociales visant à réformer le droit. Enfin, le projet mobilise des méthodes plurielles, avec le recours à une diversité de sources écrites (textes de lois, jurisprudence, débats parlementaires, rapports de conférences internationales, écrits engagés, documents militants et ego-archives), de documents visuels, d’entretiens et d’observations (pratiques sociales de mobilisations, procès, etc.) pour proposer à la fois des analyses « par le haut » et « par le bas » qui s’ouvrent sur de multiples voix et sites d’actions.

Equipe organisatrice

– Olufunke Adeboye (University of Lagos) – PI : This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

– Barbara Morovich (IFRA Nigeria) – Co-PI : This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.  

– Marième N’Diaye (CNRS-Les Afriques dans le Monde) – Co-PI : This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.  

– Sara Panata (CNRS-Les Afriques dans le Monde) – Co-PI: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Vous êtes interessé.e.s par ce projet ? N’hésitez pas à nous contacter !

Women at Work: For a comparative history of African female urban professions (Sudan, Ethiopia, Tanzania and Ghana), 1919-1970 (WomatWork)

WomatWork (ERC Consolidator grant n. 101045774a) is the first comparative investigation of the history of female popular professionals in the African continent. It studies the history of urban popular female professionals in four African countries – Ghana, Sudan, Ethiopia and Tanzania – chosen for their comparative potential, throughout fifty momentous years, from the end of the First World War to the transition to one-party governments in the 1960s.

It starts from the realization that the labour pattern of female popular urban professions as birth attendants, beauticians, market vendors, artisans and so on have historically presented a number of fascinating and unsettling characteristics, very different from those of male salaried labour. One example is the notion of a fixed price for a certain service. In the case of many of such professions, compensations were never fixed, but were determined by the customer’s economic situation and status.

According to the existing literature on African labour, while the colonial states hired generally men, women worked in a plethora of self-employed and unwaged professions, outside the colonial gaze. This sexual division of labour hindered for long time the recognition of the role of women in colonial economies, and this until an important strand of feminist Marxist scholarship (influenced by the works of Ester Boserup) managed to demonstrate that female labour was not outside colonial relations of productions, but quintessential to it.

A limit to this scholarship was that it analysed the history of female labour through macro-categories (like peasants versus urban female workers), and tended to depict women as victims of exploitative labour relations. Without overlooking this dimension, to me seeing work only as exploitation prevents us from understanding it as an existential and social phenomenon. In my project, I want to cast light on how having a certain profession impacted the lives of non-elite urban women, what work meant for them.

So, to sum up, the objectives of this project are:

1. Chart the specificities of female urban professions and their change over time

2. Study the existential and social dimension of female labour,

But how to achieve such ambitious objectives if the working hands of women were invisible? This project is based on creative methodologies used to try to overcome the problem of the invisibility of female workers in official documents by weaving together unconventional set of sources.

The idea is to start from photographic sources. Over the years, doing research in several national, colonial and missionary archives, I observed that pictures of female workers abounds in some collections, in contrast to the scarcity of textual sources directly describing them. Pictures of women at work will be surveyed and analysed, and will provide various information such as the multiplicity of urban professions, or the places where women worked. In some cases, even their names are kept.

Secondly: oral accounts. Starting from clues grasped from photographs, oral accounts of female professionals and their families will be collected through extensive fieldwork.

Finally, the vernacular press: In connection to the rise of nationalism, the press of the four countries often debated about the national role of female popular workers. These sources are to be read along and against oral accounts and photographs.

These sets of sources have also crossed with other grey and miscellaneous literature, as ILO reports, census data, missionary parish records, urban plans, and so on.

One final pillar of the project is the involvement of African institutions and junior and senior African scholars through a number of actions, including

• the co-production of knowledge through systematic research and joint publication projects
• the sharing of research benefits through a focus on training
• the fostering of local research by supporting projects on the history of women at work

In this way, this project will strive for a more democratic, more inclusive history, both for its content and for its means.

Partners:

• CNRS, Paris (France)
• Università di Bologna (Italie)
• École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris (France)
• Université de Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne (France)
• Institut Français de Recherche en Afrique – Nigeria
• Institut Français de Recherche en Afrique – Kenya
• Centre for Economic, Legal and Social Studies CEDEJ – Khartoum (Soudan)

Principal Investigators:

• Elena Vezzadini, CNRS, Paris
• Karin Pallaver, Université de Bologne
• Anne Hugon, Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne
• Akosua Adomako Ampofo, Université du Ghana
• Cyrelene Amoah-Boampong, Université du Ghana

Nigerian Alternative Heritages

In July, a program funded by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs titled ‘Nigerian Alternative Heritages’, was launched by IFRA-Nigeria and the Cooperation and Cultural Action Service of the French Embassy in Nigeria. This program will be running until June 2026. It aims to bring together Nigerian and French forces to identify, promote, protect and disseminate “alternative” heritages in Nigeria. They are alternative because they have been forgotten and are therefore in danger of being lost in the long term, or because they are recent productions by minority, marginalized and/or protesting groups, institutions and players. In pursuit of this objective, this program focuses on digitizing and promoting archives at the National Museum of Lagos, those of architect Demas Nwoko at the New Culture Studio in Ibadan, and the militant archives of the Center for Democracy and Development in Abuja. Some of the objects exhibited at the National Museum of Unity in Ibadan and the National Museum of Lagos can be considered as “alternative heritage” because they have a common use and are not considered “artistic” as some other more famous artifacts.

This program is structured around three axes.

1. Digitization of photographs of everyday objects at the National Museum of Lagos

Following on from one of our previous projects, this axis aims to digitize part of the very rich documentary collection of Nigeria's most important museum. More specifically, it will focus on the collections of photographs of everyday objects. These photos are, in effect, “object cards” that can provide crucial information in understanding religious rituals, occupations and everyday events in many of Nigeria's socio-cultural groups. At a time when many restitution projects are being launched on the continent, this project enables us to work directly with the National Commission for Museums and Monuments, to make a concrete contribution to the new circulation of objects and their traces.

Digitizing the archives of Lagos National Museum presents significant opportunities for research-creation and scholarly exploration. By focusing on its extensive documentary collections, particularly the photographs of everyday objects, this project will unlock a wealth of knowledge about Nigeria's diverse cultural practices. These visual records offer vital information on the religious practices, occupations, and daily life of various socio-cultural groups, serving as key resources for researchers. Digitization not only preserves these invaluable artifacts but also facilitates new research initiatives that delve into Nigeria’s cultural history.

2. Digitization of architect Demas Nwoko's archives at Ibadan's New Culture Studio, structuration of cultural activities, renovation of aspects of the center

Many of Demas Nwoko’s works, for which he won the Golden Lion for his career achievements at the 2023 Venice Biennale, are not known. Most of this multi-faceted artist's archives, books, drawings and plays are at risk of damage due to their haphazard storage. Many of these documents are stored at the New Culture Studio in Ibadan. Backing them up and preserving them through digitization will enable a wider public to discover the works of this artist-architect committed to a mixed vision, blending plural languages.

Digitizing Demas Nwoko's extensive body of work opens new pathways for cultural activities, for research-creation and academic research. His contributions, spanning architecture, design, and theatre, offer invaluable insights into modern Nigerian art and culture, also through the renovation of some parts of the center. By digitizing his archives, scholars and creators will gain broader access to previously unavailable materials and activities. This digital preservation not only safeguards his legacy but also encourages the development of new research projects that explore the intersections of art, architecture, digital humanities and Nigerian heritage. It provides a crucial resource for scholars, artists, and students worldwide to engage deeply with Nwoko's innovative vision.

3. Digitization of the activist archives of Abuja's Center For Democracy And Development (CDD)

This work began in 2022-2024 thanks to our previous FSPI project, which catalogued and protected the archives of Nigerian Marxist, human rights activists and feminist militants. The digitization of activist archives is of inestimable social, scientific and historiographical interest. Preservation of and access to these archives makes it possible to write different histories of Nigeria, a country where the succession of military regimes until 1999 led to the elaboration of a monolithic national narrative. This axis continues this dynamic by seeking to digitize the activist archives of the Center for Democracy and Development (CDD) and focusing also on feminist archives. The aim is to protect the documentary heritage of very old or recently deceased activists, whose conservation conditions are not guaranteed due to limited funding and the variable interest of heirs.

Against this backdrop, IFRA's partnership with CDD serves a triple purpose:

- To facilitate identification and discussion with families and activists with archival holdings.

- Simplify field monitoring of projects in a deteriorating security context.

- Train Nigerian researchers specializing in the history of Nigerian activism in techniques for preserving and digitizing documentary heritage, in order to facilitate the replicability of the project.

- Engage the general public, artists, researchers and human rights activists, with the digitized holdings.

4. Revitalizing Ibadan’s National Museum: Bridging Heritage, Art, and Public Dialogue

The National Museum of Unity in Ibadan is the second largest museum in Nigeria, but for several years it has been suffering from a lack of appeal. Although new activities have recently been launched (such as a readers' club and sustainable development initiatives), the challenge remains to forge links with the public, based on an inclusive vision of heritage. The activities presented here are designed to do just that, focusing on the objects on display in the museum's galleries. Monthly dialogues will be organized around objects from the collections. Far from seeking to superimpose an external discourse, this activity will involve calling on experts to “bring to life” objects placed in the museum. Research-creation programs will be set up, open to multidisciplinary teams of social scientists, artisans and artists. Through these dialogues between science and art, the aim is not only to question the form of cultural mediation, but also to give space to the discourse of Nigerians on their objects in the museum. In addition, we'll be taking into account the way in which the creations integrate the museum's perimeter, and the uses to which the space is put in relation to economic, festive and unofficial activities, as well as the occupation of semi-public spaces for various events.