CAPÍTULO 1 Lógica y conjuntosse tiene que

Since the early years after independence from British rule in 1960, the Nigerian post-colony has endured a situation in which the ‗implications of colonialism have had disadvantages that far outweigh its heralded advantages‘ (Ekeh, 1975, p.99). Political instability which, in most part, was the result of the ethnic divisions that (as highlighted above) surfaced and intensified under colonial rule, had the effect of crippling economic and societal progress. According to Falola and Heaton (2008), national cohesion was a challenge because the lives of Nigerians focused not on their designation as ‗Nigerians‘ but centered primarily on their local communities ‗that had existed for hundreds and thousands of years‘ (p.158). Since political power had been distributed according to the major ethnic regions by the colonialists, the contest for

power at the federal level became very ethnically-charged after independence. The mutual fear of domination of one ethnic group by another led to political confrontations which boiled over and eventually led to the intervention and subsequent takeover by the military. The persistence of the ethnic wrangling for power (also within the military) eventually degenerated into a civil war in 1967 and ushered in almost three decades of militarism, the absence of democracy, and the mismanagement of the country‘s economy.

The end of the civil war in 1970 opened up a new phase in the postcolonial era. This phase was characterized by the country‘s sudden wealth, which had come about as a result of a global rise in the value of crude oil (which was first discovered in 1958).

According to Apter (2005), this change of fortune presented Nigeria with

‗unprecedented prosperity‘ (p.22) which was evident in ‗the clutter and cacophony of new construction [that] intensified as sports stadiums, national monuments, bridges, highways, and palatial hotels modernized the nation‘ (p.22). According to him, Nigeria‘s oil boom was a ‗spectacle to behold‘ and the mood in the country was one of

‗dizzy excitement‘ at the new wealth and opportunity. Apter notes that even though Nigerians may have been divided by region and ethnicity, they had become dramatically united by the ‗blessings of oil, which circulated, like blood, through the national body‘ (p.23).

Unfortunately, in the euphoria of the oil boom, a heavy dependence on crude oil impoverished all other sources of income. Although most of the country‘s wealth had previously been derived from agriculture and mining, the expansion of the petroleum industry led to the gradual collapse of non-oil sectors, transforming the country into a

‗centralized, bureaucratic petro-state‘ (Watts, 1992, p.36). The oil glut also transformed Nigeria into a ‗rentier state‘ in which revenue was derived not from domestic labour or local production but from royalties or ‗rents‘ derived from multinational petroleum corporations such as Shell, BP and Agip (Apter, 2005; Falola and Heaton, 2008). Furthermore, as Falola and Heaton (2008) note, the oil wealth, rather than contributing to the country‘s economic progress and improving the living condition of Nigerians, was unevenly distributed and squandered, benefitting only

those people who had access to state power through the acquisition of licenses, contracts and government revenues. As Tive (2006) summarizes:

In the 1970s, Nigeria experienced an oil boom; there was need for the revenue generated from this boom to be harnessed for effective economic development.

Unfortunately, the revenue generated from the sale of crude oil during this period was probably thrown into ―the bottomless pit.‖ Nigerian leaders developed an aphorism called ―sharing the national cake.‖ Revenue accruing from the oil sector was diverted to private bank accounts overseas, leaving the nation with no basic infrastructure or anachronistic ones. (p.17)

The eventual collapse of oil prices (which occurred in the 1980s) was followed by a period of economic crisis in the country. During this time, the Nigerian government (as with many governments in Africa) was pressured by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to initiate a structural adjustment programme to curb the excesses of the state. One of the aims of this programme was to decentralize and liberalize the economy by introducing free-market policies and ‗to remove impediments caused by state interference in market operations‘ (Jenkins, 2004, p.213).

According to Falola and Heaton (2008), this situation had further negative impacts on the country‘s economy which affected different strata of society. For example, the civil service as well as public schools and universities were neglected due to the scarcity of funds. In addition, many workers lost their jobs because private sector firms could not afford to retain them. Consequently, rising joblessness gave rise to growing rates of urban crime, most noticeably in the southern cities such as Lagos where the population was largest as a result of the migration of people from other regions in search of employment opportunities. As Apter (2005) notes, during this period which lasted through the 1990s, ‗a crisis of representation and social credibility eroded the very foundations of civil society, giving rise to the era of 419⁴ and its arts of

4 ‗419‘ is the term used to describe the culture of deception which had developed in the early 1990s which was used by conmen and confidence tricksters to defraud another of his/her goods. The number

‗419‘ is derived from the country‘s penal code outlawing the impersonification of officials for personal gain.

dissimulation‘ (p.16). The period also recorded a massive growth of the informal economy, characterized by self-employed, semi-skilled labour or manual labour such as small-scale trading, plumbing, hairdressing and other income generating activities that sometimes take place outside the usual regulatory framework of the state (Castells and Portes, 1989). The eventual return to democracy in 1999 was a respite to economic and cultural life in Nigeria partly because it put an end of military rule and brought about relative political stability. Nevertheless, the country remained largely underdeveloped and the challenges of ethnic divisions, infrastructure, unemployment and corruption continued to exist.

It is within this context that new media workers operate. Like other Nigerians, their everyday work is characterized by the need to negotiate the external conditions of economic, social and cultural life in the country. As discussed in the previous chapter, these external conditions which are endemic to the Nigerian context determine the specific ways by which new media work is practiced there. For example, the practice of networking among new media workers is closely related to their ethnic affiliations because ethnicity is an important element of the Nigerian context. Similarly, entrepreneurial practices among new media workers in Nigeria are influenced by the nature of infrastructural problems prevalent in Nigeria. This, in turn, produces various manifestations of precariousness in the Nigerian context (such as software piracy) which are not experienced in the same way in the developed world. In the next sections, I discuss these specificities of the Nigerian context in more detail. While the empirical chapters of the thesis (which follow this one) engage with the experiences of new media workers in the Nigerian context, the rest of this chapter is devoted to discussing specific aspects of this context in which those experiences take place. To do this, it is divided into four sections: work and employment; technology and infrastructure; piracy and legislation; and finally, ethnicity and networks. These aspects of the Nigerian context provide contextual depth to the themes around which my discussion of my empirical data is organised, namely, precariousness, entrepreneurialism and social networking.