Tensional decolonization and public order in Western Nigeria, 1957-1960

Focusing on Western Nigeria during the era of decolonization, this article explores the impacts of decolonization on policing and public order. Specifically, it illustrates how colonial officials and Nigerian nationalists tried to interpret often-unclear policies to fashion a political transition. The granting of internal self-government by the British in 1957 began a complicated transition in which actors struggled over the meanings, opportunities, and fears of forthcoming independence. The tensions generated by contested views of the responsibilities and privileges of new leaders over the control of the transitioning bureaucracy and the police created conditions of instability ahead of the post-colonial state. More broadly, this article demonstrates a different narrative of decolonization from the conventional literature, which depicts decolonization as programmes negotiated and implemented by colonial officers and anti-colonial nationalist