Colonial Ideologies and the Emergence of Two Spaces: The Nigerian Experience

This chapter examines the politico-historical emergence of two spaces in colonial Nigeria and how this historical configuration affected colonial and postcolonial Nigerian politics. It contends that the emergence and characteristics of the two spaces owe their origins to two bourgeois groups, namely the British colonial administrators on ground and the select few indigenous elite borne out of the colonial experience. Ideologies were formulated around these two groups and used to legitimate British rule as the ordinary man became the target of the intellectual workmanship of the two groups. The chapter concludes that the postcolonial challenges of Nigeria are due to the dialectical relationship between the two spaces which emerged out of the need to execute the imperial ideologies of Britain in colonial Nigeria