Contestations of identity: colonial policing of female sexuality in the Cross River region of Southern Nigeria

Abstract

Colonial rule impacted profoundly on the lives of Nigerian women and led to a reconfiguration of gender identities, producing sites of contestation and negotiation as imperial ideas of feminity were contested and reconstructed. Through the prism of prostitution using the Cross River region of the present-day Akwa Ibom and the Cross River States as a case study, this paper navigates the landscape of female sexuality in the twentieth century and the colonial government’s effort to contain a phenomenon that undermined normative conjugal and family relations and also muddled the packaging of a colonial identity. The optimal utilisation of their colonies by the British necessitated the cooperation of the chiefs and seeking to impose a new moral, economic and social order to facilitate their economic and political control. The British rulers/colonists in collaboration with the local chiefs and elders reinterpreted morality and reconstructed the Nigerian woman in accordance with the Victorian values of what constituted a virtuous and good woman. Prostitution with its thwarting of culturally and morally acceptable expressions of sexuality drew state censorship. In some cases, local actors colluded with the colonial government to police female sexuality and more often than not deepen women’s marginalisation. In many other instances, they aided the entry of women into prostitution. Perception and the resulting behaviour of kinsmen and local governing bodies toward the sex trade were tied in part to their benefits from the derivable income which contributed significantly to the survival of rural households. At diverse points and to varying degrees, institutional structures and spaces became sites of contestation as the prostitutes sought to assert their rights over their sexuality.

Keywords: Gender identities, prostitution, female sexuality, morality, Nigeria