Protest and mobilization: Post-Second World War workers’ strikes in the Nigerian Railway, 1945 – 1955

Abstract

Using hitherto inaccessible archival sources, this study examines how socioeconomic problems in Nigeria during and after the Second World War galvanised Nigerian workers into embarking on the 1945 General Strike. The strike’s “successes” encouraged the Nigerian Railway workers and unions to challenge their employers and the colonial state. This development forced the colonial authorities into ameliorating the transport workers’ deteriorating conditions of service. So problematic were these labour strikes in the Nigerian Railway that the government decided to convert the organization, a department of the civil service, into a statutory public corporation; to free it from and to stop labour crises in the organization. However, the measure failed to achieve its objectives as the railway workers successfully forced the hands of government into granting them concessions