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Moral Economies of Corruption

State Formation & Political Culture in Nigeria

Duke University Press

A Tale of Two Emirs

Colonialism and Bureaucratizing Emirates, 1900–1948

In January 1851 Emir Bello of Katsina received a visit from a young German on an exploratory mission for the British government. His visitor, Dr. Heinrich Barth, posed the emir with a dilemma. Barth's companions had parted ways with him, going instead to Katsina's rivals. One went east to the empire of Borno, which had resisted the jihad that had brought the emir's regime to power. The other went to Maradi, a city founded by the Katsina dynasty the jihad had displaced. Barth himself was on his way to Kano, Katsina's trading rival, and ultimately to Sokoto, the capital of the emir's overlord. The presence of this European in Katsina presented Emir Bello with both opportunities and dangers. As ruler of Katsina, he was entitled to presents from travelers coming through his land. Europeans had access to valuable things: manufactured goods unavailable through normal sources, rare medicines, powerful weapons. Receiving such presents from Barth was doubly desirable when hostile powers (not to mention formally friendly rivals like Kano) might be trading in such goods with Barth's friends. But the emir was no mere shakedown artist. He had a reputation to protect as a just Muslim ruler who fostered the traders on whom his land's prosperity depended. He owed obedience to Sokoto, which was doubly important since its sultan had deposed Bello's predecessor for disobedience a few years previously. And thus his challenge: how could the emir use Barth's presence to best advantage?

The emir's ten days of negotiations with Barth are recounted in the latter's extraordinary travel narrative. The drama demonstrates important and enduring qualities to political life in the region. While the caravan in which Barth traveled was still encamped several miles from the city, the emir came to greet him. Soon thereafter the emir sent his European guest a present of a ram and two calabashes of honey. This was, Barth remarked, "an honor which was rather disagreeable to me than otherwise, as it placed me under the necessity of making the governor a considerable present in return. I had no article of value with me, and I began to feel some unpleasant foreboding of future difficulties." The ten days that followed confirmed his worst fears.

The morning after that initial meeting, Barth confided to the leader of his caravan he had very little appropriate to present to the emir — only razors, cloves, frankincense, and two red caps. The bulk of his possessions having been diverted along another route, he did not even have enough money to purchase a formal gown as a present. The caravan leader warned him the emir "had made up his mind to get a large present from me, otherwise he would not allow me to continue my journey." Visiting the emir, Barth made a present of the caps, razors, cloves, frankincense, a piece of calico, some soap, and a packet of needles. Barth then announced his intention to go to Kano and thence to Borno. There, he explained, he would be reunited with the bulk of his possessions, which had been diverted east. Having access to these goods would enable him to travel west to Sokoto to meet with the sultan. The emir replied that he would be foolish to allow Barth to leave when his companions had gone to Maradi and Borno. Tactfully, the emir forbore pointing out that Barth himself planned a journey to the latter. It was out of the question to allow Barth passage when he had done so little to acknowledge Katsina's dignity, and when he clearly intended to dispense favors elsewhere. Barth was instead separated from his caravan and provided with a house inside the city as an involuntary guest of the emir. Barth's obligation to produce a more spectacular present then deepened when the emir sent him another ram and two ox-loads of grain. In Barth's next meeting with the emir, the discussion expanded from the issue of adequate presents to Katsina's ruler from a visiting dignitary and began to consider Barth's legal status in the country. Barth presented the emir with letters written on his behalf by the sultan of Agadez, which he hoped would convince the emir to allow him onward passage. Emir Bello and his advisors, however, insisted on another interpretation:

According to the sagacious interpretation of these men, the purport of the letter was to recommend me expressly to this governor as a fit person to be detained in his company. All my representations to the effect that [the sultan] had recommended me in exactly the same terms to the governors of Daura and Kano, and that I had forwarded a letter from Agades to the Emir el Mumenin in Sokoto, informing him that, as soon as we had received new supplies from the coast, one of us at least would certainly pay him a visit, which, under present circumstances, robbed and destitute as we were, we could not well do, were all in vain; he had an answer for every objection, and was impudent enough to tell me that a message had been received from Maradi, soliciting me to go thither; that as Bornu had laid hold of one of my companions, and Maradi of the other, so he would lay hold of me, but of course only to become my benefactor. ... Seeing that reply was useless and that it was much better to let this lively humorist go through his performance, and to wait patiently for the end of the comedy, I took leave of him and returned to my quarters.

Barth felt trapped. His resources inadequate to satisfy the emir, he realized pretexts might be manufactured to detain him indefinitely. His next move was to try to find a sponsor in local politics. He had been placed under the protection of the expatriate who informally coordinated the affairs of non-Africans in the city. Acquiring a loaf of sugar, Barth reviewed his letters of introduction with this protector, who pledged to support his interpretation of their import, on the understanding that Barth would return to Katsina later after he had been reunited with his possessions. At that point his friends would be rewarded. The strategy was not immediately successful; at his next meeting with the emir he was greeted with a demand for 100,000 cowries (Barth calculated this was equivalent to £8, more than he had with him), which the emir justified as adequate reciprocity for the gifts of foodstuffs Barth had received from him. Ultimately, instead of money the emir received a caftan and a carpet, along with various medical goods: "a few powders of quinine, of tartar-emetic, and of acetate of lead, and ... a small bottle with a few drops of laudanum." Although the emir then demanded two additional medicines — one for "conjugal vigor" and the other for war (i.e., rockets) — he ultimately allowed Barth to leave, despite disappointment in these last wishes.

By itself the encounter between Barth and the emir has little historical importance. It outlines, however, a political logic of enduring significance. The issue at stake was not finding a fee for services to be rendered, nor was Emir Bello's conduct an exercise of government authority that could be termed proper or improper. The questions were deeper, and the transactions more profound. What was Barth's status in the emirate with regard to the sultan of Agadez or the sultan of Sokoto? What kind of present was an adequate gesture of respect for the emir, and what were appropriate forms of reciprocity between him and a distinguished visitor? It is a sign of Barth's extraordinary lack of ethnocentrism that he narrates this encounter in a straightforward way. Frustration comes across, but so does his presentation of himself as enmeshed within a web of reciprocal transactions. He was annoyed by the emir but recognized himself as a political inferior. More than that, Barth's narrative underlines the centrality of reciprocal prestation in the governance of the Sokoto Caliphate.

Goods were not simply goods; they were tangible symbols of political position. Their transfer as presents was a means of representing and consolidating political relationships. Medicines, gowns, and carpets were not just useful in their own right; they coordinated Barth's (and by extension Britain's) political position in the central Sudan, and Katsina's position vis-à-vis its overlord, allies, and enemies. Relationships between states were manifested in flows of people and commodities. Katsina sent money and goods and slaves to Sokoto. This was part of a routine process of tax collection, but the symbolism was dense. On his installation, Emir Bello had paid the kudin sarauta new officeholders give their overlords, and he regularly sent gifts as "greetings" (gaisuwa). Barth's encounter is not just important for its snapshot of the tangible aspects of mid-nineteenth-century diplomacy or because it portrays political culture in some untouched past. Rather Barth's experience is a window onto one moment, with a specific set of historical actors, institutional constraints, and economic considerations, and it demonstrates a mode of politics transformed but persistent in other historical contexts. The manner in which the political culture of mid-nineteenth-century Katsina was incorporated into modern Nigeria is a condition of possibility for more recent practices, which are frequently called "political corruption," and which I suggested in the introduction should be understood as part of a distinctive "corruption-complex" of material practices and discourses about those practices. But it would be anachronistic to suggest the same for the 1850s.

Barth suggests the emir's actions are not entirely admirable even within his own frame of reference:

Notwithstanding the injustice of every kind which he daily commits, he has some sentiment of honor; and feeling rather ashamed for having given me so much trouble for nothing, as he was aware that it would become known to his fellow-governors, and probably even to his liege lord, the Emir el Mumenin, he was anxious to vindicate his reputation. It was from the same motive that he begged me most urgently not to tell any body that I had made him the presents here, adding that he would afterward say that he had received them from me from Kano.

There is no hint in the text the emir was "corrupt" in the modern sense of the word — frustrating, disingenuous, perverse, greedy, oppressive, unjust. But not corrupt. Emir Bello committed injustice but retained "some sentiment of honor." And critically, Barth did not accuse him of misusing his office, just of causing Barth "trouble for nothing." Even in Barth's frame of reference this was no violation of a set of bureaucratic rules. Barth was, perhaps, not entirely fair to the emir. Aside from noting tensions with Maradi and Borno, he did not acknowledge the complexity of Bello's political position. The emir's grip on power was not entirely secure. His predecessor had been removed from Katsina's throne, and the deposed emir remained in the region, threatening to make common cause with Katsina's other enemies. Though Bello had been in power since 1844, he did not fully succeed in consolidating his authority until after 1853, when his predecessor invaded unsuccessfully. At the time of Barth's 1851 visit, therefore, Bello was engaged in a struggle to install his own supporters in offices of state, to consolidate support among existing officeholders, and to stabilize his position within the caliphate and internationally. Barth's presence was potentially significant for doing so, offering the promise of decisive advantage, but any hopes the emir entertained were disappointed. Barth, for all his acumen, did not acknowledge this.

Despite its nineteenth-century details, this passage in Barth's narrative reads as surprisingly modern. It strikes a chord in anyone who has met repeatedly with officials and been frustrated by a constantly shifting set of requirements. In more recent times, official demands — which some would call "corrupt" — can be structured in a very similar way, with protracted discussions about supplicants' status, the government services necessary for their situation, and the appropriate recompense. For example, during a long research stay in Nigeria I had business in a government office and needed to receive an official document from the officials there. I was forced to visit the office multiple times across three weeks, as I met and befriended a variety of officials in the office, from the most senior to the quite junior. Our interactions were sociable, but friendly conversation served deeper purposes, working out how I was to apply for what I needed, and how much it would cost, both in formal fees and other expenses. Eventually, my primary advisor, one of the more senior officials, determined my case would need to be decided by the relevant ministry in Abuja, the federal capital. In order to expedite my case, I would need to pay for a junior official to take my file there himself, covering his costs of travel, as well as other expenses he and his colleagues would incur on my behalf. The sums involved were substantial, and considerably greater than the published fees, but from my vantage they were not wholly extortionate. As Daniel Jordan Smith has suggested for southeastern Nigeria, this kind of intricately negotiated encounter is all-pervasive but generally perceived as problematic, not unreasonably, since so many resources must be devoted to such demands. How did a politics in which negotiation between superiors and inferiors involving significant material transactions become "corruption" and become a problem?

Hausa States and the Sokoto Caliphate

Emir Bello ruled a state with a venerable history. Katsina had long been famous as one of the Hausa bakwai, the seven ancestral Hausa city-states. These polities (the major states of Kano, Katsina, Zaria, and Gobir along with the more minor state of Daura, the Kano vassal Rano, and Biram in what is now Hadejia) claimed descent from a common ancestor-hero who had saved the city of Daura from a snake and married its queen. The Hausa states shared the Hausa language, many aspects of culture, and many elements of their constitutions. In their governments, the king was assisted by a constellation of subordinate officials (the masu sarauta, lit. "possessors of office"). Some of these offices were reserved for men and some for women, for royals and nonroyals, for free people and slaves (and sometimes eunuchs), though the specific offices and rules for filling them varied from kingdom to kingdom and across history. In addition to their functional offices, the masu sarauta played a key role in territorial administration. Every settlement under a kingdom's control owed allegiance to some officeholder, who assumed responsibility for collecting its taxes and administered its affairs through intermediaries called jakadu (sing. jakada).

Officeholders gained income from two sources. As a perquisite of office, they possessed large plantations staffed by slaves, whose incomes went to them personally. They also retained a portion of the taxes they collected from settlements inhabited by free people. When an officeholder first attained office, he or she would also make a payment (kudin sarauta) to the king, and subordinates regularly made presents (gaisuwa) to their superiors. Kings established and maintained their authority through their ability to appoint and remove officeholders and to grant slave plantations. Gifts thus went both ways, and the demands of superior officials were balanced by their ability to give patronage.

Hausaland became incorporated into the great trans-Saharan trading routes beginning in approximately the eleventh century CE, and Islam came into the region along with traders. Widespread Islamicization came slowly, and it played out differently in the various states; where in Kano the aristocracy converted before ordinary people, in Katsina the reverse happened. Everywhere, this was a feature of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, if not later. Toward the end of the eighteenth century, however, Islamicization took a new turn. Some centuries previously, a group of nomadic pastoralists, the Fulani, had come into the region. Though the nomadic Fulani kept to an indigenous religion, some of them settled down in cities, and among those a number became renowned as devout religious scholars. One of these latter, a man named Usman dan Fodio, became a close advisor to the king of Gobir and later a bitter opponent. Dan Fodio and his followers ultimately fled the Gobir capital of Alkalawa and then launched a jihad against the kingdom, which was quickly joined by Fulani in other Hausa states and even beyond. Although most of the states the jihad made war on were officially Muslim, the jihadists declared that the practice of Islam in them was syncretistic and improper. They had great success. Most Hausa states were conquered, and their Hausa dynasties replaced by Fulani emirs subject to Usman dan Fodio, who presided over the empire from a new capital built at Sokoto.

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Excerpted from Moral Economies of Corruption by Steven Pierce. Copyright © 2016 Duke University Press. Excerpted by permission of Duke University Press.
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