Nation on Board

by Lynn Schler

  Crew members are warned that should any member be misguided enough to indulge in the trafficking of cannabis or other drugs, he will not only suffer the full penalties of the law in the port of discovery, but also that information regarding the offence shall be conveyed to the military in Nigeria. . . . Any crew member convicted or suspected of being implicated in this trafficking will be blacklisted with either the Nigerian or British Federation. . . . Crew members are no doubt aware of the suffering of drug addicts and are morally implicated should he be the carrier. Heavy gaol sentences and fines will be imposed on any crew member being convicted in the above practice.101

  Efforts to stop the trade became institutionalized practices on Nigerian ships. Ship logs from the 1970s and 1980s reported routine and extensive searches of all parts of the ship. Crew and officers had to submit to searches and were not allowed to carry any unauthorized parcels on board.102 Some captains complained that drug searches were hampered by the presence of female visitors in crew’s accommodations, and harsh punishments were instituted against those who brought unauthorized females on board.103 In many ships, crew members were stationed on the gangway night and day, and every parcel or bag brought on board was subjected to inspection. In addition, crew members were put on night patrol on each end of the deck to make sure that no parcels were thrown on board from ashore.104 But harsh punishments had little impact on the volume of the trade, and seamen continued to engage in drug trafficking throughout the history of the NNSL.

  The flourishing drug trade among seamen on NNSL ships, despite enormous efforts to put a stop to it, cannot be divorced from the complex and troubled history of the Nigerian National Shipping Line and the place of seamen in this history. Seamen’s turn to illegality must be understood against the backdrop of seamen’s increasing disempowerment within the NNSL. Scholars have examined the roots and causes of the demise of the Nigerian line from the perspective of the political economy of international shipping and within the context of broader political and economic instability that plagued Nigeria in the postcolonial era. It has been argued that the history of the NNSL cannot be separated from deeper processes that contributed to a crisis of leadership and the growth of corruption. An investigation into seamen’s efforts to maneuver this volatile landscape sheds new light on the ways in which the most disempowered and marginalized continually made efforts to reap benefits and exploit opportunities over the short term. Their experiences as employees of the Nigerian National Shipping Line are a poignant testimony to the ways in which the working class experiences, interprets, and navigates political and economic landscapes not of their choosing.

  The history of seamen’s experiences in the Nigerian line demonstrates how hierarchies of power originating at the international level in the world shipping industry ultimately filtered down through the national context and locked seamen into the lowest rungs of the industry. In this context, seamen could obtain their share of power only through creative maneuvering and steadfast commitment to grab at opportunities when they presented themselves. Seamen pulled from a diverse set of tools in navigating this world. Some benefited from patrimonialism, others embraced ethnic solidarity, and most sought to preserve their autonomy and combat their proletarianization through their independent trade. As circumstances worsened, illegality also became a viable means for maintaining some autonomy and wealth. But the increasing disempowerment led many to bitter disappointment and despair. This despair soon translated into a deep sense of disillusionment with the NNSL and, ultimately, with the national project of Nigeria itself. As Engineer Akinsoji said: “When I was on the ship, everyone was enthusiastic about the NNSL, and I was enthusiastic also. It was a pride to be a seaman then, but I don’t know now. But I think a lot of people still have interest to be seaman. . . . Nigerians are very good people when they want to get things done, but the influence of the society sometime takes you away from your determination. And shipping is such a business that you can’t allow anything to take you away from your determination.”105

  Conclusion

  OVER THE LAST TWENTY YEARS, the Atlantic Ocean has increasingly provided historians with an alternative frame of reference to national borders for shaping research agendas. The focus on the Atlantic enables scholars to document the interconnectedness of histories, cultures, and experiences between Africa, Europe, and the Americas. Historians of the black diaspora have demonstrated that from the very first forced migrations of slaves across the Atlantic, Africans and their descendants throughout the Atlantic Basin have shared notions of identity, community, and culture as a result of ongoing flows and exchanges between black communities on all sides of the ocean. In taking the Atlantic Ocean as a single complex unit of analysis, or “an integrated whole,” many have argued that the identities and ideologies of Africans and their descendants across the Atlantic remain demographically, economically, culturally, and intellectually linked.1 These histories commonly invoke the terms “transnational,” “cosmopolitan,” and “intercultural” to describe the cultures and worldviews of communities and individuals living around the “Black Atlantic.” The field of African history has also been greatly influenced by these trends. Even with regard to African communities and individuals who have never ventured beyond the continent, the flow of people, ideas, and commodities across the ocean has played a significant role in shaping local circumstances in the past and the present. As a result of these transatlantic connections, it has been argued that African experiences and worldviews are “shaded with inflections of a transnational black public sphere.”2

  From the start of the transatlantic trade, black seamen played a key role in the emergence of these diaspora connections. Through their travels, seamen conveyed news, commodities, and ideas between black communities across four continents, and thus fostered the emergence of shared consciousness, cultural trends, and political organizing. Seamen were not only instruments of change; rather, their own lives and experiences were fundamentally imprinted with the border crossings, hybridity, and cosmopolitanism that characterized the migratory flows across the ocean. Black seamen’s transient lifestyle enabled them to push back against the racial and colonial hierarchies at the foundation of societies back home. Historians have argued that ships themselves represented a liminal space that enabled the emergence of transnational and interracial solidarities. Drawing heavily upon Foucault’s notion of “heterotopias,” historians of black seafaring argue that ships became vehicles that created circumstances for bypassing national and racial boundaries.3 Particularly with regard to the Age of Sail, scholars such as Jeffrey Bolster, Markus Rediker, and Peter Linebaugh have claimed that the dangers and isolation of the sea fostered camaraderie between black and white sailors.4 Working together in precarious conditions, solidarity emerged within multiracial crews that defied the hierarchies deeply embedded ashore.5

  In approaching the history of Nigerian seamen, I had an eye to this burgeoning body of literature, and I anticipated finding evidence of these alternative spaces and experiences that defied borders and bordering processes. Some preliminary findings revealed that, indeed, many aspects of Nigerian seamen’s lives conformed to this cosmopolitan vision. For Nigerians in the colonial era, the allure of seafaring was rooted in opportunities to travel beyond Nigeria and exploit new economic, social, and cultural possibilities. Their descriptions of life at sea and in foreign ports of call often reflected an empowered transience, a fluid and noncommittal lifestyle. Seamen established relations with foreign women that defied racial and national boundaries. They embraced new definitions for family, and they exploited opportunities for romantic connections that did not carry the commitments and obligations associated with family life in Nigeria. In addition, they were engaged in a vibrant independent trade that defied their categorization as a cheap and easily exploited source of labor for European shipping companies. Interviews confirmed that seamen saw themselves as what Pico Iyer characterized as “global souls”—the products of “blurred boundaries and glob
al mobility.”6

  But while there were indeed dimensions of seamen’s lives in which they enjoyed varying forms of economic and cultural autonomy, this study has ultimately shown that ships, and the seamen employed on them, did not exist in isolation of the forces of history. Seamen confronted international border regimes, racism on board ships and in ports of call, and economic exploitation as a cheap source of labor for colonial shipping companies. In the face of exclusion and discrimination, seamen drew upon the available ideologies of liberation. In the colonial era, the black diaspora provided material and ideological support for seamen in their struggles to improve their lot. But gradually, the historical processes of decolonization and the rise of nationalism overtook alternative forms of solidarity. Seamen were initially drawn to nationalist ideology as an answer to their exploitation, but their entanglement in the history of decolonization finally resulted in a loss of autonomy. As ships and the seamen who worked on them became nationalized, it was increasingly hard to find traces of the heterotopias of the Age of Sail. Stuart Hall’s vision of the cosmopolitan, “the ability to stand outside of having one’s life written and scripted by any one community,”7 gradually gave way to the hegemonic influence of nationalization. In sharp contrast to the depictions of nineteenth-century seafaring as a vehicle for liberation and alterity, this history of Nigerian seafaring in the twentieth century traces a gradual but steady process of seamen’s disempowerment.

  The fate of Nigerian seamen in the transition from colonialism to independence reaffirms that nation-building and nationalization were all-powerful forces that trampled alternative forms of alliance and identification. Seamen who had once seen themselves as “citizens of the world” faced a new set of hardships and obstacles when they became Nigerian seamen. The potent force of nationalization extended its reach far beyond the borders of Nigeria. Far out at sea, or in foreign ports throughout the world, seamen confronted work regimes, ship hierarchies, and terms of employment that increasingly bore the footprint of Nigerianization. It has been seen that in this transition from colonial ships to the Nigerian National Shipping Line (NNSL), seamen slowly experienced a loss of options for operating outside of their Nigerian identity. According to their testimonies, the conditions of work in the NNSL soon became an admonition of the opportunities they no longer had. As both local and transnational imaginaries lost ground to the nationalist perspectives, it was ultimately the nation-state that became the preeminent framework within which class struggles were negotiated and fought in the postcolonial era.8 This bordering process could be seen in the following testimony of one seaman, who claimed that the Nigerian government blocked seamen’s efforts to gain international backing for their labor disputes, and prevented them from seeking recourse from international organizations such as the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF):

  The government suppressed us, the crew, by that time. If anything new happened abroad and we told the government about an ITF decision, the government refused to listen to us. And when we invited ITF for anything here, to intervene, the ITF responded that the Nigerian government did not want them to intervene. . . . There was a strike and I went to Rotterdam, in Holland, to invite the ITF and I was told, boldly, by the Federation that the Nigerian government did not want external interference. . . . It was because the government knew that the ITF was going to take sides with us seamen.9

  Nationalism emerged as an all-powerful force in seamen’s lives, but this study also unpacks how we conceptualize and study nationalism. The power of nationalism and national borders has been evidenced in countless studies of Africa in the postcolonial era. But few of these studies have taught us what nationalism has signified in the lives of nonelites. This history of Nigerian seamen in the transition from colonialism to independence has argued that nationalism resonated in specific ways for the working class. The study has demonstrated the need to understand nationalism “from below.” Seamen’s experiences reveal how working classes embraced what Jon Fox and Cynthia Miller-Idriss have referred to as “everyday nationhood.” This nationhood is expressed and performed in the routine contexts of everyday life. As they wrote, the nation is “the practical accomplishment of ordinary people talking about themselves and their surroundings in ways that implicate and reproduce a national view.”10 Thus, for seamen, “Nigeria” was found in ship menus and work routines. Seamen identified “Nigeria” in onboard relations between crews and officers, and in the slow deterioration of the terms of their employment. Their hopes for national liberation were tied up with their hopes for better working conditions, and their disillusionment with the reality of employment in the NNSL. This history instructs us that African working classes in the era of decolonization were not passive receptors of broader political changes, and they crafted their own notions for nationhood. The mundane associations seamen made between the Nigerianization of shipping and the broader political project of nation-building in Nigeria provide a rare look into how everyday Africans wrote themselves into history. Craig Calhoun wrote, “Nations are constituted largely by [these] claims themselves, by the way of talking and thinking and acting that relies on these sorts of claims to produce collective identity, to mobilize people for collective projects, and to evaluate peoples and practice.”11

  For seamen, the disillusionment with the Nigerianization of shipping became the basis for their disillusionment with Nigeria as a nation-state. Their experiences should therefore be considered against the backdrop of an immense body of scholarly literature that has emerged to explain the failures of nation-building in Nigeria. In focusing on the working class, this study sheds new light on this troubled history. Much of the literature regarding the devastating instability and ineffectiveness of the Nigerian state points to ethnicity and regionalism as the roots to ongoing political crises and lack of effective governance. It is beyond dispute that regional interests and ethnic chauvinism have been a destructive force in the history of postcolonial Nigeria. But ethnicity was not the central factor shaping the history of the NNSL and the fate of the individuals who played a role in the Nigerian National Shipping Line. Seamen’s testimonies of their experiences with the NNSL continually downplayed ethnicity as the most significant determinant shaping their engagement with the national line. Instead, their experiences reveal that class was the most significant factor determining the ways in which each interest group involved in the NNSL anticipated the establishment of the line, and the ways in which they experienced it.

  The history of the NNSL makes it clear that we need to bring class back to the forefront of the study of postcolonial Africa in general, and Nigeria in particular. It is doubtful whether the African indigenous shipping lines created as part of nationalist political platforms could have overcome the unequal structures of power shaping the world of international shipping. Former colonial giants maintained an advantage that perhaps no reasonable measure of investment and commitment by the Nigerian government could have overcome in order for the NNSL to succeed and thrive. But for those back in Nigeria, the consequences of this failure, whatever its causes were, were not experienced evenly across class lines. Politicians appointed their cronies as managers, and together they slowly bled the company of resources. Captains, officers, and middle management also positioned themselves to best exploit opportunities for personal gain on NNSL ships. By contrast, rank-and-file seamen, who had invested their hopes and aspirations in the NNSL as a homecoming, gradually experienced disempowerment and disillusionment. While officers, management, and politicians maneuvered to protect and maximize their opportunities, working-class seamen faced a loss of prospects and autonomy. The history of the NNSL brings into clear focus that the failures of nationalism were not experienced evenly by all Africans. This book has thus argued that for both working classes and ruling elites, class played a pivotal role in determining how nationalism and nationalization shaped their lives.

  This is not just a matter of historical significance. The inequalities that characterized this
history still deeply resonate in the lives of all those who played a part in the NNSL. These inequalities also surfaced in the process of researching this history, and they played a significant role in shaping whose stories were told and how they were told. We must remain aware of how historical hierarchies of power continue to find expression in the material circumstances of the present, and how the process of historicization can constitute another form of marginalization for those who have been marginalized by history. A few examples from the processes of interviewing can demonstrate this point. Former politicians and management who were involved with the NNSL came to interviews with a clear agenda of telling their version of events, and some had various forms of archives to validate their claims. Thus, I met Sen. Cosmos Niagwan in his air-conditioned office in Apapa, where he provided a long and detailed account of the NNSL liquidation process that he oversaw in 1994. Beginning his career as an NNSL captain, Niagwan eventually went into politics and was elected senator from the Plateau State. Niagwan was extremely well versed in the interview process, and he provided a wealth of information on his personal experiences both on board NNSL ships and as the liquidator of the company. He had a well-preserved personal archive regarding the liquidation, and he generously made this available for me to photocopy in his office. Key aides were present in interviews and offered their assistance in providing me with documents and other information.

  Another member of management, Isaac Bezi, also provided a long and detailed interview. At first, Bezi was extremely reluctant to provide an interview at all. The meeting was arranged only after he itemized the subjects he would be willing to talk about and set rules for how the interview was to be conducted. We met at the exclusive Apapa Club in Lagos. This country club is well guarded and private, and I was severely warned by guards after innocently taking a picture of the entrance from the street. During the interview, Bezi directed the conversation, and I carefully avoided topics that were clearly off-limits. During the interview, it was clear to me that Bezi had agreed to meet in order to formally record his version of events, some of which was contradicted and refuted in interviews with other former managers.