Theft in colonial southwestern Nigeria

Drawing on a large number of documented cases spanning the entire colonial period, this paper highlights the dominant characteristics of theft in southwestern Nigeria. It provides data on the motives for theft, the methods employed by thieves, attempts by the State and the public to curtail theft, and the responses of thieves to security measures. Contrary to the findings of E. Hobsbawm, D. Crummey, and others, the results of the present study do not indicate a relationship between theft and resistance to the colonial State or any form of social protest. Instead of Hobsbawm’s ‘heroic criminal’ the Nigerian evidence reveals characteristics of Hobsbawm’s category of thieves operating in the ‘professional underworld’. The data reveal little on ‘class-conscious deviance’. Most thieves in colonial Nigeria were poor, an indication that theft was a means of survival. Thieves attacked the rich, not because they were opposed to accumulation, but because they targeted those who had the goods they wanted to steal. They also raided the poor, stealing such things as livestock, farm crops and low-value commodities. Notes, ref., sum. in French and Italian.