The Transformation of Rural Labour Systems in Colonial and Post-Colonial Northern Nigeria

The study attempts to highlight the interrelation between three central points in the ongoing debate on the political economy of development: viability, surplus, and class-formation. A case study of the development of rural labour systems in Northern Nigeria is meant to provide both a better qualitative and quantitative idea of this interrelation. After an analysis of the socio-economic effects of forced and bonded labour during colonial times, the articulation of different systems of family and non-family labour has been investigated. Class-specific effects of labour and capital input do even result in an increasing use of communal labour by rich and middle peasants after the Nigerian Civil War: its form remains, but its content changes fundamentally. The socio-economic and material base for small-scale peasant subsistence production has been gradually destroyed.