The City of Ibadan
Date
1967
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Publisher
London: Cambridge University Press,
Abstract
Ibadan, its Early Beginnings; The Agricultural Environment; The Morphology of Ibadan; Indigenous Ibadan; Stranger Communities; The elite; From Traditional Crafts to Modern Industries; The Markets of Ibadan; Education Expansion and the Rise of Youth Unemployment; Government and Politics in Ibadan; Religion in Ibadan; The Problems of a Metropolis.
Description
This book attempts to provide an anatomy of present-day Ibadan, the largest inland African city south of the Sahara. Although many aspects and problems of the city’s cosmopolitan and complex society are examined in this book by the twelve contributors, they do not pretend that their investigations are either comprehensive or exhaustive. They have revealed, however, the immense possibilities, the richness, and the challenge which the urban agglomerations in Africa have for scholars. This series of papers was presented to a seminar organized early in 1964 by the Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan. The authors were then, for the most part, members or associates of the University. Ibadan has a unique character of its own. It is instructive to note that many of Ibadan’s characteristics, such as its ever-extending frontiers of built-up areas and farms, its cosmopolitanism and ever swelling population, are rooted in the past, before the Pax Britannica was imposed on the city. Created largely by the upheavals which marked the disturbed last years of the Old Oyo Empire, Ibadan expanded and developed rapidly because of many factors. With its policy of discreet militarism, Ibadan became a refuge for industrious agriculturists and craftsmen, a place where careers were open to talent (rather than determined by kinship ties as in the rest of Yorubaland), and a nodal point for traders in the larger areas of Yorubaland and beyond.