From Traditionalism to Democratic Radicalism: A Re-examination of the Ilorin Talaka Parapo Phenomenon, 1954-1958.
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Date
2014
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Department of History & International Studies, Al-Hikmah University, Ilorin
Abstract
From “Traditionalism” to “Democratic Radicalism”: A Re-examination of the Ilorin Talaka Parapo Phenomenon, 1954-1958
By
Ismail Salihu Otukoko
Department of History and Heritage Studies
College of Humanities, Management and Social Sciences
Kwara State University (KWASU), Malete
e-mail: salisma2004@yahoo.co.uk
Abstract
The period of decolonization in Nigeria (1950-1960) was characterized by diverse struggles at various levels. Among the most noticeable developments during the decade are party politics, electoral, political and other forms of struggle for power as well as separatist and minority agitations. Within the defunct Northern Region, the Ilorin emirate was the first to experiment with democratic local government. It therefore had its own fair share of the emergent contestations. In Ilorin town, the headquarters of the Ilorin Emirate, the unfolding of the events associated with the emergent struggles revolved around the colonial reforms aimed at democratizing the local government, which started in the early 1950s. The reforms resulted in a struggle for the control of Ilorin between the hitherto privileged traditional ruling class and the underprivileged class of commoners. Within a period of five years, Ilorin was shaken to its very foundations by the phenomenal rise and fall of a commoners’ movement known as the Ilorin Talaka Parapo (ITP)—a movement that emerged as a champion of “tradition” but ended up as a major “enemy” of Ilorin traditional institutions and their interests. In view of the confusing signals given out by the ITP at its inception coupled with Ilorin’s peculiar circumstance both as a border territory between the North and South of Nigeria and as the only “Fulani Emirate” in Yoruba land, the ethnic conflict framework has dominated analysis of the rise and transformation of the Ilorin Commoners’ movement. Such framework, however, ignores the multi-ethnic composition of Ilorin town itself and of the membership of the Ilorin Talaka Parapo. This paper argues that the ITP was not essentially an anti-Fulani movement by Ilorin Yoruba groups; that the party’s initial commitment to tradition owed much to the local political situation in Ilorin town while its eventual advocacy for democratic radicalism was mainly a product of its transformation from a multi-ethnic based grassroots movement to a vehicle for Yoruba irredentism and ethnic nationalism that dominated the last decade of colonial rule in Nigeria.
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Salihu, O.I.(2012): From Traditionalism to Democratic Radicalism: A Re-examination of the Ilorin Talaka Parapo Phenomenon, 1954-1958. Journal of African Politics and Society, 1(2): 244-265.