“We Are Non-Political:” Gender, Intellectual Thought, and the Development of Non-Political Nationalism in Nigeria

Maria Martin
History and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies
UC Merced

African nationalism can be non-political. However, this unorthodox construction has gone unrecognized. It can only be seen through a consideration of women’s ideologies, activist agendas, and leadership in their own nationalist organizations. This presents a problem because women’s theorizing tends to be overlooked in the heavily male-centered narrative of nationalism and intellectual history in Africa. Therefore, the purpose of “We Are Non-Political” is to uncover women’s autonomous contributions to the theory and practice of African nationalism. The manuscript does this by analyzing the intellectual history of the Federation of Nigerian Women’s Societies (FNWS) and their unique development of non-political nationalism from 1947-1967. The work situates independently organized women activists as developers of African nationalism and important figures in the intellectual history of Africa. The manuscript traces the origins of the FNWS ideology of non-political nationalism. In order to do this, “We Are Non-Political” examines the most pressing question about this research, which is not whether nationalism can in fact be considered non-political, but why Nigerian women defined their brand of nationalism as such. For this reason, my work asks: how did Nigerian women define non-political nationalism? How was it enacted? And what role did cultural worldview play in its development?