Native Administration Sanitary Inspectors and the British Colonial Hygiene Programme in Western Nigeria, c. 1930-1940s.

Abstract

This article explores a colonial sanitation programme in Nigeria during the interwar period: the training and employment of Africans as sanitary inspectors to improve public health. From the early 1930-45, local health inspectors trained to educate the African public on modern hygiene principles emerged in a society where poverty made people pursue their changing personal interests in ways that challenged colonial laws and deviated from ethical standards governing behaviour in African society. In this landscape, some African sanitary inspectors and local chiefs articulated other meanings to the colonial hygiene project. Beyond the conventional racial analysis of colonial health, the article critiques the agentive role of local rulers and sanitary inspectors who shaped the health intervention. It concludes that by 1945, the well-intentioned programme had developed complications expected in an environment of budget restraint and economic hardship, transforming Yoruba towns into sites of power struggle between sanitary inspectors and the people.