Death in a Black Maria: Transport as punishment in an African carceral state

Abstract

In March 1980, fifty men suffocated to death in the back of a police van, known as a Black Maria, in Lagos, Nigeria. In the Black Maria Tragedy, as it came to be called, several currents of Nigeria’s postcolonial history converged. They included the persistent problem of crime, the question of how much power to give men in uniform, and the problems of migration and regional integration (most of the victims came from neighboring countries). This article examines the 1980 incident not only for what it reveals about Nigeria, but about the larger workings of punishment in a postcolonial state. What techniques of punishment endured after the end of colonialism? Which of them did African governments find useful, and which did they discard? Where did the technology of the Black Maria come from, and what part did it play in the machinery of the Nigerian state? Looking beyond Nigeria, the Black Maria incident suggests that prison transport is an important part of the carceral landscape – and one that is easy to miss.