Patronage Process in Pre-colonial and Colonial Ibadan, Nigeria

Abstract This article contains process-oriented research which historically traces the development and structure of patronage in Ibadan, Nigeria, from the pre-colonial epoch to the colonial era. Ibadan started up first as a camp of marauders and later as a military settlement after the collapse of the Oyo Empire, Ibadan thereafter emerged as a military empire with sovereignty over a large spectrum of Yorubaland by the end of the 19th Century. Ibadan developed a unique patronage structure based on the babaogun clientelistic system. The babaogun system entailed a network of military warlords who had clients who provided military and civil services in exchange for protection. The indirect rule introduced by the British integrated the babaogun system into governance, equipping the chiefs with economic and coercive powers, which sustained a transformed clientelistic system that was only subverted by the educated and economic elite by the 1950s in preparation for independence. Therefore, the foundation of the contemporary patronage system in Ibadan in particular and Nigeria in general could be traced to the political economy of colonial patronage and the succeeding neo-colonial system. Using archival methods, this article provides the context of the process of patronage in pre-colonial and colonial Ibadan.