Self-Help Criminality as Resistance?: Currency Counterfeiting in Colonial Nigeria

This essay examines the counterfeiting and uttering of British Imperial coinage in interwar Nigeria, and the response of the colonial state. In particular, it establishes a connection between criminality and resistance to European colonialism in Africa. In this regard, it contextualizes the preponderant involvement in the counterfeiting saga of the Ijebu, a subgroup of the Yoruba nationality in southwestern Nigeria. Though other considerations were involved, the preponderance of the Ijebu in making what was called “Ijebu money” illustrates how self-help criminality was both a means of accumulation and a veritable form of resistance to colonial rule. Following their military defeat in 1892 and their subsequent alienation from British rule, this criminal activity represented resistance by other means. The point must be stressed, however, that not all Ijebu were counterfeiters, and all counterfeiters were not Ijebu, and that the counterfeiters were no “heroic criminals”, who shared their loot with the poor.