Money Struggles and City Life: Devaluation in Ibadan and Other Urban Centers in Southern Nigeria, 1986-1996

Money Struggles and City Life: Devaluation in Ibadan and Other Urban Centers in Southern Nigeria, 1986-1996. Edited by Jane I. Guyer, LaRay Denzer, and Adigun Agbaje. Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann, 2002. Pp. xlv, 263. $67.95. Nigerians faced a situation of increasing political and economic uncertainty in the 1980s and 1990s. Beginning with the imposition of the Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) by the Babangida regime in the mid-1980s, and continuing through the regime of Sanni Abacha, who died in 1998, the country was frequently described as being on the brink of economic and political disintegration. Yet, somehow, ordinary Nigerians found ways to survive and even, in some cases, to flourish. This book takes the 1986-1996 period and the devaluation of the Naira currency, one of the main SAP policies, as the basis for an examination of the ways in which Nigerians responded to the economic crisis and sought out a wide variety of economic strategies and activities. It focuses on the city of lbadan, although several chapters deal with other areas of southern Nigeria. The chapters included here resulted from a multidisciplinary research project, whose overarching theme was to examine what the editors term the a wide variety of livelihood, employment, and capital asset creation activities (p. xxi). The editors argue that the idea of a popular provides a better framework for understanding the diverse and dynamic economic activities in this period than does the concept of the economy. Yet much of what they describe resonates well with earlier literature on the dynamism and heterogeneity of West African economies. Whether the period they discuss represented something truly new in economic activities, or was rather an elaboration and extension of the range of activities in which ordinary Nigerians were already involved is open to question. Furthermore, it is not at all clear that the new terminology helps further our understanding of what is taking place. In fact, most of the authors continue to refer to the informal economy and the formal suggesting that these concepts continue to be useful. The book is organized into four parts. The first examines political and economic change in the city of lbadan in the decade under discussion. The second examines specific occupational groups in the city. Specific chapters provide fascinating, detailed case studies of the city, its political economy, and specific occupations. They range from Adigun Agbaje's excellent study of the personalization of political power under military rule, with local leaders able to dispense funds and favors, to Charles Adesina's study of the ways in which foreign exchange dealers successfully negotiated the changing economic context in which they operated. In her study of the garment industry, LaRay Denzer demonstrates some of the transformations that took place in response not only to devaluation but also to such policies as the ban on imported textiles. …