‘Environmental Akalism’ and the War on Filth: The Personification of Sanitation in Urban Nigeria

In Nigerian cities, as across much of Africa, sanitation practices at zone, ward and street levels inscribe - in patterns of circulation and interaction around waste - not only the hopes and fears of urban residents and managers, but also the aspirations and failures encoded in colonial and post-colonial national and regional histories. Adjusting to numerous challenges - the interplay of racist colonial zoning strategies, rapid post-colonial urban expansion, the withdrawal of public services amid the liberalization programmes of the 1980s, the increasingly abject character of the social contract, and the ongoing tenuousness of economic life and activity - urban environmental sanitation in Nigeria has long struggled to keep pace with the historical dynamics of the country's emergent metropolises. Following the activities of a cohort of inspectors and volunteers at the Ministry of Environment and Water Resources, Oyo State, this article examines the politics of performance and coercion surrounding the monthly observance of Environmental Sanitation Day in Ibadan amid the heightened political tensions of the electoral season in 2011.