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SUMMARY:Culpable Identities: Homicide Jurisdiction and the Politics of Cul
 ture in Late-Colonial Northern Nigeria - Steven Pierce\, University of Man
 chester
DTSTART:20131021T160000Z
DTEND:20131021T170000Z
UID:TALK48362@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Judith Weik
DESCRIPTION:On December 26\, 1955\, Ayuba d’an Rufa’i Fagoje killed a 
 man named Sale\, whose daughter he believed was bewitching his own daughte
 r. The following June he was convicted of murder and sentenced to death by
  Emir Sanusi of Kano\, Nigeria. Subsequently\, the Privy Council commuted 
 the sentence to fifteen years’ hard labor. This paper examines the case 
 as a window onto greater issues of crime\, culpability\, and the politics 
 of personal identity in late-colonial northern Nigeria. The emir’s court
  applied Islamic law under the doctrine of indirect rule\, though by this 
 period doing so was complicated by colonial efforts to “modernize” the
  court system (though more complex appellate procedures and attempts to ma
 ke Islamic jurisprudence more closely resemble European forms) and by nati
 onalist agitation against deviation from Islamic law. The ways in which Ay
 uba’s guilt was proven in court—and then by which his sentence was mit
 igated by colonial decisionmakers—outline political relationships that w
 ere being negotiated in preparation for national independence in 1960. Cri
 minal culpability was in part determined by one’s area of origin and cul
 tural background. These determined not only the codes of law to which one 
 was subject but also the extent to which one was ultimately considered to 
 be a responsible juridical subject—a belief in witchcraft and Ayuba’s 
 “notoriously fiery” Fulani temperament made him less culpable than a m
 ore “modern” man’s would have been.  Such practices have led to a co
 ntinuing politics of indigeneity in Nigeria with long-lasting legacies.
LOCATION:Seminar Room S1 Alison Richard Building\, 7 West Road\, Cambridge
  CB3 9DT
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