After 1929: courts, taxes and politics

The commission of inquiry and the reforms that followed ended the warrant-chief system (see the Colonial chapter). Oriji lists the revolt’s consequences. British administrators commissioned anthropological research, notably by M. M. Green and Sylvia Leith-Ross, so that Indirect Rule would rest on knowledge of how Igbo communities actually governed themselves. Women entered the Native Courts for the first time: for example one of thirteen members at Nguru in Mbaise, three of thirty at Umuakpo.

Women kept protesting. In December 1938, in Okigwe and Bende Divisions, they destroyed the Native Court at Isuochi over taxation. In 1947–48 women of Ngwaland drove away installers of oil mills that threatened their income from processing palm kernels; the Nbawsi Native Court was burnt and group councils were told to consult women. In 1956, when the Eastern Region taxed women earning over £100, more than a thousand Aba market women organized, and the law was amended.

Educated women entered party politics through the NCNC Women’s Wing. Margaret Ekpo, an Efik woman living in Aba, and Janet Mokelu of Enugu were elected to the Eastern House of Assembly in 1961.

Date inconsistencies exist in the sources for the oil-mill protest (1947, 1948 and 1949 are all given). The numbers here follow Oriji’s main account and should be treated as approximate.