In the Shadow of the State
The Making of Garage Laws in Lagos
Abstract
The National Union of Road Transport workers (NURTW) is the main transport organization in Nigeria and has replaced local governments in most garages of the country. The NURTW exercises its authority in Lagos garages through its own set of rules, qualified here as garage laws. They aim at providing revenues for the union, for state institutions, for police bodies and at ordering motor parks and disciplining drivers. Based on observations and 80 interviews with unionists, the article looks at the ways these laws are implemented by unionists and agberos or local touts turned into union workers. Some rules depend on the authority of union chairmen but most of them are routinized and powerful mainly because they are co-produced by the union and state institutions. Understanding garage laws helps to move beyond visions reducing transport unions as mafia organizations and states in Africa as weak institutions unable to implement state laws.
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Stasik, Michael. 2018. “The popular niche economy of a Ghanaian bus station: departure from informality.” Africa Spectrum 53 (1): 3759. https://doi.org/10.1177/000203971805300103.
Varese, Federico. 2014. “Protection and extortion.” In The Oxford Handbook of Organised Crime, edited by Letizia Paoli, 343-358. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199730445.013.020.
Agbiboa, Daniel E. 2018. “Informal Urban Governance and Predatory Politics in Africa: The Role of Motor-park Touts in Lagos.” African Affairs 117 (466): 62–82. https://doi.org/10.1093/afraf/adx052.
Albert, Isaac Olawale. 2007. “Between the State and Transport Unions: NURTW and the Politics of Managing Public Motor Parks in Ibadan and Lagos, Nigeria.” In Gouverner les villes d’Afrique: État, gouvernement local et acteurs privés, edited by Laurent Fourchard, 131–144. Paris: Karthala.
Bähre, E. 2014. “A Trickle-up Economy: Mutuality, Freedom and Violence in Cape Town’s Taxi Associations.” Africa 84 (4): 576–594. https://doi.org/10.1017/S000197201400045X.
Bayart, Jean-François. 1989. L’État en Afrique. La politique du ventre. Paris: Fayard.
Beckman, Björn, and Salihu Lukman. 2010. “The Failure of Nigeria’s Labour Party.” In Trade Union and Party Politics in Africa. Labor Movements in Africa, edited by Björn Beckman, Sakhela Buhungu, and Sachikonye Lloyd, 59–84. Cape Town: HSRC Press.
Blundo, Giorgio, and Jean-Pierre Oliver de Sardan. 2007. Etat et corruption en Afrique. Une anthropologie comparative des relations entre fonctionnaires et usagers (Benin, Niger, Sénégal). Paris: Karthala.
Cissokho, Sidy. 2016. “Le contrat social sénégalais au ras du bitume (1985–2014): De la formation du groupe professionnel des chauffeurs au renforcement des institutions politiques.” PhD in political science, University of Panthéon Sorbonne.
Cissokho, Sidy, and Michael Stasik. 2018. “Introduction to Special Issue: Bus Stations in Africa.” Africa Today 65 (2): v. https://doi.org/10.2979/africatoday.65.2.01.
Dewey, Mathias. 2018. “Zona liberada: La suspensión de la ley como patrón de comportamiento estatal.” Nueva Sociedad 276: 102–117.
Fourchard, Laurent. 2023b. “Comparative Urban Studies and African Studies at the Crossroads. From the Colonial Situation to Twilight institutions.” In The Routledge Handbook of Comparative Global Urban Studies, edited by Patrick Le Galès, and Jennifer Robinson, pp. 58–72. London. Routledge.
Fourchard, Laurent. 2023a. “Expanding Profit and Power. The National Union of Road Transport Workers in Nigeria.” Canadian Journal of Development Studies 44 (1): 97–112. https://doi.org/10.1080/02255189.2022.2132924.
Fourchard, Laurent. 2021. Classify, Exclude, Police. Urban Lives in South Africa and Nigeria. Oxford: Blackwell Wiley. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119582663.
Fourchard, Laurent. 2011. “Lagos, Koolhaas and Partisan Politics in Nigeria.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 35 (1): 40–56. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2010.00938.x.
Goodfellow, Tom. 2017. “‘Double Capture’ and De-Democratisation: Interest Group Politics and Uganda’s ‘Transport Mafia’.” The Journal of Development Studies 53 (10): 1568–1583. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220388.2016.1214722.
Grassin, Paul. 2022. Des ordres négociés. Légitimation du travail de police et formation de l’Etat dans un quartier populaire du Malawi. PhD diss., Université Panthéon Sorbonne.
Kassanda, Alain. 2020. “Trouble Sleep.” Documentary movie.
Lund, Christian. 2006. “Twilight Institutions: Public Authority and Local Politics in Africa.” Development and Change 37 (4): 685–705. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7660.2006.00497.x.
Momoh, Abubakar. 2000. “Youth Culture and Area Boys in Lagos.” In Identity Transformation and Identity Politics Under Structural Adjustment in Nigeria, edited by Jega Athairu, 200–226. Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstiutet & CRD.
Mutongi, Kenda B. 2006. “Thugs or Entrepreneurs? Perceptions of Matatu operators in Nairobi, 1970 to the present.” Africa 76 (4): 549–568. https://doi.org/10.3366/afr.2006.0072.
Okpara, Enoch E. 1988. “The Role of Touts in Passenger Transport in Nigeria.” The Journal of Modern African Studies 26 (2): 327–335.
Olukoshi, Adebayo O., and I. Aremu. 1988. “Structural Adjustment and Labour Subordination in Nigeria: The Dissolution of the Nigeria Labour Congress Re-visited.” Review of African Political Economy 43: 99–111. https://doi.org/10.1080/03056248808703795.
Omobowale, Ayokunle O., and Olatokunbo O. Fayiga. 2017. “Commercial Motor Drivers, Transport Unions and Electoral violence in Ibadan, Nigeria.” Development and Society 46 (3): 591–614.
Pirie, Fernanda. 2013. The Anthropology of Law. Oxford. Oxford University Press.
Roy, Ananya. 2009. “Why India Cannot Plan its Cities: Informality, Insurgence and the Idiom of 2009 Urbanization.” Planning Theory 8 (1): 76–87. https://doi.org/10.1177/1473095208099299.
Rasmussen, Jacob. 2012. “Inside the System, Outside the Law: Operating the Matatu Sector in Nairobi.” Urban Forum 23: 415–432. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12132-012-9171-z.
Stasik, Michael. 2017. “Roadside Involution. How Many People do you Need to Run a Lorry Park?” In The Making of the African Road, edited by Kurt Beck, Gabriel Klaeger, and Michael Stasik, 1– 23. Leiden: Brill.
Stasik, Michael. 2018. “The popular niche economy of a Ghanaian bus station: departure from informality.” Africa Spectrum 53 (1): 3759. https://doi.org/10.1177/000203971805300103.
Varese, Federico. 2014. “Protection and extortion.” In The Oxford Handbook of Organised Crime, edited by Letizia Paoli, 343-358. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199730445.013.020.
Published
2024-01-03
How to Cite
Fourchard, Laurent. 2024. “In the Shadow of the State: The Making of Garage Laws in Lagos”. Swiss Journal of Sociocultural Anthropology 29 (1):85-101. https://doi.org/10.36950/sjsca.2023.29.8905.
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