Death in a Black Maria: Transport as punishment in an African carceral state
| Author | Samuel Fury Childs Daly |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14624745221076774 |
| Published date | 01 December 2022 |
| Date | 01 December 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Special Issue: African Penal Histories in Global Perspective |
Death in a Black Maria:
Transport as punishment
in an African carceral state
Samuel Fury Childs Daly
Department of African and African American Studies, Duke
University, USA
Abstract
In March 1980, fifty men suffocated to death in the back of a police van, known as a Black
Maria, in Lagos, Nigeria. In the Black Maria Tragedy, as it came to be called, several cur-
rents of Nigeria’s postcolonial history converged. They included the persistent problem
of crime, the question of how much power to give men in uniform, and the problems of
migration and regional integration (most of the victims came from neighboring coun-
tries). This article examines the 1980 incident not only for what it reveals about
Nigeria, but about the larger workings of punishment in a postcolonial state. What tech-
niques of punishment endured after the end of colonialism? Which of them did African
governments find useful, and which did they discard? Where did the technology of the
Black Maria come from, and what part did it play in the machinery of the Nigerian state?
Looking beyond Nigeria, the Black Maria incident suggests that prison transport is an
important part of the carceral landscape –and one that is easy to miss.
Keywords
Nigeria, Black Maria, policing, transportation, immigration, ECOWAS, logistics
On the afternoon of 2 March 1980, a shootout between a police officer and two car thieves
took place in Tin Can Island, an industrial area of Lagos, Nigeria. The officer killed one of
the men but the other escaped, and the area was cordoned off to find him. The police
detained every young man they intercepted, put them through an ordeal of interrogations,
Corresponding author:
Samuel Fury Childs Daly, Department of African and African American Studies, Duke University, USA.
Email: samuel.daly@duke.edu
Special Issue: African Penal Histories in Global Perspective
Punishment & Society
2022, Vol. 24(5) 857–872
© The Author(s) 2022
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/14624745221076774
journals.sagepub.com/home/pun
and took them to court, where they were all remanded to prison. The vehicle to take them
there was a windowless van known as a Black Maria. Due to either negligence or malice,
it was left in the sun for over three hours with the men inside. Fifty of them suffocated to
death. The ‘Black Maria Tragedy,’as the incident was called in the press and the legis-
lature, prompted public outrage. It started a national debate about how much punishment
Nigerians could stomach in the name of fighting crime (Rotimi, 2001; Ahire, 1991;
Olurode, 2007; Hills, 2012; Marenin, 1985). That debate was not resolved, and
Nigerians are still having it today (Agbiboa, 2015; Akinlabi, 2017; George, 2020).
In the Black Maria, three powerful currents of Nigeria’s politics converged: the
problem of crime, the powers of men in uniform, and immigration (most of the
victims were undocumented migrants from Ghana and Niger). The events took place
during the presidency of Alhaji Shehu Shagari, Nigeria’s sole elected head of state
between 1966 and 1993.
1
Shagari was a civilian, but there was nothing very civil or mod-
erate about policing during his administration. His Inspector General of Police, Sunday
Adewusi, threatened that he would personally give any ‘dissident’‘the bloodiest experi-
ence of their lives,’and his mobile forces earned the nickname ‘Kill-and-go,’which
referred to their tendency to mete out punishments on the spot (Soyinka, 1996: 66).
The Black Maria scandal became a referendum not only on Shagari, but on civilian dem-
ocracy at large. It showed Nigerians that the abuse of power was not the exclusive domain
of soldiers, and it gave subsequent military regimes something they could use as moral
high ground to justify their own despotism. This article examines the place of the incident
in Nigeria’s postcolonial history, with an eye to the larger history of policing and punish-
ment in Africa (Tamuno, 1970; Bernault and Roitman, 2003; Anderson and Killingray,
1991; Beek, Göpfert, Owen, and Steinberg, 2017). What were the origins of the Black
Maria? How did the events of March 1980 happen, and why did they live on in
Nigerian politics? This episode also raises a larger point about the workings of punish-
ment. If the carceral system is like an ‘archipelago,’as Michel Foucault famously
theorised, there must be vessels that move people between its ‘islands.’
2
As the Black
Maria shows, transportation is not just a logistical cog in the penal machine –it is part
of the punishment.
Prison transport in historical context
In 1995, Christine Anyanwu, a journalist accused of treason by General Sani Abacha,
described her harrowing journey in a Black Maria:
Imagine a woman in a long tight skirt, arms cuffed, legs chained, attempting to climb a
narrow, shaky ladder four feet high into an airless police truck. She is propped up by two
soldiers while another 38 armed men surround the scene. Imagine, in the dark container,
the vehicle speeding at 120mph, five other trucks blaring their sirens, the heavy Black
Maria creaking thunderously with every bump, bounce or jerk. A sudden stop at a street
light, and the bench slides in the opposite direction. I hit the floor, slide along and ram
my head into the metal frame. We return after a 45-min jolly ride round town. It is part of
the breaking-down process. (Anyanwu, 1998: 22)
858 Punishment & Society 24(5)
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