Where Should One Vote?
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1002/j.1099-162X.1960.tb00166.x |
| Published date | 01 April 1960 |
| Author | P. C. Lloyd,K. W. J. Post |
| Date | 01 April 1960 |
Where
Should
One
Vote?
P.
C.
LLOYD
and
K. W.
].
POST)
IN the modern state, in which parliaments
and
local government councils
are
elected by universal
adult
suffrage
and
secret ballot, one generally votes in
the
constituency or
ward
in which one lives.
In
atribal society political leaders
are
often selected by
and
from groups of people, membership of which is deter-
mined not by common residence
but
by common descent from a mythical
ancestor or by age. When
modern
election techniques
are
applied to peoples who
still largely
maintain
their traditional concepts of government
the
issue is raised
-should a
man
vote in the
ward
where he actually resides or
may
he still regard
himselfas belonging to a
ward
in which is situated the compound of his descent
group
and
the
graves of his ancestors?
In
this
paper
we wish to illustrate this
problem by examining three sets of electoral regulations successively used in
the
Western Region
of
Nigeria during
the
past
six years.
Three-quarters of
the
people of Western Nigeria
are
Yoruba. Most of them
live in large towns of
great
antiquity. These towns
are
sub-divided into a
number
of territorial units, usually described as quarters, each of which
consists of the compounds of one or more descent groups.
In
the compound -
traditionally a series of interlocked courtyards, now a
group
of
modern
houses-
live the male members of the group with their wives, who must by rules of
exogamy belong to other groups. Among
the
northern
Y
oruba
membership
of a
group
is defined by descent from
the
founder-ancestor in the male line -
apatrilineage is
the
result;
among
some southern
Yoruba
descent is reckoned
in
both
male
and
female lines
and
acognatic descent
group
is formed.
The
Y
oruba
men
are
peasant farmers
and
most of them live in
the
compounds in
which they were born. Some
men
have built their modern houses on
the
edge of
their towns
but
they still participate in the corporate activities of their descent
group. Clerks
and
teachers frequently work away from home
but
they tend to
be transferred so frequently
that
they cannot, even if they wished, develop
much
allegiance to the town of their domicile; they almost invariably
plan
to retire to their home town
and
with their savings they build a house there.
Farmers often live in hamlets for
much
of the year,
but
they never lose the right
to live or build in their own compound.
Asimilar
pattern
is found in non-Yoruba areas where
the
adult
men
of a
small village
are
often members of a single descentgroup.
Two
towns, however,
do
not
follow this traditional
pattern;
Sapele
and
Warri
are
both
ports in
the western
part
of the Niger
Delta
and
are
twentieth century creations.
The
neighbouring Itsekiri (Yoruba speaking)
and
Urhobo
(Edo speaking) people
live in small villages
and
have no large towns; they tend to look
upon
these
two towns as their own
urban
centres
and
many
of them have assumed
perma-
nent
residence in them.
Within
the
Western Region there are 165 directly elected local government
councils having over five thousand wards.2
The
local boundaries have been
1Dr. Lloyd who is
at
present Lecturer in Sociology at the University College,
Ibadan,
was
formerly aResearch Fellow
of
the West African
Institute
of Social
and
Economic Research
Ibadan;
Mr.
Post is a Leverhulme Research Scholar who has been engaged on a study
of
the
recent Federal election in Nigeria.
2
This
figure excludes Divisional Councils, members of which are elected by the District
Councils.
95
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