The Aba Women story is well worn ground so I cannot pretend to bring something new to the topic. Working with the original inquiry documents, I tried to write this story from the angle of interpretation and misinterpretation. I hope it’s worth your time.
This will be the last chapter published for now, unless I find enough material to complete some of the profiles I have in draft form
Introduction: The Parrot’s Work
Chapter 3: Audu With The Big Belly (no paywall)
Chapter 7: The Carpenter (no paywall)
At eight o’clock on Monday morning, 16 December 1929, Arthur Whitman went to the bamboo fence around the District Office at Opobo with a pencil and a sheet of paper. More than a thousand women were waiting on the other side and six of them stood in front as representatives of Opobo Town, Bonny, Andoni, Kwa, Ogoni and Nkoro, standing close enough to watch his hand as he wrote on the paper. Whitman had agreed the previous afternoon to hear them because they wanted the government to categorically state that women were not going to be taxed. Palm leaves had been sent through the neighbouring communities to call women to the meeting, using an old method by which women in trouble asked other women to come to their aid. Soldiers had arrived during the night and were now posted inside the perimeter of the fence, while police guarded the trading factories along the river.
The first statement said that the government would not tax women but the second was more precise: “No personal property, such as boxes, is to be counted.” Known prostitutes were to be arrested and women were not to pay rent for the common. They also wanted Mark Pepple Jaja removed as Head Chief of Opobo and for the tax on men to be abolished as well.
Whitman gave them the notes he had written, but they wanted six typewritten copies, one for each of the communities they represented. The interpreter and the clerk were to sign as witnesses and the office stamp was to be placed on every copy. While the typist worked, the women complained that the trading companies had entered the retail trade and pushed out the women who once acted as middlemen between the firms and their customers, which had in turn forced down the price paid for produce. Whitman promised to arrange a meeting with the commercial agents if the crowd dispersed. The women then asked for envelopes bearing two-shilling stamps so the papers could be posted.
The meeting had been going on for nearly two and a half hours. New groups were still arriving and the women danced and shouted while soldiers moved up and down behind the fence telling them to keep quiet. Some carried sticks and many wore palm fronds. The women expressed confidence in the knowledge that soldiers would not shoot women. A call went up for Mark Pepple Jaja and Whitman began to suspect that the complaints about trade were intended to keep him at the office while other people moved on to loot the factories.
Eventually the typed copies came out and one woman took a copy away and returned after consulting someone who could read. She then disputed the second sentence as untrue. The promise that boxes would not be counted had been drafted in English and witnessed by an interpreter but somewhere after that, “No personal property, such as boxes, is to be counted” had become an assurance (in the mind of the literate person who explained it) that boxes would continue to be counted. Whitman viewed the consultation as suspicious. Many months later, the commissioners at the public inquiry concluded that the woman may have been confused by “the transposition of the negative away from its verb”. The sentence placed “No” at the beginning and left “is to be counted” much later, so an oral explanation could lose the negative and leave its listener with the words about boxes being counted. Perhaps “Personal property, such as boxes, is not to be counted” would have worked better as an interpretation. Whatever might have been, nobody recorded the words used by the person who read the paper to her.
Whitman declared that the meeting was over and the women appeared to be leaving when the fence gave way at both ends. The noise was so great that he could not make himself heard. Lieutenant Richard Hill made a sign asking whether he should fire. Whitman nodded and said yes.
Hill shot the first woman at the fence in the head.
