Paper short abstract:

This paper examines through oral history interviews, the accomplishments of Itsekiri women who began their careers in the 1960s. By evaluating to what extent their western education played a role in how they navigated and excelled in Nigerian society, despite being from a minority ethnic group.

Paper long abstract:

These women's lives are interesting in their own right but this project is looking beyond a simply descriptive retelling of their professional accomplishments. This project draws on many different strands of historiography including gender and sexuality in Africa, oral history, colonial history and the role of western education in Nigerian and Itsekiri history. For the Itsekiri in particular there is a sense of pride associated with western education. In the Warri Kingdom, one the earliest instances of the pursuit of a western education by a Nigerian was by a Itsekiri prince in 1600. Prince Domingos ascended to the throne as Olu Atuwatse I, he was a seventeenth century graduate of the University of Coimbra. As a prince, he received a theological education in Portugal and returned to the Warri kingdom with a Portuguese noble woman as his wife Maria Pereira. He also brought with him two silver crowns gifted by the King of Portugal. This legacy lives on through the high proportion of western-educated Itsekiri in proportion to their population size. This project will take a biographical approach and central to this paper is the oral history interviews. What these interviews reveal is the importance of family and kinship ties to the Itsekiri people. This paper forms part of my master's dissertation and is a work-in progress.