Paper short abstract:

This paper uses interviews and survey data to explore how diaspora chiefs affect migration and social mobility in Nigeria. It shows how they broker relations between ethnic groups; but also how they shape avenues for upward social mobility, and may even foreshadow a transforming Nigerian state.

Paper long abstract:

Traditional authority is booming in Nigeria. Every village, community, and city has their chiefs, Emirs, Obas and other traditional rulers; and throughout the country, these leaders are involved in an increasingly wide range of facets of the Nigerian governance. Yet given their lack of constitutional codification, their position is both tenuous and dynamic, constantly under threat while also able to adjust - and be (re-)invented - to suit local needs and circumstances.

This paper focuses on what I have elsewhere called diaspora chiefs: traditional rulers of migrant - or other 'non-native' - communities in Nigeria. These include Igbo Ezes in Kano or Lagos, or the Hausa chiefs in Ibadan and Enugu, some of whom have long histories in their places of residence. But they also include a more recently crowned Chinese traditional titleholder in Kano, the Eze Igbo in Germany, and the Oba of the Yoruba living in the United States.

The invented tradition of recognising prominent individuals from migrant communities as diaspora chiefs is one of Nigeria's emergent institutional innovations that help manage its ethnic, religious, and regional divisions in a context of longstanding mobility. This paper uses extensive interviews and public perception surveys from different parts of the country to explore the way in which diaspora chiefs facilitate, or hinder, geographical and social mobility in Nigeria. It shows how diaspora chiefs broker relations between 'native' and 'non-native' groups; but also how they shape avenues for upward social mobility, and may even foreshadow a transformation of the Nigerian state.