Paper short abstract:

This papers explains how bureaucrats produce certicificates of indigene in Nigeria and what this entails in terms of politics of identity

Paper long abstract:

In the last three decades, the politics of indigeneity have led to discrimination against and marginalization of non-indigenes. This discrimination is bureaucratized: local governments produce certificates of indigene to identify the origin of their holders. Certificates are needed to get access to public jobs, to university and sometimes to secondary schools and international passports. They are part of the daily working of the state and manifestation of its post-civil war consensus based on a politics of quota (referred as the Federal Character). This paper looks at the bureaucratic machinery of issuing certificates of origin in different local governments in Oyo state, in Lagos state and Plateau state. It reveals both the standardised nature of certificates produced in mass by local administrations to respond to an increasing demand in the last 15 years and the discretionary power of local bureaucrats and politicians in issuing certificates. In deciding the questions to be asked, the procedure to be followed and the fees to be raised, local officials are not only implementing exclusionary public policies, they are also making decisions that shape those politics in delineating the lines between who is a true indigene and who is not. The materiality of these certificates, the bureaucratic procedure to get them and the major actors in charge of issuing them eventually reveal very different historical construction of power relationships at the local level, non-stabilised citizens-bureaucrat interactions and radical different politics of identity at play in those states.