Historical Studies Program, Dean of the College, and Africana Studies Program Present

Sure Banker! The Cultural Politics of Commercial Gambling in Urban Nigeria, 1880 to 2020

This talk traces the sociocultural and political significance of urban gambling in Nigeria from the colonial to the contemporary period, exploring a critical moment of transition in Nigeria's history between the 1960s and the 1980s. Ajibade argues that during the first two decades of Nigeria's independence, popular gambling came to embody contentions in Nigerian civil society over the nature of the relationship between the Nigerian state and its urban masses. 

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Folarin Ajibade is a historian of everyday life, with a regional focus on West Africa. He is broadly interested in the mundane and daily activities that urban Africans partake in, and engages with these activities as consequential and revelatory rather than as trivial pursuits. He received his PhD in African and African Diaspora History from New York University (NYU) in 2024, where he began working on his current manuscript, which is a history of the politics and profits of commercial gambling in urban Nigeria from the 1880s onward. Part of this work has been published in the Journal of African History.

For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail ewing@bard.edu.

Time: 5:00 pm – 6:30 pm EST/GMT-5

Location: Hegeman 204

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