The Man-Leopard Murders: History and Society in Colonial Nigeria (International African Library)

438 Pages·2007·3.53 MB·English

by  David Pratten

942 eup leopard 16/3/07 6:31 Page 1
THE MAN-LEOPARD MURDERS
DAVID PRATTEN
I.A.I.
HISTORY AND SOCIETY IN COLONIAL NIGERIA
David Pratten
P
R THE MAN-LEOPARD
‘This is historical anthropology in full splendour.Pratten takes a series of enigmatic ‘man-
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leopard’murders as a seminal starting point for sketching a surprisingly full picture of the T
explicit tensions in colonial Nigeria.The man-leopard murders prove to be about a T
MURDERS
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breakdown of trust,particularly in the intimate sphere,but this interpretation leads in all
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sorts of directions.A true masterpiece!’
Peter Geschiere,University of Amsterdam
HISTORY AND SOCIETY
‘Pratten’s book is a triumphant achievement.Taking its cue from the sensationally
IN COLONIAL NIGERIA
reported leopard killings of 1945–7,it opens out into a rich meditation on the nature of
Nigerian society in the twilight years of colonialism.Wide-ranging and subtle,this is a
major contribution to African studies and a wonderfully well realised conversation T
between the concerns of the anthropologist and the historian.’ H
T.C.McCaskie,School of Oriental and African Studies,London E

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This book is an account of murder and politics in Africa,and an historical ethnography of
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southern Annang communities during the colonial period.Its narrative leads to events N
between 1945 and 1948 when the imperial gaze of police,press and politicians was -
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focused on a series of mysterious deaths in south-eastern Nigeria attributed to the ‘man-
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leopard society’.These murder mysteries,reported as the ‘biggest,strangest murder hunt O
in the world’,were not just forensic but also related to the broad historical impact of
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commercial,Christian and colonial relations on Annang society. A
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David Pratten is Lecturer in the Social Anthropology of Africa at the University of

Oxford,and Fellow of St Antony’s College. M
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INTERNATIONAL AFRICAN LIBRARY
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Editors D
J.D.Y.Peel,Suzette Heald and Deborah James E
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The International African Library is a monograph series from the International African S
Institute and complements its quarterly periodical Africa,the premier journal in the field of
African studies.
Cover image:Annang Funeral Cloth (Cotton appliqué and patchwork,c.1950)
Reproduced with kind permission of the University of Michigan Museum of Art
Gift of Lewis and Margaret Zerby (1987/1.251)
E
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Edinburgh University Press
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22 George Square,Edinburgh EH8 9LF N
B
ISBN 978 0 7486 2553 6 U INTERNATIONAL AFRICAN LIBRARY
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www.eup.ed.ac.uk G
H
For further details of the International African Institute,London,visit their web site at www.iaionthe.net
International African Library 34
General Editors: J. D. Y. Peel, Suzette Heald and Deborah James
THE MAN-LEOPARD MURDERS
The International African Library is a major monograph series from the Interna-
tional African Institute. Theoretically informed ethnographies, and studies of
social relations ‘on the ground’ which are sensitive to local cultural forms, have
long been central to the Institute’s publications programme. The IAL maintains
this strength but extends it into new areas of contemporary concern, both
practical and intellectual. It includes works focused on the linkages between
local, national and global levels of society; writings on political economy and
power; studies at the interface of the socio-cultural and the environmental;
analyses of the roles of religion, cosmology and ritual in social organisation;
and historical studies, especially those of a social, cultural or interdisciplinary
character.
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International African Library
General Editors
J. D. Y. Peel, Suzette Heald and Deborah James
Titles in the series:
1 Sandra T. Barnes Patrons and power: creating a political community in metropolitan
Lagos
2 Jane I. Guyer (ed.) Feeding African cities: essays in social history
3 Paul Spencer The Maasai of Matapato: a study of rituals of rebellion
4 Johan Pottier Migrants no more: settlement and survival in Mambwe villages, Zambia
5 Gunther Schlee Identities on the move: clanship and pastoralism in northern Kenya
6 Suzette Heald Controlling anger: the sociology of Gisu violence
7 Karin Barber I could speak until tomorrow: oriki, women and the past in a Yoruba
town
8 Richard Fardon Between God, the dead and the wild: Chamba interpretations of religion
and ritual
9 Richard Werbner Tears of the dead: the social biography of an African family
10 Colin Murray Black Mountain: land, class and power in the eastern Orange Free State,
1880s to 1980s
11 J. S. Eades Strangers and traders: Yoruba migrants, markets and the state in northern
Ghana
12 Isaac Ncube Mazonde Ranching and enterprise in eastern Botswana: a case study of
black and white farmers
13 Melissa Leach Rainforest relations: gender and resource use among the Mende of Gola,
Sierra Leone
14 Tom Forrest The advance of African capital: the growth of Nigerian private enterprise
15 C. Bawa Yamba Permanent pilgrims: the role of pilgrimage in the lives of West African
Muslims in Sudan
16 Graham Furniss Poetry, prose and popular culture in Hausa
17 Philip Burnham The politics of cultural difference in northern Cameroon
18 Jane I. Guyer An African niche economy: farming to feed Ibadan, 1968–88
19 A. Fiona D. Mackenzie Land, ecology and resistance in Kenya, 1880–1952
20 David Maxwell Christians and chiefs in Zimbabwe: a social history of the Hwesa people
c. 1870s–1990s
21 Birgit Meyer Translating the devil: religion and modernity among the Ewe in Ghana
22 Deborah James Songs of the women migrants: performance and identity in South
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Central Africa
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Tanzania
25 T. C. McCaskie Asante identities: history and modernity in an African village 1850–
1950
26 Harri Englund From war to peace on the Mozambique–Malawi borderland
27 Anthony Simpson ‘Half-London’ in Zambia: contested identities in a Catholic mission
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29 Belinda Bozzoli, Theatres of struggle and the end of apartheid
30 R. M. Dilley Islamic and caste knowledge practices among Haalpulaar’en in Senegal:
between mosque and termite mound
31 Colin Murray and Peter Sanders Medicine murder in colonial Lesotho: the anatomy of
a moral crisis
32 Benjamin F. Soares Islam and the prayer economy: history and authority in a Malian
town
33 Carola Lentz Ethnicity and the making of history in northern Ghana
34 David Pratten The man-leopard murders: history and society in colonial Nigeria
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THE MAN-LEOPARD
MURDERS
HISTORY AND SOCIETY IN
COLONIAL NIGERIA
DAVID PRATTEN
EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY PRESS
for the International African Institute, London
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For Emma, Hope and Grace
© David Pratten, 2007
Edinburgh University Press Ltd
22 George Square, Edinburgh
Typeset in Plantin
by Koinonia, Bury, and
printed and bound in Great Britain
by Cromwell Press Ltd, Trowbridge, Wilts
A CIP record for this book is available
from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7486 2553 6 (hardback)

The right of David Pratten to be identifi ed
as author of this work has been asserted in
accordance with the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.
For other publications of the International
African Institute, please visit their web site at
www.iaionthe.net

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1
CONTENTS
Figures vi
Acknowledgements viii
Glossary x
1 Introduction: The Man-Leopard Murder Mysteries 1
‘Murder at Ikot Okoro – Leopard Alleged’ 1
Leopard Men in Fact and Fiction 8
A Social History of Murder 20
2 Of Leopards and Leaders: Annang Society to 1909 26
Power and Personhood 26
Trade and Transformation 45
Conversion and Conquest 63
3 Resistance and Revival, 1910–1929 82
The Landscape of Power 82
The Spirit Movement 99
The Women’s War 114
4 Progressives and Power, 1930–1938 130
Americans and Anthropology 131
‘We Shall Not Be Ruled By Our Children’ 141
Women and the ‘Infamous Traffi c’ 158
5 War and Public, 1939–1945 168
‘John Bull’ and the Reading Public 169
Cassava and Crime 185
‘Audacious Leopards’ and ‘Atrocious Deeds’ 197
6 Inlaws and Outlaws, 1946 208
‘The Time of Accusation’ 208
‘What is at the Bottom of the Leopard Man Epidemic?’ 220
‘The Leopard That Hides Its Spots’ 239
7 Divinations and Delegations, 1947 261
Police and Prophecy 262
The Ibibo Union Touring Delegation 277
The Man-Eating Leopard of Ikot Udoro 298
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vi CONTENTS
8 The Politics of ‘Improvement’, 1947–1960 311
The Leopard’s Legacy 312
Nationalist Trajectories 319
Expectations Revisited 327
9 Echoes of Ekpe Owo 339

Notes 343
References 396
Index 418
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1
LIST OF FIGURES
1.1 Obong (Dr) F. A. Umoren 5
2.1 Annang and their neighbours 28
2.2 N´wómó 31
2.3 Ékpó 34
2.4 Èbrè society, Ikot Edem Ewa 37
2.5 Ekpo Ubok Udom of Ikot Edem Ewa and Chief Inaw of Ikotobo 38
2.6 The Qua Iboe Mission ‘pioneers’ 66
2.7 Qua Iboe Mission stations c.1912 72
3.1 Map of Calabar Province 83
3.2 Sketch map of ‘Okanafon Country’, 1917 89
3.3 The Women’s War, 1929 117
3.4 Manilla exchange rate and palm oil price, 1900-1948 126
4.1 Chief Jimmy Etuk Udo Ukpanah 152
5.1 Dr Egbert Udo Udoma 171
5.2 An index of manilla exchange rates and palm oil prices,
1931–1947 179
5.3 Wartime price survey (Opobo Division, December 1941) 187
6.1 Police camps 209
6.2 Human-leopard costume 212
6.3 Human-leopard costume 213
6.4 The ‘leopard area’ 214
6.5 Murder profi le, 1946 235
6.6 Oath-swearing in court 256
7.1 Motives of ‘man-leopard’ murders, 1947 267
7.2 Police investigation 270
7.3 Confi scated ídíbn ‘regalia’, 1947 271
7.4 Obong Ntuen Ibok 275
7.5 Causes of the ‘leopard menace’ 280
7.6 Ibibio Union touring delegation 281
7.7 Unwa Solomon 300
7.8 J. A. G. McCall 301
7.9 Dennis Gibbs hearing a petition 302
7.10 The man-eating leopard of Ikot Udoro 303
7.11 Summary of McCall’s argument 304
8.1 Idiong ‘juju crown’ 317
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1
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Far too many people from the villages of Ikot Akpa Nkuk, Ikot Afanga and
elsewhere in the southern Annang region have contributed to the making
of this work to be mentioned here. I extend my sincere thanks to them for
their patience and invaluable insights. I would, however, like to acknowledge
my enormous debt to Obong Dr Frank A. Umoren, the Paramount Ruler
of Southern Ukanafun, and his family for their generous hospitality during
my fi eldwork between 1996 and 1998 and again in 2001, 2002 and 2004. I
also owe Imoh Frank Umoren my sincerest gratitude for his work with me
during these years.
I would like to extend my thanks to those who assisted in my archival
researches. By far the largest proportion of source material for this work was
compiled from the Nigerian National Archives in Enugu. Mr U. O. A. Esse
and his staff, including Comfort Umoh, Felicia Ibe and Isaac Iheakaram
Amaechi, deserve special mention for their careful and patient assistance.
Zofi a Sulej and Mary-Ann Alho of the University of Witwatersrand were
of enormous help in copying M. D. W. Jeffreys’ papers, which are held in
the library archives there. I must also mention the staff at Rhodes House
Library, Oxford, at the Library of Congress, Washington D. C. and at the
School of Oriental and African Studies, London, for their help. Thanks also
to John Cardoo of the Qua Iboe Fellowship for facilitating my access to
the Church’s archives held at the Public Record Offi ce in Belfast, and to
Tim Hutchinson at the University of Saskatchewan Archive. I should also
like to thank Ursula Jones for permission to consult Dr G. I. Jones’ papers
in Cambridge. Thanks also to John Messenger, Rosemary Harris, John
McCall, Ken Barnes and John Manton for their observations and personal
papers. For his friendship and his translation of the Spirit Movement papers
I am especially grateful to Obong Walter Idem.
Along with colleagues at SOAS, Edinburgh, Sussex and Oxford, I
am very grateful to Tom McCaskie, Richard Rathbone, Axel Harneit-
Sievers, Charlie Gore, Ruth Ginio, Robin Horton, Kay Williamson, Turner
and Miriam Isoun, Violetta Ekpo, Martin Lynn, Mike Rowlands, Peter
Geschiere, Richard Fardon and Colin Murray for their help, insight and
advice. During my fi eldwork I enjoyed the hospitality of the Sociology
Department at the University of Port Harcourt and the Faculty of Social
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ix
Sciences at the University of Uyo. I owe particular thanks to Steve Wordu
for his amiable assistance during my fi rst months in Port Harcourt. I am
grateful to the Economic and Social Research Council for a studentship
award which supported my initial research and to the British Academy for
a postdoctoral research fellowship and fi eldwork funding which saw the
project through to this point.
For encouraging me many years ago to make the history I write ‘my
own’, I should like to thank Cliff Davies. Since I had the good fortune of
becoming John Peel’s research student I have been inspired by his passion
for a t horoughly historical ethnography, by his intimate knowledge of
African societies and by the style and scholarship of his research. Most of all,
though, I want to thank him for his belief in my work and for the persistence
and generosity of his guidance over the many years of this project.
My research and writing would not have been possible without the
support of my parents and family to whom I will always be grateful. My
wife and daughters have borne the labours of authorship and the absences
of an anthropologist with humour, grace and resolve and it is to them that
I dedicate this book.
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