“A Little Book of Logic” – Reconstructing Colonial Arts of Suasion at Government College, Umuahia

Abstract

AbstractMemories of political pedagogies in the elite colonial classroom are typically fragmentary and constitute limited historical evidence. But when contextualized and used in combination with coetaneous sources, such as textbooks and lesson notes, they can be crucial in the reconstruction of the transmission of political knowledge, its classroom assimilation and postcolonial negotiation. This article pieces together a number of unconnected but mutually consistent epiphanic moments in the life-writing and interviews of writers Chinua Achebe and Chike Momah, tracing and identifying a mysterious textbook of logic – R.W. Jepson’sClear Thinking(1936) – and its use as a tool to rein in and redirect anti-colonial nationalist undercurrents at Government College, Umuahia, the elite colonial school famous for having produced eight renowned Nigerian writers.