Between 1890 and 1920, marriage was the subject of a widespread debate in the early Lagos press. This debate focused largely on the relative merits of 'native polygamy' versus 'European monogamy'. In cultural nationalist papers, like the Lagos Weekly Record, monogamy was positioned as a European import that was morally detrimental. It was held to be responsible for a range of social ills, including 'prostitution'. According to this line of argument, monogamy produced a surplus of women who were beyond both husbandly and parental authority and who courted extra-marital relations. Polygamy was lauded as being morally superior and a model of proper guardianship for women.
This discourse rarely attacked 'prostitutes' directly. Instead, monogamists were criticized for failing women and leaving them exposed to the 'unscrupulous passions of men'. They were also blamed for the various ills to which 'prostitution' was thought to be related. Of particular concern were illegitimate children, who might be subject to infanticide and abortion. The newspapers argued that this would ultimately lead to the 'destruction of the native'; reinforcing nationalist fears about racial deterioration.
This paper will argue that the discourse on 'failed women' signalled an appeal to a gender ideology, which emphasized the need for guardianship of women and the institutionalization of their reproductive capacities. Implicit within this rhetoric was an inability to conceptualize women outside of relationships with men; since their natural calling was to bear and raise children, celibacy was not an option, and 'prostitution' became the only fate imaginable. 'Prostitution', then, as conceived in certain sections of the early Lagos press, had less to do with the sale of sex than with its extra-marital quality. This notion of prostitution must be understood in the context of Yoruba norms around female sexuality; in particular, the presumed association between female sexuality and biological reproduction, and the need to contain this within marriage and the male-dominated compound.
The adequate containment of female sexuality assumed a new pertinence in the 1890s, when cultural nationalists feared a combination of cultural and physical 'extinction'. Within this context extra-marital sex, configured as 'prostitution', was perceived to be eroding the entire social system. Through its concomitant effects, like infanticide and abortion, it also posed a threat to the native's very existence. This paper will demonstrate that debates about prostitution highlight the ways in which gender relations were central to the earliest manifestations of 'Nigerian' cultural nationalism.