Alumni of the London School of Economics Columbia University
Academic work
Institutions
Hampton University
Nigerian writer and pan-African activist (1893–1944)
Nathaniel Akinremi Fadipe (2 October 1893 – 1944) was a Nigerian researcher and pan-African anti-colonial activist. After studying in Nigeria, Britain and the United States, Fadipe taught economics at the Achimota College in the early 1930s. He then returned to Britain, where he completed an anthropology doctorate at the London School of Economics, on the sociology of the Yoruba people, and participated in anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist activism.
Early life
Nathaniel Akinremi Fadipe was born 2 October 1893 at Oko-Saje, Abeokuta, Nigeria.[1] His father, I. O. Fadipe, was a Baptist pastor at the town's mission and his mother worked as a trader.[2]
In 1925, he moved to Britain as there was no educational institute beyond secondary school in Nigeria at the time. When in London he studied at the London School of Economics for four years. Then, he gained a fellowship to study history and internationalism at the Quaker Woodbrooke College in Selly Oak, Birmingham, where he received a diploma cum laude. A thesis he wrote while studying at the college – which criticized the white-majority governments of Nigeria and South Africa for detribalization of the indigenous black populations of their countries and denying them the legal rights and opportunities afforded to the white minority – was reprinted in Woodbrooke's official journal in 1930.[2][3]
Once he completed his studies, Fadipe taught economics from 1931 at the Achimota College in the Gold Coast colony (modern-day Ghana). This caused consternation with the directors of the Phelps Stokes Fund, who assumed that Fadipe would tour other universities in America, and the fund demanded Fadipe to pay back his grant money in part. This was because the money he received was supposed to cover a two-year stint touring America.[3]
As the only African tutor on the faculty of Achimota during his time there, Fadipe struggled and often felt isolated in his work, whereupon he was highly critical of the economic actions of the country and its government during the Great Depression. Nnamdi Azikiwe, a Nigerian journalist who later became the first independent president of the country, later said that Fadipe went "through hell" at the institution "all due to professional jealousy".[3]
In 1933, Fadipe travelled to Europe to visit Czechoslovakia, with funding from Woodbrooke. In 1934, Achimota College did not renew Fadipe's contract and all trace of his tenure was erased from the college's records.[2]
Back to Britain
Fadipe moved back to London at the end of the 1933–1934 academic year and later enrolled at London School of Economics to study for a doctorate in anthropology. At LSE, he studied under professors Bronisław Malinowski and Morris Ginsberg. He was partially funded by the International Institute of African Languages and Cultures for his studies, but remained in financial difficulties during his time there. His doctoral thesis The Sociology of the Yoruba was the first sociological study by a black African.[3] Despite it being completed in 1939, and used for several decades afterwards as a reputable resource on colonial-era Nigerian history and Yoruba culture, it remained unpublished until 1970.[3][4]
Still struggling with his finances, Fadipe also worked as a clerk, Yoruba language instructor, and translator.[2]
Death
Fadipe died in 1944 from a brain haemorrhage at the age of 51. He was described as being "killed by overwork and perhaps by frustration: he had to combine earning a minimal living at menial tasks with total devotion to the cause of Africa".[3]